Clint Eastwood‘s Jersey Boys (Warner Bros., 6.20), a film version of the hit Broadway jukebox musical, is being research-screened this evening in the San Fernando Valley. I’m not going to say where and I’m not going to post or discuss reactions, but I would like to hear, privately, what people think. I don’t have a lot of faith or interest in a movie musical about the Four Seasons, but Eastwood knows what he’s doing and the respected John Logan wrote the screenplay so no pre-judgments. I’m just curious.
The likeliest Best Picture contenders of 2014 will, as usual, be made by respected people with strong resumes and, as usual, contain strong, socially resonant material that will probably push mainstream buttons. Particularly among over-25 women. Two of the likeliest will be directed by women, and four will primarily be about women. Plus a couple of dramedies, a crime drama, an epic Biblical drama, two World War II dramas, a more-or-less modern war drama and so on. In a word, varied. Nobody knows anything and I’m obviously just guessing at this stage, but here are the films I’m presuming will be among the final picks:
1. Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu‘s comedic Birdman (seen in a rough version by a friend last July and described as AGI’s “best, most humanistic work!”); 2. J.C. Chandor‘s A Most Violent Year (’80s-set, Sidney Lumet-ish Manhattan crime drama); 3. Ridley Scott‘s Exodus (Ridley Scott/Kingdom of Heaven treatment given to Biblical tale of Moses, Egyptians and Hebrew slaves); 4. Angelina Jolie‘s Unbroken (World War II survival saga, All Is Lost/Life of Pi + Japanese prison camp); 5. Jean Marc Vallee‘s Wild (makeup-free Reese Witherspoon discovering herself and the American character on a long-distance hike); 6. Saul Dibbs‘ Suite Francaise (married rural-residing French woman has affair with German solder during World War II); 7. Michel Hazanavicius‘ The Search (remake of Fred Zinneman‘s same-titled 1948 film, relationship between a woman and a young boy in war-torn Chechnya, Berenice Bejo and Annette Bening costarring); 8. Jason Reitman‘s Men, Women & Chidren (ensemble social-sexual dramedy with Adam Sandler, Jennifer Garner, Judy Greer, et. al.) ; 9. Sarah Gavron‘s Suffragette (British-set, turn-of-the-century drama about female voting-rights struggle, script by The Queen‘s Abi Morgan, costarring Carey Mulligan, Helena Bonham Carter and Meryl Streep).
I’m so sick of the Oscar race (and particularly of reading Oscar nominee suck-up pieces on Hitfix.com) that I’m not even going to post the winners in the Oscar Balloon, as I’ve done in the past. I’ll just post them as a story and that’ll be that. Instead I’ll be re-posting HE’s Projected/Likely 2014 Highlights roster. Before it goes up I’m asking once again for additions and suggestions. Which films belong under the Presumed High-Pedigree, Respectable Second Tier and Third-Tier Megaplex categories? I’ve obviously made my determinations but maybe I’ve got a few wrong.
Presumed High-Pedigree: Paul Thomas Anderson‘s Inherent Vice, Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu‘s Birdman, Ridley Scott‘s Exodus, Bennett Miller‘s Foxcatcher, David Fincher‘s Gone Girl, Christopher Nolan‘s Interstellar, J.C. Chandor‘s A Very Violent Year, Jean Marc Vallee‘s Wild (i.e., the Reese Witherspoon hiking drama), Noah Baumbach‘s While We’re Young, Terrence Malick‘s Knight of Cups (or the other “intersecting love triangles” Austin-based film that still doesn’t have a title…or both), Matt Reeves‘ Dawn of the Planet of the Apes, Jeff Nichols‘ Midnight Special, Tim Burton‘s Big Eyes, Noah Baumbach‘s Untitled Public School Project, Phillip Noyce‘s The Giver, Mike Leigh‘s Mr. Turner, Todd Haynes‘ Carol, Justin Kurzel‘s Macbeth, Angelina Jolie‘s Unbroken. (20).
My last 2014 Highlights update posted on 1.3. This morning I reviewed Hitfix’s “Most Anticipated Prestige Films of 2014” piece (which I avoided because it’s one of those photo cavalcade page-view pieces) and have added 9 of their picks along with 4 wait-and-see maybes. So my previous total of 46 is now 55 or 59 with the maybes. I wasn’t sure about 2014 before — now I’m thinking it might be another banner year.
The Hitfix additions in order of presumed quality: Richard Linklater‘s Boyhood, Noah Baumbach‘s Untitled Public School Project, Jeff Nichols‘ Midnight Special, Craig Johnson‘s The Skeleton Twins (a 2014 Sundance selection), Hossein Amini‘s The Two Faces of January, Justin Kurzel‘s Macbeth, Jon Stewart‘s Rosewater, Mike Leigh‘s Mr. Turner, Todd Haynes‘ Carol.
Probationary/Concerned/Lack of Trust/Wait-and-See: David Cronenberg‘s Maps to the Stars, Terrence Malick‘s Knight of Cups (IF it even comes out this year — you know Malick). Ryan Gosling‘s How To Catch A Monster (judgment in question after The Place Beyond The Pines, Only God Forgives), Thomas Vinterberg‘s Far From The Madding Crowd.
As I noted a couple of days ago, there are seven 2014 releases with a high-profile pedigree: Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu‘s Birdman, Paul Thomas Anderson‘s Inherent Vice, Bennett Miller‘s Foxcatcher, Ridley Scott‘s Exodus, Tim Burton‘s Big Eyes, David Fincher‘s Gone Girl, Christopher Nolan‘s Interstellar. I guess I should add Jean Marc Vallee‘s Wild (i.e., the Reese Witherspoon hiking drama), Matt Reeves‘ Dawn of the Planet of the Apes and Wes Anderson‘s The Grand Budapest Hotel for an even ten.
I’m going to re-scramble the Next Tier of Promising Films in order of highest quality (presumed or expected): George Clooney‘s The Monuments Men, Darren Aronofsky‘s Noah, Richard Shephard‘s Dom Hemingway, Ted Melfi‘s St. Vincent, Craig Gillespie‘s Million Dollar Arm, Doug Liman‘s Edge of Tomorrow, Clint Eastwood‘s Jersey Boys, Andy and Lana Wachowski‘s Jupiter Ascending, Phillip Noyce‘s The Giver, Angelina Jolie‘s Unbroken (adapted by Joel and Ethan Coen), Jason Bateman‘s Bad Words. (11)
The usual seven or eight high-intrigues or must-sees (possibly Calvary, The Voices Inside, White Bird In A Blizzard, A Most Wanted Man, They Came Together, The One I Love) will emerge from Sundance 2014, which begins a couple of weeks hence. And then comes the seven-month slog of winter, spring and summer, during which an occasional pop-through might happen — maybe. The only guaranteed goodie going to Cannes will be Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu‘s Birdman. (A list of other likelies will emerge around mid-March, I’m guessing.) Anyone can recite the big-studio releases but which among these are likely to assemble a strong critical following? Okay, Paul Thomas Anderson‘s Inherent Vice, Bennett Miller‘s Foxcatcher, Ridley Scott‘s Exodus, Michael Mann‘s Cyber, Tim Burton‘s Big Eyes, Spike Lee‘s Sweet Blood of Jesus, David Fincher‘s Gone Girl and Christopher Nolan‘s Interstellar. But what else? Things always look hazy at this stage but right now? Honestly? It looks like a middle-range lineup. Which isn’t so bad. As long as it’s not flat.
Possibly Good, Agreeable or Passable 2014 Films (maybe, here’s hoping, bending over backwards, all CG fantasy and superhero crap automatically excluded): George Clooney‘s The Monuments Men, Jose Padilla‘s RoboCop, Akiva Goldsman‘s Winter’s Tale (probably not that good, to judge by the trailer), Paul W.S. Anderson‘s Pompeii (video game crap), Wes Anderson‘s The Grand Budapest Hotel, Jason Bateman‘s Bad Words, Joe Carnahan‘s Stretch, Diego Luna‘s Cesar Chávez, Darren Aronofsky‘s Noah, Richard Shephard‘s Dom Hemingway, Ivan Reitman‘s Draft Day (beware-of-Reitman factor), Ted Melfi‘s St. Vincent, Wally Pfister‘s Transcendence, Nick Casavetes‘ The Other Woman, Amma Asanate‘s Belle (mezzo-mezzo?), Nicholas Stoller‘s Neighbors (likely crap), Craig Gillespie‘s Million Dollar Arm, Seth McFarlane‘s A Million Ways to Die in the West, Doug Liman‘s Edge of Tomorrow, Phil Lord and Chris Miller‘s 22 Jump Street, Clint Eastwood‘s Jersey Boys, Matt Reeves‘ Dawn of the Planet of the Apes, Andy and Lana Wachowski‘s Jupiter Ascending, Luc Besson‘s Lucy (probable crap), Phillip Noyce‘s The Giver, Shawn Levy‘s This Is Where I Leave You, Antoine Fuqua‘s The Equalizer, David Ayer‘s Fury (probable crap) and Angelina Jolie‘s Unbroken (adapted by Joel and Ethan Coen).
I was reminded after seeing the B’way revival of Sweeney Todd last year (the one with Patti Lupone as Mrs. Lovett) what a great uptown show it is — great Lupone, magnificent staging, a beautiful Stephen Sondheim score, sad-tragic theme. And then I asked myself, how would this musical play with Helena Bonham Carter in the Lovett role (which was first created by a magnificent Angela Lansbury) in a feverishly Tim Burton -ized film adaptation? (I’m being told Bonham-Carter does her own singing, which sounds problematic.)
Sweeney Todd is a very high-end thing full of operatic passion, but deep down it’s a chilly-atmosphere piece about a revenge-obsessed, throat-slitting barber (read the Wikipedia synopsis). This obviously makes it a different animal than your standard rube musical (i.e., Mamma Mia, Hairspray, Jersey Boys, etc.) that tends to play best with the people who go to movies just looking for tasty popcorn and a good time.
And I’m wondering in this context what the decision to break Burton’s Sweeney Todd wide on 12.21 really means. WB execs are obviously betting they can make more money with a faster limited-wide break (1500 screens) that sells the Sweeney sizzle rather than a gradual roll-out that promises quality and prestige and leans upon word-of-mouth.
McLintock has written that Burton and Sweeney producer Dick Zanuck already had been pushing for a wide bow, expressing concerns that a platform release could give the impression it was an arthouse title.
The whole grand guignol arterial-spurt element will almost certainly feed the fire of Burton’s love for precise and ultra-luscious visual composition. You know Burton — he’s going to go for the oozey-ness of Sweeney Todd and then some. This seems to support the statement by McLintock that Sweeney Todd is “expected to receive an R rating.”
But there’s also an alleged Daily Mail story (can’t find the original link) that’s been quoted on slashfilm.com, saying that the powers-that-be want Burton to “butcher” his own film. “Apparently the early footage from the film was so extremely bloody that the studio executives have become a tad squeamish and are requesting the film to be re-cut,” the story says.
“Tim’s not happy that the studio is asking for so many cuts to the cutting, as it were,” a source has allegedly told a Daily Mail reporter. “The thing is, the studio really likes the film and they want to make it accessible to as big an audience as possible,which means stemming the blood flow. But that’s a bit difficult for a story involving a guy who gets high slitting throats.”
My God….I was almost shocked by how ineffective and annoying Steven Soderbergh‘s Presence is, and I’m saying that as one who’s generally admired or at least been okay with Soderbergh’s “bauble” flicks.
A friend calls it “the very definition of a B-minus movie.”
It’s obviously wokey in the use of Ryan (West Mulholland), a sickening psycho white kid villain…standard evil toxic paleface syndrome, par for the course. This plus a mostly Asian family of four coping with Mulholland’s initially subtle creepitude…the teenage daughter Chloe (Callina Liang) grappling with his casual-but-aggressive sexuality, and her older brother Tyler (Eddy Maday) triggered by Mulholland at the finale.
I’m sorry but David Koepp’s screenplay is just a flat-out slog to wade through. I don’t know the right term for the exact polar opposite of “sharp and engaging with an interesting subtext”, but that’s what Koepp’s dialogue is. The story also kinda blows.
I had read the Wiki synopsis a couple of times before last night’s viewing, mainly because of shitty sound mixes that sometimes obscure key plot details. I would’ve been completely lost in the thicket if I hadn’t done this.
I’d read a few reviews and found it interesting that no one even mentioned that Presence is basically about a three-quarters Asian-American family, albeit with an overweight, bearded, all-but-hairless Anglo dad named Chris (Chris Sullivan) with a worry-wart personality.
Apparently even a cursory mention of the ethnicity factor (which is obviously anecdotal) makes one a racist MAGA xenophobe, and therefore subject to termination.
Presence is set in a bland environment — a nice older home in a typical suburban town that could be fucking anywhere. It was actually shot in Cranford, New Jersey, which isn’t that far from HE’s hometown of Westfield.
Peter Andrews‘ wide-angle cinematography “lies” in the manner of online real-estate photography, which always tries to make everything look bigger and more spacious with wide-angle or spherical lenses.
And the shadowed under-lighting feels oppressive. The upstairs bedrooms have a fair amount of sunlight but the downstairs rooms appear to have been coated with a blend of turkey gravy and black bean soup. Why does it look so fucking morose?
Pretty Chloe is obviously the most sympathetic character, but she’s dull. Hell, they’re all dull. Right away I said to myself, “These people are an absolute drag to hang with…they exude misery and neuroticism and anxiety and emotional avoidance with every line, every furtive glance or gesture.
Even the protective, flitting-around, good-guy ghost is is a bit dull.
Overweight Chris brings in a similarly proportioned medium, played by Natalie Woodlams-Torr, who immediately senses the presence, and also discerns that “something bad” might happen in the near future.
Chloe shrieks early on when she sees that some books and notebooks have been moved off the bed onto a desk, but when dad asks if she’s cool, she immediately lies. Why?
Tyler is an insensitive, judgmental dick who sees nothing beyond or beneath his own macho arrogance, but at the very last second and after the ghost has woken him from drugged stupor, Tyler suddenly becomes an idiotic superhero avenger…I can say no more but in my eighth-row seat I went “what the FUCK?”
Plus Tyler’s lack of basic decency is off-putting. Right after meeting Chloe for the first time, psycho Ryan indicates to Tyler that she’s hot and he’d like to fuck her, and Tyler is seemingly “whatever” about this. This is how older brothers respond to sexual invasiveness concerning their sisters?
It turns out that laid-back, blonde-haired Ryan is a drink-spiking fiend who’s not only a threat to Chloe but was also…uhm, involved with her late friend Nadia. (Saying no more.) I was muttering to myself, “This is the best plot driver that Koepp and Soderbergh could come up with? A sinister white kid who dopes his victims and has a thing for plastic wrap?”
HE to hip filmmakers: The villain or the serial killer or the corrupt, ethically-challenged guy doesn’t have to be a white male. Creativity and imagination can and should allow for a little diversity in this matter. Go with a gun-toting lesbian on occasion. Or a Glenn Close-resembling Kentucky yokel. Or (gasp!) a black dude. Or a Latino fat-ass. Or an Islamic jihadist. Or a Proud Boys nutter who happens to be a person of color or, let’s say, a Russian gopnik.
…to the version that began to peek out 20 years ago…Birth (’04), Under the Skin (’13) and The Zone of Interest (’23).
Eight days ago my heart sank when it was announced that Justin Chang, a Millennial wokester with a particular focus on ethnic representation, will be elbowing aside New Yorker critic Anthony Lane, a young boomer whose writings have never seemed to follow woke doctrine.
I almost wept this morning when I re-read Lane’s 23-year-old review of Jonathan Glazer‘s Sexy Beast. It’s very sad to consider that this kind of writing (aloof wit, verve, panache) is, in a sense, being put out to pasture, at least within The New Yorker‘s movie realm…I just feel gutted.
Lane‘s “Exiles,” posted on 6.19.21: “You will be relieved to learn that the title of Jonathan Glazer‘s Sexy Beast is dripping with irony. How could it be otherwise, given that the movie hails from England? Take Gal (Ray Winstone), charring himself like a fat salmon beside his Spanish pool. Gal used to be a London crook, and his wife, Deedee (Amanda Redman), used to be big in porno. These days, they have nothing to do but drink and dine with their good friends Aitch (Cavan Kendall) and Jackie (Julianne White), who share the leathery look of those who have weathered enough for one lifetime.
“But here comes trouble, in a neat, fast package: Don Logan (Ben Kingsley), a man whose mere name, like that of Keyser Söze, is enough to bring any civilized company to a lurching halt.
“Don wants Gal to return to London for the sake of one more job. You would think that the heist itself, a raid on a safe-deposit vault, would be the core of the plot. Not so. What rouses Sexy Beast, against all expectations, is the central, Iago-like act of persuasion: one scene after another, in which Don sits or stalks around Gal’s villa and rails away at him, as if to show not that Gal’s defenses are breachable but that they were hardly defenses in the first place…just patches of softness, the pressure points of a sad slacker. The trailer now showing in theatres presents Sexy Beast as a thriller, which means that moviegoers may be heading for a surprise; what they are about to witness resembles nothing so much as Harold Pinter in a really foul mood.
Two days ago (Wednesday, 4.26) I wrote about anticipating negative vibes from Kelly Fremon Craig‘s Are You There God? It’s Me, Margaret. All those obsequious reviews (falsetto-voiced Scott Menzel called it “one of the best films of ’23”) got my dander up. Florid praise from a notoriously unreliable cabal of sensitive virtue-signallers will do that. I was ready to hate-vent but needed to wait, obviously, until I saw it.
Well, I saw Margaret early Thursday evening, and within minutes I knew my suspicions had been justified — the critics had overpraised it. But at the same time I realized it was a harmless and congenial thing — a mild-mannered ABC After-School Special that would never allow butter to melt in its mouth.
Based on Judy Blume’s celebrated 1970 novel, it’s just a mezzo-mezzo, no-big-deal saga about the trials and tribulations of an 11 or 12 year-old girl. Uncertainty and anxiety about God Fantasy #1 (i.e., that the Cosmic Almighty cares or is even aware of Margaret’s existence), for one thing. Not to mention moving from the comforts of New York City to a wonderbread New Jersey suburb; not to mention new girlfriends (including a socially awkward giraffe), boys with armpit hair and the twin prospects of menstruation and budding breasts.
“This?” I said to myself. “This is what inspired Scott Menzel and his congregated colleagues to shift into gush mode?”
There’s nothing to hate here, and at the same time nothing to get all that excited about. It’s not even a meal, this movie — more like a baloney and lettuce sandwich on toast with mayonnaise. It just toddles and ambles along in a nice massage-y way…fine.
Abby Ryder Fortson overacts a bit (i.e., tries too hard) as Margaret, but not to any harmful degree. Rachel McAdams and Kathy Bates as her mother and Jewishy grandmother are fine. Even Benny Safdie is inoffensive.
How does it fuck things up then? It doesn’t — it’s modest and unassuming and stays within a certain perimeter. It does, however, stumble here and there.
Are You There, God? It’s Me, Margaret is set in either ’70 or the very late ’60s — a long time ago in a galaxy far, far away. If the fictitious suburb of Farbrook, New Jersey (where Margaret and her parents move to) bears any resemblance to my old home town of Westfield or, let’s say, SaddleBrook or Plainfield or Montclair, then it wasn’t Newark or Trenton or Rahway or East Orange. Which is to say it was most likely a middle- to upper-middle-class, mostly segregated white town. (For what it’s worth, Far Brook is the name of a private school in upscale Millburn, New Jersey.)
I’m sorry to break it to some of you but that’s how things were during the LBJ and Nixon administrations. I was there so don’t tell me. There were some POCs in Westfield but not many, and they lived in a less-flush section of town that was south of the railroad tracks.
It is therefore not honest for Margaret to cast a bearded, good-looking black guy as a home room teacher. (If a black teacher had theroetically been hired by a white school district he certainly would’ve ditched the beard, which is way too Eldridge Cleaver-ish.) And there are too many black kids in Margaret’s class. It’s just not an honest representation of how things were in whitebread towns 53 years ago. Teenagers of different feathers simply didn’t hang together for the most part. Even WASPs and Italians (i.e., “guineas”) kept their distance.
There’s a big Act Two scene in which McAdams’ bigoted parents, who opposed her marriage to the Jewish Safdie, decide to pay a sudden visit, and an argument ensues between them and Bates about which religion the ambivalent Margaret will sign up for. The dialogue has a clumsy, too-blunt quality…it doesn’t flow. And Bates, we’re told, has impulsively driven all the way up from Florida in order to confront McAdams’ parents, and not alone but with a new white-haired boyfriend. That’s a two-and-a-half-day drive!
The offshoot is that Margaret gradually divorces herself from God and religion. Plus she finally starts menstruating so all’s well on that score.
Amy Nicholson repeated: “As charming as the film is in its best moments, it’s hard not to be frustrated as it backpedals from the book’s awareness that not all wrongs are righted. Sometimes, our heroines might stay buddies with bullies. Sometimes they might run from conflict and never explain themselves. Sometimes, they might even hurt people without making amends. Sometimes frank talk is more impactful than an idealized fantasy.”
Bloomberg’s Felix Gillette has seenAlan Taylor and David Chase‘s The Many Saints of Newark (Warner Bros./HBO Max, 10.1) and posted…well, not a “review” but a mildly upbeat assessment. The headline says “HBO Finally Nails a Spinoff With Chase Prequel.” And it more or less explains that Michael Gandolfini, who plays the teenaged Tony Soprano, doesn’t show up until the film’s second half. (Part One is set in Newark in ’67; Part Two, set in ’71 or thereabouts, is set in the Jersey suburbs.)
Excerpt: “Over two action-packed hours, Chase and co-writer Lawrence Konner sketch out much of the Soprano family roots in America.” Describing the film as “action-packed” isn’t necessarily high praise — it just means it’s not a Peter Greenaway film.
Blade Runner 2049 will probably land a berth at the Toronto Film Festival (right?), but the fact that it wasn’t announced among the first batch…what does that tell you? To me it suggests indecisiveness or an internal debate on the part of Warner Bros. marketing, but maybe not.
What’s the most memorable moment in Blade Runner? When Rutger Hauer‘s Roy dies and the dove flies away.
Again: It would seem that the decades-old Blade Runner suspicion about Harrison Ford‘s Rick Deckard being a replicant has been answered by the trailer for Blade Runner 2049. Deckard, like Ford, has aged, and that, for me, feels like proof that Deckard is flesh and blood. Why on earth would the Tyrell Corporation have constructed replicants that age like humans? This would make no sense at all — none.
The official synopsis says 2049 is about LAPD Officer K (Ryan Gosling) discovering “a long-buried secret that has the potential to plunge what’s left of society into chaos,” etc. This “leads K on a quest to find Deckard, a former LAPD blade runner who’s been missing for 30 years.” It would follow, naturally, that the K-meets-Deckard moment happens in the third act.
“Not happening…way too laid back…zero narrative urgency,” I was muttering from the get-go. Basically the sixth episode of White Lotus Thai SERIOUSLY disappoints. Puttering around, way too slow. Things inch along but it’s all “woozy guilty lying aftermath to the big party night” stuff. Glacial pace…waiting, waiting. I was told...
I finally saw Walter Salles' I'm Still Here two days ago in Ojai. It's obviously an absorbing, very well-crafted, fact-based poltical drama, and yes, Fernanda Torres carries the whole thing on her shoulders. Superb actress. Fully deserving of her Best Actress nomination. But as good as it basically is...
After three-plus-years of delay and fiddling around, Bernard McMahon's Becoming Led Zeppelin, an obsequious 2021 doc about the early glory days of arguably the greatest metal-rock band of all time, is opening in IMAX today in roughly 200 theaters. Sony Pictures Classics is distributing. All I can say is, it...
To my great surprise and delight, Christy Hall's Daddio, which I was remiss in not seeing during last year's Telluride Film Festival, is a truly first-rate two-hander -- a pure-dialogue, character-revealing, heart-to-heart talkfest that knows what it's doing and ends sublimely. Yes, it all happens inside a Yellow Cab on...
7:45 pm: Okay, the initial light-hearted section (repartee, wedding, hospital, afterlife Joey Pants, healthy diet) was enjoyable, but Jesus, when and how did Martin Lawrence become Oliver Hardy? He’s funny in that bug-eyed, space-cadet way… 7:55 pm: And now it’s all cartel bad guys, ice-cold vibes, hard bullets, bad business,...
