To hear it from the vast majority of critics, new movies are always one of two things — (a) masterful, brilliant, fulfilling and irresistably enjoyable or (b) disappointing or slack or even stinky. They’re never in-betweeners — not great but passable, very well made but not especially riveting, 70% worthwhile but 30% problematic, etc. Or mostly problematic but with a few really good aspects.

Worst of all, critics will often distort with overpraise. Sometimes you can just tell that they’ve decided to give a certain film is getting a pass because it exudes the right kind of social bonafides, and that’s that.

Take this line from an Anatomy of a Fall review by Film Yap‘s Nate Richards (posted on 10.26). The subhead calls Justine Triet’s murder investigation drama “one of the most gripping and memorable movies that you’ll see this year”…that’s a 100% decisive nope.

Anatomy of a Fall is a thorough, exacting and meticulous (read: exhausting) “what really happened?” exercise by way of a courtoom procedural, and is certainly smart and interesting as far as it goes but let’s not get carried away…please.

Sandra Huller is excellent as a bisexual writer accused of murdering her angry, pain-in-the-ass French husband (Samuel Theis), but the film goes on for 152 minutes, and the cloying kid playing Huhler’s half-blind son (Milo Machado-Graner) lays it on too thick, and the loud and relentless playing of an instrumental cover of 50 Cent’s “P.I.M.P.” drove me fucking nuts. The more I heard it, the more angry I felt…”Why is Triet making me listen to this over-loud track over and over?”

Another highly dubious declaration from Richards: “What makes Anatomy of a Fall so compelling is that Triet and Arthur Harari’s script has you constantly battle with yourself over whether or not you believe in Sandra’s innocence.” Not so! No battle! I was never even faintly persuaded that Huller might be a murderer…not for a minute.

…but since Jeff Mclachlan already has, there’s no harm in commenting. Both men were somewhat overweight during filming. Plemons has since dropped a ton of weight (he’s almost skinny now) and Leo has also slimmed down. Plus Plemons never takes his cowboy hat off, and that camoflauges or offsets his facial appearance.

I watched my Patton Bluray this evening for the seventh or eighth time (I’ve lost count), mainly to savor Fred J. Koenekamp‘s glorious cinematography.

Franklin J. Schaffner‘s Oscar-winning film (Best Picture, Best Director, Best Actor and Best Adapted Screenplay plus three more) was captured in 65mm Dimension 150, which has a panoramic, large-canvas feeling…acres of head and side room, and no MCUs or close-ups or inserts except at the very beginning, just before the big American flag speech. Plus every shot is crisp, windowpane clear, spit-shined to perfection.

During the slapping-of-Tim Considine scene in Sicily a delicious fantasy came to mind — George C. Scott‘s three-star general somehow straddling the swamps of time and coming face to face with a trio of Millennials or Zoomers from ’23, and listening to their white-male suppressive, enemies-of-free-speech, our-way-or-the-highway theology and views on gender fluidity and hormone injections and occasionally slicing dicks and breasts off, and finally becoming enraged and slapping the shit out of all three with a leather glove….”shut aahhhp!…ya goddam wokesters!!”

Schoenkamp’s cinematography and Jerry Goldsmith‘s legendary score were Oscar-nominated, and both lost. The winners in their respective categories were Freddie Young for Ryan’s Daughter and Francis Lai for Love Story.

Since the news of Richard Roundtree’s passing I’ve been trying to think of something specific to say. A legendary and iconic actor, sure, but they’re all saying that. And then a hazy memory, 41 years old, surfaced this morning.

I attended a midtown Manhattan press luncheon for One Down, Two To Go (’82), a cops vs. bad guys martial-arts film that was directed and written by Fred Williamson. Roundtree costarred with Williamson, Jim Brown and Jim Kelly, and the gang was all there.

The gathering happened somewhere in the theatre district. There was a meet-and-greet before the food and speeches, and Roundtree was warm and congenial. (Or so I recall.) Wonderful smile, great vibes.

The film was about to come out, and apparently the word was that exhibitors weren’t that happy with it. (Or it wasn’t tracking all that well with Joe Popcorn….something like that.)

At the lecturn Williamson delivered the comic highlight — a now-classic story about a tasty new brand of dog food that had been carefully prepared and brilliantly marketed, but unfortunately the dogs didn’t like it and that was the bottom line.

Ten days ago I wrote six paragraphs about David Fincher‘s The Killer, and it came out just right because (this is important) I hadn’t really explored what I was feeling deep down…I just said “this movie made me feel so damn engaged and electrified, escapism-wise”, and I did so without asking why or trying to protect myself from the usual HE slings and arrows. Because that is what this site is partly about….dicks firing beebee pellets.

If I had a magic wand I would wave it like Mickey Mouse in Fantasia and transform The Killer into one of the locked-and-loaded, no-escape-clause 2023 Best Picture nominees…I would have no hesitation about this whatsoever. Because the Movie Godz are sold on the value of this film and so am I….and when you’re right, you’re right. And I don’t want to even think about what the Perri Nemiroffs of this world feel about The Killer. It’s not worth fooling with.

I knew deep down that I’d said the right and necessary thing when I wrote that Fincher’s revenge film (and that’s what it is — a sleek and efficient survival and revenge thing that will only warm the hearts of earth-orbiting, X-factor, don’t-fence-me-in fellows like myself)..I said that it “feels like a kind of new-age opiate…it’s about the joys of living a cold and barren life….it mainlines the hollow.”

Strange as this may sound, typing these words felt like a breakthrough of sorts. Without planning it out or thinking it through I had randomly but decisively admitted that there’s something to be said for living a life of smart solitude and fleet escapism…a life defined or punctuated by apartness, alert alienation, fake IDs and chilly satisfactions. And at the same time I live for rare meltdown moments in exceptional grade-A films…I’ve been watching the 1951 version of A Christmas Carol every holiday season since I was nine or ten years old…at the same time I love staying a step or two ahead of pursuers and living for the chase and the game of it all.

The instant that I acknowledged that a cold and barren life could radiate joy and satisfaction…well! I don’t think I’ve ever read something like this from any movie critic anywhere, and to compound matters I’m not even sure why I’m making this distinction as we speak.

It’s 4:45 pm and I have some stuff to do, I’m afraid, so I have to shut this down, but I can’t leave without asking what’s up with Elvis Mitchell‘s baggy-ass, dark-blue, fresh-off-the-rack jeans with the cuffs folded up, not to mention those plastic, lace-up space shoes with the three-inch soles? The photos are from last night’s post-screening q & a at the David Geffen Theatre at the Academy Museum.

I loved David Fincher’s The Killer (Netflix 10.27)…a great escape film if I’ve ever seen and felt one. It took me out of myself and dropped me into a higher realm, or at least my idea of one. It redefines the meaning of the word “chill” in a way that will either knock you out or, if you’re an ideologue or a shoulder-shrugger or a constipated, closed-off type, leave you with shards.

It’s first and foremost about the supreme comfort of living in a super-clean, perfectly crafted Fincher film, and about the joy of being a ghost and travelling alone like a nowhere man, and about the blissful solitude and curious joy of disassociative technique…about the existential solace and solitude of having a wonderfully endless supply of fake IDs, fake passports and fake license plates, and maneuvering through flush and fragrant realms and the zen of nothingness…about the almost religious high of not giving a single, solitary fuck.

Despite sitting in a too-small Paris theatre seat (I could barely move my legs) and despite Fincher’s film starting almost a half-hour late, I was in heaven start to finish. It’s all about eluding fate and slipping the grasp, about playing a fleet phantom game and, much to my surprise and delight, about chasing down several unlucky functionaries and nefarious upper-caste types and sending them to God.

It’s about a side of me (and of Fincher, of course) that loves being on the move and managing to slip-slide away like Paul Simon but in a GOOD way or at least an extremely cool one…about being blissfully free of conventional entanglements and concerned only with slick stealth and ducking out of sight and, despite suffering a bruise or two, gaining the upper hand.

The Killer is about the joys of living a cold and barren life…it mainlines the hollow but feels like a kind of new-age opiate…it turned me on like Joni Mitchell’s radio, and I’m still feeling the buzz and humming the melody the morning after. I can’t wait to see it another two or three times, bare minimum.

Thank you, Mr. Fincher, for slipping me a great nickle bag of smack and what felt last night like the best meaningless-but-at-the-sane-time meaningful movie high I’ve had in a dog’s age.

Worldwide apocalypse, everything falling apart, deer emerging from the forest….Rumaan Alam‘s Leave The World Behind (Netfix, 11.22) appears to be M. Night Shyamalan‘s Knock at the Cabin, Part II only with bigger names (Julia Roberts, Mahershala Ali, Ethan Hawke) and minus the idiotic plot contrivance about how the death of four people can somehow save the world….I don’t want to remember it.

This is Carey Mulligan‘s film…that seems obvious. Felicia forever. Bradley Cooper‘s Lenny seems like a combination artful dodger and attention whore.

What’s with Cooper’s accent? It sounds fascinating in some respects, but it also sounds like he has an odd nasal condition.

A Netflix presentation, Maestro goes up against Ridley Scott‘s Napoleon on 11.22, and then begins streaming on 12.20.

In the comment thread of a two-day old (10.23) piece called “Hello, Claude…Where’d Ya Get The Midget?“, I said I’ve never had the slightest interest in seeing Brian G. Hutton and Alistair MacLean‘s Where Eagles Dare (’68). I have, in fact, avoided it like the plague all my life. HE commenters insisted I was missing a goodie and should watch it at the first opportunity, and that “if you don’t like Where Eagles Dare you don’t like movies” and so on.

Last night I decided to watch a few YouTube clips, and was fairly dumbfounded by the finale (below). It turns out that the actual motive of the Bavarian Alps rescue mission was about ferreting out a British double agent — someone high up who was actually serving the Germans.

While the film’s four chief players (Richard Burton, Clint Eastwood, Mary Ure, Patrick Wymark) are flying above the Austrian or Swiss alps, Burton’s Maj. John Smith informs Wymark’s Col. Turner that he’s been fingered as the Nazi rat. Smith suggests to Turner that in order to avoid being executed for treason, he might want to honorably jump out of the plane and thereby save his family the shame.

And Turner, who has a fleshy face and a conversational manner that procaims the virtues of accomodation and riding along, does that! He swallows, frowns, opens the hatch, stares at Burton for four or five seconds and jumps without a parachute. After which Burton, Eastwood and Ure sit there calmly and more or less shrug their shoulders…”c’est la guerre.”

If Hollywood Elsewhere had directed Where Eagles Dare I would have insisted on a different outcome. A chubby, gray-haired British Colonel willfully jumping out of a plane and splitting his skull open as he smashes into the rocky, snow-capped mountains below…that’s not an ending. It’s too civilized, too dull, too absurd.

HE alternate #1: Wymark/Turner pulls a knife, leaps across the aisle and stabs Burton/Smith in the heart, slugs Eastwood and wrestles with him on the floor of the plane, and they both fall out….whooooossshhh! Ure, the last survivor, pulls out a pack of Lucky Strike cigarettes and lights up, blase and unaffected.

HE alternate #2: Wymark/Turner grabs an inflatable raft before jumping out of the plane. He inflates it as he falls, Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom-style. He lands on a steep snowy hillside and slides to safety, thus setting up a sequel in which Burton and Eastwood are assigned to hunt Turner down and kill him.

HE alternate #3: Wymark/Turner crashes into the cockpit, knifes the pilot to death and steers the plane into the mountains….they all die.

HE alternate #4: Rather than share a flight with a despised traitor, Burton, Eastwood and Ure put on parachutes and leap out of the plane in tandem. Alas, Burton’s chute doesn’t open and his body is shattered and torn to pieces as he hits the rocks. Eastwood and Ure’s parachutes open, however, and after a short hike they find shelter in a warm mountain cabin that just happens to be stocked with cold beer, potatoes, weinerschnitzel and sauerkraut. Eastwood and Ure decide that “if you can’t be with the one you love, love the ones you’re with.”

During last May’s Cannes Film Festival N.Y. Times critic Manohla Dargis, who’s become an unbridled celebrator of feminist-brand cinema in recent years, praised Todd Haynes’ May December (Netflix, 12.1), an underwhelming (to put it kindly) attempt at blending the Mary Kay Letourneau saga with a semblance of a re-heated Persona. Dargis actually went apeshit, predicting Oscar glory. I wouldn’t say that reactions to the recent N.Y. Film Festival screenings of Haynes’ film have necessarily put the kibbosh on this fantasy, but I would say that the general lack of excitement is palpable.

HE’s most recent May December piece appeared on 9.26.

Last night I saw for the very first time Rouben Mamoulian‘s Dr. Jekyl and Mr. Hyde (’31). I had watched two or three segments (particularly the Miriam Hopkins stocking-removal + side-boob scene) but never the entire thing.

It was a beautifully restored version showing on the Criterion Channel, but I was doubly impressed and actually astonished by the extended POV sequence in the very beginning, which I had somehow never read about.

It was almost certainly Mamoulian’s idea to begin with, I’m guessing, but the renowned cinematographer Karl Struss (Sunrise, The Great Dictator, Limelight) was obviously a full partner. The shot uses a circular, partially-closed iris view, and it starts with Fredric March‘s unseen Dr. Jekyll playing an organ, talking to his butler, walking through his home, putting on an evening cape, leaving his home (we finally get a peek at March when he looks in a mirror) and arriving as a college classroom for a lecture.

If before last night you had asked me what film was the first to make use of extended POV cinematography, I would have said Robert Motgomery‘s Lady in the Lake (’47), a hardboiled Phillip Marlowe crime story.

Everyone has a look of excitement and anticipation in their eye after they’ve graduated high school and are about to start college. The great adventure! When I attended my 25th celebration most of my ex-classmates had either surrendered that gleam or put it into a bureau drawer somewhere. To me they looked sedate, staid, settled. All except for a small fraternity, which I estimated to be maybe 5% of the crowd. X-factor types with a semblance of life in their veins. Looking for action, adventure, the next discovery.

Posted on 6.29.15: The other day a friend mentioned a pending high-school reunion. Okay, fine, I wanted to say, but if you were fundamentally unhappy and occasionally miserable in high school (as many of us were, and as I definitely was), you’ll need to stash that history in your locker and keep it there until the reunion is over.

Reunions tend to remind a lot of us what a regimented environment and cultural concentration camp high school was. Most of us only realize this after we’ve found our footing as adults. I was lost but now I’m free, or certainly a lot freer.

My high-school years didn’t feel “miserable” in an unmistakable, lemme-outta-here sense; the unhappiness I lived with seeped into my system in a hundred subtle ways. I was so down it looked like up to me. All of it. I didn’t expect any semblance of “happiness,” but I was hoping all the time that life might eventually become less grueling.

I wasn’t anti-social but I didn’t party and run around all that much until my senior year, and once that phase kicked in I became a madman. The truth is that on a certain level I was a kind of functioning alcoholic (no serious behavioral problems but a few serpents under the surface) from my late teens until I quit the hard stuff in the mid ’90s. The real healing didn’t begin until I went sober in March 2012, or so I tell myself.

Before I socially flowered I watched a shitload of TV and listened to a lot of music and basically lived in my head. I was a secret genius who could potentially be persuaded to join the crowd, but no one ever asked. I know that my father’s alcoholism felt and smelled like mustard gas in our home, especially during dinner hour, and that my self-esteem was in the basement. I mostly felt apart, diminished and unworthy when it came to women. In school I didn’t do sports or join clubs or do anything extra-curricular except for detention.

My life didn’t really kick into gear until my mid 20s when the journalism thing started, and even that was agony until I became a half-decent writer and had learned the ropes and had gotten to know people, etc. Things didn’t actually kick into a good place (confidence, comfort, fair reward) until the online column era started, in late ’98 — a quarter-century ago.