I’m presuming that Donald Trump and his supporters are going to love London Has Fallen (Grammercy/Lionsgate, 3.4). This London-based sequel to Olympus Has Fallen is a crude, gut-level, kill-the-terrorists flick that shows 80 or 90 bad guys getting drilled for their lunacy — the kind of justice that every Trump voter pines for. And yet the movie doesn’t, in the end, have the balls to cut off heads. It wants to but hasn’t the courage of its convictions. I know that sounds weird but hear me out.

London Has Fallen definitely struck me as a reflection of aggressive Trump values — racism, rage, intemperance, militancy. The bad guys are a small army of Middle-Eastern terrorists, and boy, does Gerald Butler‘s Mike Bannon waste these America-hating fucks like there’s no tomorrow…die, die, die, assholes! 90, 100…I lost count.

London Has Fallen is also dumb as a pile of rocks, but what’s a little idiocy between fans and filmmakers? It doesn’t do the spade work, it doesn’t care about logic or realism…nothing. It’s just recycling cliches and humiliating the cast.

At least a couple of hundred ruthless, well-funded terrorists kill a lot of government leaders and security guys and all but reduce London to Fallujah, but except for the appearance of a squad of British SWAT guys who show up in Act Three there is next to no response to the attacks by the British military. Which struck me as bizarre. The resistance mostly boils down to Butler and Aaron Eckhart‘s President Benjamin Asher — a couple of armed bros vs. a gang of ISIS-like demon fiends. (Yes, the baddies are technically doing the bidding of a ruthless 50something arms dealer but we all know what the shot is.)

Yes, London Has Fallen is occasionally “funny” (guys were chortling now and then during this morning’s press screening) but not, for my money, funny enough. By which I mean truly self-lampooning. And why not? Nobody takes this shit even half-seriously so why not go full comedy? Instead all we get are the usual hard-boiled, self-regarding macho quips (straight out of the classic Die Hard playbook) but London never really cuts loose like Roland Emmerich‘s White House Down, which didn’t make as much money as Olympus Has Fallen but was a far more enjoyable film.

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All-media screenings happen on Monday, Tuesday or Wednesday evenings. (Especially Tuesdays.) Family-friendly flicks will sometimes show at all-media screenings on Saturday morning or afternoon. But nobody and I mean nobody books an all-media screening for 4 pm on a Wednesday, which is what the Sony guys have done for Louis Leterrier‘s The Brothers Grimsby. Pic opens on 3.11. It opened in England on 2.24 under the title of Grimsby, pulling a 50% Rotten Tomatoes rating and 46% on Metacritic.

Yesterday Entertainment Weekly‘s Clark Collis filed an “exclusive” but clueless report about the 4.22 opening (theatrical, VOD) of Nina, an allegedly underwhelming Nina Simone biopic with the clearly miscast Zoe Saldana (as opposed to, say, the great Viola Davis) portraying the troubled singer.

The fact that director Cynthia Mort filed a lawsuit nearly two years ago against producer Ealing Studios Enterprises should tell you plenty. Here are some of the lawsuit details.

I don’t want to see Nina anyway. Self-destruction is boring, and I’ve already done time with Liz Garbus‘s Oscar-nominated What Happened, Miss Simone? — a respectable effort in this equation.

Here’s how Collis idiotically puts it: “How could we cheer up Nina Simone fans about the documentary What Happened, Miss Simone? losing to Amy at the Oscars last Sunday? Well, how about this: EW can exclusively reveal that Nina, a years-in-the-making biopic of the so-called ‘High Priestess of Soul’, will be released to theaters and on VOD, April 22. Directed by Cynthia Mort, the movie stars Guardians of the Galaxy and Avatar actress Zoe Saldana as Simone and Selma actor David Oyelowo as her assistant-turned-manager, Clifton Henderson.”

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In anticipation of Universal Home Video and the Film Foundation’s forthcoming Bluray of Marlon Brando’s One-Eyed Jacks (’61), which will probably street between early summer and early fall**, here are two images — one from a lobby card, another a publicity still — of a tragic ending that was filmed but discarded. I’m speaking of the death of Luisa (Pina Pellicer) from a bullet fired by a wounded Dad Longworth (Karl Malden) after being drilled twice in the back by Brando’s Rio. In the 141-minute release version Longworth fires at Rio and Luisa as they ride out of town after a gunfight, but he misses. In the much longer but long-ago-destroyed Brando cut Luisa catches a bullet and dies. It’s odd that photos of a death scene that wasn’t meant to seen were printed, but here’s the evidence.

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For Los Angeles-based journos like myself, or more precisely the kind that doesn’t get invited to elite trade-critic screenings, Whiskey Tango Foxtrot and London Has Fallen are screening against each other tonight. (Thankfully London has a follow-up screening tomorrow morning.) They’ll open against each other three days hence (3.4). Nobody’s written about London but we all know the deal. Meanwhile credible critics have spoken against the Tina Fey-goes-to-Afghanistan comedy, leaving it with a 60% and 43% rating from Rotten Tomatoes and Metacritic, respectively. I’ll try to keep the moaning down out of respect for those seated nearby.

Yesterday morning Sasha Stone and I discussed Sunday night’s Oscar telecast — general assessments, the coming effects of a diverse Academy (along with the already in-progress degradation and downswirling of theatrical cinema culture due to indifferent Millenials who see “Oscar movies” as a half-boring, semi-disreputable genre), the Stallone shocker, how the preferential ballot was crucial to Spotlight‘s big win, etc. This should have been posted yesterday afternoon, but Sasha didn’t send it along until early last evening when I was out and about. As per custom, Sasha will be taking it a bit easier for the next few months while Hollywood Elsewhere will push on as usual. Again, the mp3.

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In my 2.29 “Oh, What A Night” riff I failed to post the best snap of the night — Spotlight director-cowriter Tom McCarthy coming down the main stairs at Palihouse and being cheered by the crowd.

Spotlight‘s Tom McCarthy — Sunday, 2.28, 11:35 pm.

Speaker of the House Paul Ryan: “If a person” — Donald Trump — “wants to be the nominee of the Republican party, there can be no evasion and no games. They must reject any group or cause this is built on bigotry” — a reference to former KKK bigwig David Duke, who has endorsed Trump. “This party does not prey on people’s prejudices,” Ryan went on. “We appeal to their highest ideals. This is the party of Lincoln. We believe all people are created equal in the eyes of God, and our government. This is fundamental. And if someone wants to be our nominee, they must understand this.”

Translation: Since the passage of the 1965 Voting Rights Act and particularly the rise of civil unrest in the late ’60s and early ’70s, the Republican party has been a haven for rich, alarmed or under-educated whites who feel threatened by liberal social legislation, programs and attitudes that have afforded a fair shot to people of color looking to get ahead. Republican leaders disavow blatant racism, of course, but we all know they’ve been speaking in code for decades about social and racial issues, and that they are, in fact, the party of racial dog-whistle sentiments.

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In a 2.29 N.Y. Times piece about diversity concerns and the gradual implementation of new AMPAS voting rules, Brooks Barnes and Michael Cieply state the following: “The academy has only a few months to repair damaged processes, internal relationships and its public image before the next Oscar season descends in late summer, bringing with it a chilling prospect: What if voters, even after a planned purge of inactive members, again snub actors of color?”

The purge will take a while to fully kick in, but in terms of the upcoming 2016 Oscar season Barnes and Cieply are essentially asking “what if Academy voters aren’t as impressed with Nate Parker‘s The Birth of a Nation as many who attended the 2016 Sundance Film Festival were?”

Nation and possibly one other film — Barry Jenkins‘ Moonlight, a Plan B/A24 project about “black queer youth amid the temptations of the Miami drug trade” — are the only 2016 films made by and primarily starring African-Americans that seem to have, at least nominally, the markings of award-season contenders.

The only other film with an African-American theme and a sizable cast of African-American players is Gary Ross‘s The Free State of Jones (STX, 5.13), but this is basically a drama about a white savior — a true story of a Mississippi farmer, Newton Knight (Matthew McConaughey), who leads an armed rebellion against the Confederacy and marries a former slave, Rachel (Gugu Mbatha-Raw).

There’s also Jeff Nichols‘ Loving, a late ’50s-era drama about a real-life interracial marriage that briefly resulted in Mildred and Richard Loving (Ruth Negga, Joel Edgerton) being sentenced to prison in Virginia.

Please check out HE’s just-posted 2016 Oscar Balloon — a rundown of over 55 films that may eventually register as awards fodder or at least as adult-friendly, review-driven fare. If I’m missing a black-centric film of any dimension — African-American focused, performed or created — please advise.

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In a few days Quentin Tarantino‘s New Beverly Cinema will be screening a beware-of-Ryan O’Neal double bill — Love Story (’70) and Oliver’s Story (’78). A little more than 37 years ago I laughed at a defaced version of an Oliver’s Story one-sheet on a New York subway station wall. It won’t be very funny if I use the original graffiti so I’m going to use polite terminology. The dialogue balloons had O’Neal saying to costar Candice Bergen, “I’m sorry but may I have sex with you in a way that can’t get you pregnant?” Bergen answered, “I’d prefer another method.” I was poor and struggling and mostly miserable, but the graffiti made me laugh. I guess you had to be there.

The late George Kennedy‘s peak moment (“the greatest of my life”) was winning the Best Supporting Actor Oscar for his performance as a big-mouthed convict in Cool Hand Luke (’67). He was fine in that Stuart Rosenberg film, but my favorite Kennedy performances are his police detective in The Boston Strangler (’68) and particularly his bullying, sociopathic goon who was brought down by a pack of Dobermans in Clint Eastwood and Michael Cimino‘s Thunderbolt and Lightfoot (’74). I understood Kennedy’s willingness to prostitute himself as Joe Petroni in those Godforsaken Airport sequels (Airport 1975, Airport ’77, The Concorde: Airport ’79), but doing these and other crap films diminished what he had going in the late ’60s.

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