Variety‘s Courtney Howard and The Hollywood Reporter‘s Frank Scheck have reviewed Meg Ryan‘s What Happens Later (Bleecker Street, 11.3), an older person’s romcom set in a snowbound airport, and based upon Steven Dietz’s play Shooting Star.

Apart from noting that it’s a two-hander and agreeing upon the magical realist atmosphere, the disparity of opinion is startling.

Scheck: “Not so much a romcom as a comic drama infused with strong doses of magic realism that some viewers will find charming and others insufferably twee. What might have proved effective theatrically comes across as wholly artificial and schematic onscreen, despite Ryan’s considerable efforts as both director and performer. The proceedings inevitably feel claustrophobic. While Ryan’s bountiful charm is as evident as ever, her character unfortunately comes across like an older version of the manic pixie dream girl. And the movie’s heavy-handed magical realist elements counter the slightness of the material to deadly effect.

Howard: “Meg Ryan not only dazzles before the camera in What Happens Later, but behind it as well, as director and co-writer. Through the prism of one former couple’s relationship woes, this effervescent, enlightened romantic comedy explores our innate need for reconciliation within ourselves and with each other. It’s a delight to welcome Ryan back to the silver screen after an extended hiatus, and in the genre she helped rejuvenate alongside filmmakers like Rob Reiner and Nora Ephron (to whom this film is touchingly dedicated).”

I haven’t seen What Happens Later, but Howard’s use of the term “touchingly dedicated” almost certainly indicates bias. She’s in the tank for romcoms, I suspect, and loves the idea of Ryan making one of her own.

There’s also Mick LaSalle’s delighted take.

“The Marvel machine was pumping out a lot of content, but did it get to the point where there was just too much, and they were burning people out on superheroes?”

This quote, spoken by Wall Street analyst Eric Handler and reported by Variety‘s Tatiana Siegel, is music to Hollywood Elsewhere’s ears.

I’ve been waiting for over a decade for the Marvel downfall or at least the gradual weakening of this satanic strain, and now that it’s slowly, finally happening there are tears of joy in my eyes.

I haven’t felt this good since the death of Robert Downey, Jr.’s Tony Stark, and I was clicking my heels over that one.

The impetus behind Siegel’s new “Marvel is in trouble” article (okay, call it a “the tide has turned and things are swirling downward” piece) boils down to widespread readings and presumptions about The Marvels (Disney, 11.10) blowing the big one.

That plus the seeming downfall of Jonathan Majors, but this has been a nagging legal thing for several months now, partly due to Siegel reporting on Major’s issues (sexual assault charges) and seemingly pushing for his demise.

Even I, a committed hater of all things spandex and particularly a cinematic brand that significantly contributed to the death (or at least the diminishing popularity until Oppenheimer came along) of tangy, character-driven, real-world theatrical films…Marvel plus Covid plus streaming plus the appalling cinematic tastes of Millennials and Zoomers…a brand that every major over-45 filmmaker (Marty!…Fuck Joe Russo!) has been deploring and damning for years…even I was delighted by Spider-Man: No Way Home two years ago…I admit it.

But generally the Marvel machine was been drooping and groaning and shortfalling for at least a couple of years now, and not just in my head.

Siegel: “The source of Marvel’s current troubles can be traced back to 2020. That’s when the COVID pandemic ushered in a mandate to help boost Disney’s stock price with an endless torrent of interconnected Marvel content for the studio’s fledgling streaming platform, Disney+.

“According to the plan, there would never be a lapse in superhero fare, with either a film in theaters or a new television series streaming at any given moment.

“But the ensuing tsunami of spandex proved to be too much of a good thing, and the demands of churning out so much programming taxed the Marvel apparatus. Moreover, the need to tease out an interwoven storyline over so many disparate shows, movies and platforms created a muddled narrative that baffled viewers.

“‘The more you do, the tougher it is to maintain quality,” says Handler. “[Marvel] tried experimenting with breaking in some new characters, like Shang-Chi and Eternals, with mixed results. With budgets as big as these, you need home runs.”

Speaking of Eternals, another anvil tied around Marvel’s ankles these days are workester themes and plotlines. Fanboys don’t like that shit as a rule. Just ask Kathy Kennedy.

Siegel: “The Marvels will struggle to get the ball past the infield, at least by Marvel’s outsized standards. The movie, which cost $250 million and sees Brie Larson reprising her role as Captain Marvel, is tracking to open to $75 million-$80 million — far below the $185 million Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness took in domestically in its debut weekend last year.

“The Marvels has seen its release date moved back twice, too, once to swap places with Quantumania, which was deemed further along, and again when its debut shifted from July to November to give the filmmakers more time to tinker. But that extra time didn’t necessarily help. In June, Marvel, which traditionally only solicits feedback from Disney employees and their friends and families, took the uncharacteristic step of holding a public test screening in Texas. The audience gave the film middling reviews.”

Invites for one-day-only press screenings of Ridley Scott‘s Napoleon were received yesterday. The big day is Tuesday, 11.14 in Manhattan and Los Angeles — day and evening screenings with the review embargo lifting at 7 pm eastern, 4 pm L.A. time.

That’s not much time to bang out a thoughtful review but this is a rough-and-tumble racket.

Scott’s long-awaited epic (157 minutes) will open in theatres eight days later on the 60th anniversary of JFK’s murder — Wednesday, 11.22. A four-hour-plus director’s cut will stream on Apple + sometime down the road, possibly in late December or certainly by January.

Here’s a year-old research screening rave, posted by Jordan Ruimy.

Last night HE commenter “Regular Joe” said the following about Alexander Payne‘s The Holdovers: “I liked it. I enjoyed it and might see it again on the big screen. That being said, I’m not sure how much it will resonate with the newer, younger Oscar voters who’ve been skewing the awards for a while now. Either way, entertaining flick.”

HE to Regular Joe: Saying you “liked” it enough to possibly see it again is both a serious compliment and an increasingly rare one these days. At the same time saying you found it “entertaining” almost qualifies as damnation with faint praise. Almost but not quite. I know you didn’t mean it this way but there’s a certain low-flame element in what you’re saying

In my book The Holdovers is a tartly finessed gift and something close to a well-varnished treasure — the kind of wisely seasoned, well-assembled, character-rich relationship dramedy that (here comes the crusty cliche that everyone has been repeating since Telluride) they just don’t make any more.

Mostly set in late December of ’70, The Holdovers delivers a sublime time-travel effect — a visit to a land of wonder and imagination…Jesus, I sound like Rod Serling here. It’s basically a visit to a land of real-people flavorings and shadings, of realistic complications and emotional detours and random speedbumps…the kind of food that was occasionally served on the menu back in the 20th Century…the kind of stuff that been-around-the-track types remember from films like The Last Detail, etc. Three characters with their particular, baked-in contours and attitudes on a journey of gradual self-discovery or resignation or whatever.

I know what you’re saying about the likely expectations or criteria that Millennials and Zoomers might have in their heads. Over the last 15 years these unfortunately bruised and coarsened souls have been conditioned to want more push or punch from films of this sort — payoff elements of a grosser or more pratfally nature (erections, farts, belchings, defecations, brown torpedoes, vomitings, ejaculations, handjobs, blowjobs, slaps and punches and ball-kickings, guys jumping out of second-story windows and suffering nary a bruise or scratch, fire alarms, cops being called, car thefts or crashings or breakdowns or speeding tickets, encounters with local yokel mechanics or grumpy old codgers or eccentric trans folk). I know what they want. They want “holy shit!” or “oooh-hah-hah-hah!!” or “gaaahhh!”

As Marcus Licinius Crassus once said, it’s all a matter of taste. And as Francois Truffaut once explained, taste is a result of a thousand distastes, I’m not saying that the cinematic appetites of Millennials and Zoomers are tragic, but in a sense a fair-sized percentage of them don’t seem to know (or don’t care to know) what distastes are, or have rejected the idea of distastes or something along these lines. Over the last 15 or 20 years their standards have been systematically lowered and ground into mush, and so they want relationship dramedies in a Seth Rogen-y vein.

You know that feeling of shuddering disgust that many critics expressed in their reviews of Rogen’s Long Shot? The Holdovers has none of that shit in its veins. It’s a fine wine by comparison.