Clint Eastwood‘s Juror No. 2 is a smart, somber, adult-angled jury deliberation drama that holds you start to finish. Alas, it leaves you with an unsatisfied feeling at the very end.

It’s about a reasonable, sensible 30something dude (Nicholas Hoult‘s Justin Kemp, a married, ex-alcoholic magazine writer) trying to wriggle his way out of a tough moral-pressure-cooker situation.

There’s no good way out of what Kemp is facing, and yet we, the audience, would like to see this obviously decent protagonist find a solution regardless.

Serving as a juror on a murder trial, Kemp is devastated early on by a two-fold realization — i.e., the guy accused of killing his girlfriend (Gabriel Basso‘s James Michael Sythe) is not guilty, and that Kemp, of all the forehead-slapping coincidences, is accidentally guilty of having hit this woman with his car on a dark rainy night.

Kemp initially thinks he might have hit a deer, but he’s also not sure. He’s actually suppressing a terrible inkling. His car was damaged by the impact but he had the dent fixed and then he lied to his pregnant wife about where the collision happened.

So the film is basically held together by Kemp’s moral discomfort as well as our own.

How to solve this horrific situation? Kemp tries the Henry Fonda-in-12 Angry Men solution by trying to talk his fellow jurors out of finding a guilty verdict due to reasonable doubt. A hung jury won’t suffice as the case will just be retried.

Juror No. 2 lacks the tension and intrigue of 12 Angry Men, but it never bores and it certainly ends boldly. That’s all I’m going to say.

Our natural inclination is to want to see justice done, which in this case means Kemp has to come clean and face the music. But an attorney friend (Kiefer Sutherland) tells Kemp that because of his prior alcoholism no one will believe he was sober at the time of the accident, and that he’ll wind up doing serious time. Excerpt hie wife (Zoey Deutch) is about to give birth so there’s nothing but pain either way.

Without getting into specifics there’s a major plot hole that involves auto-body repair receipts. That’s all I’m going to say but this issue becomes more and more bothersome.

Billy Zane‘s forthcoming performance as Marlon Brando will be fun to savor, and yet the trailer tells us immediately why Bill Fishman‘s Waltzing With Brando has been a tough sell, distribution-wise.

It’s not a film about Marlon Brando’s whatever — acting talent, rebel spirit, career turbulence, sexual prowess, spiritual lassitude. It’s a fact-based saga about the building of an ecologically balanced, earth-nourishing resort on the atoll of Tetiaroa, which Brando purchased a 99-year lease for back in ’66 or thereabouts. So it’s basically a story about a rich, flaky eccentric…a story about fiddling around in paradise, trying to do right by nature, gazing at the horizon, etc.

Written and directed by Fishman, and adapted from the late Bernard Judge‘s “Waltzing with Brando: Planning a Paradise in Tahiti,” etc. It could make for an interesting documentary, but dramatically speaking it sounds like a snooze.

The costare are Jon Heder (as Judge), Richard Dreyfuss, Camille Razat, Alaina Huffman, Tia Carrere and James (son of Mick) Jagger.

White–haired septuagenarian: “Trump’s the man.”

HE: “Okay, but do you guys think there’s a slight chance you might go to hell when you die?”

While–haired septuagenarian (chuckling): “Heh, not a chance.”

HE: “Satan is his father, not Fred! He came up from hell and begat a son of mortal woman. He will overthrow the mighty and lay waste their temples!”

I actually didn’t say any of this Roman Castevet stuff, but I said it inwardly. I didn’t have the courage to say it verbally.

Ever since the marketing klutzes at Apple TV+ blew off debuting Steve McQueen’s Blitz at the Venice, Telluride, Toronto or New York film festivals and went instead for a London Film Festival debut, the clear indication was that McQueen’s film was some kind of not-quite-there curio or shortfaller.

And then came confirmation of same from a recent smattering of negative reviews. A 76% RT rating doesn’t say “wipeout” but it does suggest the drag-down effect of certain issues and concerns.

Bullshit!

I saw Blitz last night, and I’m telling you that Apple should be completely ashamed of itself for all-but-burying — are you ready? — this superbly composed, oddball period war fantasy — an exquisitely crafted, richly imaginative, occasionally horrific, constantly engrossing “adventures of a young lad” movie.

And the critics who’ve panned it need to fall on the church steps and beg forgiveness from the Movie Godz.

Blitz is a violent cousin of Disney’s Toby Tyler (‘60) with a racially eccentric, super-woke casting approach plus a little Empire of the Sun seasoning, amounting to something that almost feels a little Wizard of Oz-y — a multi-chaptered child’s adventure flick that blends (during the third act at least) Coppola’s The Cotton Club with Dickens’ “Oliver Twist.”

Partly because of the musical ingredients, I mean. Blitz has a strong, excitingly intrusive score (Hans Zimmer) and a fair amount of tunes that are sung — yes, sung! — with such spunk and warmth, it’s almost (but not quite) a kind of musical. It’s open-hearted and super-carefully composed in a way that vaguely reminded me of Spielberg’s 1941, if you substitute the tone of beardo’s failed comedy for the occasional jolts of brutal realism that punctuate John Boorman’s Hope and Glory.

You almost expect one of the kids whom Eliot Heffernan’s George runs into during his perilous, days-long, trying-to get-back-home-while-dodging-bombs adventure…you almost expect one of the boys he befriends to sing “Consider Yourself,” the 60-year-old tune from B’way’s Oliver!

I’ve been griping about presentism for years, but McQueen’s commitment to re-imagining and recreating the racial composition of 84-years-old London is so surreal and unbridled and fantasy-soaked that you have to give him credit for saying “fuck it” and just taking the damn plunge.

I mean, if you leave out Brixton and similar nabes, London wasn’t this black even in the mid ‘70s or early ‘80s — I was there back then so don’t tell me — and Blitz, of course, is set in ‘40 and ‘41, when there was one person of color for every 3800 palefaces.

Here’s what I tapped out on the train last night:

“Wow….Blitz is much better than I expected…a grittily imaginative, superbly composed Swing Shift meets the London Blitz meets ‘Oliver Twist’ meets Spielberg’s 1941 within a multicultural fantasyland that the ghosts of Alfred Hitchcock and Alexander Korda would be totally flabbergasted by if they could somehow see it…

“McQueen is such a great, ballsy filmmaker…this is what brave, phenomenally skilled artists do…they swan-dive into their own, self-created worlds.

“It’s almost a musical & is fairly amazing altogether and yet some half-panned it for being too square and conventional! What the fuck! All of that music and spirit & impressionistic imagery & a general current of adventure as seen and felt by a young lad…it’s a great smorgasbord of 1940s magical realism…it’s brutally realistic and quite violent at certain junctures and yet it almost feels at times like an old Disney film, and that’s what’s bold and robust about it.”

Friendo: “I didn’t see any of what you saw and got off on. I saw a movie that just kind of sat there, and I suspect it’s going to be a MAJOR commercial dud. I don’t think anyone is going to go see it.”

HE reply: “No argument there. Apple did as little as possible for Blitz. They suffocated whatever commercial potential it had.”

I’m talking about a remake of The King and I, costarring a bald Cynthia Erivo in the Yul Brynner role (King Mongkut of Siam) and Ariana Grande in the Deborah Kerr role (Anna Leonowens). I’m not suggesting that Erivo’s king should be transformed into a bald lesbian, mind — she could portray the actual Mongkut but in the same way that Cate Blanchett played Bob Dylan in I’m Not There. And they (Erivo + Grande) could fall in love in a straight hetero sense, except the audience would process their affair as a whole ‘nother thing.

The first 12 hours of Tuesday, 11.5, will be such a nail-biter, I won’t know what to think or do. No encouraging or discouraging numbers will appear until 8 pm eastern, right? To alleviate my anxiety I might burrow into all kinds of non-political topics…I’ll be going quietly nuts.

But I’ll definitely be tapping out an HE live blog starting sometime in the early evening.

Today I’ll be catching a 4 pm screening or Clint Eastwood‘s Juror No. 2, which I’m excited about due to a reportedly unconventional ending, and an early evening showing of Steve McQueen‘s Blitz.

We all have to go sometime, and yesterday the bell tolled for the great Quincy Jones.

I don’t know how awake or aware he was at the end or how politically minded he may have been, but I feel a little bit sad that he didn’t get to witness the election of Kamala Harris as the nation’s 47th president.

Posted on 9.23.18: “I admire and respect Quincy Jones as much as the next guy. He hasn’t done much since the ’80s, but he’ll always be cool.

“Jones’ musical score for Richard Brooks‘ In Cold Blood (’67) is a standout…in my mind, at least.

“I was intrigued when I read that Jones’ ancestors include Betty Washington Lewis, a sister of president George Washington, Edward I of England, and Jane Fonda even. And I loved that Vulture interview he gave earlier this year, and particularly an implication that Jones had enjoyed some kind of intimate contact with Ivanka Trump.

“But I had no interest in seeing Alan Hicks and Rashida Jones‘ Quincy, as I don’t enjoy kiss-ass portraiture as a rule. The first 44 seconds of the trailer are suffocating in this regard.

“I would love to sit down with the 85-year-old Jones for hours and hours and listen to his stories, but his friends need to give that ‘oh my God, what an awesome, genius-level talent!’ shit a rest…no offense.”

I’m feeling fairly confident about Harris’s chances tomorrow, especially after that shocking Selzer poll out of Iowa, but I’m also continuing to feel quite antsy about Pennsylvania, where, outside of Philly, Scranton and Pittsburgh, the breathtaking, mule-stubborn, Alabama-mindset legions reside…truly dumber than a box of rocks.

With Jesse Eisenberg‘s A Real Pain finally playing commercially or at least about to open in suburban locations, here’s a refresher of my 9.25.24 Telluride review:

Jesse Eisenberg‘s A Real Pain (Searchlight, 11.1), a quirky, shifty dudes-travelling-through-Poland thing, is going to connect because of Kieran Culkin‘s richly eccentric and occasionally unhinged character, Benji Kaplan…one of those hyper, live-wire guys whose irreverent, unfiltered energy most of us can’t help but enjoy or even get off on in short bursts.

But Culkin’s stoned-jumping-bean manner is also a bit much after repeated exposures. And knowing that Benji is doomed to some kind of arduous instability later in life…a poet who’s fated to “die in the gutter,” as Bob Dylan might put it…Benji is, of course, quite sad.

Everyone has encountered a Benji or two in their life, and this is the film’s big irresistable draw. A Real Pain has to be seen for the Culkin effect. I had heard quite a lot about his firecracker turn, and yet Culkin didn’t disappoint in the least. God, what an amazing, infectious asshole…love his shpiel! And I adore the fact that he loves to sit in airline terminals and study the travellers.

Pic is basically about a pair of tristate-area Jewish cousins, crazy Benji and anxious, straightlaced, somewhat dull David (Eisenberg, who is strangely being campaigned for Best Actor with Culkin going for a Best Supporting nom) embarked on a group holocaust tour in Poland. The usual intrigues and complications ensue.

On top of which Dirty Dancing‘s Jennifer Grey, 63 years young when the film was shot in mid ’23, is also a participant. (The others are like lumps of mashed potatoes.)

This, trust me, is an excellent trailer:

Bob Costas on LeBatardShow three days ago: “Kamala Harris is not an ideal [presidential] candidate, and [she] may have to grow into the job if she wins it. But this is not a political question — it’a a moral question, and it would be [this] no matter who opposes Donald Trump.

“There is nothing wrong with being a Republican or a conservative. Nothing wrong with that. I read George Will on a regular basis, and Peggy Noonan in The Wall Street Journal. I’m like Bill Maher. I’m a center-left guy, a classic liberal, who is troubled by the distortions of [woke] leftism, which is different than liberalism, and some of that is an anchor around Kamala Harris’s neck now. Because she can’t distance herself from the worst of it, even if she doesn’t fully embrace it. Over the years excessive [voices] on the left have handed Fox News their talking points on a silver platter. Or, in this case, the Trump candidacy points.

“So I can understand people having serious misgivings about Biden’s record, and about how the Dems kinda gaslit the public about Biden’s fitness, both as a candidate and [his ability to handle] a second term as president. There are some policies that can’t be defended. You cannot defend what has gone on for a long time at the [Mexican] border. You can certainly defend attempts to reform the police and the justice system, which has historically been tilted against African Americans and other people of color.

“[But] the Trump candidacy is about a man who is a liar, a lunatic and an ignoramus. So it’s a moral question such as we have never seen, not in my lifetime and maybe ever…a presidential candidate with so many of those who are rock-solid Republicans and conservatives, and who worked closely with him and whose credibilty and credentials cannot be questioned…all of these [veterans of the 2017 to 2021 Trump administration] saying the same word — unfit. He is unfit to hold any position of public trust, let alone the presidency.

“So there are millions of people who may have misgivings about aspects of Kamala Harris’s candidacy, but at the same time cannot stomach the idea that somebody whose entire being is antithetical to actual patriotism, to American principles, to common sense and common decency…that, to me, is the deciding factor.”