I fell into a yeah-whatever, low-energy chat with a couple of Zoomer women (early to mid 20s) earlier today. We mainly discussed 2024 NYFF flicks vs. recent Cannes and Telluride headliners.

One of them resembled the young Anne Bancroft, except her hair was longish (close to the length of Bancroft’s Mrs. Robinson) and blonde instead of gray-streaked. She didn’t have Bancroft’s Bronx accent but kind of a tough-but-bruised Italian-girl vibe. I was struck by her penetrating, drill-bit eyes and a slightly arched Bancroft-y nose. She wasn’t a dead ringer for Mel Brooks’ wife of 41 years, but the resemblance was certainly there.

I wasn’t going to say anything but then I blurted it out. Does she get the Bancroft resemblance thing now and then?

She didn’t know who Bancroft was. She’d never heard the name. I mentioned The Graduate, and she’d never heard of that either. Her friend chimed in — “Wait, I know The Graduate…I think.” I recited the basic plot — college grad falls into a lackluster affair with wife of his father’s business partner, and then falls seriously in love with their college-aged daughter.

“So you’re kind of a movie buff, buying film festival tickets ,” I started to say.

“I’m a fake movie person,” she replied.

“Okay but you should probably watch The Graduate some day…you’ll see what I mean.”

“Thanks for telling me,” she said.

I asked them both if they’re planning to see the Bob Dylan movie with Timothee Chalamet. They hadn’t heard of A Complete Unknown but know who Chalamet is and had possibly heard of Dylan, but I didn’t want to grill them.

I’d overheard Bancroft Jr. mentioning Lady Gaga to her friend, so I asked if she was looking forward to Joker: Folie a Deux. She hadn’t heard of it.

It’s one thing if a 20something who’s vaguely into movies hasn’t seen The Graduate, but to have never even heard of it?

I fell into a yeah-whatever, low-energy chat with a couple of Zoomer women (early to mid 20s) earlier today. We mainly discussed 2024 NYFF flicks vs. recent Cannes and Telluride headliners.

One of them resembled the young Anne Bancroft, except her hair was longish (close to the length of Bancroft’s Mrs. Robinson) and blonde instead of gray-streaked. She didn’t have Bancroft’s Bronx accent but kind of a tough-but-bruised Italian-girl vibe. I was struck by her penetrating, drill-bit eyes and a slightly arched Bancroft-y nose. She wasn’t a dead ringer for Mel Brooks’ wife of 41 years, but the resemblance was certainly there.

I wasn’t going to say anything but then I blurted it out. Does she get the Bancroft resemblance thing now and then?

She didn’t know who Bancroft was. She’d never heard the name. I mentioned The Graduate, and she’d never heard of that either. Her friend chimed in — “Wait, I know The Graduate…I think.” I recited the basic plot — college grad falls into a lackluster affair with wife of his father’s business partner, and then falls seriously in love with their college-aged daughter.

“So you’re kind of a movie buff, buying film festival tickets,” I started to say.

“I’m a fake movie person,” she replied.

“Okay but you should probably watch The Graduate some day…you’ll see what I mean.”

“Thanks for telling me,” she said.

I asked them both if they’re planning to see the Bob Dylan movie with Timothee Chalamet. They hadn’t heard of A Complete Unknown but know who Chalamet is and had possibly heard of Dylan, but I didn’t want to grill them.

I’d overheard Bancroft Jr. mentioning Lady Gaga to her friend, so I asked if she was looking forward to Joker: Folie a Deux. She hadn’t heard of it.

It’s one thing if a 20something who’s vaguely into movies hasn’t seen The Graduate, but to have never even heard of it?

That’s all you had to say, man…that’s all you had to say.

But not so much the shorts and especially the greenish-gray whitesides…no offense. This is a New York Film Festival ticket-buying line for Average Joes.

One of HE’s all-time favorite Manhattan greasy-spoon, mid-20th-Century diners.

The Order (Vertical, 12.6) is a completely decent, top-tier, action-propelled historical crime drama (set in the early ‘80s) about some FBI guys (led by Jude Law, Tye Sheridan and Jurnee Smollett) looking to bust a thieving white supremacist group called The Order, led by the real-life Robert Matthews (Nicholas Hoult).

The Order was behind the 1984 murder of Denver-based talk-show host Alan Berg. A character based on Berg was played by Eric Bogosian in Oliver Stone’s Talk Radio (‘88).

An HE friendo has called The Order an example of good, sturdy, “old-school” filmmaking.

HE response: “How exactly is it ‘old school’? What would be the ‘new school’ way of telling this story? Dialogue, character, action, milieu, atmosphere…what’s old school about it?”

Friendo: “Not flashy or heavily stylized, absence of hip virus.”

It won’t open theatrically for another two and a half months. Vertical will be streaming it very quickly afterwards (i.e., mid-December).

I was mildly surprised by my positive reaction to The Order, given that Justin Kurzel, whose films I’ve disliked for years on end, is the director. Before last night I’d come to believe that if Kurzel was directing, the film is almost certainly irksome or annoying or even unwatchable on some level.

I own a beautiful-looking Bluray of No Country For Old Men (‘07), and right now I’m watching this Joel and Ethan Coen classic via HD streaming and it looks just as good as the Bluray.

Just as good as it looked, in fact, on that big brilliant screen inside the Salle Debussy in Cannes…17 and 1/3 years ago.

All to say it’s highly unlikely that Criterion’s forthcoming 4K Bluray version will deliver any kind of pulse-quickening bump in visual values, certainly not the kind that might prompt you to sit down at a motel-room desk and write home about.

The older I get, the more that breakfast hour, kitchen table, describin’ a dream ending with Tommy Lee Jones gets me deep down.

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“I’d rather be villainized than infantilized…”

If you can somehow forget about Matt Walsh actually wanting Donald Trump, a lying, diseased, foam-at-the-mouth sociopath, to beat Kamala Harris, a transactional politician with obvious problems but who is still far more sensible, consructive and practical-minded as a potential U.S. president, on 11.5, Am I A Racist? is a compelling, fair-minded documentary.

The only problem with this interview is that the Free Press guy is wearing shorts.