Daniel Ragussis‘s Imperium (Lionsgate Premiere, 8.19) is about a short guy (Daniel Radcliffe) infiltrating a group of radical right-wing racist nutters. Written and directed by Ragussis from a story by Michael German, and almost certainly influenced on some level by Costa-Gavras‘s Betrayed (’88), in which FBI agent Debra Winger not only infiltrates a secret white racist organization but has an affair with the leader, played by Tom Berenger. Betrayed wasn’t very good, in part because Joe Eszterhas felt obliged to insert the fucking element. Imperium, which costars Toni Collette, Tracy Letts and Sam Trammell, will have a limited theatrical opening concurrent with VOD.

I’ve long believed that Albert Brooks‘ two finest films are Lost in America and Defending Your Life, but I happened to watch Modern Romance the other night on Netflix (where all the Brooks films are playing for the time being). It was almost a revelation. I’d forgotten how subversively (i.e., sometimes uncomfortably) funny it is. It brought me back to those emotional moments in my own life when “the ‘ludes kicked in.” (Oh, for the days when I used to score at the old Edlich Pharmacy on Manhattan’s Upper East Side.) Kathryn Harrold married The Last Word‘s Lawrence O’Donnell in ’94; they divorced in ’13 or thereabouts. Harrold runs an L.A.-based counselling service.

I had intended to catch a screening last week of Mike and Dave Need Wedding Dates (20th Century Fox, 7.8), but something interfered. What was that thing? What kept me from going? It may have had something to do with my wanting to avoid this film like the plague. That aversion was always there but I had told myself to ignore it. “Man up and watch the film,” I told myself. “Face the music, do the job, grapple with the zeitgeist.” But I ducked it anyway, and I’m not sorry in the least. And I’d as soon go to Dublin as to hell.

I’d have a different attitude if the movie was called Mike and Dave Get Captured By ISIS. I would’ve attended that film with bells on. But of course that was never in the cards.

“Yes, it’s a piece of product shaped by four decades’ worth of arrested-adolescent farce, going back to the granddaddy of bad-behavior comedy, National Lampoon’s Animal House,” writes Variety‘s Owen Gleiberman. “[And] the women, who used to be victims of this stuff (or on the sidelines), are now at the rowdy, disheveled, foul-mouthed center of it all, and that just multiplies the highly agreeable possibilities for naughty nasty lunacy.

Read more

I was reading Wesley Morris‘s 7.1 N.Y. Times piece about the overlapping realms of Blake Lively and Kate Hudson and how this affected his response to The Shallows. About halfway through it hit me that even though The Shallows has only taken in $36.7 million after 11 days in release, Lively has come up in the world since it opened. She’s become a kind of juggernaut, a major blonde, someone you talk about, a thing. This dumb-ass shark flick is the best thing that’s ever happened to her career. So I thought about this, and re-read my Shallows review and then stumbled upon something that Ben Affleck said about her in 2012. Just to keep things in perspective.

Read more

It’s natural to go a little dippy in the early stages of a love affair. You might occasionally say and do things that will seem a bit silly or ill-considered later on. But you still have to draw a line. Especially if you’re looking to play a famous secret agent superstud. Somehow the name “James Bond” and a #famewhore hash tag don’t jibe. Call me old-fashioned but when 007 falls in love, he shows restraint. He might have been crazy over Honor Blackman‘s lesbian pilot in Goldfinger (i.e., the hottie who decided to become hetero or at least bi after fucking him), but he would’ve never, ever worn a T-shirt that says “I Heart Pussy Galore.” And in 1962 Sean Connery, trust me, would have never worn a T-shirt on a beach that said “I Heart Diane Cilento.” I’m sorry but this kills it for Tom Hiddleston — no 007 role for him, not after this.

If I was at the beach with a new girlfriend and she put on a T-shirt that said “I Love JW,” I would smile and say “wow, so cool…I love you too” but inwardly I would be asking myself “what the fuck?”

Let’s take Trump at his bullshit word and accept that the campaign guy who assembled the anti-Hillary ad with the six-pointed star really was thinking of the lawman star worn by High Noon‘s Will Kane or Sheriff Gene Wilder in Blazing Saddles. Even if you give him that, how dumb did his staff have to be to not realize that the Star of David is also six-pointed, and that using this image would result in accusations of anti-Semitism? Three answers: (a) the staffer[s] behind the tweet didn’t consider this, which is breathtaking, (b) they didn’t care about the anti-Semitic shade they were throwing upon themselves or (c) they definitely knew what they were putting out and presumed that Trump supporters would understand what they were saying, which is that big-city Jews are corrupt and out for themselves and not on the side of real Americans. Any way you slice it the Trumpsters handled this like idiots.

F.B.I. director James Comey put the Hillary Clinton email thing to bed this morning by stating the bureau is not recommending charges against the presumptive Democratic presidential nominee for her handling of classified information as Secretary of State, and that “no reasonable prosecutor” would bring a case against her.

And yet — here comes the wrist slap I spoke of a few days ago — Comey said that Hillary and her staff were “extremely careless” in using a private server, etc. Read: blase, cavalier, indifferent, a tad clueless, a touch arrogant. Read: “The rules don’t apply to me as much as they do with others because I’m Secretary of State….I can skirt this. We can, I mean…right, Huma?”

So that’s it — “extremely careless” but no indictment. Trump will try to make something of this but what can he say? It’s just a verbal admonishment. Hillary has slinked out of a potentially damaging episode that was caused by her obsessive guardedness and aversion to transparency. Sooner or later she or Bill or someone close will once again step into the cowpie. The Clintons are always up to something.

I’m feeling so much nostalgia for Obama now — dry, careful, concise, drama-less. The Clinton years are going to be such a mess, such a headache.

Posted by Jeff Bridges sometime around 7:50 pm Pacific, give or take.

A nearly 30-year-old classic monster movie has been given an improved Bluray treatment. Apparently the 2010 Bluray wasn’t good enough. Dark Horizons‘ Garth Franklin says it’s “one of the most infamously bad Blu-rays ever created…the amount of digital noise reduction used has effectively destroyed all the grain and thus all the detail in the picture.” Franklin claims that a new 2K Predator Bluray is coming out in France in August, and yet there’s no listing on French Amazon. The Predator franchise was milked dry years ago so I couldn’t care less.

Two days ago I was riffing about a Cinemaholic checklist piece called “The 25 Most Awaited Movies of the Second Half of 2016.” I was working my way backwards from #25 but only got as far as #19. Only John Lee Hancock‘s The Founder seemed to offer possible intrigue among these seven. The other six — John Cameron Mitchell‘s How to Talk to Girls at Parties, Alexandros Avranas‘ True Crimes, Scott Derrickson‘s Doctor Strange, Justin Chadwick‘s Tulip Fever, Peter Berg‘s Deepwater Horizon, Amma Asante‘s A United Kingdom — didn’t feel quite right.

I don’t know why I even started this thing as the Cinemaholic list is partly whimsical and certainly too popcorny, but I might as well finish it. Please note that the reverse order of the films listed indicate Cinemaholic’s levels of excitement and/or preference. It doesn’t reflect mine.

18. Farren Blackburn‘s Shut-In (Europa, 11.11.). Featuring: Naomi Watts, Oliver Platt, Charlie Heaton, David Cubitt, Jacob Tremblay. Synopsis: Psychological indoor creeper — New England, winter, possibly Orphanage-like.  HE suspicion/presumption: Essentially a genre film, doesn’t seem top-tier enough. Bottom line: Maybe a classy spooker and maybe not, but what’s it doing on a most anticipated list? And what kind of a first name is “Farren”?

17. Clint Eastwood‘s Sully (Warner Bros., 9.9). Featuring: Tom Hanks, Aaron Eckhart, Laura Linney, Anna Gunn, Jamey Sheridan, Jerry Ferrara. Synopsis: Everyone knows the synopsis — I’m sick of repeating it. HE suspicion/presumption: The bureaucrats gang up on poor, honorable Sully after he saves a planeload of people = downish moral fable about how seasoned, reliable good guys aren’t sufficiently valued. Bottom line: You know Hanks will nail this.

16. Justin Kurzel‘s Assassin’s Creed (20th Century Fox, 12.21). Bottom line: Not for me, doesn’t belong, needs to be shunned, “Turning Against Fassbender,” nope.

15. Stephen Gaghan‘s Gold (TWC/Dimension, fall/holiday). Featuring: Matthew McConaughey, Édgar Ramírez, Bryce Dallas Howard. Synopsis: An unlucky balding guy (McConaughey) pools forces with with a geologist (Ramírez) to find gold in the Indonesian jungle. Bottom line: The director-writer of Syriana is a skilled, serious-minded fellow so you have to presume this is an attempt to revisit the spirit of Treasure of Sierra Madre (or something like that), but why is this film being distributed by Dimension?

Read more

I’m not qualified to write a proper tribute to legendary Iranian director Abbas Kiarostami, whose death from cancer was announced a couple of hours ago. I have nothing but respect and admiration for his work, but I’ve been too much of a Kiarostami dilletante to offer anything worth reading. I haven’t even seen Taste of Cherry, which won the Palme d’Or at the ’97 Cannes Film Festival, or Through The Olive Groves. But I can at least say that when you watched his films you always felt deeply immersed. Like all great films, they made you feel wholly subservient to their realm. My favorite Kiarostami pic was his last — 2012’s Like Someone In Love. I’m sorry but I really and truly didn’t care for Certified Copy — it actually pissed me off. But don’t listen to me. Read an appreciation by Guy Lodge or someone better acquainted with Kiarostami’s filmography. Try Owen Gleiberman’s essay — pretty good.

Read more