After the disastrous disappointing underwhelming reception to his titular performance in Solo: A Stars Wars Story ('18), Alden Ehrenreich seemed to go into hiding. Okay, not entirely. Two years later he costarred in Brave New World, a Peacock streaming series based on the Aldous Huxley novel, but it was cancelled after a single season. The general impression (at least in this corner) was that the poor guy's career had been seriously dented, and that his leading-man aspirations had been dashed.
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Updated: Journalists sometimes make mistakes, and it's not the end of the world when they do. But you have to give Deadline's Andreas Wiseman credit for really knocking it out of the park today in a recently posted interview with Venice Film Festival chief Alberto Barbera.
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Herewith films that have always made me seethe with hatred, twitch with revulsion and convulse with contempt. I’m naturally excluding films that are merely dull or excessive or appalling…or so bad they’re funny (Irwin Allen‘s The Swarm).
1. Richard Curtis‘ Love Actually (’03).
2. Frank Darabont‘s The Green Mile (’99)
3. Peter Jackson‘s Lord of the Rings franchise, especially Return of the King (’03).
4. Stephen Sommer‘s The Mummy (’99).
5. Joel Schumacher‘s Dying Young (’91).
6. Sir Lew Grade and Jerry Jameson‘s Raise The Titanic (’80).
7. Jerry Jameson‘s Airport ’77 (’77).
8. Josie Rourke‘s Mary, Queen of Scots (’18).
9. Ridley Scott‘s Prometheus (’12).
10. Randall Kleiser‘s The Blue Lagoon (’80).
11. Steven Spielberg‘s Hook (’91).
12. George Stevens‘ The Only Game in Town (’70).
Special bonus: The animatronic baby scene in Clint Eastwood‘s American Sniper (’14).
Superficial reaction to trailer for David O. Russell’s Amsterdam: This is a manic, half-truthful 1930s yarn — a weaving of fact and fiction that seems, at first glance, both intricate and confusing. Amsterdam is a kind of farcical crime comedy about three close friends — a pair of ex-soldiers played by Christian Twitchy-Face Bale and John David Washington, and an ex-nurse portrayed by Margot Robbie –— “who find themselves at the center of one of the most shocking secret plots in American history.” Except nobody wants to mention what the “secret plot” might be vaguely related to.
Slightly deeper analysis: I’ve watched the trailer three times, and all I can say is that Amsterdam feels to me like a hot mess. Whatever it’s actually about, Russell is (a) determined to hide the pertinent plot details, and (b) seems to have committed himself to a hyper hellzapoppin’ that involves juggling several plot threads and several characters. Has Russell bitten off more than he could chew? No idea but the trailer suggests that. It’s going to be fast and eccentric and mannered and wacky. Crazy plot, several affected characters, antsy energy and I swear to God I’ve NO FUCKING IDEA what it’s actually about.
Emmanuel Lubezski‘s warm, amber-brownish cinematography strikes me as pretty (it reminds me of Milos Forman‘s Ragtime) but a tad affected. I’m intrigued, of course, and obviously the dynamite cast will generate all kinds of pleasant distractions. (Talented people always do.) But it doesn’t feel right. Bo honest — the trailer is confusing.
What’s up with Chris Rock acting alarmed about a white guy corpse in a coffin without a top? What’s the issue? No clue. We have three woke musketeers (Bale, Robbie, Washington), fast friends whose history goes back to WWI…friends to the end in the midst of an almost totally segregated society of the 1930s, having formed a “pact” (committed to what or in search of what?).
Is the drop-dead beautiful Robbie sexual with either of them or both or none? Is there a little bit of Lubitsch’s Design for Living going on here, or not at all?
Frizzy-haired Bale says, “Do me a favor…try to be optimistic.” Okay, but optimistic about what? When Robbie says “Amsterdam,” it means what? Obviously not the Dutch city. Manhattan used to be called Amsterdam in the early days of this country, but what did it signify in the 1930s?
The trio is falsely accused of murdering somebody — the same friend of Robert DeNiro’s who was iced after witnessing something horrible. “Cuckoo”? All I know is that the trailer made me feel as if bees were buzzing around inside my head.
Question: Is this in fact the second film in which Bale has to find his false eye on the floor? A Reddit guy says the first time this happened was in The Big Short
The delighted reactions of Collider's Perri Nemiroff and Variety's Jazz Tangcay aside, Jurassic World Dominion (Universal, 6.10) is allegedly dogshit. I won't catch it until Thursday afternoon, but what am I gonna say?
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The above quote is from a Peter Bradshaw piece about Mike Hodges‘ Get Carter (’71), which is being theatrically re-released in England. A buffed-up version will also be 4K Bluray’ed on 7.25.22
HE-posted on 8.23.15: One noteworthy thing about Michael Caine‘s icy performance in Get Carter is that he always looks stern, steady and focused. He never blinks an eye.
And yet by his own admission Caine was half in the bag while filming this Mike Hodges gangster flick. During the ’60s and early ’70s Caine was smoking at least 80 cigarettes and “drinking two to three bottles of vodka” a day, he’s said.
Caine reportedly quit cigarettes “following a stern lecture from Tony Curtis at a party in 1971,” and has credited his wife Shakira, whom he married in ’73, for steering him away from vodka.
Anthony Lane‘s New Yorker review of Sam Raimi‘s Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness delivers not just an explicit warning, but a confirmation of what I’ve been sensing from the get-go, and why I decided against attending last Monday’s all-media screening in Los Angeles.
Doctor Strange “may do temporary damage to your central nervous system,” Lane writes, “yet it’s not unenlightening. For one thing, it clarifies the purpose of a multiverse. (I was startled to find the word being used by the poet and critic Allen Tate almost a century ago, in 1923: ‘I suppose Keats was insincere in his letters because he exposes a multiverse.’ Don’t tell the Scarlet Witch.)
“This has nothing to do with astrophysical speculation and plenty to do with the special-effects teams, for whom the multiverse means party time. It gives them carte blanche—which never bodes well—to dish up anything they fancy. The one smidgen of wit, as opposed to visual overkill, is the sight of a storm in an actual teacup, complete with raging waves.
“Raimi’s movie could also be of interest to sociologists. What stirred the fans around me, causing them to levitate in their seats, was not the film’s emotional sway (for it has none) but the miraculous visitation of characters from other Marvel flicks, many of them played by embarrassed-looking British actors, whose every entrance was met with ejaculations of joy.
“The cinema, at such moments, becomes a place of worship. I sat there, strewn with popcorn rubble, lost in the liturgy, jealous of the true believers, and baffled by their incomprehensible gods.”
From Sasha Stone‘s “Frank Langella and the Climate of Fear,” posted today [5.6.22] on Awards Daily:
“If there is more to the story, let it be told. If it was more than an actress upset that Langella broke rules that the ‘intimacy coordinator’ laid out, then fine — let’s hear it. But if this was IT**? If this really was the whole thing? The actress [who went nuclear] on the set of The Fall of the House of Usher really should not be an actress. She is in the wrong business. Acting requires you to access authentic humalk behavior. If a man and a woman are doing a love scene and he has to be told where to put his hands, it is not going to look authentic. It’s going to look artificial and stupid.
“If we’re talking about Last Tango in Paris or Don’t Look Now when going for authenticity really did blur the lines, that’s one thing. Here, they were both fully clothed. If THAT is too much for this actress, if she is THAT fragile…? She should do something else, or play a different part. She should look at the script and say ‘a love scene with a grown male?…oh, I’m not strong enough to do that because I’m easily triggered by hands on my body.’ That is called protecting yourself.
“But having to pull back on authenticity because the actress can’t handle it? Netflix should film a series about THIS story. I can promise you it would be a lot more interesting than one frozen in fear with intimacy coordinators scurrying about.
“At some point, we have to stop treating grown women like children, or like they’re made of glass. Actors this nervous should not be actors. I would not even want ‘intimacy coordinators’ on set. I don’t like ‘sensitivity readers.’
“The problem is that young adults [Millennials, Zoomers] seem to have been raised to believe that the world must be safe for them. But guess what, folks? That isn’t how it works. Take a look at Ukraine. Do you think any of those young people have a world made safe for them? The world is not a safe place. It is a dangerous place. Micromanaging art to accommodate overly sensitive feelings renders art useless.
“Someday there will be great books and great movies written about this moment. No one is ever going to believe that we once lived through a time when a famous and talented actor was fired because he touched a woman on the leg during a love scene where both were fully clothed.
“The truth is, Langella wasn’t fired for that reason. It was because he didn’t apologize, or, in effect, confess as a witch and live. To have apologized, he would have sold himself out, and admitted he’d done something ‘wrong.’
“Every young person should be told that the world is never going to be made safe for them. They have to become strong to survive it. Strong inside, strong outside. The last thing we need is writers, directors, comedians, and yes, actors to play it safe. We need art to express authentic human experiences — good, bad, and ugly so that they can be wrested from our own hearts. We need this to prevent madness. Frank Langella knew that. Edgar Allen Poe certainly knew that.”
** off-color jokes, a single instance of leg touching, cavalier boomer vibes.
The following nine boldfaced Cannes Competition titles have my interest, but generally speaking I’m feeling a bit underwhelmed this morning. Okay, a little bummed out.
The absence of Ari Aster‘s Disappointment Blvd. is, for me, a painful wound. If this allegedly four-hour epic had been included, Cannes ’22 would have taken on an extra dimension. Without it, it feels diminished.
I look at this rundown and I experience an imperceptible slump in my soul.
And I have to ask myself, “What will Clayton Davis say about these films?” He can wet himself over the non-competitive titles — Baz Luhrman‘s Elvis, Joseph Kosinski‘s Top Gun: Maverick, George Miller‘s Three Thousand Years of Longing — but then what? HE will be waiting with bated breath to see what Davis thinks of Cristian Mungiu‘s RMN.
HOLY SPIDER by Ali ABBASI
LES AMANDIERS by Valeria BRUNI TEDESCHI
CRIMES OF THE FUTURE (Les crimes du futur) by David CRONENBERG
TORI ET LOKITA (Tori and Lokita) by Jean-Pierre et Luc DARDENNE
STARS AT NOON by Claire Denis
CLOSE by Lukas DHONT
FRÈRE ET SŒUR by Arnaud DESPLECHIN
ARMAGEDDON TIME by James Gray
BROKER by KORE-EDA Hirokazu
NOSTALGIA by Mario MARTONE
RMN by Cristian MUNGIU
TRIANGLE OF SADNESS by Ruben ÖSTLUND
HAEOJIL GYEOLSIM (Decision to leave) by PARK Chan-Wook
SHOWING UP by Kelly REICHARDT
LEILA’S BROTHERS by Saeed ROUSTAEE
BOY FROM HEAVEN by Tarik SALEH
ZHENA CHAIKOVSKOGO (Tchaïkovski’s wife) by Kirill SEREBRENNIKOV
HI-HAN (Eo) by Jerzy SKOLIMOWSKI
Word around the campfire was that Armageddon Time wouldn’t be showing in Cannes, but a last-minute switcheroo happened, or so it appears. Okay, fine. The “James Gray cabal” has been a powerful force for years so I’m not totally surprised. But I’ve spoken to a guy who saw it recently and…okay, I won’t say anything.
From Barton Swaim‘s “David Mamet Is a Defiant Scribe in the Age of Conformity,” a 4.8.22 Wall Street Journal interview:
“Do people in the entertainment industry censor themselves? ‘They do not walk around saying things that are dangerous to express, no,’ Mamet says. ‘People whisper out here. They have to. To say, ‘Well maybe Trump did some good things’…you can’t do that. You’d risk your home, your job, your family, your friends.”
“Mr. Mamet is convinced that the ‘woke agenda’ is basically an act, so in some ways it works well in Hollywood. ‘Nobody really believes it,’ he says. ‘Nobody really believes boys turn into girls and girls turn into boys…no one does. But it’s put into a different category, so that it becomes dangerous to question it. If you question it, you’re out.’
“Are the young buying [the woke thing]? My own observation suggests some substantial minority do not. Academics and college students I’ve spoken to since 2017 indicate that social pressure to signal assent to a rotating series of orthodoxies, from public health to race and gender theories, has sparked a quiet revolt. Post a black square on Instagram to show that America is systemically racist, even if you don’t think that’s true; wear a mask even though you know it doesn’t work and you’re 20 and vaccinated; share your pronouns whether you accept or reject gender ideology — a reaction seems almost guaranteed.
“’People of that generation,’ Mr. Mamet agrees, ‘a lot of them just aren’t scared anymore.'”
This polyamorous genderfluid witch is a preschool teacher in Florida. She’s so proud of herself that she discusses her gender and sexuality with 4 year olds pic.twitter.com/XOuuX6by4w
— Libs of Tik Tok (@libsoftiktok) April 7, 2022
HE question: Are those tiny metal studs or moles below the two corners of her bottom lip? The green hair is okay and she seems relatively mold-mannered, but those mole studs….good God.
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