Last night I read a 4.12 Nick Pinkerton piece about Jerry Lewis. It’s a fairly scalding portrait, but it doesn’t read like a hatchet job. I asked Lewis biographer Shawn Levy (“King of Comedy: The Life and Art of Jerry Lewis“) for a response. “It’s Jerry through-and-through,” he replied. “The sheer longevity of the man and the neediness — staggering. He’s outlived everyone you can consider a peer (my theory is that they’re beta-testing something bespoke for him in Hell), and yet he still preens and condescends and crows like he’s got things to prove and scores to settle. A remarkable man, and captured to a tee by the story, I think. A very nice job.”

“Critics have a duty to be clear with readers,” Marshall Fine has written in a 4.12 essay. “Not to warn them, per se, because that implies something about relative merit. But to be clear or honest [when the case applies]: This is a movie in which nothing much happens. Or this is a movie in which what does happen doesn’t make a lot of sense. Or is deliberately off-putting or upsetting.”

I am one of the few critic-columnists who actually says stuff like this from time to time. But I disagree with Fine siding with the virtues of audience-friendly films, particularly when he uses Brian Helgeland‘s 42 as a sterling example.

“You know what an audience-friendly film is,” Fine writes. “It tells a story that engages you about characters you can like and root for. {And] yet movies that seek to tell a story that uplifts or inspires often get short shrift from critics. 42 is being slagged by some critics for being manipulative, [but it] happens to be a well-made and extremely involving story about an important moment in history.”

Wells response: 42 is okay if you like your movies to be tidy and primary-colored and unfettered to a fault, but it’s a very simplistic film in which every narrative or emotional point is served with the chops and stylings that I associate with 1950s Disney films. The actors conspicuously “act” every line, every emotional moment. It’s one slice of cake after another. Sugar, icing, familiar, sanctified. One exception: that scene in which Jackie Robinson is taunted by a Philadelphia Phillies manager with racial epithets. I’m not likely to forget this scene ever. It’s extremely ugly.

Back to Fine: “The fact that 42 works on the viewer emotionally, however, is often seen as a negative by critics who aren’t comfortable with movies that deal with feelings, rather than ideas or theories.”

There’s an audience, Fine allows, for nervy, brainy and complex films like To the Wonder, Upstream Color, Room 237, Holy Motors and The Master. But “all of those are not audience-friendly,” he states. “Most of them were barely watchable. But if you read the reviews, you would find little that’s descriptive of what the movie actually looks or feels like while you’re watching it. Which, for a lot of people, was a negative experience in the case of those particular titles.

“How many people saw them because of positive reviews that were misleading? How many might have thought twice if the review mentioned that, oh, well, this film is all but incomprehensible, even if you’ve read a director’s statement on what it means? Or, well, this movie has very little dialogue and takes a 20-minute break for a flashback to the beginning of time? Or this movie is about an inarticulate movie star caught in moments by himself during a movie junket?”

Wells response: I also think that critics should just say what it’s like to watch certain films. If a film is great or legendary or well worth seeing they need to say that, of course, but they also have to admit how it plays in Average-Joe terms and how it feels to actually sit through it. I’m not saying “nobody does this except me,” but who does do this? New Yorker critic David Denby strives to convey this, I think. Andy Klein does this. I’m sure there are others. But I know that it’s a clear violation of the monk-dweeb code to speak candidly about how this or that monk-worshipped, Film Society of Lincoln Center-approved film actually plays for non-dweebs or your no-account brother-in-law or the guy who works at the neighborhood pizza parlor. Guys like Dennis Lim will never cop to this.

It also needs to be said that “audience-friendly” is a somewhat flattering term. The more accurate term is audience-pandering. Pandering to the banal default emotions that the less hip, more simple-minded and certainly less adventurous portions of the paying public like to take a bath in. Because these emotions are comforting, reassuring, and above all familiar. That is what 42 does, in spades.

Last Tuesday The Guardian‘s Ed Pilkington and Alan Yuhas profiled 13 Republican senators who’ve pledged to filibuster any legislation that restricts the ability of people with dicey backgrounds to buy guns. The 13 are Sen. Rand Paul (Kentucky), Sen. Marco Rubio (Florida), Sen.James Inhofe (Oklahoma), Sen. Richard Burr (North Carolina), Sen. Mike Enzi (Wyoming), Sen. Jerry Moran (Kansas), Sen. Pat Roberts (Kansas), Sen. Ron Johnson (Wisconsin), Sen. Dan Coats (Indiana), Sen. Mike Crapo (Idaho) and Sen. James Risch (Idaho). Whores servicing the gun industry — plain and simple.

Yesterday afternoon Time Out Chicago‘s Jake Malooley posted a nice summary of Thursday night’s Roger Ebert tribute at the Chicago theatre. Pallies and colleagues shared their feelings along with Ebert’s widow Chaz (a great lady) and family members. The memorial for the departed critic lasted two and a half hours.

Photo stolen from Variety story filed by Scott Foundas.

“Variety critic Scott Foundas called Ebert a ‘gentle giant,’ as opposed to the likes of Pauline Kael, who inspired in her disciples a fierce partisanship. The Hollywood Reporter‘s Todd McCarthy concluded his memorial tribute saying, ‘In film criticism for 46 years, there was Roger Ebert — and then there was the rest of us.” Christie Hefner said she was mortified to recall showing Ebert film reviews she had written for her college newspaper while he was interviewing her for a story ‘on Hugh Hefner’s daughter.’ She later went on to review films for the Boston Phoenix.

“Joan Cusack read aloud a heartfelt letter from the Obamas. Brother John remembered a nervous first run-in with Ebert at the Carnegie Deli in New York while on the press tour for The Sure Thing. ‘Don’t worry,’ Ebert whispered to the young actor. ‘I liked your movie.’ Cusack said that Ebert ‘didn’t always love your movie, but he always gave you a fair shake. His writing was often better than the writing in the film.'”

Honest Wells anecdote: I was in the same Toronto elevator as Cusack in ’02, and on the way down I heard him quietly mention that he’d heard Ebert had fallen asleep during a screening of Menno Menjes‘ Max, in which Cusack played an Austrian art dealer who has dealings with Adolf Hitler (Noah Taylor).

“Several filmmakers underscored Ebert’s fairness [in] advocating for small-budget art-house cinema alongside reviews of Hollywood blockbusters. Director Gregory Nava (El Norte) said there was a time when Ebert ‘was the only major critic in this country who would look at our movies,’ i.e., indie films telling minority stories. Michael Barker, president of Sony Pictures Classics, called Ebert ‘the conscience of the movie business.’

Filmmaker Andrew Davis — whom Ebert imagined directing ‘the perfect Chicago movie’ — had fond remembrances of his friend, even taking the chance to read Ebert’s glowing review of Davis’s The Fugitive.

“Ebert’s boozy past made a brief appearance when Old Town Ale House proprietor Bruce Elliott told a bawdy barroom tale. (Apparently, Rog had a fondness for large-breasted women.) Comedian Dick Gregory did some off-color standup before comparing Ebert to a turtle: ‘Hard on the outside, soft in the middle and always willing to stick his neck out.'”

Presumably more HE regulars have seen Upstream Color by now. Reactions?

I remember saying to friends about 12 years ago, right after the release of Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone, that Emma Watson had a certain plucky magnetism. Almost a kind of attraction-that-dared-not-say-its-name (and no one did). She might still have it in a 20-something form. The Bling Ring should provide a clue, but I’ve sensed in recent years something a bit reluctant and recessive about Watson. I don’t get the feeling that she really loves the acting elixir.

The interesting thing about this clip is that you can taste the material euphoria. You know it’s pathetic but can feel it all the same. Here’s hoping there’s more.

Terry Teachout‘s 4.13 Wall Street Journal piece about film critic Otis Ferguson (1907-43) struck a chord. Ferguson’s jazzy, loose-shoe prose was a seminal influence when I first began in this racket in the late ’70s. It was Annette Insdorf who gave me a 1971 compilation of Ferguson’s film reviews. Ferguson reviewed books, movies and jazz for The New Republic from 1933 until he joined the Merchant Marines after Pearl Harbor. He was killed at age 36 by a German bomb near Salerno, Italy.

Teachout excerpt: “Like George Orwell, Mr. Ferguson was a sworn enemy of the pretentious, and he wrote in a casual, slangy ‘spoken’ style well suited to his preferred topics. He described Louis Armstrong‘s 1939 recording of ‘Bye and Bye,’ a black spiritual, as being full of ‘the sadness and hope of heaven and jumping rhythm; the open-bell trumpet tones and that magnificent husky voice of his. It is a mixture of horseplay and the faith of fathers, and not to be imitated. Not to be snooted, either.’

“That last line is Mr. Ferguson in a nutshell. Unlike most of his critical contemporaries, he understood that you can be popular and serious at the same time.”

Another key Fergsuon compilation is “In The Spirit of Jazz,” published in 1997.

It is rude and lazy and completely unfair to say that my interest in seeing Jerome Salle‘s Zulu, a noirish South African thriller with Forest Whitaker and Orlando Bloom, is next to zilch. Sorry but that was my immediate reaction when I heard it’ll close the 66th Cannes Film Festival. I will quite possibly eat these words, and that’ll be fine. In that sense I’m looking forward to seeing it. The full list of Cannes selections will be announced on on Thursday, 4.18.

In other words, a Scottish Bad Lieutenant only a lot crazier, crossed with the sensibilities of Trainspotting‘s Irvine Welsh by way of direction and a script adaptation by Jon S. Baird and a lead performance by James McAvoy. Will the film include the dog scene in Welsh’s book?

The incontestably great Jonathan Winters has left the earth. He was much more than a comedian, and much more, I always felt, than Maude Frickert — the character that Middle America seemed to like the most. Winters was first and foremost (and I don’t think this is a word) a transportationist. He would leave his body and go into trance-states that seemed to flirt with real madness. “This guy isn’t just playing characters — he’s one-third nuts,” I told myself long ago. “He knows what it is to throw normality out the window.”

One reason for this (apart from Winters having been blessed with pure genius) is that he crashed and did two stretches in a mental hospital in ’59 and again in ’61 for manic depression. I’ve never fallen into that pit myself, but I know that guys who’ve been there and have come back are always fifteen times more interesting than mild-mannered folk. Ask any comedian who knows a thing or two. Ask Albert Brooks or Robin Williams or anyone, really, who knows what a bitch it is to be funny in a way that resonates on some level. Winters was world-class.

A Rotten Tomatoes or Metacritic grade in the mid to high 60s obviously signifies substantial resistance, even if the majority of critics are with you. It also means, in strict high-school exam terms, a failing grade. This is what’s happened so far with Henry Alex Rubin‘s Disconnect — a RT 69% rating, a 65 from Metacritic.

It feels odd when a third of the critics disagree with you, but it happens. All I can say is that I have a very clear and hard-won understanding of what a failed film plays like, and Disconnect, trust me, does not deserve that label.

Wall Street Journal critic Joe Morgenstern isn’t as much of a fan as myself, but he allows that despite an element of “sheer contrivance” (which is there in a sense but doesn’t get in the way as the multiple-overlapping-plot-strand drama is a genre and as valid as any other reality-reshaping approach or film style) “the film is impressive all the same, a bleak vision of life in the internet age as an asocial network where faceless predators abound, heedless kids live secret lives, everything is phishy until proven otherwise and quests for love or intimacy lead to loneliness or grief.

“Movies about intertwined lives often suffer from the gimmick that’s supposed to sustain them: Two examples of recent years, Crash and Babel, piled on fateful connections to the point of self-parody. Disconnect suffers less in that department because the gimmickry is accompanied by a valid if familiar irony — the technological revolution that brings us together in ways that were unimaginable to previous generations also separates us by replacing face-to-face encounters with texts, tweets, webcams, emails and disembodied chats.”

Here’s how I put it on 4.3:

“Disconnect works because it delivers in the writing, direction and acting. Andrew Stern‘s screenplay feels credible and compelling and is very finely threaded, always pushed along by believable turns and real-seeming characters behaving in what they believe are their best interests. Rubin’s direction is unforced naturalism par excellence, and the result is a story that always seems steady-on-the-tracks — nothing ever feels like a stretch (except perhaps that one moment at the very end when slow-mo kicks in). And the performances are honestly inhabited and true-feeling and just about perfectly rendered.”

Those negative 42 reviews from Variety‘s Scott Foundas and The Hollywood Reporter‘s Todd McCarthy (plus my own briefly expressed disappointment) might suggest to some that Brian Helgeland‘s film has been roundly condemned. It hasn’t. It currently has a 70% Rotten Tomatoes rating and a 60% Metacritic score. Ticket buyers traditionally don’t have a huge problem with square, on-the-nose films of this sort. I’ve no tracking information to share.

From Coed.dom’s Phil Villarreal: “While Jackie Robinson’s story is worthy of respect and admiration, director-writer Brian Helgeland shows conclusively that even a great man’s life can be incredibly repetitive and boring. “42 can find no other conflict or resolution than Robinson getting treated like crap, then proceeding to play such incredibly great baseball that it’s accompanied by extremely loud trumpet swells.

“Chadwick Boseman, as Robinson, does an excellent job of playing a man with a female name. One might argue, in fact, that Boseman does a better job of playing Robinson than Robinson himself did playing himself in The Jackie Robinson Story back in 1950.

“Harrison Ford does a solid job as Dodgers executive Branch Rickey, who, as baseball historians love to note, showed incredible bravery in bringing Robinson into the Majors. Poor Rickey had to sit there and watch as Robinson got hit in the head, spiked on the base paths and shunned in the locker room as Rickey counted mounds of cash that Robinson made him. Ford does a good job of conveying the plight of an incredibly rich old man who watches stuff happen while wearing a poker face.”