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Mary Bronstein and Rose Byrne’s IfIHadLegsI’dKickYou is about miserable, gloomed-out Linda (Byrne), a weary, facially-lined, stressed-out, emotionally and psychologically gutted therapist and struggling mother of a young ailing daughter (heard but unseen until the very end)…
Call her a 40ish woman under siege…anguished to a fare-thee-well and at her absolute wit’s end…a victim of a tortured, infuriating, harrowing, one-urban-indignity-after-another gauntlet that — surprise! — assaults and saps the life force out of the audience as much as Linda if not more so.
Within the first five minutes I was telling myself “you’re not going to last through this whole thing”. But I decided I would tough it out, dammit, for at least an hour. Which I did. It was agony and I was checking my watch every ten minutes, but I made it!
In JeannetteCatsoulis ‘s N.YTimesreview (10.9), she calls IfIHadLegs “wrenching and at times suffocating”, as well as “a horror movie…a howling maternal desperation spiked with jagged humor”.
There is no humor-spiking at any point in this film, trust me. Zero.
Catsoulis also writes that “some viewers could find the movie’s relentlessness exhausting“.
Famous Steve Martin line in Planes, TrainsandAutomobiles (‘88), spoken to John Candy: “Do ya think so?”
But there doesn’t seem to be any way of weaselling out of giving a certain amount of fair credit to this extremely reprehensible life form for having brought about the Israel-Hamas peace deal. I’d like to come up with a negative take but I can’t find one, dammit.
And if, therefore, Ridley Scott‘s 1979 original had never been made, you know who would make a really great Ripley? If Scott was casting Alien right now, I mean? Chase Infiniti. She’d be perfect.
Ben Foster‘s beefy, balding Tanner Howard knows he’s finished, of course, but in his final moments he feels triumphant all the same. Elated even.
Tanner is brought down by Jeff Bridges‘ Marcus Hamilton, a sweaty, drawlin’, pot-bellied Texas Ranger who’s determined to get revenge for the death of his partner, Gil Birmingham‘s Alberto Parker. And it’s almost as if Tanner is ready for the coup de grace.
“To live outside the law you must be honest” — a line from Bob Dylan‘s “Absolutely Sweet Marie“.
Derek Cianfrance‘s Roofman (Paramount/Miramax, 10.10), which I saw late last night, is much, much better than I expected. It hums with serious heart, tension, anxiety, inner conflict. And if you ask me, Kirsten Dunst is a shoo-in for a Best Actress nomination.
As we speak the woke-theology fanatics critics aren’t being effusive enough about Roofman — it’s only merited an 82% from Rotten Tomatoes and currently has a droopy 64% score from Metacritic. And that’s really wrong…it’s really fucked up to dismiss or semi-dismiss a film as good as this. Fucking assholes.
Roofman might nonetheless qualify as a Best Picture contender once the word gets around; ditto Cianfrance for Best Director. Tatum is pretty damn impressive also. It’s that fucking good…seriously.
The first trailer sold a semi-comical, character-driven, fact-flirting caperflick about a lighthearted, small-time thief (Channing Tatum) falling in love with a nice, decent woman (Kirsten Dunst) who eventually finds out, etc.
A more recent trailer [below] was a bit more candid about what kind of film Roofman is, but it still lied because it emphasized the “antsy, anxiety-besieged thief having to lie and pretend and skulk around in order to survive” aspect.
What Roofman is, in fact, is an oddly fascinating and curiously touching love story…actually a kind of suburban schizophrenic love story because Tatum’s Jeffrey Manchester is torn between living the sketchy, dodgy, blade-runner life of a thief while falling into the vibe of being a nice, nurturing, church-attending guy who loves Dunst’s Leigh Wainscott, a mother of two teenage girls who works at a Toys R’ Us in Charlotte, North Carolina.
The film is basically about Tatum’s inability to to be loyal to one or the other and trying to split the difference, and eventually succumbing to the yield of his own indecision.
Pic is generally based on a five-year period in Manchester’s felonious life, which began in ’98 and ended in early ’05 (i.e., between his late 20s and early 30s). But it’s more particularly about the Wainscott period (June ’04 to early ’05).
Roofman isn’t guided as much as punctuated (not defined or propelled but punctuated like a dash or an ellipses or a semi-colon) by Manchester’s thievery, which basically amounted to roof-drilling into a series of McDonalds outlets and grabbing the cash as well as living inside a Toys ‘R’ Us and subsisting on baby food and M&Ms peanut candies.
Manchester’s relationship with Wainscott and her daughters is the heart of the film, as well as the primary, paradoxical reason why he gets popped at the end. (The 54-year-old Manchester is currently in the slam and not due for release until 2036.)
And I’m telling you that Dunst’s performance really brings the honesty, the feeling, the hurt and the do-re-mi. I know what an Oscar-level performance looks, feels and sounds like, and Dunst really brings it.
But you still have to be able to roll with the mystery of Jeffrey Manchester, whom Tatum portrays as a real humdinger of a puzzle…an amiable but hidden, strangely conflicted dude….decent but conniving and gently felonious…unconcerned with the usual social commandments but desiring family ties.
It’s actually not so much the Blonde on Blonde poetry of Dylan as the core philosophy of Neil McCauley that Manchester fails to heed.
McCauley’s view is that living outside the law requires a coldly calculating form of discipline when it comes to significant others, to wit: “Don’t let yourself get attached to anything you are not willing to walk out on in 30 seconds flat if you feel the heat around the corner.”
Alas, Tatum/Manchester isn’t cold or tough enough to adopt the McCauley ethos, and it is this failure from which Roofman‘s story tension and emotionality flows. This is what makes Roofman curiously fascinating. Manchester is obviously some kind of fleet-fingered sociopath, but one who paradoxically manages to con himself into believing that he can find comfort and respite in the straight, conventional, church-adjacent life of Wainscott and her two teenage daughters.
The whole time you’re muttering to yourself, “Listen, asshole…I feel the rapport with Dunst and her daughters like you, and I understand why you want to live in that world while taking part in their churchgoing life and all that, but you fucking can’t becauseyou’re chosen the life of a thief. Haven’t you seen fucking Heat? If you don’t want to get sent back to jail you have to maintain that McCauley discipline, and if you fail to do that you’re toast. Do you get it? Wake up, man!”
The dude who designed this ugly-ass, black-white-and-blue Soho scarf (top photo) should be fined if not arrested.
Not to mention the semi-ghoulish return of the “Castroclone” look of the mid to late ‘70s, complete with a rough-and-ready, “Don’t Stop Me Now” FreddieMercury moustache.
Honestquestion: Who walks around with a folded scarf hanging out of a jacket’s side pocket? We all recall the colored-handkerchief signage from the leather-bar culture of several decades ago. Is the folded scarf thing a variation of some kind?
Here’s one of the best written, most movingly phrased passages I’ve ever come across in a Jordan Ruimy review….a heartfelt riff about Cloe Zhao‘s Hamnet and particularly Jessie Buckley:
“Where Zhao sometimes falters, her lead more than makes up for it. Jessie Buckley is extraordinary, inhabiting Agnes Hathaway with a presence that feels both elemental and infinite. When she carries the film to its final, shattering minutes, she channels sorrow and hope, rendering grief as something living — almost too real.
“Paul Mescal, despite having far less screen time, delivers a commendable performance [as William Shakespeare], though it remains unremarkable until he elevates his game in the final scenes.
“About that finale — it’s transcendent. Max Richter’s ‘On the Nature of Daylight’ has been used before, and yet here it feels justified. It’s in that very moment that Zhao’s film reveals its purpose: the intimate grief of a family becomes the nucleus for enduring art. The private sorrow of Agnes and William blossoms into something universal. This scene alone redeems the film.”
Guess what? Hamnet is going to beat One Battle After Another. Unless they split the vote and Sentimental Value cleans up.
If a reporter or editor puts quote marks around a term, it means that he/she regards the term as exotic and to some degree suspect. Especially if they qualify it by adding “so-called”.
“[Weiss] achieved [her CBS News hiring] without climbing the typical journalistic career ladder, and with no experience directing television coverage. She is richer in social clout than in Emmys or Pulitzers. And she is known more for wanting to rid the world of so-called wokeness than for promoting journalistic traditions.”
Testa and her editors are obviously casting doubt upon the validity of the “w” term. It follows that they wouldn’t dare use “so-called” as an adjective when mentioning certain sacred-cow terms.
If, say, a reporter or editor were to put quotes around “systemic racism” with a “so-called” qualifier, they would be instantly suspected of being Republicans if not white supremacists and probably fired and ex-communicated on the spot. Same result if they were to post an article that used the term “so-called ‘sexual harassment'”. Ditto if a reporter or editor were to publish an article that included “so-called ‘climate change'” — only a rightwing denialist would use such terminology.
“‘Johnny Depp was only meant to be asked questions relating to his career during a press conference preceding his Donostia Awards reception at the San Sebastian Film Festival. But in response to one journalist’s bold attempt to parse the actor’s thoughts on so-called ‘cancel culture’ and how social media can affect public figures, Depp did not hold back.'”
JFK spots Abraham Zapruder, etc. The JFK voice (created or branded by “Inspector Theory” or Sora or whomever) isn’t an imitation…it’s him! Same vocal chords! The most accurate-sounding artificial JFK simulation I’ve ever heard. Presumably AI-generated.
Why didn’t the creator get the proper seating, the angle and the Dealey Plaza atmosphere right? How hard could that have been? And why does Jackie look like Lois Chiles in The Way We Were?
As we all stand together before the gaping, fang-toothed jaws of AI engulfment, I’ve never felt more of an intense longing to see films that operate on the simplest renderings of dramatic or comedic or fantasy-seeking basics — movies that hopefully arouse the mind, trigger the heart and generally go deep.
Translation: AI is fine, but it has to be invisible.
I will hereafter stop badgering David Kittredge about a possible Best Documentary Oscar campaign for the great Boorman and The Devil, as I learned today that so far nobody has gotten in touch with key journos and conversation-starters who might want to see it.
I don’t know for a fact that Boorman and the Devil hasn’t even been verbally pitched as a possible awards contender, but this certainly seems to be the situation.
I don’t know if the film’s reps are keeping silent because they simply don’t see it as an award-season player, or because they don’t plan to qualify it until next year or what.
I’m sure that key players in the award-season universe would love to see Boorman and the Devil. They just haven’t been offered the chance to do so.
In other words, Kittredge has basically thrown in the towel. For now, I mean. Maybe next year.
