Forgive the lateness but five months ago (4.6.23) six Hollywood Reporter critics — Jon Frosch, David Rooney, Sheri Linden, Livia Guyarkye, Leslie Felperin and Jordan Mintzer — posted their choices for the 50 Best Films of the 21st Century.

Nobody is an absolute authority and we all have our special passions and allegiances, but boy, do these guys live on Planet Uranus or what? Travelling within their own solar system, residing in ivory tower suites, however you want to put it. Wow.

Friendo: “Absurd, elitist, off in their own realm…shows how out of touch they and so many other critics are these days.”

The THR gang didn’t include 2022 or 2023 films, but their top ten (#1 to #10) are are Yi Yi, Inside Llewyn Davis (HE agrees that it’s among the top 50), The Gleaners and I, Zodiac (stiff HE salute), Mulholland Drive, Spirited Away, Brokeback Mountain (ditto), In The Mood For Love, 4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days (definitely among HE’s top 20) and Get Out (WHAT??).

I’m still in New Jersey and facing a drive back to Wilton and therefore in too much of a rush to include the films of the last four years, but here’s one of HE’s 21st Century rundowns, moving backwards from 2018 — roughly 114 titles:

Best of 2018: Roma, Green Book, First Reformed, Hereditary, Capernaum, Vice, Happy As Lazzaro, Filmworker, First Man, Widows, Sicario — Day of the Soldado. (11).

Best of 2017: Call Me My Your Name, Dunkirk, Lady Bird, The Square, War For The Planet of the Apes, mother!, The Florida Project. (7)

Best of 2016 Manchester By The Sea, A Bigger Splash, The Witch, Eye in the Sky, The Confirmation, The Invitation. (6)

Best of 2015: Spotlight, The Revenant; Mad Max: Fury Road; Beasts of No Nation; Love & Mercy, Son of Saul; Brooklyn; Carol, Everest, Ant-Man; The Big Short. (10)

Best of 2014: Birdman, Citizen Four, Leviathan, Gone Girl, Boyhood, Locke, Wild Tales. (7)

Best of 2013: The Wolf of Wall Street, 12 Years A Slave, Inside Llewyn Davis, Her, Dallas Buyers Club, Before Midnight, The Past, Frances Ha (8).

Best of 2012: Zero Dark Thirty, Silver Linings Playbook, Amour, Beasts of the Southern Wild, Barbara, The Grey, Moonrise Kingdom (7).

Best of 2011 (ditto): A Separation, Moneyball, Drive, Contagion, X-Men: First Class, Attack the Block (6).

Best of 2010: The Social Network, The Fighter, Black Swan, Inside Job, Let Me In, A Prophet, Animal Kingdom, Rabbit Hole, The Tillman Story, Winter’s Bone (10).

Best of the First Decade (’00 to ’09): Zodiac, Memento, Traffic, Amores perros, United 93, Children of Men, Adaptation, City of God, The Pianist, The Lives of Others, Sexy Beast, Avatar, There Will Be Blood, Michael Clayton, Almost Famous (the “Untitled” DVD director’s cut), 4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days, Collateral, Dancer in the Dark, A Serious Man, Girlfight, The Departed, Babel, Ghost World, In the Bedroom, Talk to Her, Bloody Sunday, No Country For Old Men, The Quiet American, Whale Rider, Road to Perdition, Open Range, Touching the Void, Maria Full of Grace, Up In The Air, The Hurt Locker, Million Dollar Baby, The Motorcycle Diaries, An Education, Man on Wire, Revolutionary Road, Che and Volver. (42)

HE’s Best of 2020: 1. Chloe Zhao‘s Nomadland; 2. Roman Polanski‘s J’Accuse (An Officer and a Spy); Aaron Sorkin‘s The Trial of the Chicago 7; Florian Zeller‘s The Father, 8. Chris Nolan‘s Tenet, Judd Apatow and Pete Davidson‘s The King of Staten Island, Michael Winterbottom‘s The Trip to Greece, Rod Lurie‘s The Outpost, Diao Yinan‘s The Wild Goose Lake. 10. Cory Finley and Mike Makowski‘s Bad Education.

HE’s best of 2021: 1. King Richard, 2. Parallel Mothers, 3. West Side Story, 4. Spider-Man: No Way Home, 5. The Worst Person in the World, 6. A Hero (Amazon), 7. Riders of Justice, 8. No Time To Die, 9. The Beatles: Get Back, 10. Zola.

…that out of darkness leads up to light.

I avoided Elizabeth Chai Vasarhelyi and Jimmy Chin‘s Nyad (Netflix, 10.20 theatrically, 11.3 streaming) during Telluride because I was told over and over that Annette Bening‘s titular performance amounted to a tough sit. Now, having seen the trailer, I’m seeing a possible parallel between Nyad and Raging Bull. It seems clear that both Bening and costar Jodie Foster go for it hard, and that Foster…let’s wait and see but she may deliver like Joe Pesci.

In the wake of the first Telluride screening of Jeff Nichols‘ The Bikeriders (Searchlight, 12.1), several critics and columnists who should have known better insisted it was a very cool ride and that they loved it and so on.

Variety‘s Clayton Davis actually wrote that costars Austin Butler, Jodie Comer and Tom Hardy “are all putting their stamp on an awards season that will be udoubtedly competitive.” The season will be competitive, as always, but they won’t be — trust me. Okay, maybe Comer will punch through, but her performance is all about her labored street accent. It sounds like she worked very hard to sound just so.

The Bikeriders is piffle…an actors’ attitude movie about studly posturing and leather pants and roaring two-wheelers. And dozens upon dozens of lit cigarettes.

I was so into groaning and rolling my eyes and exhaling with exasperation during the screening that Sasha Stone bawled me out — “You almost ruined it for me!…I’m not going to sit next to you if you do that again!” It’s not me, I replied. I’m just a victim. Blame Jeff Nichols!

Posted from Telluride on 8.31.23:

As I was watching Jeff Nichols’ The Bikeriders, I was telling myself that it’s basically about the inability (or unwillingness) of costars Tom Hardy and especially Austin Butler, playing surly-ass, black leather biker types, to perform a scene without constantly inhaling gray-blue cigarette smoke.

No honest assessment of The Bikeriders will fail to acknowledge that it’s basically a posturing, surly attitude genre flick about skanky vroom-vroom machismo…about sullen Midwest motorcycle lowlifes in the general mold of Marlon Brando’s “Johnny” in The Wild One, mixed with the nihilist biker hooligan aesthetic of the AIP ‘60s motorcycle flicks (The Wild Angels, The Born Losers).

Story-wise it’s about a battle for the soul of Butler’s Benny, a moody, cool-cat rebel straight out of the Shangrilas’ ”The Leader of the Pack.”

On one side is Jodie Comer’s Kathy, who quickly becomes Benny’s girlfriend and then wife in a possibly sexless marriage (nobody fucks in this film). Kathy wants Benny to be his own man and not submit to certain aimless bullshit rituals that come with membership in a motorcycle gang.

Pulling in an opposite direction is Hardy’s Johnny, who wants Benny to succeed him as the leader of the Vandals, a mythical local gang that gradually becomes huge with several chapters around the Midwest.

The Vandals are ostensibly a black leather outlaw motorcycle club in the vein of actual old-style OMCs like Hells Angels, the Outlaws, the Bandidos and the Pagans. The difference is that the Vandals aren’t criminals. They’re just ornery guys who occasionally beat the shit out of other ornery guys. Really — that’s all that happens. Scuzzy, nihilistic, no-direction-home guys snorting brewskis, sucking down cigarettes like they’re in a cancer contest while taking offense at this or that and kicking or pounding the crap out of each other.

The Bikeriders is basically about actors playing with machismo, nihilism, nothingness and swaggering around… about Hardy, Butler and costars Michael Shannon, Boyd Holbrook and Norman Reedus attempting to resuscitate (like I just said) the old AIP biker movie aesthetic except not in California but somewhere in Illinois or Ohio…that surly, unshaven, leather-jacket-wearin’ thang, man…rumblin’ those noisy choppers, man..surly attitudes, beard stubble, greasy hair, tough-asshole posturing, leather jackets with “colors” and insignias, stinky T-shirts and no change of underwear for days on end.

Please see The Bikeriders!! Some of you out there, unburdened by taste, will have a raunchy good old time with it.

This was your mission, Mr. Hunt. You choose to accept it and the fact that it didn’t work out…well, that’s on you.

Yesterday afternoon’s Albuquerque-to-JFK flight (Jet Blue, #66) left an hour late, but was expected to land by 11:30 pm. With my car parked at Jett’s home in West Orange, the plan was to take the Air Train to Howard Beach station and then an A train express to Penn Station and catch the last NJ Transit train to Orange — 12:55 am departure, arriving at 1:30 am. I arranged for an Uber to meet me at 1:35 am and take me to Jett’s — a four-minute ride (if that) that Uber would’ve charged me $30 for.

Flight #66 arrived at JFK at 11:40 pm (hey!), but it took us 20 minutes to unload. Did a 50-minute A train ride between Howard Beach and Penn Station seem reasonable? Maybe not, but at least I had a fighting chance if the Air Train and A Express were moving normally. Alas, the Air Train was on slumber meds and the A train killed me.

Maintenance issues are currently forcing the Manhattan-bound A train to unload passengers at Rockaway Blvd. We were shuffled into a sluggish bus, which drove us to the Euclid Ave. station. We got onto another A train but it was a local (whoo-hoo!), plus it just sat there for 11 or 12 minutes and then creaked and groaned and lumbered its way toward Manhattan, one pathetic stop at a time.

It was hell, but the NYC subway system has been making humans suffer for decades. You think late-night service is this soul-draining in London, Paris, Tokyo, Berlin, Moscow or Barcelona?

Ethan Hunt knew he was fucked as far as catching that 12:55 am train, so he cancelled the New Jersey Uber (a guy named Jose) but guess what? A $20 cancellation fee!

Ethan knew he was beaten. He got off the A train cattle car at Canal Street and figured he had no choice but to take an Uber to West Orange, which would cost $110 plus an after-tip. Then he spotted an ordinary Yellow Cab in front of a hotel. The driver told Ethan it would cost $120 but that included tolls plus having to take the Lincoln Tunnel (West 40th) because the Holland Tunnel is closed every night for six hours (11 pm to 5 am). Ethan went for it, the driver drove like a pro and we arrived at Jett’s home a little after 2 am.

JFK touchdown to West Orange, the total travelling time was two hours and 25 minutes.

If Jet Blue, which had cancelled my Tuesday night red-eye (Albuquerque to JFK) and thereby forced me to accept yesterday afternoon’s make-up flight…if Jet Blue hadn’t delayed the Albuquerque take-off by an hour-plus I might have made the last train to Orange and saved myself $80 or 90 dollars. Ethan Hunt and Hollywood Elsewhere are hereby expressing heartfelt gratitude.

Cinematic reference #1: A stressed-out Steve Martin swearing at the car-rental “gobble gobble!” lady in Planes, Trains and Automobiles. Cinematic reference #2: A 50something woman barking at Jerry Lewis‘s Jerry Langford in The King of Comedy: “You should get cancer…I hope you get cancer!”

“The studios didn’t invent Rotten Tomatoes, and most of them don’t like it,” says director Paul Schrader. “But the system is broken. Audiences are dumber. Normal people don’t go through reviews like they used to. Rotten Tomatoes is something the studios can game. So they do.” — from Lane Brown‘s “The Decomposition of Rotten Tomatoes,” a 9.6. Vulture article.

Excerpt: “In a recent interview, Quentin Tarantino, whose next film is reportedly called The Movie Critic, admitted that he no longer reads critics’ work. ‘Today, I don’t know anyone,’ he said (in a translation of his remarks, first published in French). ‘I’m told, ‘Manohla Dargis, she’s excellent.’ But when I ask what are the three movies she loved and the three she hated in the last few years, no one can answer me. Because they don’t care!’

“This is probably because Rotten Tomatoes — with help from Yelp, Goodreads, and countless other review aggregators — has desensitized us to the opinions of individual critics.

“Once upon a time, Gene Siskel and Roger Ebert turned the no-budget documentary Hoop Dreams into a phenomenon using only their thumbs. But critical power like that has been replaced by the collective voice of the masses. A third of U.S. adults say they check Rotten Tomatoes before going to the multiplex, and while movie ads used to tout the blurbage of Jeffrey Lyons and Peter Travers, now they’re more likely to boast that a film has been “Certified Fresh.”

“To filmmakers across the taste spectrum, Rotten Tomatoes is a scourge.

“Martin Scorsese says it reduces the director ‘to a content manufacturer and the viewer to an unadventurous consumer.’ Brett Ratner has called it ‘the destruction of our business.”’But insiders acknowledge that it has become a crucial arbiter. Publicists say their jobs revolve around the site. ‘In the last ten years,’ says one, ‘it’s become much more important as so many of the most trusted critics have retired without replacements.’

“An indie-distribution executive says, ‘I put in our original business plan that we should not do films that score less than 80. Rotten Tomatoes is the only public stamp of approval that says, ‘This is of immense quality, and all critics agree.’”

“But despite Rotten Tomatoes’ reputed importance, it’s worth a reminder: Its math stinks. Scores are calculated by classifying each review as either positive or negative and then dividing the number of positives by the total. That’s the whole formula. Every review carries the same weight whether it runs in a major newspaper or a Substack with a dozen subscribers.

“If a review strad’les positive and negative, too bad. ‘I read some reviews of my own films where the writer might say that he doesn’t think that I pull something off, but, boy, is it interesting in the way that I don’t pull it off,’ says Schrader, a former critic. ‘To me, that’s a good review, but it would count as negative on Rotten Tomatoes.'”

A few days ago Kino Lorber released a double-disc 4K Bluray of Sidney Pollack and Robert Redford‘s Three Days of the Condor (’75). I’m not sure I see the need. I own the old Bluray from 2009 or thereabouts, and it’s fine.

The wifi signal in Albuquerque Airport is so anemic, so astoundingly sludgy, even slower than a dial-up connection in 1997 — that I can’t even post a link to a 9.2.23 High-Def Digest review.

Condor is a perfectly assembled, deliciously cool and extremely anxious time-capsule capturing of mid ’70s paranoia.

It works as a great companion piece to Alan Pakula and Warren Beatty‘s The Parallax View.

Redford’s “Turner” is one of his career-best performances, and Max von Sydow‘s “Joubert” is so exquisite in every scene…so gentle, settled-in and unmalicious…an almost serene European man involved in a dirty business.

I just wish that Leonard Atwood‘s motive behind the idiotic murdering of seven CIA employees in a midtown Manhattan office made more sense. Atwood freaked when he read Turner’s original “book report”, sent to CIA headquarters, about a rogue CIA operation — Atwood’s — that would’ve seized Middle Eastern oil fields.

Everything about Condor fits into place except for this one ludicrous plot device.

Cliff Robertson to John Houseman: “Do you miss that kind of action, sir?” Houseman to Robertson: “No, I miss that kind of clarity.”

You have to figure that the current 85% Rotten Tomatoes score for Woody Allen‘s Coup de Chance (Metacritic hasn’t weighed in yet) would be slightly higher were it not for the fact that a significant percentage of critics are cowards and whores.

Cowards and whores, I mean, even under relatively mild circumstances, but especially so, one presumes, when it comes to a Woody Allen film.

They all understand that approving of an Allen film these days could either cast suspicion upon their values or get them into trouble with editors and readers. Especially when it comes to female critics — a positive Coup de Chance review could result in a woman critic being accused of betrayal from the #MeToo corner.

From a boilerplate standpoint, there’s not much upside to praising Coup de Chance. It’s safer to pan it. Therefore the fact that a significant majority has approved of the film (an HE commenter is claiming it’s closer to 65%) means a bit more.

As of yesterday, the general Venice Film Festival response to Woody Allen‘s Coup de Chance had been largely positive. Not a half-hate, half-love thing, but something like an 85-15 or 80-20 split in favor of Allen’s infidelity thriller.

Despite this the N.Y. Times, seemingly aligned with and loyal to the hater camp, has posted a Kyle Buchanan piece that claims the Venice reception was “decidedly mixed.”

This is a fundamentally dishonest reading as any fair-minded assessment of the Coup de Chance response would necessarily dismiss anti-Woody protestors, as they’re basically a fringe hate group.

The response to any film at any major festival is always about what sophistos in the know — critics, fellow filmmakers, industry columnists — are saying. You can’t count what fringe nutters are howling about from the sidelines