Spike Jonze‘s Her (Warner Bros., 12.18) is one of the most delicate, emotionally supple, fully-in-touch-with-the-zeitgeist movies about love, longing and vulnerability that I’ve ever seen. Some will claim it’s the best film of Jonze’s career, although others will argue that Adaptation and Being John Malkovich are still the champs. The problem is that it doesn’t quite pay off at the end of the third act. Almost but not quite. But the first 90% to 95% is a mature, profound, probing, open-hearted exploration of all the standard phases of a love affair, including the always difficult transition when lovers get past the glorious Phase One and into the complicated who-are-we?, where-is-this-going? stuff. Except — this is significant — the affair involves only one flesh-and-blood person.

Her is about a nice, slightly dweeby, sensitive writer named Theodore Twombly (Joaquin Phoenix), hurting from a recent divorce, who falls in love with (no joke) a highly brilliant operating system — OS1. A just-released, heuristically programmed, extra-intelligent software with a female voice and a name (Samantha) and a striking ability to emotionally respond and adapt and dig in. A “woman” who’s extremely turned on, who’s hungry to feel and learn and explore and grow.

Read more

I finally took a look at Sony Home Video’s long-delayed From Here To Eternity Bluray about two weeks ago, and I was so taken I watched it once more on my new 60″ Samsung a couple of days ago. This is one of the best-looking “Bluray bumps” of a classic film I’ve ever seen or owned. I’ve been watching this film since I was 12 and it’s never looked this good — rich blacks, magnificent detail, vivid but celluloid-like. That extra-dynamic, super-silvery Ansel Adams-in-Hawaii quality. All classic film fans want is for a Bluray to look significantly better than the DVD version, and this really makes the grade in that resepct.

Sony’s Grover Crisp remastered this 1953 Best Picture winner sometime in early to mid 2009 so it took Sony…what, three and a half to four years to release it? My first “where’s the Bluray?” piece ran in November 2009. I’ve run three or four follow-ups since.

Today I’m going to temporarily ignore Hollywood Elsewhere’s prohibition against discussing or even acknowledging Focus Features’ upcoming adaptation of Fifty Shades of Grey. That’s because an official explanation about why Charlie Hunnam has decided against playing kinky multimillionaire Christian Grey sounds like bunk. A joint statement by Universal and Focus says that “the filmmakers of Fifty Shades of Grey and Charlie Hunnam have agreed to find another male lead given Hunnam’s immersive TV schedule [on FX’s Sons of Anarchy] which is not allowing him time to adequately prepare for the role of Christian Grey.” Hunnam wouldn’t have been cast unless the scheduling had been worked out in advance. For those who care, the truth will surface eventually. If I had to guess I’d say it has something do with former Focus honcho James Schamus being replaced by Peter Schlessel…maybe. Grey was slated to begin shooting in early November for release on 8.1.14. Not likely.

Yesterday I watched Fox Home Video’s Bluray of Joseph L. Mankiewicz‘s A Letter To Three Wives (’49), which I first saw…oh, sometime in my teens. Even in that early stage of aesthetic development I remember admiring the brilliant writing and especially the way it pays off.

Nominally it’s a woman’s drama about whose husband (Jeanne Crain‘s, Linda Darnell‘s or Ann Southern‘s) has run away with sophisticated socialite Addie Ross, who narrates the film from time to time (the voice belongs to Celeste Holm) but is never seen. But that’s just the story or the clothesline upon which Wives hangs its real agenda. For this is primarily an examination of social mores, values and ethics among middle-class marrieds of late 1940s America.

Over and over the film reminds you how long ago this was. Southern is fairly liberated in the sense that she’s the main breadwinner in her household; her husband, played by Kirk Douglas, is a more-or-less penniless schoolteacher. One of the film’s quaint highlights is Douglas’s cocktail party rant against the dishonest and vulgar hucksterism of commercial radio. This was a valid point, I’m sure, from Mankiewicz’s perspective 60-plus years ago, but if Joe could see the world now…

Read more

Grantland award-season columnist Mark Harris, who seems to file every three weeks or so, has embraced the popular view that Alfonso Cuaron‘s Gravity is a Best Picture lock as well as the admittedly popular but curious view that Sandra Bullock is all but guaranteed a Best Actress nomination. I accept the latter scenario but can’t understand what everyone is so excited about. Unless everyone is secretly embracing the Sasha Stone view that it’s a very significant thing for a 49 year-old actress to carry a huge film like Gravity and lend a certain emotional quality and obviously contribute to its success, and that a vote for Bullock is a vote for better, stronger roles for 45-and-older women, which I agree with. I just don’t get what’s so great about her performance. Because all I get from it are needles.

Read more

Eccentric and intemperate as this sounds, I’m going to London for three days next weekend in order to catch a BFI London Film Festival debut on Sunday, 10.20 of John Lee Hancock‘s Saving Mr. Banks — presumed to be a major factor in the awards race (certainly in terms of performances). This will be the first time it’ll be shown to critics. Two and a half weeks later it’ll open L.A.’s AFI Film Festival on 11.7 and then open commercially on 12.13, but it’ll be fair game eight days from now. Disney (which is very high on the film) will be screening it next week for select Los Angeles elites (but not critics). I get their strategy. They want the presumably positive reviews and the buzz to start with the AFI debut, and that’s fine. I haven’t been to London for a few years…what the hell. I’ve been in the tank for Kelly Marcel‘s screenplay for months, and I totally respect Hancock for his special touch. I even liked The Alamo.

This refers to a two-day-old discussion of Russ & Roger Go Beyond, Christopher Cluess‘s screenplay about the making of Russ Meyer‘s Beyond The Valley of the Dolls, which was written by Roger Ebert. I wondered aloud “what Ebert — fat, brilliant, bespectacled, desk-bound — could have possibly known about hot lascivious chicks and the charged sexual atmosphere of the late ’60s.” I said I didn’t know what Roger was up to in the ’60s “but I don’t believe he was up to very much.” Well, I’ve heard some hilarious second-hand stories since I wrote that and…uhm, I’m taking it back. Roger wrote brilliantly and apparently never missed a deadline but he also led quite the ribald life. During the Nixon, Ford and Carter administrations, at least. Let’s leave it at that.

I’ve never wanted to attend those Jason Reitman “Live Read” presentations at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art. That’s because they always read scripts of already-released films that everyone knows. Why not some hot, not-yet-produced scripts? The cream of the current Blacklist, for instance? Is it Reitman’s presumption that people won’t show up for readings of works they’ve never heard of? Timid thinking. Paul Thomas Anderson‘s Boogie Nights was read during last night’s opener. Taylor Lautner, Don Johnson, Judy Greer, Nick Kroll, Jim Rash, Nat Faxon and Kevin Pollack.

Spike Jonze‘s Her (Warner Bros., 12.8), an operating system love story costarring Joaquin Pheonix, Scarlett Johansson, Amy Adams and Rooney Mara, will close the New York Film Festival tomorrow night. Credentialed New York journalists will see it tomorrow morning at 10 am, and their L.A. counterparts will set tomorrow afternoon at 4:30 pm (i.e., 7:30 pm Manhattan time). The official embargo ends at 11 pm Eastern/8pm Pacific.

This is some kind of come-on for Kimberley Peirce‘s Carrie (MGM/Screen Gems, 10.18), although it’s basically a rigged telekinesis stunt a la Punked. (Or is it? The people freaking out seem like they’re performing. Too much footage, way too many angles.) I don’t know anyone who’s seen this Chloe Moretz film. Even a guy I know who sees everything hasn’t seen it. And I still haven’t heard about any screenings next week. Doesn’t that usually mean something?

George Clooney‘s The Monuments Men (Sony, 12.18) was research-screened Wednesday night in Sherman Oaks. A guy I know attended. Here’s an excerpt: “I don’t know how else a Hollywood treatment of this subject matter could have ended up. Clooney’s job was to direct an efficient film that was entertaining and convincingly dramatic, and he accomplished that. Judging from the responses around me, people were…moved and filled with laughter…enjoying the experience and touched at times.” This also: “Cate Blanchett’s French-accented performance stuck out…her hardened, mistrusting art historian was quite funny at times. Clooney gives himself the best scene towards the end when he sits down with a Nazi and explains the futility of an individual who fought on the wrong side.”

Read more

Here’s an example of how an intriguing Bluray jacket design can make a very old and familiar film seem almost new again. The problem for me is that this 1973 Robert Altman neo-noir…I should probably shut up until I see the disc but my impression, having seen this film nine or ten times, is that it can’t look all that much better in terms of heightened resolution or texture. A Bluray upgrade probably can’t improve that much upon the DVD, or so I suspect. The style of Vilmos Zsigmond‘s widescreen cinematography (always moving, slowly gliding left to right and vice versa, never static) is what matters. He shot inventively but under an Elliott Kastner budget. Maybe the soundtrack will be improved.