“Costa-Gavras‘s The Confession is not, I think, a better movie than his prize-winning Z, with which it will inevitably be compared, not only by the critics but also by those members of the public who may look for a repeat performance. The earlier film was a nearly perfect topical thriller whose form pretty much defined the substance of its liberal politics.

“However, because the subject of The Confession is much more complex, much more human, I find it vastly more interesting than Z, even when one is aware of the way Costa-Gavras manipulates attention by the use of flashy cinematic devices that sometimes substitute for sustained drama. It is a horror story of the mind told almost entirely in factual and physical terms, which is something of a contradiction.

The 2015 Cannes Film Festival roster was announced in Paris this morning, and it is what it is. No surprises — all previously spitballed. I’ve been feeling a wee bit glum about what seems to me like an underserving of crackling dimensionality and serious marquee pizazz but let’s try to be optimistic. Among all of the announced (including out of competition or OOC), I feel instinctually drawn to or moderately cranked about the following, in this order: Todd Haynes‘ Carol (yes!), Woody Allen‘s Irrational Man (OOC), George Miller‘s Mad Max: Fury Road (OOC), Denis Villeneuve‘s Sicario (sorry but I’ll always be wary of Villeneuve), Paolo Sorrentino‘s Youth, Jacques Audiard‘s Erran, Justin Kurzel‘s Macbeth (Shakespeare for ADD generation?), Joachim Trier‘s Louder Than Bombs, Gus Van Sant‘s The Sea of Trees, Barbet Schroeder‘s Amnesia and Hou Hsiao-hsien‘s The Assassin (special Asian martial-arts suffering potential).

How about this for a theory? Dennis Quaid freaked about being blackballed as an unemployable nutcase after yesterday’s “Dopey the dick” video went viral. His manager called the Funny or Die guys and three hours later they were on the set and shooting this “punk” video that claims it was all staged. The more I think about it, the more likely it seems.

Until an hour ago I had never once seen a color photograph taken on the set of John Huston‘s Key Largo (’48). Humphrey Bogart was 48, close to 49, and Lauren Bacall was 23. Just before the shooting, which happened in the fall of ’47, Bogart had starred in Huston’s The Treasure of the Sierra Madre, which opened in January ’48. Key Largo opened in mid-July of that year.

I’m into my fourth year of sobriety now (the three-year anniversary occured almost exactly a month ago) but every so often I look back and go, “Whoa…that happened in my drinking days.” Which were only occasionally wild. Except for my vodka-and-lemonade period from ’93 to ’96, which involved two alcohol-related car collisions, I never felt as if my life was all that negatively affected by drinking. Nor did I ever decide in my 20s and 30s that things had become problematic due to pot, hallucinogens, quaaludes and cocaine toots. I saw my nocturnal adventures as purely supplemental. I never partied during work hours. I saw myself as someone who worked hard, always woke up early, killed myself to become a half-decent writer, kept myself in shape and led a more-or-less disciplined life.

Yes, I behaved erratically and irresponsibly at times, but when I was younger I believed that a life without Jack Daniels and beer and quaaludes and revelry represented a kind of death. On top of which my romantic life was fairly spectacular back then so there was that besides.

One night I was at a party in Wilton with the usual assortment of drinking buddies. I started to feel tired around 1 am or so (I had to work the next day) but the guy I came with wasn’t in the mood to leave. I went outside for whatever reason and noticed that a friend who lived about a mile from my place was preparing to leave. He began to get into his ride (an LTD Ford station wagon) with his girlfriend and two other couples. I asked for a lift and he said “Uhm, I don’t think there’s any room, Jeff.” So without telling my friend (i.e., Pete) I decided to sneak a ride on top of his car, lying spread-eagled and holding on to the luggage rack. It was a moonless, pitch-black night and I somehow managed to gently crawl on top without anyone noticing. Don’t ask me.

The photography is too murky, too grayish, too shadowed. You can barely see Meryl Streep. The rock through the window is the only image that sticks.

Nice trippy little dream piece. Blood torrent replaced by tennis balls (or possibly Jolly Green Giant frozen peas?). “There ain’t nothin‘ in Room 237.” Kubrick’s moon hovering in the 18th Century bedroom at the end of 2001. Posted two weeks ago by BBB3viz.

Andrew Bujalski‘s Results, which I caught at last January’s Sundance Film Festival, is a mildly diverting “indie romantic comedy” that is actually aggressively non-romantic for the simple fact that the aggressively balding, somewhat flabby, alabaster-skinned Kevin Corrigan, who is usually funny on his own louchey, street-slacker terms, plays a romantic suitor of Cobie Smulders (How I Met Your Mother). Nobody wants to see a movie in which Corrigan (who’s now 46 but looks a decade older) has sex with anyone, for any reason. The other leg of the romantic triangle is played by Guy Pearce, who’s all buffed up and handling his trainer role with a kind of dry, non-“comedic” gravitas. Results is not a “problem film” — I stayed with it, chuckled once or twice, nodded off once, woke up again. It’s a bit meandering but fine. Giovanni Ribisi, Brooklyn Decker, Anthony Michael Hall and Constance Zimmer costar.

I’ve always wanted to go inside Abbey Road Studios (3 Abbey Road, London NW8), but this Google-created virtual tour is (or was) inaccessible on my iPhone 6 Plus. So I took the tour on the Macbook Pro. It doesn’t show you the administrative offices or the walking path to Studio #1 or Studio #2. It just plops you down in Studio #1 with the narrator offering a brief history and…it all stops. Oh, I see…I have to activate the menu box and click on various blue buttons. But how do I get to the Beatles recording studio (i.e., #2)? Oh, I see…I have to resuscitate the main options and then click on 2…fine. (If Dennis Quaid was taking this tour with me, around this point he would be muttering “fucking piss shit cocksucker.”) Oh, here’s the famous old piano that was heard on “Lady Madonna” and “Martha My Dear” and sounded that legendary chord-strike on “A Day In The Life.” If I had put this together, I would have offered an optional version for the easily irritated — an old-fashioned, non-horseshitty, non-interactive version that just takes you around with a gliding Steadicam and shows you stuff…period, over and out.

I saw and praised Bill Pohlad‘s Love & Mercy (Roadside Attractions, 6.5) seven months ago at the Toronto Film Festival, and now, with this excellent trailer, I’m feeling some of the same sitrrings and satisfactions for the first time since then. Paul Dano and John Cusack both give knock-out, award-level performances as Beach Boys wunderkind and genius composer Brian Wilson at different ages. I’ve been looking forward to a second dip in the pool since Toronto, and now I’m a little disappointed that I’ve been been told about only one Los Angeles press screening this month (on 4.28), and at the less-than-wonderful Wilshire Screening Room at that.

Neil LaBute‘s Dirty Weekend, debuting this weekend at the Tribeca Film Festival, is said to be an “ascerbic” comedy concerning an odd-couple pair of co-workers (Matthew Broderick, Alice Eve) who roam around Albuquerque “on a business trip as personal proclivities and intimate secrets are revealed” blah blah. A Wikipedia entry states the obvious, which is that the U.K. term “dirty weekend” alludes to “a romantic hotel assignation.”

The New Republic‘s Brian Beutler has suggested that Hillary Clinton‘s likability problem would evaporate overnight if she got Barack Obama to run as her Vice-President. If you ask me Beutler is on to something. From my perspective this would totally lift me out of my Hillary doldrums and change everything.

“There are three sections of the Constitution that prescribe limits on who can be president and vice president,” Beutler writes. “Article II, the Twelfth Amendment and the Twenty-Second Amendment. While the former two limit who is ‘eligible’ to serve—natural born citizens, 35 or older—the Twenty-Second Amendment begins ‘No person shall be elected to the office of the President more than twice.’