“Sinners” More or Less Blanked by NYFCC …Yes!

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And the one trophy Sinners did win was for Autumn Durald Arkapaw‘s cinematography, which to my eyes was muddy and dreary and indistinct during some of the nocturnal scenes. I literally couldn’t see all that was happening when the Irish vampires were out and about.

Arkapaw did, however, shoot Sinners on 65mm film, using a combination of IMAX 15-perf and Ultra Panavision 70 cameras, which made her the first female dp to shoot IMAX.

Otherwise the New York film Critics Circle gave their trophies to…

Best Film: Paul Thomas Anderson‘s One Battle After Another. HE comment: Fine, whatever…basically a political “yay team!” call. Fuck Joe Popcorn and all the money PTA’s film lost…we know better!

Best Director: It Was Just an Accident‘s Jafar Panahi. HE comment: This is all about the one-year jail term that Panahi was just sentenced to in absentia. Basically a mew-mew, milkbowl-licking political decision.

Best Actor: The Secret Agent‘s Wagner Moura, HE comment: WHAT? Moura is fine in this film, but Leonardo DiCaprio is far more “alive” and striking and penetrating in OBAA.

Best Actress: If I Had Legs I’d Kick You‘s Rose Byrne. HE comment: It was truly punishing to sit through Byrne’s performance, and for that matter the film itself. Kinda ridiculous. Hamnet‘s Jessie Buckley and Sentimental Value‘s Renate Reinsve are far more relatable and affecting.

Best Supporting Actor: One Battle After Another‘s Benicio del Toro. HE comment: Benicio is great as “Sensei”, but you can’t tell me he exudes anything close to the anguished penetration that Stellan Skarsgård delivers in Sentimental Value. And what about poor Adam Sandler in Jay Kelly?

Best Supporting Actress: Weapons‘ Amy Madigan. HE comment: Agreed — a totally warranted win.

Best International Film: Kleber Mendonça Filho‘s The Secret Agent. HE comment: It’s completely ridiculous to assert that The Secret Agent, a good-but-vaguely-problematic period drama, is more deserving of this NYFCC trophy than Joachim Trier‘s Sentimental Value. Patently absurd!

Thank God Sinners was trounced in the major categories!

Peak Malkovich (’83 to ’99)

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To me, John Malkovich, who will turn 72 a week from now, has long seemed like a fascinating, super-knowledgable, deep-drill fellow, and I’m sure he always will be. Nobody plays droll intelligent madmen better than he.

I was part of a small, very relaxed Malkovich press schmooze at the 2010 Marrakech Film Festival, and I remember gently asking him about cynical paycheck roles vs. the real stuff, and how he was simultaneously a wee bit taken aback and yet cool with the question after two or three seconds. Cool and settled.

Malkovich will always be mythic, but his peak era lasted 14 or 15 years — his Biff in the 1984 B’way stage production of Death of a Salesman (“a 31 year-old, totally-on-fire John Malkovich,” I wrote after seeing the play), Places in the Heart (’84), The Killing Fields (’85), Burn This on Broadway (’87), Dangerous Liaisons (Vicomte de Valmont) and his marriage-shattering affair with Michelle Pfeiffer, The Sheltering Sky (’90), In the Line of Fire (’93), Cyrus “The Virus” Grissom in Con Air (’87), and finally his multitudinous self in Being John Malkovich (’99).

And that, ladies and gems, was one hell of a 15-year peak.

Then Malkovich rebounded in Burn After Reading (’08) — I’ve long felt that his alcoholic, self-deluding, furiously frustrated Osborne Cox, a CIA guy, is not only his greatest-ever film performance, but one of the greatest film performances ever.

Persistence of Idiots

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There’s no reaching the God-knows-how-many-millions-of-woke-kneejerk-simpletons out there who agree with @alibrooke4ever.

Woody Allen haters are beyond the realm of reason and rationality. They are cultists living in a cave.

There’s a Grand Canyon’s worth of difference, for example, between Soon–Yi Previn having been his “stepdaughter” (imagined) and “adopted daughter of girlfriend.” Not to mention the 28 years of marriage that have transpired since Woody and Soon–Yi tied the knot in ‘97.

Ali Brooke could be ordered to read and re-read Woody Allen‘s 2.7.14 op–ed response in the N.Y. Times ten or twenty or a hundred times, and she would still say “no!”

The haters could be forced to read and re-read Moses Farrow’s “A Son Speaks Out” (5.23.18) and they would say “okay, Moses was right there in the house and all, but we’re not buying it!”

All hail persons of moral integrity and backbone like Scarlett Johansson.

Incidentally: Not that it matters all that much, but Woody’s Isaac character in Manhattan is 42, not 40.

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Ken Burns: “Disney Stole ‘Sons of Liberty’ Melody From The Iroquois!”

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To the best of my recollection Walt Disney and Robert Stevenson‘s Johnny Tremain (6.19.57) is the only mainstream film that ever depicted the Boston Tea Party. Am I wrong? Oh, and the Sons of Liberty were violent rowdies.

Despite the purported semblance of historical realism, Tremain fulfilled a paramount Disney law of the 1950s…the one about always featuring a happy sing-along scene.

Titular player Hal Stalmaster is now 85 years old. Luana Patten was definitely a looker, but she sadly passed at age 58. 19 year-old Richard Beymer (West Side Story) played Johnny’s best friend, Rab Silsbee.

Okay, That’s It — Panahi’s “Just An Accident” Will Take Best Int’l Feature Oscar

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When this happens inside Hollywood’s Dolby Theatre on Sunday, 3.15.26, it will be the second time that a political/cultural sympathy vote has bestowed a major honor upon Jafar Panahi’s latest film, the first time occuring at the close of last May’s Cannes Film Festival when it won the Palme d’Or.

Joachim Trier‘s Sentimental Value, obviously the best film of the 2025 festival, therefore lost to It Was Just An Accident and had to settle for a Grand Prix award (i.e., second prize). If I know anything about the Academy, Value will once again get elbowed aside because of Panahi’s just-announced one-year jail sentence.

Was William Shakespeare a London Tomcat? Was He a Kirk Douglas Kinda Guy?

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As a successful playwright, producer and director of many respected plays, Mr. S was surely regarded by young women as an opportunity waiting to happen. In this respect he surely had the pick of the litter. “Will” was married with kids, of course, but those obligations were 100 miles away in Stratford-upon-Avon. Out of sight, out of mind. How could he have abstained, given his relative youth and all? How could he not have been Joseph Fiennes?

Does Anyone Even Remember “42”?

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“Critics have a duty to be clear with readers,” Marshall Fine has written in a 4.12 essay. “Not to warn them, per se, because that implies something about relative merit. But to be clear or honest [when the case applies]: This is a movie in which nothing much happens. Or this is a movie in which what does happen doesn’t make a lot of sense. Or is deliberately off-putting or upsetting.”

I am one of the few critic-columnists who actually says stuff like this from time to time. But I disagree with Fine siding with the virtues of audience-friendly films, particularly when he uses Brian Helgeland‘s 42 as a sterling example.

“You know what an audience-friendly film is,” Fine writes. “It tells a story that engages you about characters you can like and root for. {And] yet movies that seek to tell a story that uplifts or inspires often get short shrift from critics. 42 is being slagged by some critics for being manipulative, [but it] happens to be a well-made and extremely involving story about an important moment in history.”

Wells response: 42 is okay if you like your movies to be tidy and primary-colored and unfettered to a fault, but it’s a very simplistic film in which every narrative or emotional point is served with the chops and stylings that I associate with 1950s Disney films. The actors conspicuously “act” every line, every emotional moment. It’s one slice of cake after another. Sugar, icing, familiar, sanctified.

One exception: that scene in which Jackie Robinson is taunted by a Philadelphia Phillies manager with racial epithets. I’m not likely to forget this scene ever. It’s extremely ugly.

Back to Fine: “The fact that 42 works on the viewer emotionally, however, is often seen as a negative by critics who aren’t comfortable with movies that deal with feelings, rather than ideas or theories.” There’s an audience, Fine allows, for nervy, brainy and complex films like To the Wonder, Upstream Color, Room 237, Holy Motors and The Master. But “all of those are not audience-friendly,” he states. “Most of them were barely watchable.

But if you read the reviews, you would find little that’s descriptive of what the movie actually looks or feels like while you’re watching it. Which, for a lot of people, was a negative experience in the case of those particular titles. “How many people saw them because of positive reviews that were misleading? How many might have thought twice if the review mentioned that, oh, well, this film is all but incomprehensible, even if you’ve read a director’s statement on what it means? Or, well, this movie has very little dialogue and takes a 20-minute break for a flashback to the beginning of time? Or this movie is about an inarticulate movie star caught in moments by himself during a movie junket?”

Wells response: I also think that critics should just say what it’s like to watch certain films. If a film is great or legendary or well worth seeing they need to say that, of course, but they also have to admit how it plays in Average-Joe terms and how it feels to actually sit through it. I’m not saying “nobody does this except me,” but who does do this? New Yorker critic David Denby strives to convey this, I think. Andy Klein does this. I’m sure there are others. But I know that it’s a clear violation of the monk-dweeb code to speak candidly about how this or that monk-worshipped, Film Society of Lincoln Center-approved film actually plays for non-dweebs or your no-account brother-in-law or the guy who works at the neighborhood pizza parlor.

Guys like Dennis Lim will never cop to this. It also needs to be said that “audience-friendly” is a somewhat flattering term. The more accurate term is audience-pandering. Pandering to the banal default emotions that the less hip, more simple-minded and certainly less adventurous portions of the paying public like to take a bath in. Because these emotions are comforting, reassuring, and above all familiar. That is what 42 does, in spades.

Possibly The Most Repulsive Human Trait

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It is my considered opinion that emotionally performative people of an insincere bent — i.e., phonies who instinctively laugh their ass off or otherwise show monkey-like obeisance before power whenever there’s an opportunity to back-pat or express any sort of emotional mood support — are among the worst people in the world.

All “performative” people are, by nature, insincere. They’re basically jacking you off.

I understand the basic pleasing impulse as I’ve expressed insincere approval thousands of times throughout my life, but I’ve always tried to avoid bending over or slapping my thighs when laughing uproariously at some shitty joke.

Posted 11 months ago: Nothing uncorks my rage more than people laughing too hard, too demonstratively, giggling like idiots, rocking back and forth, slapping their thighs, covering their mouths with their right hand, going “hoo-hoo-hoo” and “yee-hee-hee”…all of this is truly horrible.

Have you ever seen any serious, heavy-cat comedians laugh like this? Woody Allen will crack an occasional grin or smirk, but never, ever has he yee-hawed in some over-the-top way. People who know what goes never laugh like this. Only shallow gladhanders do. Only the worst people.

12.30.22: “I wear my gracious alpha face all the time in social situations. It’s the only way to be. 99% of people who work in social congregation situations turn on the placid vibes. So much so that it’s fairly freaky, in fact, when certain people (submentals, addicts, sociopaths) don’t turn it on. There’s no earthly reason not to be warm and kind and gracious with people, and I mean especially in Hollywood realms.

“I’m saying this because I wish below-the-liners and set visitors and others who work with above-the-liners would stop saying ‘wow…he/she is so nice!’? How else are they gonna behave? They’re probably nice people anyway, yes, but first and foremost they’re top-level professionals and talented smoothies, and this is how the movie business operates.

“Do you ever hear polar bears saying, “Wow, the snow is so white and powdery, and the seals bark so vigorously when I catch and eat them!” I’m just sick of hearing how nice this and that famous person turned out to be. Turn that shit down a bit.”

By the way: Of all the millions upon millions of faces out there, there’s one that immediately makes me flinch and recoil:

Movie Endings That Say “This Marriage Is Obviously Poisoned With Deceit, and Will Probably Get Worse”

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The greatest “holy shit, this marriage is so totally fucked” finale is delivered by Francis Coppola‘s The Godfather (’72), but what are some of the strongest runner-ups?

In the same vein, what are some of the most dishonest upbeat finales in the history of movies about marriages and families? Upbeat endings that you’d like to believe and invest in, but you can’t possibly do so because of all the emotional corn syrup and forced fakery?

It’s A Wonderful Life is surely the fakest of them all, although I’ve always melted (and will continue to melt) when James Stewart cries out “Clarence!…I want to live again!” That’s always moved me, but the happy-schmappy stuff at the Bailey home with all the community joy and donated money…that has always felt to me like happy crap.