Ira Sachs‘ Love Is Strange (Sony Classics, 8.22) is a bittersweet, sluggish, mild-mannered tale about an older gay couple, Ben (John Lithgow) and George (Alfred Molina), facing financial hardship and having to give up their condo and temporarily move in with friends. It’s all because they’ve recently married and George, a Catholic school music teacher, has been canned by the Archdiocese for the usual homophobic reasons. Right away I asked myself, “They didn’t see this coming? They didn’t even suspect that the Catholic elders might react this way?” Not very bright if you ask me. It’s great to get openly married and wave your flag but what idiot would do this knowing that it might lead to getting whacked? My second thought was, “They can’t they fight this in court? Doesn’t George have an extremely strong discrimination case against the Archdiocese? What are they gonna do, take this lying down?”

They take it lying down, all right. Sachs doesn’t want any blame-gaming or court battles. His film is mostly about coping and weary resignation. Sachs is interested in the humiliating process of leaning on friends and family and having to make do with less, and in basically going down the drain with dignity. The film’s slogan, if you want to give it one, is “life sure gets hard when you lose your home but at least we love each other and our extended families are helping but whoa, what a way to wrap things up.” Love Is Strange is nothing if not kindly, perceptive and compassionate, and there’s no faulting Lithgow and Molina’s performances. They know exactly what they’re doing and how to make many (okay, more than a few) of their scenes turn the key and flip the lock. But let no one doubt that Sachs has made a very low-key, occasionally quite trying film. I didn’t hate it but I checked my watch at least six or seven times.

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From Justin Chang‘s 8.20 Variety piece about the Telluride vs. Toronto War: “It probably didn’t bother Toronto too much that its new honesty policy allowed it to deal Telluride an unusual slap in the face. In unveiling its typically massive film slate, the Toronto press office opted for the first time to disclose the true premiere status of each entry, effectively spilling the beans (or some of them, anyway) on Telluride’s lineup, which is usually kept under wraps until just before its Labor Day weekend kickoff.

“Based on reasonable deductions from Toronto’s announcement, the Telluride program almost certainly will include Jean-Marc Vallee‘s Wild, Morten Tyldum’s The Imitation Game, Jon Stewart’s Rosewater, Ramin Bahrani’s 99 Homes and Ethan Hawke’s documentary Seymour: An Introduction. As usual, Telluride will host the North American premieres of Sony Classics’ Cannes entries, which this year include Bennett Miller’s Foxcatcher and Mike Leigh’s Mr. Turner, Andrei Zvyagintsev’s Leviathan and Damian Szifron’s Wild Tales.”

HE Insert #1: I heard Foxcatcher wasn’t going to Telluride…hmmm. HE Insert #2: Sony Pictures Classics has recently screened Leviathan, Whiplash and Wild Tales for regional critics. One of them told me he’s just seen Leviathan and Wild Tales. I wish SPC would extend the same courtesy to big-city critics. I’d love to re-see all three just for the pleasure, without being pressed for time.

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I lasted about 45 minutes with Robert Rodriguez and Frank Miller‘s Sin City: A Dame to Kill For (Dimension, 8.22). Not to sound pervy but I waited for Eva Green‘s nude scenes. Honestly? They were pretty damn good. That’s what this film is selling, right? Hard-boiled hard-ons. The first Sin City (’05) was a simple-dick noir cartoon crammed with gruff machismo and brazenly sexual temptresses. Sin City: A Dame to Kill For is a parody of a parody of a simple-dick noir cartoon, etc. Rodriguez always gets his actresses to parade around in skimpy lingerie and Miller…well, his comic book series started it all. I was dead bored five minutes in, but I was determined to wait for Green. I’m sorry but that’s what happened.

Eva Green in Sin City: A Dame to Kill For.

In the view of Variety‘s Justin Chang, Sin City: A Dame to Kill For “clocks in 23 minutes shorter than its predecessor yet [it] feels far more enervating. This is a movie that, in attempting to update the tawdry pleasures of classic American crime fiction, doesn’t hesitate to indulge its characters’ peeping-tom fantasies as well as ours. In scene after scene, voyeurism is less a subtext than a narrative constant, whether it’s a kinky tryst being secretly photographed from above, a woman diving naked into a moonlit swimming pool, or a squad of vigilante vixens roaming the streets with crossbows while modeling the latest in designer dominatrix wear.

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Why did Dan Gilroy‘s Nightcrawler (Open Road, 10.31), a noirish thriller about an enterprising freelance crime journalist (played by a gaunt Jake Gyllenhaal), change its opening date from 10.17 to 10.31? I ask because for most instinct-driven, under-educated types, a movie called Nightcrawler (which of course was the name of Alan Cumming‘s shape-shifting character in Bryan Singer‘s X2) opening on Halloween weekend (10.31 to 11.2) indicates something spooky or slithery. Remember what happened to William Friedkin‘s Sorcerer, which 90% of the audience assumed was about something supernatural? So why risk the confusion?

I’ll tell you why. David Ayer‘s Fury is why. Or…well, I suppose it’s really due to The Interview abandoning its 11.17 release for Christmas Day, which led to Fury filling that date and so on. You know what? It’s simpler just to blame Brad Pitt.

Nightcrawler was all set to open on 11.17 on 2000-plus screens and then Fury, a violent, visually striking, sure-to-be-heavily-promoted WWII film, pounced on Nightcrawler like a panther and said, “Look, sorry, man but you might be a cooler, more layered Gilroy film but you know that Pitt can kick Jake Gyllenhaal‘s ass with one hand tied behind his back, especially with Jake’s weight-loss appearance. Plus we have a big-dick budget and we’re bigger and more badass than you guys, at least as far as the young male adult audience is concerned and….well, obviously it’s a free country so you do what you want but we’re opening on 11.17. Life in the big city, man. Adapt or die.”

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97 year-old Kirk Douglas sat down and tapped out a short tribute piece for The Hollywood Reporter about the recently-passed Lauren Bacall, whom Douglas first met in 1940 when they were attending the American Academy of Dramatic Arts. Douglas was 24, Bacall was 16…I won’t ask. In ’46 Douglas’s lead performance in The Wind Is Ninety, a Broadway play, won good reviews. At an L.A. party Bacall told producer Hal Wallis to see it for Douglas’s sake and “he actually listened to her,” Douglas writes. “Did I mention she was persuasive? Soon after I was on my way to Hollywood with a meaty role as Barbara Stanwyck‘s husband in The Strange Love of Martha Ivers.” Which, by the way, is a fairly dreadful film. But it led to Out of the Past and, in ’49, Champion.

Jean-Pierre and Luc Dardenne‘s Two Days, One Night has either opened or is due to open around Europe over the next month or two, and it will screen at both TIFF and the NYFF on 10.5. But U.S. distributor Sundance Selects is still thinking things over. I would be too if I was distributing. After seeing it in Cannes last May I called Two Days, One Night “another line-drive single…a low-key, no-frills, ploddingly earnest drama about factory workers being asked to make a choice between humanity and expediency after a co-worker (Marion Cotillard) has been told she’s being laid off…it’s a decently made but far-from-inspired film, roughly on the level of the Dardennes’ The Kid With The Bike.”

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The Toronto International Film Festival has decided to partner with the Weinstein Co. to launch what appears to be an imminent “Bill Murray in St. Vincent for Best Actor” campaign. A celebration of “Bill Murray Day” on Friday, 9.5, will include free screenings of three Murray classics — Stripes, Ghostbusters and Groundhog Day — at the Bell Lightbox. The world premiere of St Vincent, Murray’s latest and a possible (though unproven) basis for a Best Actor campaign, will cap things off. Above and beyond the merits of Murray’s performance (i.e., a semi-alcoholic, loose-shoe babysitter), the campaign theme will almost certainly be “Murray is owed.” He was shafted, of course, when the Academy didn’t even nominate his note-perfect performance in Wes Anderson‘s Rushmore (’98) and his Best Actor-nominated performance for Lost in Translation lost to Mystic River‘s Sean Penn.

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You know what would have been great, seriously? If Barack Obama had dumped the ice on his head. Why not? Everyone’s been getting to the act, it’s for a good cause, and it would feel like justice all around. Inside Obama’s head as he dumps the ice water: “I’ve been meaning to pass along a personal thanks for that huge financial catastrophe you left me to deal with when I took office in January 2009, so thanks…felt good!”

The Criterion guys know that Michelangelo Antonioni‘s L’Avventura (’60) was shot 55 years ago (i.e., summer of ’59) with an understanding that a likely majority of cinemas would screen it at 1.66 or perhaps even at 1.37, particularly those in rural Europe. They know it looks exquisite at 1.66, and they know there are ample references to 1.66 as the preferred or default a.r., and they know that 1.77 is so close to the severity of 1.85 that it’s barely worth comparing the two. And yet, as they did with their Bluray of La Notte, Criterion has decided to slice off the tops and bottoms in order to render it at 1.77. Thanks very much, Mr. Becker. History will speak fondly of you for sparing Antonioni fans all of that unnecessary headroom. At least there’s a selected-scene commentary from Olivier Assayas to look forward to. Criterion’s Bluray streets on 11.25.

I ignored the math a few days ago when I mentioned the BFI London Film Festival showing of David Ayer‘s Fury. The fact that the BFI called the 10.19 showing a “European premiere” means that some U.S.-based festival will be also be showing the Brad Pitt-starring WWII combat film before it opens on 10.17. I don’t think Fury and Telluride are an aesthetic fit, but maybe. It would certainly be cool and unusual if that happens, but would you book an envelope-pushing, Joe Popcorn-angled, ultra-violent war film if you were Tom Luddy or Gary Meyer or Julie Huntsinger? If you ask me a surprise showing at the New York Film Festival is the more likely scenario, sometime after the centerpiece showing (i.e., Inherent Vice) but before the closing nighter (i.e, Birdman).

The Deadline gang has a lot of balls posting a photo of Paul Rudd standing near the Golden Gate bridge in a hoodie and calling it “the first look of Rudd in Ant-Man,” which began shooting yesterday. I hate this movie and they’ve barely rolled film on it, although I do notice that the regular-guy-proportioned Rudd has lost weight. Peyton Reed‘s Ant-Man, which also stars Michael Douglas, opens on 7.17.15. Does anyone remember the name of Anthony Zerbe‘s crooked narco in Karel Reisz‘s Who’ll Stop The Rain? Antheil.