The widespread acclaim and expectations of a huge opening weekend for Doug Liman and Tom Cruise‘s Edge of Tomorrow (Warner Bros., opening today) are such that I thought I’d spritz things up by quoting from one of the very few negative reviews, written by Indiewire‘s Eric Kohn. Is Kohn making a reasonable point? Isn’t Edge showing tonight here and there? The usual early-bird Thursday night showings? Responses from the HE community will start trickling in later this afternoon and evening but please fire away whatever your reaction.

“It’s impossible not to observe the explicit borrowing from Groundhog Day, an infinitely wiser and more astute storytelling accomplishment,” Kohn notes. “Edge of Tomorrow is slick, but once its fancy plot dressing takes form, it has little more to offer aside from a few impressive action sequences and the infallible grin of its nimble lead.

“The movie works just fine as a mild distraction, but arrives in theaters with a fanfare that suggests a far grander achievement.

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The use of black-and-white and then, gradually, delicate applications of color are, of course, metaphors in Phillip Noyce‘s The Giver (Weinstein Co., 8.15). I’ve been a fool for monochrome my whole moviegoing life, and I love the tinting work here. Almost as an end in itself.

Brute Force isn’t exactly second-tier Jules Dassin but it’s one of his ground-rule doubles, I think. It suggests that prisoners were a lot more worldly and refined back in 1947, essentially decent fellows who happened to draw bad cards, and I’m not sure how valid that is. “Not having intimate knowledge of prisons or prisoners, we wouldn’t know whether the average American convict is so cruelly victimized as are the principal prison inmates in Brute Force, which came to Loew’s Criterion yesterday. But to judge by this ‘big house’ melodrama, the poor chaps who languish in our jails are miserably and viciously mistreated and their jailers are either weaklings or brutes.” — from Bosley Crowther‘s 7.17.47 N.Y. Times review.

I’m completely aware that what I’m about to say sounds like self-parody, but now that John Oliver has had his first big success with his anti-FCC net neutrality diatribe [after the jump] and the reported reaction to it, he should think about getting his teeth fixed. If he’s going to be a big-timer he has to sand off a couple of edges. He doesn’t need odd-looking chompers to double down on the British eccentricity, which is potent enough as is.

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I don’t know why this is funny but it is. No-laugh funny, I mean, which is pretty much the only kind being produced these days. (And right in my wheelhouse.) The guy doing Morgan Freeman‘s voice is on the money. Not to get strange but eight pounds is light for a severed adult head. Most of the links says the average is closer to ten or eleven pounds. Just saying.

It’s 6:30 am in Manhattan, and I need to be out at JFK around 11 am for my 1 pm flight back to Los Angeles. But first I’ll be visiting the 9/11 Memorial and Museum (opens at 8:30 am) for a little stroll-around. No, I’m not paying $20-odd dollars for entrance to the gift shop and I’m not buying any NYFD T-shirts or any of the other knick-knacks. I just want to stand there and take some shots and look down into the two pools where the twin towers once stood. I’m giving myself 45 minutes, all in. Update: It was raining cats, dogs and raccoons when I got down there around 8:40 am. Pond-sized puddles and damp socks and still a lot of construction fences and machinery. Way too many bodies and umbrellas. Another time.

If I had been in President Obama‘s shoes when the Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl prisoner swap deal was being cobbled together, I would have said the following: “Is this guy worth five Taliban militants? Where did we get five for one? Okay, I’ll swap two Taliban guys for Bowe but no more. But even with those terms I wouldn’t like it because Bowe is obviously not made of uncommon valor and sterner stuff. He’s basically a none-too-bright, possibly mentally unstable deserter who walked off his post without even carrying a weapon. Obviously I wouldn’t feel the same way if he was my kid, but he’s made his own doofus bed and now he’s damaged goods. Two Taliban guys, final offer. Five is out of the question, and if they don’t like it they can stuff it.”

1:35 pm GMT Update: Heathrow-to-JFK flight leaving in 25 or 30 minutes. Arriving 4:45 pm EST or thereabouts. Earlier: Several weeks ago I booked a return from London’s Heathrow because there was something interesting to do in the London area. Then that thing didn’t pan out. Changing the flight to Paris was way too costly, or certainly less expensive than taking a Eurostar from Gare du Nord to London/St. Pancras at 8:45 am this morning, which will happen an hour from now. Then a 2 pm flight back to New York. No wifi on the train or the plane so there won’t be much filing except for what I can tap out on the phone.

Less than seven weeks before showtime, Andy and Lana Wachowski‘s Jupiter Ascending (Warner Bros., 7.18) has been yanked from the release schedule and bumped into a 2.6.15 opening, or seven months hence. The reason, according to WB distribution chief Dan Fellman, is that the Wachowskis needed more time to complete their work on more than 2,000 special effects shots in the film. All right, okay, maybe. The Wachowskis got jammed and said “to hell with the pressure — let’s downshift and get everything totally right and open Jupiter during the February doldrums instead.” That could have been it, sure, but no one will really believe that. The Wachowskis didn’t have a schedule of FX — when this and that would be done by this and that date — all planned out with plenty of time for last-minute refinements? I’m not doubting Fellman’s account as far as it goes, but there’s probably an undercurrent or two that isn’t up for discussion. When films get pushed back it’s rarely due to concerns about this or that technical post-production issue.

Hollywood Elsewhere is offering a raised-fist salute to actor John Lacy, who was canned three days ago (i.e., Saturday) for stopping a performance of Cat On A Hot Tin Roof at Newhall’s Repertory East Playhouse in order to deal with a drunken bigot who was heckling the show with homophobic slurs. Lacy reportedly jumped off the stage after the drunk wouldn’t shut up (the guy reportedly shouted “fag” more than once) and physically ejected him from the theatre.

This is how all drunken assholes should be dealt with. Lacy is to be applauded, not fired. He sounds to me like a guy Denzel Washington might portray in a film. A man of slow-burning conviction who doesn’t take shit.

The show reportedly continued following the incident and concluded to a standing ovation. Lacy was fired right after the performance. The REP authority figure who did that (probably executive director Ovington Michael Owston) should be ashamed of himself and offer apologies all around. The theatre has since announced the closing of the Tennessee Williams play “due to casting loss.” The REP’s official statement notes that “cast members” have left the show, which indicates some of Lacy’s fellow cast members resigned in protest when he was whacked.

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