I knew Don DeLillo‘s Cosmopolis (published five years before the ’08 meltdown) and the basic Ulysses/Odysseus drill. Eric Packer, a young, dead-souled billionaire (is there any other kind?) makes his way across Manhattan in a white, custom-designed, not-quite-soundproof stretch limo, encountering various characters (including his beautiful, not-quite-as-dead-souled-but-getting-there wife) and dealing with all kinds of threats, financial and anarchic, that serve as omens of a coming apocalypse. He’s already lost his soul so all that’s left to do is lose his fortune, which he manages by day’s end. Which strangely comforts him.

So going into David Cronenberg‘s Cosmopolis, I was asking myself, “What’s going to be new about this? We all know that Wall Street sharks are the compulsive demons of our time and are probably living with suppressed torment of one kind or another, so it won’t do to just say that Packer is a beast and show how devoid he is of humanity. The film will have to say ‘yeah, he’s a beast but he used to be human…see?’ Or ‘he’s more than a beast — he’s an alien.’ Or ‘he’s a beast but there might be a way out.’ Something more than just ‘this guy is all but dead, and you’re going to spend 108 minutes watching him be a zombie as he talks trade and devaluations and currencies and fucks hot women.’

Lamentably, Cosmopolis, which ended an hour ago, does almost exactly that. And with non-stop chatter so compact and persistent and airless your ears will eventually fall off. With the same determination that Packer — played by Robert Pattinson with his usual glum, shark-eyed passivity — takes himself down, Cosmopolis talks itself to death I was dying for a little silence, a little quiet outside the limo…a sunset, an empty, wind-swept boulevard at pre-dawn, an encounter with a friend or two. Oh, that’s right — Packer hasn’t any.

And so Cosmopolis is about a dead guy in a run-of-the-mill Men in Black/Reservoir Dogs suit as he talks about trade and devaluations and currencies and dead Russian rats, and hears from Samantha Morton (what’s with her weight?) how the future is sucking the life out of the present, and fucks hot women — Juliette Binoche and a black actress whose name escapes. And watches with faint amusement as enraged protestors throw dead rats around and carry huge paper-mache rat sculptures through midtown and spray-paint his limo, etc.

It’s too familiar, too regimented, too claustropobic, too obvious. Yes, you’re constantly aware of Cronenberg’s fierce behind-the-camera talent, his determination to stay with his apparently quite faithful screenplay of DeLillo’s book and to not cop out by making a film about how Packer used to be human but is now an alien although there might be a way out. That’s not the Cronenberg way. He gives it to you his way, and you just have to sit there and take it.

This movie made me feel the way Cronenberg’s Naked Lunch did.

It says something (or maybe not) that one of the most emotionally affecting things that happen is when half of Pattinson’s haircut is mutilated by a kindly neighborhood barber.

I’ll give Cosmopolis this: it ends really well. With a plea from Paul Giamatti‘s destitute, beaten-down, unemployed everyman, begging Packer and his kind to come to their senses and stop their horrendous games and stop plundering and devouring and chewing everything up and regurgitating it as corporate mulch. But even the Giamatti scene (which is the finale) is way too talky. I can’t decide if this scene is oppressive or suppressive. Maybe both.

All right, that’s it — I have to catch my bus to Nice Airport. But before I do, a smattering of tweets:

“Cosmopolis is stilted, self-important and fantastically shallow.” — The Guardian’s Peter Bradshaw

“A surreal capitalist comedy of how the titans who build the world are small, broken people. Rapid-fire dialogue with bullet holes. [In] the part of a dead-eyed consumerist shark wreathed in unearned success, Robert Pattinson is a great fit.” — MSN’s James Rocchi.

“Pattinson a good fit for Cronenberg’s cold, weird Cosmopolis, which is VERY talky (even during sex scenes).” — Rotten Tomatoes‘ Anna Smith.

“Cosmopolis trailers are INCREDIBLY misleading about its pace and tone. Expect lot of “wtf?” and “That’s IT?” from general audiences.” — Filmland Empire.

“Blown away by Cosmopolis at Cannes. A film of cool, diamond brilliance. Perfectly fitted, a tale for the times. Note to jurors: this one.” — The Guardian‘s Xan Brooks.

“Wish I could rewatch Cosmopolis before writing a word about it. For now, it’s both too much and too little; I’m both impressed and deflated.” — Guy Lodge.

“A blockbuster of the mind, fascinating as much for what Cronenberg shows us as for what he doesn’t show.” — Toronto Star‘s Peter Howell.

“Intriguing, contemplative look at how money corrupts this world. Philosophical, overlong, meh. Pattinson still wooden.” — First Showing‘s Alex Billington.

Nine or ten hours ago Barack Obama engaged in a brief q & a twitter session about clean energy and job creation, using the @whitehouse twitter handle. Why am I linking to this? I enjoyed the quick sum-ups and abbreviations, and the consistent no-drama attitude.

Cosmopolis morning! Last night’s coming attractions reels — trailers, really — at the Salle du Soixentieme were mostly a wash. The only standouts were (a) a violent clip from Nicholas Winding Refn‘s Only God Forgives, showing Ryan Gosling in some kind of posh Thai brothel walking over to two middle-aged Asian guys and kicking the tar out of them, and (b) blah master-teaches-student footage from Wong Kar Wai‘s The Grandmasters…nice lensing and luscious snowscapes but same-old-seen-it-all-before.

Six years and eight months ago I did a phone interview with actor-producer Norman Lloyd, whose performance as a blind ex-teacher in Curtis Hanson‘s In Her Shoes had moved me a great deal. After that I visited Lloyd at his home in Brentwood and chatted some more and took some photos and basically felt honored and gratified that I’d gotten to know one of the great old gents of Hollywood and the theatre.

Todd McCarthy, Norman Lloyd following this afternoon’s discussion in the Salle Bunuel.

Lloyd was 90 then and sharp as a whip. Spoke like a scholar, no memory loss, right on it. And he was just as lucid and mesmerizing this afternoon when he sat for an interview with Hollywood Reporter critic Todd McCarthy and French film scholar and gadfly Pierre Rissient inside the Salle Bunuel.

The man is now 97 and still playing tennis and looking hale and hearty and giving off that same old gusto and elocutionary pizazz. Will he ever ease up and just plop in front of the tube and slurp his soup like a regular old person? Nope.

For an hour or so Lloyd regaled the crowd with tales of working with Orson Welles, who directed him on the New York stage in “Julius Caesar” and “Shoemaker’s Holiday” in the late ’30s, and with Elia Kazan on stage, and on film with Alfred Hitchcock twice (he acted in Saboteur and Spellbound), Jean Renoir (The Southerner), Charlie Chaplin (Limelight) and so on.

Here’s a clip of him talking about working with Chaplin:

In ’05 I wrote that “I want to be just like Norman Lloyd when I’m almost 91. He’s done everything, been everywhere and knows (or knew) everyone. And he’s healthy and spirited with the intellectual vigor of a well-educated 37 year-old.” Can I also be like Lloyd when I’m 97?

Lloyd spoke at length about working with Hitchcock as a producer of “Alfred Hitchcock Presents,” the long-running ’50s TV series, and particularly about how Hitchcock revived his career when he insisted that Lloyd work with him on the show when Lloyd was blacklisted. Lloyd and McCarthy didn’t even get around to talking about his being directed by Peter Weir (Dead Poet’s Society) and Martin Scorsese (The Age of Innocence), or playing his ongoing role as “Dr. Auschlander” on St. Elsewhere in the ’80s.

Thanks to McCarthy for urging me to come and listen. The theatre was fairly full, which I didn’t expect. “How many people these days know Norman Lloyd?” I asked myself as I bounded up the Palais steps. Answer: Quite a few, at least among the Cannes faithful.

Thursday, 5.24, 5:55 pm

I don’t know if that rumored presentation of footage from unseen films is on or not at le Salle du Soixentieme, but The Impossible director Juan Antonio Bayona, here in Cannes, has informed me that “a clip for The Impossible is not going to be shown tonight.” Too bad but okay.

The Playlist is reporting that Cosmospolis star Robert Pattinson has told a French magazine, Les Inrockuptibles, that he’ll star in another David Cronenberg film that’ll shoot in France. “I don’t know when he wants to start filming,” Pattinson said, “[but] it’s going to be his first one in France and he promises it’s going to be very strange.” This suggests that in Cronenberg’s head at least Cosmospolis turned out okay, or at least that RPatz’s performance made the grade.

Today will be my ninth sixteen-hour Cannes Film Festival work day in a row. Is it okay with Glenn Kenny if I’m feeling a bit whipped at this stage? Tomorrow will be a halfer with my final viewing, David Cronenberg‘s Cosmopolis, at 8:30, followed by a review, packing and then a bus to Nice Airport for a 4:45 pm flight back to Berlin. My favorites in this order: Holy Motors, No, On The Road, Like Someone In Love, Killing Them Softly, Into The Hills. Sincere Respect, Painful Sit: Amour. Top Stinkers: The Paperboy, Lawless, Post Tenebras Lux.

I won’t see Men in Black 3 until this weekend, but if a mildly grumpy guy like Marshall Fine half likes it then maybe. The Rotten Tomatoes rating is 67%. Presumably some HE regulars caught it yesterday. Reactions?

“I will admit: I tend to have a bias against movies with the number ‘3’ in the title,” Fine begins. “If there’s ever a dead giveaway that all imagination has been sapped from a movie, it’s that second sequel (as if the first sequel wasn’t bad enough). Sure, the filmmaker can say, ‘Oh, I planned to make it a trilogy all along. Tell me another.

“There are exceptions, but not many of them. Still, I’m willing to add Men in Black 3 to the very short list of third outings that actually work — better by far than the second film, perhaps even better than the first.

“The director once again is Barry Sonnenfeld, but the key player here is one who isn’t even mentioned in the credits. While the writer of record is Etan Cohen” — not Ethan Coen of Joel and Ethan — “two other (and probably better) writers are listed on IMDB: David Koepp and Jeff Nathanson, both of whom have lengthy lists of strong films on their filmographies.

“The point is that the script is better for this film than either of the previous two. The first one had the disadvantage of being an origin story: trying to tell an actual story, while introducing the universe of the comic books on which it was based. The second one was simply a rehash of the first with a slight twist, bigger special effects and weaker jokes.”

Two and a half hours after it finished screening in the Grand Palais, Lee Daniels‘ The Paperboy is being primarily spoken of as the Nicole Kidman-pees-on-Zac Efron flick. Her line before she does so — “If anyone’s gonna pee on him, it’s gonna be me” — is also tweeting around.

Matthew McConaughey, Zac Efron in Lee Daniels’ The Paperboy.

In other words, the press gang at Cannes thought The Paperboy was mostly a joke. Which is what Daniels apparently intended on some level — to flavor or season it with foolery. I love it when referenced goof humor is thrown into a drama, but the film has to be believable in the usual ways — you have to accept the bedrock reality of the story and characters — but almost all of The Paperboy reeks of fake. Bits and flourishes are pasted on and thrown at the wall. The result is something sloppy, inept and — sorry — appalling.

Defenders (like Guy Lodge) have called it a camp classic and…whatever, an instant midnight movie for stoners. I actually think it might find some traction in this vein. But most reactions have been mocking and derisive. The response at the end of the 8:30 press screening went beyond boos. A guy somewhere to my right got a case of the giggles around the two-thirds mark and couldn’t stop…”Hoo-hoo-hoo…oh-hee-hee-hee!”

Daily Telegraph critic Robbie Coll called it “the first bona fide fiasco of the festival. So bad it has to be seen to be believed. Transcendentally shambolic.” MSN’s James Rocchi said “it makes A Time To Kill look like To Kill A Mockingbird.”

You might have read that the subject of The Paperboy, set in a Florida backwater in 1969, is about a pair of Miami Times reporters (Matthew McConaughey, David Oyelowo) and McConaughey’s younger brother (Efron) trying to get a redneck, alligator-skinning cracker (John Cusack) off death row at the request of a local Barbie Doll floozy (Kidman) who’s fallen in love with Cusack and is convinced of his innocence.

Ostensibly, yeah, but the actual subjects are sex, racism, Efron’s bod, Kidman’s character’s saucy sexuality, repressed homosexuality, Southern drawls, medicinal peeing and oh, yes — sex.

Some of the plot points in Pete Dexter’s 1995 novel have been changed. Kidman relentlessly flirts with and then finally schtupps Efron in the film, but has it off with Oyelowo’s character, Yardley, in the book. And Yardley fabricates parts of his Miami Times story, which the film bypasses, or so I recall. But The Paperboy is mainly about what Daniels wanted to get into and particularly the people he’s known in his life.

“All these people [in the film] are people who live in my head, my world and my existence,” he said this morning.

The peeing scene happens when Efron is badly stung by jellyfish during a swim in the Gulf of Mexico. Three girls come to his aid as he stumbles out of the water and suggest the peeing remedy (the acids in urine work as an antidote to jellyfish poison), but then Kidman comes over and angrily shoves them away and says her famous line.

Dexter’s book invented the pen-pal love affair between Kidman’s Charlotte and Cusack’s Hillary Van Wetter, but, as I said this morning, “Kidman’s girly-girl might enjoy a sexual dalliance with a Deliverance-style redneck stallion, as played by Cusack. But not marry — no way.” Girly girls like their lives to be nice and pretty and pink and tidy, and Cusack lives in a swamp in a skunky old shack. Doesn’t wash.

And to get to Cusack’s shack, which he shares with his father and other family members, McConaughey and Efron have to boat through a swamp and then wade through thigh-deep water. The shack isn’t directly accessible by motorboats with a pier in front? When the family goes to buy groceries and other necessities they have to carry their shopping bags and whatnot through swamp water?

Efron is a sexually repressed kid (or so says Kidman’s Charlotte) who doesn’t have any girlfriends. Because, you know, he’s not good looking enough to score. Right.

The story is narrated by a maid (Macy Gray, the most likable, dignified and straight-talking character) who works for Efron’s family, but her character isn’t privy to a lot of what we’re shown and yet she’s in on every detail, including when and where Kidman and Efron have it off. Her narration is cloying and at times painful

The movie is full of little “what?” moments like these. I was physically flinching at some of them.

Pedro Almodovar wanted to make a Paperboy movie but “opted out if it,” Daniels said in the press conference.

The $12.5 million film was shot in Los Angeles and New Orleans, it says here. And Kidman had to do her own makeup, she said this morning. She did a good job. And her performance is spirited. Give her that.

(l. to r.) Matthew McConaughey, Lee Daniels and Nicole Kidman during this morning’s Paperboy press conference inside Cannes’ Grand Palais.

A producer who’s been around forever (and whom I’ve known for a couple of decades) said something interesting at tonight’s On The Road after-party: “Whenever there’s strong sexuality in a film, you always lose about 30% of the critics.” He may have meant precisely that, but I don’t think he was saying that this 30% hates any film with strong sexuality. I think he meant that pronounced sex scenes tend to diminish their enthusiasm, either somewhat or significantly. Thoughts?

I need to find a staunch Carlos Reygadas fan who caught tonight’s screening of Post Tenebras Lux, as I did, who could maybe share his or her interpretations. (Is Manohla around?) There’s an undercurrent of dread throughout, but mostly it lacks connective tissue. Three scenes of abrupt violence (especially the final one) are…well, I suppose the term is “noteworthy.” And it contains a truly strange, Hieronymous Bosch-like orgy scene in a Turkish bath sex club. And a moving deathbed soliloquy (although there’s no clue that the speaker is dying when he delivers it). But otherwise I found it slow, lumpy, indulgent and mystifying. Don’t get me started on the soccer game footage. Social rot and demonic behavior are the subjects, but it doesn’t tie together.