I finally sat down with Azazel Jacobs‘ His Three Daughters on Netflix, and I have very little to add to what everyone else has been saying, which is that it’s a fairly delicious ensemble piece.

It’s about three adult-aged sisters (Carrie Coon‘s control-freak Katie, Natasha Lyonnes stoned-all-the-time Rachel and Elizabeth Olsen‘s space-casey Christina) tending to their dying dad (Jay O. Sanders) inside a dreary-looking apartment — almost all dialogue, great performances from everyone top to bottom but especially from Coon.

My favorite scene is when Katie and Rachel, who routinely get on each others’ nerves, lose their tempers and come damn close trading blows, but are prevented from doing so by a huddling, freaked-out Christina.

My only problem is with Sanders’ bulky, fleshy appearance. As soon as I saw him my suspension of disbelief went out the window. Sanders’ character has been dying for months and is very close to the end, and yet he’s got a fair amount of weight on him and his facial features have a jowly thing going on. The last time I checked older men who are cancer-wracked are fairly skinny and gaunt looking. Sanders is too beefy, too heavy-set….like a linebacker or a professional wrestler.

And I didn’t iike the Three Daughters apartment, which seems to be part of a Co-op City structure of some kind (fake-brick siding, chain-link fences, spindly trees, security guard downstairs). It appears to be located within a vaguely shitty Queens neighborhood that’e near an elevated subway line. Perhaps Washington Heighte but who wants to live in a soulless Queens or Bronx apartment complex…a place without any color or personality to speak of…generally lacking in real New Yorkyness?

And I wasn’t in love with Sam Levy‘s cinematography, which mostly emphasizss one color — amber gold– and always look soft and hazy to the point of the film almost seeming unfocused.

And that sweater!

Last night everyone jumped on that Fandango report that Wicked Part One (Universal, 11.22) runs 160 minutes. And it’s a musical, mind.

Let’s assume that Wicked: Part Two (11.26.25) will have the same tone and pacing and comes in at two hours or perhaps a bit longer. 160 plus 120 = a 280-minute or a four and a half hour Wizard of Oz-adjacent thing that we’ll all need to sit through.

The applicable term or phrase, once again, is “lack of narrative discipline.”

Unless they’re on camera. Media exposure changes everything.

As previously noted on HE, widespread shock and outrage greeted a recent decision by the cultural troglodytes on the Film Federation of India (FFI) to submit a lightweight sitcom, Laapataa Ladies, over Payal Kapadia All We Imagine As Light for Oscar consideration as 2024’s Best International Feature.

Yesterday The Hollywood Reporter’s Anuska Alves reported a quote from FFI President Ravi Kottarakara that seemed to indicate a sexist or certainly a lowbrow nativist attitude in the part of FFI’s all-male selection committee.

HE to Academy members: Leapfrog over the FFI’s dismissiveness by nominating Kapadia’s film for Best Picture — it’s the only thing to do.

This is real. HE feels that these sociopathic Zoomer eco-activists should have drawn longer sentences. As in, like, “throw away the key.”

Then again what choice did I have?

From Manohla Dargis’s N.Y. Times review:

From HE’s 5.16.24 Cannes Film Festival review:

…for the great Maggie Smith, who never quite “peaked” in the HE sense of the term but kept on rolling on…from the late 1950s through the mid 20teens…I know what I’m obliged or expected to say about her remarkable career and yes, we all think of Smith of having excelled when playing middle-aged or elderly roles, but when I heard of her passing this morning the first thing that came to mind was her deeply stirred and stirring Desdemona in Laurence Olivier‘s Othello (’65), filmed when Smith was 30 or 31.

Tongues are wagging about how overexposed Nicole Kidman is, working nonstop in negligible-to-middling streaming projects, possibly since her agent represents a slew of names that aren’t working and Kidman seems to have some compulsion to be absent from her personal life. It diminishes the mystique of whenever she’s good in a film. Honestly? It’s gotten to the point that when Kidman is costarring in a new streamer or eccentric indie the general response is “oh, her again.”

From Deadline commment thread:

I’m such a huge fan of Russell Metty‘s cinematography on The Misfits that I’m almost tempted to purchase the 4K Bluray. But I won’t because the 2011 Bluray I own is quite the sharp-focused, perfectly lighted freshwater melancholy bath. Metty’s films include All That Heaven Allows, Written on the Wind, Man of a Thousand Faces, Touch of Evil, Imitation of Life, Spartacus, The Appaloosa, Madigan and The Omega Man.

I’m also a fan of Alex North‘s Misfits score.

I’m mentioning The Misfits because I’ve just watched a hugely interesting video essay about John Huston and Arthur Miller’s 1961 drama, and the maestro is none other than Isabel “Izzy” Custodio, otherwise known by her YouTube handle, Be Kind Rewind.

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