Felicity Jones is a skilled and respected actress, but I didn’t find her especially attractive in Drake Doremus‘s Like Crazy. She’s supposed to be this object of mad erotic desire for costar Anton Yelchin, but I was frowning and going “I really don’t get this.” Not a hint of erotic arousal or intrigue or anything. Then I saw Jones in Ralph Fiennes‘ The Invisible Woman, portraying the real-life Nelly Ternan, the young mistress of Fiennes’ Charles Dickens, and again I was perplexed. Jones was more attractive than Joanna Scanlan, who played Dickens’ fat, older wife, but I couldn’t fathom why Dickens, a huge literary celebrity and a man of considerable wealth and power in mid-1800s London, would choose a woman who looks like Jones, of all the attractive women in London at the time, to be the extra-marital love of his life.

Now we have Doremus’s Breathe In opening on 3.28 and I’m not sure I even want to see it because of Jones. You have to want to see someone before you can admire their acting talent. Why do audiences decide they like some actors and actresses and not others? It’s a queer mystical process but some have it and some don’t. I don’t mean to be cruel but Jones is just not schwing material and I’d rather not go there…no offense. Fair warning: if Jones is in a major role, I’m either going to delay seeing the film and/or find some way to not like it when I do. Or…you know, like it less than I would if Jones wasn’t in it. I’m sorry but that’s my decision.

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In an AP story posted today (3.27), reporter Gina Abdy has sought to ignite controversy by suggesting that Noah star Russell Crowe was out of line when he described Christian nutter objections to the unseen Noah as “irrational.” Of course such objections are irrational — how else to describe believers in a made-up myth objecting to a film that weaves in alternate myths in a re-telling of same? On top of which…hello?…Christianity itself is irrational. There couldn’t be a Christian faith (or any belief in any deity or after-life) without a basic investment in irrationality.

“In writer-director David Ayer’s End of Watch, there wasn’t a moment that didn’t feel lived-in and true. The same cannot be said of Ayer’s Sabotage, a gruesome and frequently preposterous B-grade actioner about an elite team of DEA agents who run afoul of a ruthless Mexican cartel — and each other. That the team’s battle-scarred leader is played by Arnold Schwarzenegger, in the best and most substantial of his post-Governator comeback roles, gives a mild kick to this otherwise strained attempt at a latter-day “Wild Bunch” or “Treasure of the Sierra Madre” updated to the mean streets of metro Atlanta. Likely to repel even some of the hard-R action crowd with its intentionally scuzzy milieu and lack of a rooting interest, this $35 million Open Road release will be hard-pressed to top End of Watch‘s $41 million domestic haul.” — from Scott Foundas‘s 3.27 Variety review.

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Roland Emmerich owns Into The Storm (Warner Bros., 8..14) even if he has nothing to do with it. Hard-drive disaster movies have been stamped with his DNA. Storm will probably be mediocre in the acting, thematic and and screenwriting departments, but I have to admit the impressive VFX have me hooked. The director is Stephen Quayle, a Charlie Nobody if I ever heard of one. Director of Final Destination 5, second-unit director on Avatar and Titanic…strictly a jizz-whizz journeyman. But hats off the visual effects team.

An assortment of clips from New York-centric films of the ’60s, ’70s and ’80s might suggest a portrait of grime, grit and squalor — a city that used to scare the shit out of tourists who dared to venture out of the Times Square area. But Jonathan Hertzberg‘s “Dirty Old New York” is not that. It’s mainly a portrait of old analog Manhattan — a world of dicey-looking black guys with big Afros, gas guzzlers, dial pay phones, trash on those John Lindsay-Abe Beame streets, turntables, tube television sets, a co-residing Dustin Hoffman and Mia Farrow, 3/4″ video tapes, VCRs, etc. A nice time-trip thing, but I wouldn’t call it “dirty.”

“20th Century Fox showed an extended clip of David Fincher‘s Gone Girl this morning [at Cinemacon in Las Vegas]. Can’t wait for this one. It looks really great. The usual atmosphere we’ve come to expect from Fincher is there. I was most impressed by the footage we saw of Ben Affleck‘s performance. I think it’s safe to say that working with Fincher kicked up his game a couple of notches, based on what was on display. ” — an email just received from Boxoffice.com’s Phil Contrino.

Gone Girl director David Fincher, star Ben Affleck during filming.

Every other year Grantland‘s Bill Simmons, whose metier will always be sports-writing, bangs out a piece about movies. Almost (I say “almost”) every time he does this he slams a ground-rule double or a triple — he always tags it pretty hard. I love Simmons’ voice. He’s Grantland‘s all-guy antidote to the studiously passionate know-it-allism of Mark Harris. His latest effort, posted today (i.e., 3.27), is called “The Action Hero Championship Belt,” a chapter-by-chapter review of the peak moments of greatest action stars of the last 45 years (starting with Steve McQueen in 1968’s Bullitt), is a major kick and possibly the best Simmons movie piece ever written. But since he’s only tapped out…what, seven or eight movie articles in his entire life this praise is obviously modified if not faint.

Simmons, of course, is a grade-A, brand-name columnist and cultural seer, but my first reaction was that this sort of regular-guy-dealing-straight-cards and dispensing-with-any-semblance-of-pretentious-bullshit style of movie-writing is owned these days, in my mind at least, by LexG. Simmons is a veteran pro, of course — more skilled and seasoned than Lex and in no apparent way saddled or distracted by alcoholism or hookers — but he’s such a dilletante-ish dabbler that this particular voice is primarily owned by that tortured and lamenting voice of Agonized Horndog, Underpaid Caption-Inserter and Chinese Wizard Imprisonment. I’m serious.

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Hollywood’s four biggest YA franchise properties of the last few years are, of course, The Hunger Games, Fifty Shades of Grey, Divergent and the over-and-done-with Twilight. All are trilogies in book and (presumably in the case of Divergent and Fifty Shades) movie form. Their authors, respectively, are Suzanne Collins, EL James, Veronica Roth and Stephenie Meyer. What do these women have in common? Not age — Collins and James are 51, Meyer is 40, Roth is 25. Their trilogies are, of course, romantic fantasies (dystopian, urban, fantastical) about young women who possess or command great power. The guys in these novels are, of course, intensely devoted to and in love with the heroines — The Hunger Games‘ Katniss Everdeen, Fifty Shades‘ Anastasia Steele, Divergent‘s Beatrice Prior and Twilight‘s Bella Swan. What else do the authors have in common? A German exhibition guy I was speaking to at Cinemacon said they’re all kind of…uhm, plus-sized. But that’s not apparently true in the case of Collins and Roth. They’re not Angelina Jolie but c’mon…writers are never as attractive as movie stars. This is partly, I’m sure, what led them to write these books. All fiction writers are creators of alternate worlds that they very much prefer to the real one.

(l.) Fifty Shades of Grey trilogy author EL James (a.k.a. Erica Leonard); (r.) Hunger Games trilogy author Suzanne Collins.

(l.) Twilight series author Stephanie Meyer; (r.) Divergent trilogy author Veronica Roth.

I was hot to see Craig Gillespie‘s Million Dollar Arm at Cinecom this morning, but I was also feeling a bit anxious about the time frame. I knew I had to leave Las Vegas by 11:30 am to get back to Los Angeles by 3:30 pm to prepare for a 5:15 pm appointment on the 20th Century Fox lot. I also knew the film wouldn’t begin until at least 10 am, if not later. But I was determined to see most of it. I checked out of the spartan fleabag motel at 8:40 am and drove south down Las Vegas Blvd. and then turned left on Flamingo Road. I had done a Google search last night about Ceasar’s Palace self-parking and believed the best approach was via Frank Sinatra Drive, behind the hotel. I tried twice to find Sinatra Drive and both times was diverted elsewhere or blocked. Valet was out because I knew I’d have to leave in a hurry after the screening and that valet would slow me down by a good 15 minutes if not longer. I was reminded for the 179th time why I hate Las Vegas. I also realized and accepted that God didn’t want me to see Million Dollar Arm in Vegas and that I’d be catching it in April or early May instead. (Disney is opening it on May 16th.) So I got the hell out of Dodge. I’m writing this from a Greek diner in Baker, California. Excellent wifi!

Jon Hamm in Million Dollar Arm (Disney, 5.16).

MCN’s David Poland presented several contentious, spoiler-ish observations in a two-day-old Hot Blog review of Darren Aronofsky‘s Noah. I’m not going to do a point-for-point ten minutes before a Ceasar’s Palace screening of Million Dollar Arm, but I can say without hesitation that Poland’s complaint about Noah not constituting a vigorous “challenge” is highly questionable. At every step and juncture this movie feels like a fever dream — like it was put on raw, virgin canvas with fresh paint. It never, for me, felt tired or humdrum. Yes, Aronofsky throws in action elements with conventional-seeming evil expressed by the mad-dog villagers and particularly Ray Winstone‘s Tubal-cain, but I understood the why of it (the movie has to reach the idiots to some extent) and this tactic didn’t get in the way. McWeeny’s thumbs-up Hitfix review is…well, read it.

Yesterday Latino Review‘s Kellvin Chavez reported that Disney, which purchased distribution and marketing rights to the Indiana Jones franchise last December, is technically open to making a new Jones film with the somewhat creaky and weathered Harrison Ford (who, at 71, is now 13 years older than Sean Connery was when he portrayed Professor Henry Jones in Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade) but they’re quite naturally looking to re-cast the role with a younger, studlier guy. Chavez, quoting “ever reliable sources,” is also reporting that Bradley Cooper is at the top of the list of potential replacements. “Let’s get it straight — Cooper doesn’t have the role [and hasn’t] signed the deal,” Chavez writes. [He’s] just someone they’re looking at to play the role.” Looking at? That’s it? They’re “looking” at him in the same sense that LexG could theoretically take a walk in a municipal park somewhere in the San Fernando Valley, sit down on a bench and “look” at a squirrel who happens to be scampering by?

Anyone who’s read HE for any length of time knows I genuinely admire comedies that I call no-laugh funny — i.e., consistently clever, amusing and witty but never quite eliciting actual laughter. Nicholas Stoller‘s Neighbors (Universal, 5.9.14) is not that — it’s heh-heh funny. I was never that giddy or tickled but I never felt bored or irritated or disengaged. I got ten or twelve heh-hehs out of it, and the rest is at least fast, punchy and lewd. It’s not exactly a routine culture clash comedy but the basic set-up — a 30ish couple with a baby (Seth Rogen, Rose Byrne) vs. a party-animal college fraternity (Zac Efron, Dave Franco, Christopher Mintz-Plasse) that moves in next door — is familiar. But Neighbors is agreeably tight and vigorous and scattershot, and Andrew J. Cohen and Brendan O’Brien‘s script (augmented, I’m sure, by nonstop improv) is a cut or two above. A likely hit.

During tonight’s Neighbors after-party inside Ceasar’s Palace.

For the honor of eating pizza in a Caesar’s Palace food court, you pay at least 30% or 40% more per slice than anywhere else. Wait…nine bucks a slice? That’s at least double what any NY pizzeria charges. I was on the verge of breaking the cockatoo diet but those prices turned me off.

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