I can only feel puzzlement about all the love for Richard Linklater‘s Hit Man. Strange love = Strangelove. I didn’t hate it or anything, but I was certainly underwhelmed. Part of my problem was that Glenn Powell didn’t seem to radiate a lot of charisma. His eyes are too small and his voice is too reedy. I decided that the similarities to Stakeout were fairly significant, and that Richard Dreyfuss‘s cop character “Chris” was more likable that Powell’s “Gary Johnson”.

HE commenter “Adam L”: “I genuinely think Dreyfuss deserved a Best Actor nomination for Stakeout. There’s significant range in what he’s asked to do and he nails absolutely every single aspect of that character. I can’t imagine anyone else doing it as well.”

I’m presuming HE regulars have seen Hit Man by now (it’s been streaming on Netflix since June 7) so I’m asking two questions. One, what is the big likable deal with this film? I wasn’t glaring daggers but I was mainly going “this is just okay…people have been overpraising it.” And two, when’s the last time a Powell-like guy — a dude with tiny beady eyes and kind of a shallow vibe or mentality — became a big movie star?

Plus I hate it when anyone says to anyone else, “I guess I’m just your fantasy.” I hate that fucking line!

From my 5.31.24 post: In general terms, Richard Linklater‘s Hit Man (Netflix, 6.7) is about Gary (Glenn Powell), a 30something guy who works for a big-city police department (New Orleans) in an undercover capacity.

The story kicks in when Gary falls in love with Maddy (Adria Arjona), a beautiful Latina woman who’s been involved with a not-so-nice guy named Ray (Evan Holtzman), and who is also kind of a target of the police. Except Gary can’t tell Maddy for procedural and security reasons that he’s with the fuzz.

The story tension is about when and how Gary will come clean with Maddy, and how her troubled relationship with Ray will be resolved (i.e., come to an end) so that she and Gary will have some kind of chance together.

Without divulging what I felt about Hit Man, I need to mention how much it reminded me, in certain ways, of John Badham‘s Stakeout (’87), which was a kind of cop sitcom thriller with a strong emotional pull.

The lead character was Chris (Richard Dreyfuss), a 30something detective who works for a big city police department (Seattle). He and partner Bill (Emilio Estevez) are assigned to spy on Maria (Madeleine Stowe), a beautiful Latina woman who’s been involved with a not-so-nice guy named Stick (Aidan Quinn). Stick has recently escaped from prison and, cops suspect, may be visiting Maria soon.

The story kicks in when Chris falls in love with Maria, but can’t tell her for procedural and security reasons that he’s with the cops. Plus he’s doubly deceived her by pretending to be a phone company technician so he can plant a bug in her phone.

The story tension is about when and how Chris will come clean with Maria, and how her troubled relationship with Stick will be resolved (i.e., come to an end) so that she and Chris will have some kind of chance together.

The storylines of Hit Man and Stakeout don’t line up precisely and diverge in significant ways, but the above described similarities are legit.

Bill Forsyth‘s Local Hero opened on 2.17.83. I caught a long-lead screening (early or mid December ’82) at the old Warner Bros. screening room at 75 Rockefeller Plaza. I was beaming when it ended around 9 pm or thereabouts. The final scene got me deep down; I was half teary-eyed and so jazzed I walked straight up to Cafe Central (75th and Amsterdam), the actors’ hangout bar. I felt too good to submit to an IRT local — I walked the 26 or 27 blocks in a half hour.

Believe it or not Peter Riegert, 35 at the time, was standing at the bar. I knew him slightly from previous Cafe Central inebriations, and was overjoyed to see him. I told him what a great film LH was and what a high I was on, etc. “And that pay phone ringing at the very end…that’s Macintosh calling!”,” I said after my second Jack Daniels and ginger ale. Riegert, perhaps wondering if I was a little drunk or just a bit slow, smiled and nodded “yeah.”

“Bill Forsyth, Peter Reigert and the Truth About Movies,” posted on 3.28.15. In a More Intelligent Life piece about Bill Forstyh‘s Local Hero (’83), star Peter Riegert is quoted by Jasper Rees as follows:

“Bill [Forsyth] understood that moviegoers are not interested in what the actors are feeling. They’re interested in what they’re feeling.”

Precisely! This is a perfect distillation of the entire Hollywood Elsewhere approach to reviewing movies and performances. This is the sine qua non, the emerald, the whole magillah…words in passing that give the game away.

I’m always perfectly aware of the feelings that an actor is attempting to generate with his or her personality or application of technique or whatever, but all I care about is what I’m feeling as I sit slumped in my seat, tripping happily on the film or the performance or trying to make heads or tails of either one. I might “respect” what a filmmaker has tried to accomplish with this or that approach, but all I care about and all I’m going to write about at the end of the day is if this approach works for me.

For I am King Solomon…the ultimate arbiter, the one-man jury, inspector of the final product, giver or denier of the HE seal of approval.

A performance or a movie, in other words, is not about the idea or theme or cultural undercurrent propelling the filmmakers, but about how I fucking feel as I contemplate the finality of it.

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…standing stiff and strange like a department store mannequin, ignoring the music, smiling like a robot shot full of novacaine…this is not deepfake.

President Biden can’t even manage to gently roll with the rhythm like Doug Emhoff….Jesus.

Our congenial fellow has done a reasonably good job as President since 1.20.21 — the economy isn’t great but is more or less okay — but because of Joe’s arrogant insistence that only he can defeat The Beast, he’s almost certainly going to lose in November and will thereby condemn us all to four years of hell, starting on 1.20.25. We’re stuck in a slow-motion death dive. This will be Biden’s legacy — the man who condemned his countrymen to suffer through authoritarian MAGA rule.

Jeff Nichols‘ The Bikeriders (Focus features) will open on Friday, 6.21. Once again, HE’s 8.31 Bikeriders review, posted from Telluride:

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.

Lit cigarettes are a sign of weakness, the ultimate crutch used by actors who don’t have anything really figured out and who need to hide on some level.

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…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.

It’s somehow comforting to note the timeless backdrop in this 86 year-old Rita Hayworth photo, which was probably snapped on one of the upper Malibu beaches (El Matador, La Piedra, El Pescador). Because this location — trust me — looked and sounded exactly the same a thousand years earlier. Or 10,000.

Just ask the vacationing Roman elites who stood upon the beaches of Capri during the reign of Tiberius. Or ask Charlton Heston’s Taylor, the time-stranded astronaut in Planet of the Apes (‘68) — when his spacecraft splashed into a large body of water he thought the date was 11.25.3978, and the seaside location he rode upon at the very end of Franklin Schaffner’s film didn’t seem to argue with this.

To be precise, over the last 49 years casting maestro Juliet Taylor has assembled the casts of 42 Woody Allen films. (Or is it 43?)

Those Woodies are Love and Death, Annie Hall, Interiors, Manhattan, Stardust Memories, A Midsummer Night’s Sex Comedy, Zelig, Broadway Danny Rose, Hannah and Her Sisters, Radio Days, Another Woman, Crimes and Misdemeanors, Allen’s chapter in New York Stories, Alice, Shadows and Fog, Husbands and Wives, Manhattan Murder Mystery, Bullets over Broadway, Mighty Aphrodite, Everyone Says I Love You, Deconstructing Harry, Celebrity, Sweet and Lowdown, Small Time Crooks, The Curse of the Jade Scorpion, Hollywood Ending, Anything Else, Melinda and Melinda, Match Point, Scoop, Cassandra’s Dream, Vicky Cristina Barcelona, Whatever Works, You Will Meet a Tall Dark Stranger, Midnight in Paris, To Rome with Love, Blue Jasmine, Magic in the Moonlight, Irrational Man and Cafe Society.

Last Thursday (6.12) the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences announced that Taylor will be given an honorary Governor’s Award later this year.

Here’s how the Academy monsters have summarized Taylor’s career in a press release:

The loathsome, flea-infested dogs who told the public relations staffers not to mention Allen’s Taylor-cast films need to be slapped around but good. Bitch-slapped, I mean. Remind those contemptible ayeholes who and what they are.

You know who else has fleas? Variety‘s Clayton Davis for not mentioning the Allen ghosting in his 6.12 Variety story. Ditto TheWrap‘s Steve Pond for ignoring the omission. Ditto AP’s Lindsey Bahr.

Only The Hollywood Reporter‘s Scott Feinberg had the character to ignore the Academy’s deliberate slighting of Allen. In his 6.12 report, Feinberg wrote that Taylor “has cast more than 100 films, most famously 43 of Woody Allen‘s dating back to 1975’s Love and Death.”

I’ve only counted 42, but then I’m bad at math.

Here’s the applicable paragraph from Davis’s Variety story:

I’m sorry but “How Can I Be Sure?” is one of the most touching and well-sung ’60s love anthems ever recorded. Co-penned by Felix Cavaliere and Eddie Brigati, it wouldn’t have worked if the composers had been in their 30s or early 40s — it’s a young guy’s song, and gap-toothed Brigati really knew how to sell it…pipes, presence, confidence.

I also love Cavaliere’s obviously close resemblance to mid ’70s Martin Scorsese.

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A 6.15 story by Washington Post reporters Adriana Usero and Glenn Kessler has exposed an RNC deepfake G7 video that indicates — fraudulently — that President Biden was wandering off and talking to ghjosts or what-have-you.

The title of the piece reads “‘Cheapfake’ Biden videos enrapture right-wing media, but deeply mislead“. Except: “

“On Thursday, 6.15, the Republican National Committee RNC posted a clip captioned, ‘What is Biden doing?’ The post has been viewed more than 3 million times. Biden is seen with other Group of Seven leaders watching skydivers in Italy, carrying the flags of the nations. Biden turns and walks a few steps to chat with one of the parachutists, the only leader to do so. Then Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni turns him back to the other leaders.

“In one feed distributed by news services — the one used by the RNC — it’s not entirely clear who Biden is talking to, but an alternative feed, also distributed by news services, makes it clear that Biden is having a conversation.

“The New York Post jumped on the RNC clip, posting a story less than two hours later and embedding the RNC post. When the White House cried foul, saying the video had been taken out of context, the newspaper buried that comment in the bottom of the story,

“The Post went on to make the fake story the cover of its print edition.”

THIS IS THE FAKE MISLEADING VIDEO, posted by London’s Telegraph:

You know something? The deepfakes don’t matter. A significant percentage of prospective voters believe that Biden is out to lunch, and they’re going to keep on believing it. I’m convinced that Biden is almost certainly going to lose. It kills me to say this but it’s true. The only way to stop Trump is for Biden to bail and Gretchen Whitmer to step in. He neeeds to face reality and quit now. It’s the only way to stop The Beast.

“Overflowing with insight; stuffed with revelatory interviews and anecdotes and archival footage; as bursting with flavor as a baked ziti; and as immersive, in its way, as the show itself, Wise Guy: David Chase and the Sopranos is Alex Gibney’s sensationally artful and engrossing two-hour-and-40-minute documentary about the greatest show in the history of television.”

So reads Owen Gleiberman‘s 6.13 Variety review.

When will Gibney’s doc begin streaming on Max? They haven’t decided yet but probably later this summer….right? They can’t wait until the fall.

Gleiberman has the nerve to say that the last few seconds of the final episode are ambiguous. Maybe Tony sleeps with the fishes, Owen says, and maybe he and Carmela are living quietly in Belize or Guatemala. Chase did’t make the ending clear, see, and sobyou’ll never really know!

That’s just bullshit, man. BullSHITamente.

Smart, strategic, well-ordered cinema rarely fucks with people’s heads like the final Sopranos scene did. I explained why many were confused or uncertain about what had happened. It was because of the EDITING — Chase’s decision to not play by basic editing rules.

I explained this very clearly and thoroughly on 8.4.21 (“Sopranos Finale Was Cut Wrong“).

Facebook-posted by Steve De Jarnatt:

Please read my original Toronto Film Festival review, posted on 9.30.07.

HE-posted 13 1/2 years ago:

Each and every waking minute I’m considering and comparing the content of strong, impactful cinema (smarthouse, popcorn, the entire gamut) with the repetitive, complex, meditative, often demanding, occasionally grueling nature of actual, day-to-day life, and the cross-pollination (in my head at least) is not only constant but illuminating.

For me good films are not just helpful in understanding the unruly cacophony of things (ironic, euphoric, tragic, symphonic, soul-deadening, absurd, comedic, existential) — they are essential guideposts in that effort.

Even a popcorn film like Speed offers a measure of perspective or a yardstick by which the tumultuous nature of things can be broken down and simplified or at least considered in a way that has value. Life and movies have always bled into each other. Everything’s everything.