Another generic ready-or-not, here-comes-United 93 story, this one by USA Today‘s Anthony Breznican…right down the middle of the tarmac. It mentions a USA TODAY/Gallup poll of 1,006 adults conducted between 4.7 and 4.9, that found that “38% of respondents were very or somewhat likely to see a 9/11 movie, while 60% would not be inclined to watch one. If they turn out in theaters, that 38% is enough to supply very solid box-office numbers.”
People were split evenly, 44% to 44%, over whether it was a good or bad thing for Hollywood to tackle 9/11. (The margin of error was plus or minus 3 percentage points.)
“I think United 93 takes away the detachment of media reports, as well as the passage of time, and puts you directly into these situations. By doing so, the Hollywood-influenced concept of heroism that invariably exists in our mind is replaced by something more visceral and potent. Paul Greengrass is giving us a modern version of You Are There. David Poland ‘s being a contrarian and not rising up to the concept of being challenged by what is right there on the screen. He wants dramatization and fiction.” — L.A.-based director-screenwriter who saw United 93 before the press screenings started.
“I think United 93 is the best film of the year so far. I almost wished I hadn’t seen the A&E telefilm. I thought it was cool that John Rothman (older brother of Fox honcho Tom Rothman) and David Rasche (star of TV’s Sledgehammer series) were in it as two of the passengers. [Director Paul] Greengrass is opposed to the war in Iraq, so the ending card — ‘America’s war on terror had begun’ — that you cited smacks to me of studio meddling.” — Connected industry guy
Paul Greengrass‘s United 93, the 9/11 thriller hitting theatres on 4.28, will open Manhattan’s Tribeca Film Festival on 4.25. Tammy Rosen’s press release says that people whose family members died on Flight 93 will be there. Also attending will be “other 9/11 groups and family organizations and first responders whose lives were forever altered on that day.” (After I read this last sentence to a friend, he asked, “Will they be flying them in on United?”) It’s obvious why this downtown Manhattan film festival is looking to show United 93, but I sense a vague strategy in the presence of the victims’ families. There almost seems to be a selling-point message in this: “If these people who really suffered that day can roll with this film, all of you folks out there saying ‘no, no…too soon’ should be able to roll with it.” There are always going to be squeamish types saying “too soon,” etc., but artists have never waited for the hoi polloi to take a vote and announce, “Okay, we’re finally ready to see a film about a recent tragic event that touched us all.” It happened, life moves on…get over it.
Say it again: Top Gun: Maverick is a totally square, totally flash-bang, sirloin steak, right down the middle, Tom Cruise-worshipping, un-woke, stiff-saluting, high-velocity, bull’s-eye popcorn pleasure machine.
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The last line in United 93, seen in white type against black background before the end credits, is “America’s war on terrorism had begun.” My gut tells me this proclamation was muscled into the film. Universal knows the right is going to be suppporting this film big-time, and I think it was thrown in as a sop to the Bill O’Reilly crowd. This is merely a suspicion, and far from a factual assertion. It’s not a huge deal and obviously not central, but it’s stuck between my teeth at the moment. It’s the one and only incongruent note in the film.
“To me, Flight 93 was a defining moment in the sense that the hijack victims of Flight 93, when they understood what was going on, changed themselves into the Flight 93 militia and fired the shot heard around the world, the beginning of the war against Al-Qaeda, followed by Congress and Bush officially declaring that same war. To me, this is something that I think is probably…we haven’t had a moment like this since 1776. These victims said, ‘We will be victims no more.” They became soldiers, men and women alike, shoulder to shoulder, and took on Al-Qaeda and said, ‘You will not succeed,’ and they took down that plane and I think it’s marvelous.” — caller to Rush Limbaugh show on 4.3.06. Note: I never thought I’d link to Limbaugh in any way, shape or form, but there it is. Exception: However director Paul Greengrass decides to depict the final moments of that flight, the 9/11 Commission concluded, based on black-box recordings, that the passengers never busted into the cockpit and therefore didn’t force the plane down.
Forgive the lateness but five months ago (4.6.23) six Hollywood Reporter critics — Jon Frosch, David Rooney, Sheri Linden, Livia Guyarkye, Leslie Felperin and Jordan Mintzer — posted their choices for the 50 Best Films of the 21st Century.
Nobody is an absolute authority and we all have our special passions and allegiances, but boy, do these guys live on Planet Uranus or what? Travelling within their own solar system, residing in ivory tower suites, however you want to put it. Wow.
Friendo: “Absurd, elitist, off in their own realm…shows how out of touch they and so many other critics are these days.”
The THR gang didn’t include 2022 or 2023 films, but their top ten (#1 to #10) are are Yi Yi, Inside Llewyn Davis (HE agrees that it’s among the top 50), The Gleaners and I, Zodiac (stiff HE salute), Mulholland Drive, Spirited Away, Brokeback Mountain (ditto), In The Mood For Love, 4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days (definitely among HE’s top 20) and Get Out (WHAT??).
I’m still in New Jersey and facing a drive back to Wilton and therefore in too much of a rush to include the films of the last four years, but here’s one of HE’s 21st Century rundowns, moving backwards from 2018 — roughly 114 titles:
Best of 2018: Roma, Green Book, First Reformed, Hereditary, Capernaum, Vice, Happy As Lazzaro, Filmworker, First Man, Widows, Sicario — Day of the Soldado. (11).
Best of 2017: Call Me My Your Name, Dunkirk, Lady Bird, The Square, War For The Planet of the Apes, mother!, The Florida Project. (7)
Best of 2016 Manchester By The Sea, A Bigger Splash, The Witch, Eye in the Sky, The Confirmation, The Invitation. (6)
Best of 2015: Spotlight, The Revenant; Mad Max: Fury Road; Beasts of No Nation; Love & Mercy, Son of Saul; Brooklyn; Carol, Everest, Ant-Man; The Big Short. (10)
Best of 2014: Birdman, Citizen Four, Leviathan, Gone Girl, Boyhood, Locke, Wild Tales. (7)
Best of 2013: The Wolf of Wall Street, 12 Years A Slave, Inside Llewyn Davis, Her, Dallas Buyers Club, Before Midnight, The Past, Frances Ha (8).
Best of 2012: Zero Dark Thirty, Silver Linings Playbook, Amour, Beasts of the Southern Wild, Barbara, The Grey, Moonrise Kingdom (7).
Best of 2011 (ditto): A Separation, Moneyball, Drive, Contagion, X-Men: First Class, Attack the Block (6).
Best of 2010: The Social Network, The Fighter, Black Swan, Inside Job, Let Me In, A Prophet, Animal Kingdom, Rabbit Hole, The Tillman Story, Winter’s Bone (10).
Best of the First Decade (’00 to ’09): Zodiac, Memento, Traffic, Amores perros, United 93, Children of Men, Adaptation, City of God, The Pianist, The Lives of Others, Sexy Beast, Avatar, There Will Be Blood, Michael Clayton, Almost Famous (the “Untitled” DVD director’s cut), 4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days, Collateral, Dancer in the Dark, A Serious Man, Girlfight, The Departed, Babel, Ghost World, In the Bedroom, Talk to Her, Bloody Sunday, No Country For Old Men, The Quiet American, Whale Rider, Road to Perdition, Open Range, Touching the Void, Maria Full of Grace, Up In The Air, The Hurt Locker, Million Dollar Baby, The Motorcycle Diaries, An Education, Man on Wire, Revolutionary Road, Che and Volver. (42)
HE’s Best of 2020: 1. Chloe Zhao‘s Nomadland; 2. Roman Polanski‘s J’Accuse (An Officer and a Spy); Aaron Sorkin‘s The Trial of the Chicago 7; Florian Zeller‘s The Father, 8. Chris Nolan‘s Tenet, Judd Apatow and Pete Davidson‘s The King of Staten Island, Michael Winterbottom‘s The Trip to Greece, Rod Lurie‘s The Outpost, Diao Yinan‘s The Wild Goose Lake. 10. Cory Finley and Mike Makowski‘s Bad Education.
HE’s best of 2021: 1. King Richard, 2. Parallel Mothers, 3. West Side Story, 4. Spider-Man: No Way Home, 5. The Worst Person in the World, 6. A Hero (Amazon), 7. Riders of Justice, 8. No Time To Die, 9. The Beatles: Get Back, 10. Zola.
Three days ago (4.6.23) the Hollywood Reporter ran one of those “taking stock and honing it all down” laundry-list articles that happen every so often. It’s called “Hollywood Reporter Critics Pick the 50 Best Films of the 21st Century.”
Co-authored by the highly esteemed Jon Frosch, David Rooney, Sheri Linden, Lovia Gyarkye, Leslie Felperin and Jordan Mintzer, the piece highlights several brilliant, important, well-chosen films, but for the most part it’s a DEI checklist roster…the same kind of diverse balancing act assessment that N.Y. Times critics A.O. Scott and and Manohla Dargis began to be associated with starting about five years ago….gay, Black, women, Asian + steer clear of any white male influence whenever possible…gay, Black, women, Asian + steer clear of any white male influence whenever possible…wash, rinse, repeat.
The key question must always be, “If you discount the DEI aspect, how good are these films on their own bare-bones merit?”
Most of these critics understand this is a fair way to winnow and select, but they’re fearful of not doing the DEI dance because doing so could be interpreted as exclusionary, elitist, racist or old-schoolish. In the old days (i.e., before 2017) such lists were sometimes driven by attempts to reckon with the best-of-the-best based on purely cinematic, dramatic, daring or transcendent, soul-drilling terms. Now it’s all about identity politics and Twitter and terror…about being afraid to say what they really think because this might get them into trouble or cause some kind of ruckus. They know this deep down but will never admit it.
Here’s what they chose (HE agreement in boldface)…HE enthusiastically approves of 12 THR picks:
Bottom 25: Weekend (fine), Black Panther (gimme a break!), Time (difficult incarceration story), Bright Star (Jane Campion, John Keats, Fanny Brawne), Pariah (Dee Rees, Brooklyn lesbian saga), Bridesmaids (culturally important but not really good enough to make a serious “creme de la creme” list), Things to Come (Mia Hansen Love, Isabelle Huppert), Grizzly Man (great Herzog), Never Rarely Sometimes Always (weak tea abortion saga), Pan’s Labyrinth (top-tier GDT), Summer of Soul (found-footage POC concert doc…stirring as far as it goes), I Am Not Your Negro (gripping James Baldwin doc), Children of Men (brilliant, classic), Wendy and Lucy (good but basically a sop to the Reichart cult), Lover’s Rock (not the best of the five Small Axe films — the best is Mangrove), The Favourite (good Yorgos Lanthimos costumer but calm down), The Social Network (brilliant), Portrait of a Lady on Fire (blistering lesbian romance, emotional wipe-out), The Return (I’m more enamored of Zvyagintsev‘s Leviathan), Manchester by the Sea (grand slam), Marie Antoinette (please!), The Death of Mr. Lazarescu (Romanian classic), A Serious Man (magnificent defeatism, peak Coen Bros.), At Berkeley (Wiseman tribute doc), Y Tu Mamá También (classic Cuaron but “unbearably poignant”?). HE approval tally: 6.
Top 25: Call Me By Your Name (Guadagnino’s landmark romance), Timbuktu (Islamic nutters), 35 Shots of Rum (calm down), Before Sunset (not the best of Linklater’s relationship trilogy — that would be Before Midnight), Parasite (good but overrated — collapses when drunk con artists let the maid in and thereby ruin their whole con), Far From Heaven (commendable but overpraised Sirk tribute), Drive My Car (too long, too many cigarettes, exhausting, runs out of gas), Shoplifters (under-energized, over-praised), Talk to Her (magnificent Almodovar), Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind (fine), The Power of the Dog (no way in hell does this punishing slog of a film belong on this list), Wall-E (okay), Burning (corrosive and hard-hitting, but overlong and sluggish), Moonlight (way overpraised due to weak third act + too-muscular Trevante Rhodes, but Barry Jenkins‘ depiction of a world-class handjob on a beach will be long remembered), Boyhood (exceptional stunt film), Get Out (racially stamped Ira Levin zombie spooker…possibly the most overpraised film of the 21st Century), 4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days (brilliant), In the Mood for Love (understated, appropriately respected romance, considerably aided by Chris Doyle‘s cinematography), Brokeback Mountain (Ang Lee‘s timeless classic about letting love slip away), Spirited Away (fine), Mulholland Drive (take away the spookiness and perversity and what’s left?), Zodiac (drop-dead brilliant investigation of an endlessly fascinating cold case), The Gleaners and I (never saw it), Inside Llewyn Davis (another serving of world-class downerism from the Coens) and Yi Yi (ashamed to admit that I’ve never seen it). HE approval tally: 6.
…with a man and a woman realizing that death is imminent and about to enfold them, and that they’re powerless to stop it? Not a solitary figure, mind, but a couple — romantically linked, father and daughter, anything along those lines.
Last night I was watching the end of Kurt Neumann‘s Rocketship X-M (’50), and that concludes with Lloyd Bridges and Osa Massen staring out of a porthole window as their rocketship plummets to a crash landing.
There’s Mimi Leder‘s Deep Impact ’98), in which TV anchor Tea Leoni and estranged father Maximillian Schell stand on a beach as a half-mile-high tidal wave approaches at 1000 mph.
The last few seconds of Arthur Penn‘s Bonnie and Clyde (’67), just before the posse start firing as Warren Beatty and Faye Dunaway gaze at each other for the last time.
Stanley Kramer‘s On The Beach (’59), of course, with two emotionally entwined couples (Gregory Peck and Ava Gardner, Anthony Perkins and Donna Anderson) facing either slow radiation death or suicide.
Paul Greengrass‘s United 93 doesn’t count as none of the doomed passengers are portrayed as emotionally linked, or at least none with dialogue.
Which others?
On 1.23.07, or 15 and 1/4 years ago, the 2006 Oscar nominations hit like an impact grenade. Many blogaroos went into shock; almost everyone in the award-season loop was speechless. For on that darkly historic morning, Bill Condon's Dreamgirls -- one of the most heavily hyped Best Picture contenders of all time -- failed to be Best Picture-nominated, and it was like "Casey at the Bat" times ten. It gathered eight Oscar nominations but not for Best Picture.
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Sometimes I hate comedy that you’re expected to “laugh” at. Almost as much as I hate people who hideously shriek and guffaw in cafes and bars after their second glass of wine. For most of my life I’ve been an LQTM type of guy. I worship at the altar of no-laugh funny. This is where the gold is.
Upon these two deadpan dialogue scenes hang all of the humor and informed attitude of Joel and Ethan Coen‘s Burn After Reading. Idiots will watch these scenes with sour, quizzical expressions and say “Where’s the funny? We don’t get it.” And they never will.
The senior artist — the guy who channels most of the music, does most of the dancing and “carries the ball”, so to speak — is the great David Rasche (Sledgehammer, United 93, In The Loop). J. K. Simmons is obviously on the same wavelength, of course, but he’s strictly a straight man. Rasche owns this scene.
It has been said that the absolute Coen peak of the aughts (and arguably of their careers) happened between ’07 and ’09, and involved three films in quick succession — No Country For Old Men (’07), Burn After Reading (’08) and A Serious Man (’09). My fourth favorite Coen film of the aughts is Intolerable Cruelty (’03).
Blood Simple was obviously the best Coen film of the ’80s. Fargo (’96) and The Big Lebowski (’98) were the crown jewels of the ’90s. The best Coen film of the 20teens, of course, was Inside Llewyn Davis.
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