Richard Lester‘s Petulia is a chilly, emotionally distant film about a relationship that doesn’t quite come together, and yet there’s something very infectious and fizzy about it. I think it’s the combination of Lester’s dry ironic detachment and the odd atmospheric stirrings of what was happening in San Francisco when he shot it in the late summer and fall of 1967. There are snatches of music and marijuana and Haight-Ashbury in the periphery, but this is a film about being lonely and adrift…about wealth and comfort and social dance steps and two people who want out. It’s about a 40ish doctor (George C. Scott) who’s bored to death by almost everything in his life and a dishy, impossibly spacey rich girl (Julie Christie) who gets it in her head that Scott is some kind of cure for whatever might be ailing her. Petulia, which I return to every four or five years when I don’t feel like watching anything else, is composed of thousands of slices and fragments of everything and anything that was “happening” back then…sounds, whispers, glances. It’s somewhere between a tapestry and a jumble of pieces that don’t seem to fit, and yet they do when you step back. I think it’s one of the sharpest cultural time-capsule films Hollywood has ever churned out, and at the same time a curiously affecting love story. There an HD version on Amazon but none on Vudu or Netflix. I wish that Warner Home Video or Criterion or someone would punch out a Bluray.

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I’ve agreed to get up early tomorrow morning and drive out to Deep Creek Hot Springs, which is in a hilly wasteland about an hour or 90 minutes north of Lake Arrowhead. I never do this sort of thing and it’ll probably be good for my soul, but the current plan is to stay there for a good six or seven hours before pushing on to Lake Arrowhead. I’d be lying if I didn’t say I’m a bit worried about connectivity. Forget wifi — this area is so remote I won’t be able to make a call or send a text. If it turns out to as bar-less out there as I suspect it might be, tomorrow is going to be a very slow filing day. I’m just saying that upfront. I live in public, I file as a way of life…I don’t do well in the boonies.

I had a pair of dark green suede Beatle boots when I was 23 or 24…something like that. Looked great, were great. I found this British site that sells them but I’m afraid to pull the trigger because of bad associations. The only people I’ve seen wear them over the last quarter-century are icky, oily Eurotrash guys who over-dye their hair and wear neck jewelry, and I wouldn’t want to be associated with that aesthetic, thank you very much. I guess it’s better to let it go (by “it” I mean the past) but I wish there was a way.

I’ve written and said Liam “Paycheck” Neeson so many times on this site that it sounds as natural and unaffected as Daniel Day Lewis, Tommy Lee Jones and Billy Bob Thornton. I’m not sorry for calling him a paycheck slut because…well, he’s been that for the last five or so years…let’s be honest. But out of respect for Neeson’s performance in A Walk Among the Tombstones and for the general integrity of the film, I am hereby pledging to never again use that ignominious middle name. Even if he makes three or four more Taken films (and I wouldn’t put it past Neeson to do this), from here on this grizzled 62-year-old will be referred to on this site as Liam Neeson and nothing else.

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I’ll be shelling out to see Michael Roskam‘s The Drop again this evening. I couldn’t understand roughly a third of the dialogue when I saw it at Toronto’s Princess of Wales theatre the weekend before last. And don’t tell me it’s my hearing — another Toronto-visiting critic agreed with my complaint about the POW’s murky tones on top of which The Theory of Everything composer Johann Johannsson told me he found the sound substandard. I’ll be seeing The Drop this evening at the Landmark, which I know has excellent sound. But it pisses me off regardless. The Drop is fine but without the sound issue I would have waited for a Vudu HDX availability. I called it “an earnestly above-average, Friends of Eddie Coyle-ish crime drama…well-acted, agreeably flavorfu…one of those low-key neighborhood personality soup bowls.” I was especially taken by the “always impressive Tom Hardy as an unassuming, seemingly-none-too-bright barkeep named Tom who surprises the audience but particularly Matthias Schoenaert‘s bullying bad-guy character in Act Three,” etc.

“A traffic accident involving a young boy spins a web of lies, suspicion and cover-ups around three policemen in Felony, a tension-packed drama from Aussie helmer Matthew Saville. The script, written by lead actor Joel Edgerton, teems with moral conundrums, as straight-arrow righteousness, self-serving pragmatism and plain, old-fashioned guilt duke it out amid drug busts and family disintegration. Thanks to Saville’s tightly controlled direction and a superlative cast, the mere exchange of glances builds as much suspense as the kinetic action sequence that opens the pic.” — from Ronnie Scheib‘s Variety review. Gravitas Ventures is releasing on 10.17.

I could live on a steady diet of Sidney Lumet movies for the rest of my life. Not just those made by the late director** but Lumet-style New York melodramas with his signature attitude and blunt, stabby brushstrokes. Urgent, propulsive tales of corruption. Tentacles of fate, forces closing in, shootings, beatings, etc. 33 Years Ago: “Hey, wanna go see that new movie? It’s with whatsisname…Treat Williams. I’ve heard it’s almost three hours of medium interiors of prosecutors and district attorneys debating whether or not to prosecute a corrupt cop who wanted to dishcarge the crap in his life but winds up ratting on his partners and his mafia cousins…whaddaya think?” A Most Violent Year will open on Wednesday, 12.31.14, which, by the way, is the same day that Leviathan opens.

** I don’t think I ever want to see Family Business again and I’m not so sure about Last of the Mobile Hot-Shots, but these aside…

Shawn Levy and Jonathan Tropper‘s This Is Where I Leave You (Warner Bros., 9.19) is one of those soothing suburban-middle-class family comedies in which the major characters (four 30something kids and their mom) fret about, examine and resolve their respective issues. I missed the opening 25 minutes in Toronto so I caught it again last night. It’s not bad — it just starts to feel like a sedative after the first hour. It occured to me that movies of this sort always take place in a really nice (usually pre-war) home with a nice big lawn shaded by big trees, plenty of bedrooms, loads of food on the dinner table, etc. And the photography is steady and unfussy and the lighting is just right with everyone looking well-dressed in a casual sort of way with perfect hair, etc. The idea is to make the audience feel as flush and comfortable as the characters. But I need to give Levy credit for handling the husband-discovers-wife-in-bed-with-his-boss scene (which is in the trailer) in an unexpected way. The husband (Jason Bateman) is holding a birthday cake when he walks in on the nasty-doers (Abigail Spencer, Dax Shepard), and right away you’re expecting Bateman to dump the cake on Spencer’s head. Or on Shepard’s. I’m not going to spoil but Bateman doesn’t do that. And what he does is just right. It might be the best scene in the film.

From my 1.17.14 review: “Damien Chazelle‘s Whiplash (Sony Pictures Classics, 10.14) is a raging two-hander about a gifted drummer named Andrew (Miles Teller). Enrolled at an elite Manhattan music school and determined to be not just proficient or admired but Buddy Rich-great, Andrew is a Bunsen burner. We can see from the get-go he’s going to be increasingly possessed and manic and single-minded about the skins. (All great musicians are like this to varying degrees.) On top of which he really doesn’t want to be like his kindly, failed-writer dad (Paul Reiser), and he can’t find peace with a pretty girl (Melissa Benoist) because she isn’t as consumed as he is — too uncertain and unexceptional.

“That’s combustible enough, but Chazelle turns it up with the villain/angel of the piece — a snarling, egg-bald, half-mad music instructor named Terence Fletcher (J.K. Simmons). This guy is definitely not sane and yet he knows what it takes to be great. Andrew recognizes this kindred (if dominating) spirit and wham…we’re off to the races. You know these guys are going to butt heads, and that a lot of emotional-psychological blood will be spilt (along with the actual stuff). This is the super-demanding realm of classic jazz. Everyone listening to Rich and Charlie Parker and other legends of that ilk. Playing the hell out of ‘Whiplash’ and ‘Cherokee’ and dreading Fletcher’s wrath. No pikers, whiners or jerkoffs.”

Fatih Akin‘s The Cut is “a big, ambitious, continent-spanning piece of work…but it’s a little simplistic emotionally, especially in its latter half as the film trudges across America with its hero. It doesn’t have the sophisticated nuance and wit of Akin’s contemporary German-language movies, like Head-On (’04) and The Edge of Heaven (’07). [The title] can mean the brutal act of murder itself; it can mean the division of husbands from wives, parents from children, and it can mean the present from the past, the insidious amputation of memory. Whether The Cut encompasses this last sense is up for debate, but it is a forceful, watchable, strongly presented picture and a courageous, honest gesture.” — from Peter Bradshaw‘s Guardian review, filed from Venice Film Festival on 8.31.14.

If you’re a cultured film cricket or impassioned film hound, there are two ways to go with Scott Frank‘s A Walk Among The Tombstones. You can praise it for being “an uncommonly well-made thriller,” as Village Voice critic Alan Scherstuhl did today, or you can say it’s too venal and misogynist (the bad guys are as animalistic and bloodthirsty as the Islamic State fighters) despite the gritty, well-honed, old-fashioned chops. But you can’t just wave it off. You can’t dismiss it for being retro (there’s nothing wrong with taking a basic ’70s-style approach) or for not being exceptionally well made (a ludicrous thing to say) or because it’s not cartoonishly violent in the rote style of the Taken films. Or because it invests in secondary characters. Or because it has a heart.

“The Taken films invite viewers to cheer violence,” Scherstuhl writes. “A Walk Among the Tombstones, with some moral force, insists that you want nothing to do with it.”

In short, you can say you don’t like Tombstones for whatever peculiar reason you may choose (as I often do), but you can’t fault the obviously high level of craft. You’ve got to at least show proper respect. Theatrical urban thrillers really need this kind of smart, low-key approach. Or…aahh, fuck it, maybe they don’t. Maybe it’s better to just let this level of writing and acting migrate to cable television where it belongs. But this is the kind of good-detective-vs.-maniacal-villain flick that nobody makes any more. It’s composed of well-ordered material and the right kind of instincts. It’s a bit like John Flynn‘s The Outfit, that 1973 Robert Duvall film that finally re-surfaced on DVD a few years ago. One of those tone-it-down, less-is-more exercises. And quite gripping in its own way. It just doesn’t pander to morons.

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We know that Chris and Jonathan Nolan‘s Interstellar (Paramount, 11.5) involves an attempt to…you tell me. We know that the earth is dust-filled and polluted beyond hope and less and less capable of sustaining life, and that Matthew McConaughey is part of a team of space voyagers who want to somehow turn things around…but how? It’s a slim thread of a notion of a vague idea of something or other, and it’s been floating around for several months now. Does anyone know what Interstellar is actually about without the dandelion pollen? I’m not trying to be an asshole. I’m just feeling fed up with the vague-itude.

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