Last night I caught Joel Edgerton‘s The Gift (STX, 8.7) at the urging of an old journalist friend, and now I’m obliged to pay him back. One way or another I’m going to talk this guy into catching another extremely irritating, poorly motivated, button-pushing thriller that adds up to very little. Yes, a much-admired stalker thriller (92% at Rotten Tomatoes) is basically a load of hackneyed cliches that dissolve into slop once you examine them closely. Plus it leaves you adrift and hovering without anyone to identify with because (a) the two lead males are obviously repulsive and (b) the lead female (Rebecca Hall‘s Robin) is almost worse than the guys — an all-but-brainless cypher with a pixie haircut. At times she merely annoyed me; at other times I despised her.

The Gift is basically about a wounded psycho-loser (Edgerton’s Gordon, a.k.a. “Gordo the weirdo”) who skillfully insinuates himself into the life of Jason Bateman‘s Simon, a former high-school classmate who’s now a married, well-to-do security company executive, and who’s just moved to Los Angeles with his ultra-delicate dodo-bird wife (Hall). And then, bit by bit, creepy Gordo causes increasing paranoia and chaos. Simon, it turns out, is a manipulative amoral shitheel who ruined Gordo’s life in high school (or so Gordo believes) with a heartless gay-smear gossip campaign. We’re further informed that Simon is still fucking people over with loose gossip at work so it’s time for him to pay the piper because the chickens have come home to roost…right?

The basic idea is that if you did something cruel in high school you have to pay for this as an adult by being completely destroyed. “You might be done with the past,” Gordo tells Simon, “but the past isn’t done with you.” I’m sorry but that’s almost 100% bullshit. The dawn of every new day tells us to shed our old skins and fears and start anew. Many of us do that. Remnants of past errors or traumas may linger in this or that way (guilt, nightmares, self-destructive habits) but unless you’re a former murderer or child-molester healthy people move on. Sometimes they transcend. We’ve all done things we’re sorry for. I’ll never forgive myself for repeatedly whacking a turtle’s shell with a board when I was seven or eight and causing the poor thing to bleed. (I thought it was a snapping turtle.) But you have to try to forgive yourself and try and grow into a better person. Unless…you know, you’re Josef Mengele and the only option is a black capsule.

Three or four days ago an Esquire profiler called Miles Teller a “dick” and now Josh Trank‘s Fantastic Four, in which Teller is one of the four leads, opened yesterday to a “breathtakingly bad” $2,829 per screen, according to Boxofficemojo.com, for a likely $27 million by Sunday night. No question about it — Teller’s nose is bloodied right now. He’ll rebound, of course, but that cock-of-the-walk vibe he had last year during the Whiplash hoo-hah…let’s just say these things go in cycles. You get clocked, you’re on the canvas and then you’re up again. Did anyone pay to see Fantastic Four?

What happened is that the Fox Searchlight guys un-scheduled me for a Mistress America interview with Greta Gerwig, and then yesterday I forgot it was Friday (possibly a subconscious reaction to my feelings being a bit hurt?) so I didn’t attend last night’s Sundance NEXT screening at the Ace Hotel. But that was okay because I’ve seen Mistress America twice now, and I’m convinced it’s one of the most original, high-energy screwball comedies I’ve ever seen. And very much a woman’s thing. Someday the New Beverly will play it on a double bill with Trainwreck, another high-wire act with the stamp of a gifted comedienne. Mistress America opens on 8.14.

Directed by Noah Baumbach but for the most part imprinted with Gerwig’s personality (she stars, co-wrote and is one of the producers), Mistress America takes the screwball genre, which was hatched in the 1930s, and reconfigures and re-energizes it according to 21st Century currents and attitudes, and gives it a New York mood. I haven’t seen Peter Bogdanovich‘s She’s Funny That Way (Lionsgate, 8.21), but my understanding is that it’s also an attempt to reanimate screwball in 2015 terms, and that it’s not as successful. (Mistress America has a Rotten Tomatoes rating of 88% compared to 36% for the Bogdanovich.)

In a 8.7 interview with Time‘s Eliza Berman, Nicolas Cage (The Runner) is quoted as follows: “I think that there was a period in film commentary where it was like the gold standard — I would cite someone like Pauline Kael or Roger Ebert or Paul Schrader — where they were really determining based on the work itself, the film itself, the performance itself. And now, with the advent of this kind of TMZ culture, it sadly seems to have infiltrated the vanguard of film commentary. I see these reviews sometimes where I think…well, you have a right to say whatever you want about my work, and I will listen whether it’s good or bad and see if there’s something that I might work with, but personal issues don’t have a place in film commentary.”

Wells to Cage: Indeed, the era of classic film criticism is more or less over. None of us can go home again. But you’re wrong about “personal issues” having no place in the discussion. The fact is that in today’s digressive, multi-stranded realm movies have to be grist for all kinds of mills. There are too many links and digressions available to readers. There’s obviously nothing wrong with putting on your Dwight McDonald hat and assessing “cinematic merit” but there are many other ways to skin a cat, and one side-aspect of the new reality is that every actor (especially the meta-eccentrics like Cage) appearing in a new movie is like a dead frog in a high-school biology class.

I’m comforted that staffers for the Guardian or the N.Y. Times of L.A. Times or The New Yorker are still doing it the old-fashioned way — sharp, scholastic, knowledgable evaluation the way Kael or Sarris or Canby or Bazin or Agee used to. But it’s a new ball game out there, and you can’t say this or that association is invalid. I can mention any damn impression that I’ve gotten from a film any damn way that I choose. That’s the only way to go these days — say anything, feel anything, live free or die. Compare a film to anything and then take that thought and riff on it like Pharaoh Sanders.

I decided a long time ago, in fact, to be completely open to writing about films from three vantage points, depending on my mood at the time.

An East Coast movie maven I’m vaguely acquainted with has passed along a purported response to a research screening of Cary Fukanaga‘s Beasts of No Nation (Bleecker/Netflix, 10.16), which will screen next month at the Venice and Toronto film festivals (and perhaps also at Telluride). Pic is basically about a young African kid, Agu (Abraham Attah), being turned into a monster by the horrors of fighting a mercenary war. Idris Elba is the only marquee name although his character, a fiendish warlord called “Commandant”, is supporting. Everything is bunk until proven otherwise, so take these condensed and edited words with a grain of salt:

“I couldn’t heap enough praise on it as it stands now,” says a Research Screening Guy With No Name. “The film is powerful throughout, although it has some genuinely very funny moments in the beginning before we embark on Agu’s harrowing journey. Fukunaga really got great performances from all the non-actors. Attah is charming, heartbreaking, sometimes terrifying. Strika (not sure of the actor’s name because we had to fill out questionnaires as soon as the credits started rolling) is one of the most fascinating younger roles I’ve seen in a while. Elba is definitely supporting in every way, but he looms so large over the film. Definitely his best work, in my opinion.

I can be a little trucculent in my critiques of certain movies and actors, but I don’t go after journos as a rule unless they go after me. As much as I despise certain fellows in this racket I’ll never toss grenades (call them “sexist” or whatever) out of the blue. And I certainly don’t put myself to sleep dreaming about their demise or (believe it or not but this has actually happened twice) threatening to hurt their income. And I’ll never tweet about how amusing it might be if this or that journo were to…heh-heh…be “killed” by Ed Norton. But some do think this way. They toss their little piss darts and then snicker about it. Which speaks, obviously, to their character.  Real charmers. Just saying.

For the murder of 12 people in a Colorado movie theatre, James Holmes was today sentenced to life in prison with no chance of parole. HE sentence: death. From just-posted N.Y Times story: “On each count, Judge Samour read, the panel had been unable to agree that Mr. Holmes should be put to death, and jurors understood that as a result, the court would impose a sentence of life imprisonment. Only one juror needed to dissent for the sentence to be life in prison.” The jury was comprised of nine women and three men. At least one of them — one of the women, I’m presuming — bought the defense argument that prior to the 7.20.12 shootings Holmes was afflicted with “a deepening form of schizophrenia that infected his mind with powerful delusions that killing people somehow increased his ‘human capital.'”

I noted yesterday that I wasn’t detecting any strong currents (i.e., “something that hints at a certain molecular constitution”) inside Luca Guadagnino‘s A Bigger Splash, the remake of Jacques Deray‘s La Piscine that will debut at the 2015 Venice Film Festival. The IMDB says the domestic melodrama will open in England sometime in October but Fox Searchight’s distribution plan is vague. Last night I finally watched La Piscine start to finish. Man! The plot and the tone are as malevolent as this kind of thing gets. It’s a Mediterranean sun-baked noir with nary a drop of heart or compassion. And in at least one respect it’s fairly deranged. Who dumps Romy Schneider at a time when she was one of most beautiful women in the world? She was 30 when La Piscine was made in September 1968 and dead 13 and 2/3 years later, at age 43. Anyway, I sensed or suspected right away how audiences will respond A Bigger Splash if it follows the plot of La Piscine. “Audience-friendly” is not a term that I’d use. The costars are Tilda Swinton, Dakota Johnson, Matthias Schoenaerts and Ralph Fiennes.

Jeffrey Wells to 2015 Key West Film Festival honchos: As one of the better established bigmouth Hollywood columnists with a sense of style, I would be honored to cover the 2015 Key West Film Festival in late November. Yes, I know — you didn’t invite me like you invited Ann Hornaday (a friend with whom I share a Cannes apartment every May) and Eric Kohn. But I’d like to attend and cover anyway. Every so often I’ll prostitute my services to this or that interesting film festival, and it just hit me that I’ve never been to Key West. Plus it’ll give me an opportunity to drive up to Lionel Barrymore’s hotel in Key Largo. Thank you.

All due respect for the late Robert Stack, but he never struck me as one who possessed a clear natural style. By which I mean a way of being and behaving that feels cool without effort. You’d think that most actors would have it, but a few don’t. Bette Davis had it. Amy Schumer has it in spades but not Bill Hader, good as he is in Trainwreck. Robert Downey, Jr. has attitude as opposed to style — different things. Jennifer Lawrence has style all day and into the night. Carey Mulligan‘s style is very subtle but it’s there. The non-stylists can be skilled at acting a well-written role but not quite as good at just standing against a lamppost. It used to be said that Meryl Streep was all about technique and carefully constructed behaviors, but she’s developed a real style as she’s gotten older. Obviously Marlon Brando, Robert Mitchum, Gary Cooper and Cary Grant had style but I don’t think Franchot Tone, Robert Taylor and Charlton Heston did. (I know — “Franchot who?”) Bill Maher has style but not so much Jimmy Fallon. Walter Matthau had style to burn. Laurence Olivier had none of his own, but give him a fake nose or a wig or a Roman toga and style just poured into him. Woody Allen has style. Jimmy Cagney, Jack Nicholson, John Wayne, James Gandolfini. It’s hard to define style but I know it when somebody doesn’t quite have it. (A link for those who don’t know who Garcia Lorca was.)

The People’s Central Committee for the Compassionate Portrayals of LGBT Characters and Public Education Regarding Transgender Rights and Lifestyles announces the 9.18 opening of About Ray (Weinstein Co., 9.18). Formerly called Three Generations, it’s basically about Elle Fanning waiting to transition into a guy. Directed and cowritten by Gaby Dellal and co-written by Nikole Beckwith, pic costars Naomi Watts, Susan Sarandon, Tate Donovan and Sam Trammell. I don’t mean to sound flip or facile about this. It’s obviously an excellent thing that public consciousness about transgenders is much more enlightened than it was even five years ago. But trendy transgender-ism has been leapt upon with such fervor by liberal creatives that I’m detecting vague parallels to China’s Great Cultural Revolution. The climax of the Great Transgender Information Campaign of 2015 will happen, of course, with the arrival of Tom Hooper‘s The Danish Girl (Focus Features, 11.27).

In an 8.6 discussion with Indiewire‘s Eric Kohn, Edward Norton has two significant things to say about the New York/Hollywood award season, which will run this year from Telluride (9.4 to 9.7) until Oscar night on 2.28.16. The first thing I responded to sympathetically. The second thing I regarded as excessively austere and bizarre, to be polite about it.

The first thing Norton says is that it’s a huge drag to have to jaw with journalists and Academy members about your award-worthy film and/or performance for six months straight. This I understand and sympathize with, but on the other hand if it wasn’t for award season Hollywood wouldn’t have a financial incentive to make complex, adult-angled quality films at all. For all the hassle, award season is the only thing saving movie lovers from a nonstop barrage of superhero flicks, YA adaptations, dumb-ass hormone comedies and the usual half-intriging, half-oddball shit from the indie community. When Norton is on his deathbed one of the things he’ll look back upon with fondness is his performance in Birdman. Presumably he understands that without an award season nobody would have financed Birdman in the first place.