I’m so sick of the Oscar race (and particularly of reading Oscar nominee suck-up pieces on Hitfix.com) that I’m not even going to post the winners in the Oscar Balloon, as I’ve done in the past. I’ll just post them as a story and that’ll be that. Instead I’ll be re-posting HE’s Projected/Likely 2014 Highlights roster. Before it goes up I’m asking once again for additions and suggestions. Which films belong under the Presumed High-Pedigree, Respectable Second Tier and Third-Tier Megaplex categories? I’ve obviously made my determinations but maybe I’ve got a few wrong.
Presumed High-Pedigree: Paul Thomas Anderson‘s Inherent Vice, Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu‘s Birdman, Ridley Scott‘s Exodus, Bennett Miller‘s Foxcatcher, David Fincher‘s Gone Girl, Christopher Nolan‘s Interstellar, J.C. Chandor‘s A Very Violent Year, Jean Marc Vallee‘s Wild (i.e., the Reese Witherspoon hiking drama), Noah Baumbach‘s While We’re Young, Terrence Malick‘s Knight of Cups (or the other “intersecting love triangles” Austin-based film that still doesn’t have a title…or both), Matt Reeves‘ Dawn of the Planet of the Apes, Jeff Nichols‘ Midnight Special, Tim Burton‘s Big Eyes, Noah Baumbach‘s Untitled Public School Project, Phillip Noyce‘s The Giver, Mike Leigh‘s Mr. Turner, Todd Haynes‘ Carol, Justin Kurzel‘s Macbeth, Angelina Jolie‘s Unbroken. (20).
Theodore Melfi‘s St. Vincent de Van Nuys, which began shooting in July in various New York-area locations, is about a rootless young guy with just-divorced parents befriending a “misanthropic, bawdy, hedonistic war veteran” played by Bill Murray. Costars include Melissa McCarthy, Chris O’Dowd, Naomi Watts — no idea who plays the kid. Noah Baumbach‘s While We’re Young is about “an uptight documentary filmmaker and his wife find their lives loosened up a bit after befriending a free-spirited younger couple.” (Hey, maybe they could hook up with Murray’s hedonistic war veteran and make it a real party?) It costars Ben Stiller, Amanda Seyfried, Naomi Watts, Adam Driver and Charles Grodin. Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu‘s Birdman, which will most likely debut in Cannes next May, is about an actor known for playing an iconic superhero (Michael Keaton) struggling to prepare a Broadway play while at the same time attempting to recover his family, his career, and himself. (The play in the film is an adaptation of Raymond Carver‘s “What We Talk About When We Talk About Love.”) Keaton’s costars include Emma Stone, Andrea Riseborough, Naomi Watts, Edward Norton and Zach Galifianakis.
Have we moved beyond “dump” months (February, March, August) and into the concept of a dump year — i.e., 2011? If you think things are going to be bad in Washington with the Republican House majority, wait until you endure next year’s mainstream films. I’m talking about what looks to be the biggest mudslide of Eloi fast-food movies in human history — cheap/shallow/rancid concepts taken to the corporate limit, formula eye-dazzle, superhero comic-book/ComicCon crap. Just scan any list. It’s devastating. Shoot me now.
I realize that things always seem grim at the start of any annum, but apart from a list of fifteen 2011 films — Alexander Payne‘s The Descendants, Terrence Malick‘s The Tree of Life, Cameron Crowe‘s We Bought A Zoo, Zhang Yimou‘s Nanjing Heroes, Steven Soderbergh‘s Contagion and Haywire, Bennett Miller‘s Moneyball, Stephen Daldry‘s Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close, Rod Lurie‘s Straw Dogs, Jodie Foster‘s The Beaver, George Nolfi‘s The Adjustment Bureau, David Fincher‘s The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo, Steven Spielberg‘s The War Horse, Martin Scorsese‘s Hugo Cabret, Francis Lawrence‘s Water for Elephants and Jason Eisener‘s Hobo With A Shotgun — what do people like me have to look forward to?
I know, I know. There are always four or five major Sundance breakouts, and another four or five each from Cannes and Toronto. I’m sure I’m missing or overlooking at least 15 or 20 possibilities. I’d feel a lot better if there was at least half a chance of Noah Baumbach‘s While We’re Young opening by year’s end, but it’s not expected to start shooting before early summer so I guess not.
I don’t care what anyone says about Jon Favreau‘s Cowboys & Aliens. It’s obviously just another bottom-feeding bullshit genre movie with laughs and CG and six-shooters and Daniel Craig, Harrison Ford, Olivia Wilde, etc. Strictly ComicCon. A half-comic Jonah Hex with flash. Stop dreaming. You know what it’s going to be.
Read down the popcorn list and it’s like…please God, lemme outta here. Sinbad: The Fifth Voyage, The Green Hornet, Justin Bieber: Never Say Never, Cedar Rapids, Big Mommas: Like Father, Like Son, Rango, Take Me Home Tonight, Happythankyoumoreplease, Battle: Los Angeles, Mars Needs Moms!, Diary of a Wimpy Kid 2: Rodrick Rules, Your Highness, Ceremony, Scream 4, Thor, Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides, The Hangover 2, Kung Fu Panda 2, X-Men: First Class Beginners, Super 8, Green Lantern, Cars 2, Rise of the Apes, Transformers: Dark of the Moon, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part II, Captain America: The First Avenger, Spy Kids 4: All the Time in the World, Fright Night, Final Destination 5, The Thing, Footloose, The Three Musketeers, Paranormal Activity 3, Tower Heist, The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn, Happy Feet 2 in 3-D, etc.
Wait…we’re going to have to wait until 2012 for Jerry Bruckheimer and Gore Verbinski‘s The Lone Ranger?
“An unexamined life is not worth living but an examined one is still no bargain” — Woody Allen line from Cafe Society.
Angsty Loner (i.e., me) to Mr. Lonelyhearts: I’m 17, a high-school junior, and miserable. Partly (mostly?) due to the fact that my hormones are raging while my experience with hetero physical intimacy has been, shall we say, limited.
Which doesn’t mean I haven’t emotionally suffered over this or that dashed relationship. I’ve eaten my heart out over…I don’t know, seven or eight girls since the third grade. Maybe more. And none of the objects of my desire have been more than semi-interested, if that.
Girls are fickle and flighty and all over the map, and at the end of the day I don’t seem to have what they want. Even temporarily, I mean. Before their mood changes.
So I know a thing or two about unrequited love or lust or, in the best of situations, a combination of the two that is casually, half-assedly or all-too-briefly reciprocated and then forgotten. One of these days or years the real thing will happen, and when it does…I’ll cross that bridge.
My current obsession is blonde and blue-eyed and a little scatterbrained. Or scatter-hearted. She likes me in spurts, and then some other guy moves in.
There are three others she’s enamored of. A cute, stocky, chubby-faced jock. A hippie-ish dude with longish hair, Brooks Brothers shirts and mocassins. And a local cop who’s 27 or 28. And then fourth-place me.
I rolled around with blondie on a bed of pine needles near the local reservoir…once. We made out at a party…once. She slapped me repeatedly at another party, which was her way of saying she wanted my attention. We’ve had some fun times.
But I’m strictly backup. So what do I do? Is there any path to salvation in this agonizing situation?
Mr. Lonelyhearts to Angsty Loner: I’m sorry but no, there isn’t. It sounds cruel to say this, but you’re just going to have to suffer through this infatuation and then eventually move on.
One reason you’re in fourth place (and not third, second or first) is that you’re probably radiating weak, squishy vibes. Probably born of low-self-esteem. If you have any moxie you’ll grow out of that but for the time being it’s your cross to bear.
High-school women are reticent as a rule, and they do hold most of the cards, and if they’re not that interested you can’t stop ’em.
The fact that she’s nursing relationships with four guys simultaneously is a red flag, of course. It means she has self-esteem issues of her own. It won’t kill you to pine for this flighty little blonde. It hurts, of course, but life is a never-ending stream of hurt and troubles. Get used to it. Pain makes you stronger if you can take it.
Last night I watched Juan Antonio Bayona’s SocietyoftheSnow (Netflix, now streaming), and while it’s obviously a thumbs-upper in several respects I don’t quite understand why so many critics have been doing acrobatic cartwheels.
It’s very good but it’s not a film that enables you to meet or know God…it doesn’t cleanse or purify your soul or bring about a shuddering emotional orgasm. Turn it down, ease up.
Society is obviously a very well-made, bracingly realistic survival film. I never felt it was doing anything but dealing straight cards about that horrible real-life ordeal that befell that Uruguayan rugby team when their prop plane crashed into the snowy Andes mountains in mid October of ‘72.
The smallish plane was carrying 45 passengers; upon rescue 71 days later all but 16 had died, and the survivors wouldn’t have lived if they hadn’t resorted to cannibalism, and not just strips of flesh and muscle but internal organs (heart, lungs, brains)…horrific but true.
I still feel that Bayona’s The Orphanage (’07) is his finest film, but Society of the Snow is quite the rugged accomplishment and I have no serious complaints. I do, however, have a few small ones.
One, there’s too much “acting” among the ensemble cast of young lads…too much eye contact, too much hugging, not enough bitter humor or a sense of “we’re fucked and I don’t need to fucking hug you” solitude.
Two, the incessant debate about whether or not they should eat their dead comrades in order to live is ridiculous — if they didn’t eat something (and there was nothing to eat up there) they would have died, period, and yet some (they were all Roman Catholics) insist that eating human flesh will damn their souls for eternity. Asinine.
Three, I should compare Society of the Snow with Frank Marshall‘s Alive (’93), which told the exact same story, but it’s been 30 years and I need to re-stream it. Does anyone have any vivid memories? Reviews mere moderately positive.
Four, Bayona’s film doesn’t make it clear that the crash happened entirely due to pilot error. Flight 571’s inexperienced co-pilot, Lieutenant-Colonel Dante Héctor Lagurara, fucked up and pretty much committed manslaughter, plain and simple.
Five, Bayona allows the viewer to presume that the survivors are eating the tastiest parts of the human body (ribs, arms, legs) until we see a glimpse of a stripped human rib cage…holy shit.
But there’s no question that Society is a first-rate effort…your belief in the frosty realism is absolute and bruising. I just didn’t find it miraculous or breathtaking or drop-to-your-knees astonishing. But it’s worth seeing.
Last night I drove all the way to Pleasantville’s Jacob Burns Film Center (45 minutes) to see Christian Petzold‘s Afire. Then I had to drive back, of course — another 45 for a total travel experience of 90 minutes.
Afirereally isn’t worth all that time and gasoline. Because it requires the viewer to spend the entire running time (103 minutes) with one of the emptiest, most self-absorbed, clueless and physically unattractive characters I’ve ever hung with in my moviegoing life.
We’re speaking of Thomas Schubert‘s Leon, a fat, seemingly untalented, self-deluding writer for the first 85 or 90 minutes. And yet following a third-act tragedy that I won’t disclose, Leon suddenly becomes a gifted writer. Quelle surprise!
And so the film, we realize, isn’t as much about pudgy, fucked-up Leon as the difference between spinning your wheels for no discernible reason and writing true and straight about something real. And what improving your game can sometimes involve (i.e., a horrific inferno, the charring of flesh, the blackening of bones, being faced with terrible finality).
So the ending isn’t half bad but the first 85 or 90…God! Immature, pissed off, lost-in-the-proverbial-woods Leon obsessing about the highly attuned, rail-thin Nadja (Paula Beer) and never making any headway because he’s such a fleshy, mopey, self-deluding asshole.
Yesterday’s boilerplate: “While vacationing by the Baltic Sea, writer Leon (Schubert) and photographer Felix (Langston Uibel) are surprised by the presence of Nadja (Beer), a mysterious young woman staying as a guest at Felix’s family’s holiday home. Nadja distracts Leon from finishing his latest novel and, with brutal honesty, forces him to confront his caustic temperament and self-absorption. An encroaching forest fire threatens the group as Nadja and Leon grow closer, and tensions escalate when a handsome lifeguard and Leon’s tight-lipped book editor also arrive.”
If I was a film director I wouldn’t dare make a movie as thin, irritating and lacking in tension as the first two acts of Afire are. I was instantly annoyed and glancing at my watch and feeling sorry for myself, being stuck with this obviously not-very-good film and coping with air-conditioning that was too cold.
All I can say is thank God Schubert never gets naked, and double thank God he and Beers never do the actual deed. (Early on sex happens off-screen between Beer and another guy who’s mainly gay.) That’s not saying stuff doesn’t happen between them, or that their interactions aren’t faintly interesting from a certain perspective.
I was just grateful that Petzold respected the sensibilities of persons like myself. His discretion was gratifying. For he spared me the sight of Leon’s cashew-sized appendage…down on my knees!
In a comment HE reader Canyon Coyote tried to casually normalize beefalo + thin girl relationships, which he says are par for the course in his neck of the woods. I’ve spotted such pairings but c’mon, they were highly unusual before the obesity plague began to encroach roughly 20 years ago.
As I noted yesterday, Schubert is actually a bit heavier than John Belushi in Animal House and not that far from his appearance during his final Chateau Marmont cocaine speedball chapter, and only a few heaping plates of pasta short of obese. Just saying.
If while profiling a non-binary person a writer fails to use the person's correct pronouns, he/she could be (and most likely would be) attacked as some kind of bigot. So I realize that Melena Ryzik had no choice but to follow the proscribed form in her N.Y. Times profile of Emma Corrin.
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“I don’t think we’re seeing the unwinding of a company (Twitter), but the unwinding of a person (Elon Musk). Which I believe is part of a larger trend. As our society has become wealthier and better educated, the reliance on a super-being along with church attendance goes down. but people still look for idols. Into that void has stepped technology leaders, because technology is the closest thing we have to magic. [For a while] our new Jesus Christ was Steve Jobs, and Elon Musk has taken on that mantle. And every ridiculously mean, nonsensical, irrational move he makes is somehow seen as chess, not checkers. We’re just not privvy to his genius yet.
“I think [Musk[] is an individual who has demonstrated a total lack of grace, has no guardrails around him, and is going to see his wealth probably cut in half. Just a week or two after the close, this is already the second worst acquisition in history. This is someone who in my opinion shows a bit of a God complex. Someone who vastly overpaid in a fit of mania or seeing something we don’t see. Twitter is a company probably worth 10 billion, [and] Musk paid 45 billion for it. He thinks he can lay off half the staff and treat them poorly and disparage them and not [suffer] any ramifications. I think he’s a terrible role model for young business people. You can’t deny his incredible accompishments, but now he’s running three different companies.
“So this notion that we need superbeings…I have found that this notion never proves out. The Roman warriors who returned after a triumphant battle, and they would have a huge parade for them, and they would hire a slave to follow and whisper in the conqueror’s ear ‘all glory is fleeting, and you are only a man.’ I have never met a person who is infallible, Christiane. They all eventually screw up, and a universal pillar of truth is that the universe doesn’t want a consolidation of power among any country or any society or any individual.”
Speaking as a longtime honorary (i.e,. self-proclaimed) member of “the tribe”, I’m semi-astonished that within the community of decent, well-brought-up Americans (i.e., outside the realm of MAGA lunatics) that even a shred of anti-Semitism still circulates in the bloodstream of this nation.
Ken Burns‘ The U.S. and the Holocaust reminded that anti-Semitism was an unmistakable horror in the 1930s and ’40s, but haven’t we jettisoned all that, especially over the last 50 or 60 years? Among decent folk, I mean**?
Perhaps not. Or at least, apparently or allegedly, among a certain subset of Black Americans. Kanye West spit out some of the ugly not long ago, and was severely pounded and punished for it. Dave Chapelle spoke of the Kanye slapdown on SNL two nights ago, and David Poland spoke of tribal animus yesterday in his Substack Hot Button column (#255):
“I have never really understood how this thing between Blacks and Jews took such hold,” he wrote, [but] I am also aware, from living a long time, that many of my Black friends believe in a lot of false tropes about Jewish people, which is also true in reverse.
“My best friend in the world still makes a comment anytime I order pork of any kind. Jews are ‘them,’ meaning not only are we in the category of entitled white oppressors, but we are also hyper-entitled by perceptions of wealth, political prowess, and higher levels of education.”
I for one have never ordered a pork dish in my life — not once — although I’ve written more than once about one of the greatest compliments I’ve ever received in my life. In the late ’70s a smart and wise Jewish friend and fellow cineaste told me I had more Jewish guilt than he did. That was the beginning of my honorary Jewhood, which thrives to this day. I also regard myself an honorary gay guy, in a vaguely metrosexual sort of way.
I am grateful that my alleged or supposed honorary status among Jews and gays, however legit or illegit it may be, is at least a discussion point because it gives my life a certain dimension that would not otherwise exist.
Poland #1: “[Jews and Blacks] have been held down, exiled, slaughtered, and suffered attempts to remove what is uniquely [theirs] in the world. It is somewhat insane to compare atrocities, but personally, I believe the Black Holocaust of slavery is a step worse than the Jewish Holocaust that killed 6 million Jews because slavery not only killed and demeaned and tortured Blacks, it sought to homogenize away any cultural history away from them.”
Poland #2: “I guess it’s a little like having a friend you love who is abusive to women (short of violence) or who is a little bit racist. We all have them or have had them. And most of us know people of some small group that looks down on another small group without breaking the bar on what we believe makes them a racist. Once you become an adult, the world gets complicated. Dave Chappelle is complicated.”
I’ll make it simple — no one who aspires to even a semblance of honesty will claim that race consciousness doesn’t exist in every human. Race acknowledgement is what we all feel in our gut while racism is a judgment call — a suspicion that there may be something a little bit preferable about our tribe vs. the others. Everyone has muttered this to him or herself at one time or another, usually when young and ignorant due to the influence of under-developed people in our families or communities — “our thing seems a little better and perhaps is a little better, at least according to standards that we’re familiar with.”
I’m speaking of under-our-breath acknowledgments, of course. Nobody will say this stuff out loud. We all know how to adhere to what’s expected of us, and we all say the right things in order to get along, etc. The best of us understand the cosmic universality of everything, and act accordingly.
What I can’t stand about finger-pointing, holier-than-thou types like Poland (i.e,” Rabbi Dave”) is that they’re constantly sniffing the air for whiffs of people who may be “a little bit racist,” and who, once identified, need to be bitchsmacked and name-called and shoved around and so on. We’re all vaguely, subliminally conscious of racial separatism under the skin, but those us with even a smidgen of heart and soul dismiss those subliminals on a regular basis while summoning the better angels of our nature. That’s how things have always worked on my side of the court, at least.
In mid 1967, an under-educated, under-achieving alcoholic moron (Zac Efron‘s “Chickie” Donohue) from a Manhattan working-class neighborhood foolishly decides to use his Merchant Marine credentials to travel to war-engulfed Vietnam in order to give beer hugs to his military-serving buddies, but gradually has his eyes opened to the real-life horror and particularly the bullshit that LBJ and General Westmoreland have been leaning upon to justify it.
At the end he returns to his home in Inwood, New York, with a somewhat more mature attitude — “less drinking and more thinking.”
Will someone please tell me what’s so awful about a movie that tells that more or less fact-based story? Particularly if the film in question delivers decent performances, reasonably convincing dialogue, tight pacing, semi-realistic depictions of combat and one absolutely killer line of dialogue?
Here it is: Somewhere in a jungle hell-hole Donohue is about to leave a landing zone on a helicopter, and one of his anxious and exhausted G.I. buddies is regarding him with concern. A fellow grunt notices and says, “You don’t have to worry about him. Every once in a while, you’ll run into someone who’s too dumb to get killed.”
Yes, I’ve finally seen Peter Farrelly‘s The Greatest Beer Run Ever (Apple, streaming on 9.30) and it’s a tolerable sit and sometimes better than that. And there’s absolutely no question in my mind that the current aggregate ratings — 44% Rotten Tomatoes, 35% Metacritic — have been motivated by politics and score-settling. For nearly four years the arch-backed film critic cabal has been dying to punish Farrelly for Green Book having won the Best Picture Oscar three and a half years ago, and now they’re sticking it to him with relish, and to Beer Run for fun.
I’m saying this because I know (i.e., not guessing) that in a fair and just world, Beer Run would be averaging so-so or not-bad scores. Scores that say “this movie has a couple of problems, okay, but not lethal ones…it may not be good enough to be raved about, but it’s a decent try and a moderately passable in-and-outer. In HE’s mind it’s a solid ground-rule double, and in baseball that’s a totally respectable thing. You didn’t whiff or pop out, and you’re in a position to score if the next guy slams a single. But in movies if you don’t hit a homer or a triple, you’ve somehow failed.
A majority of critics are saying Farrelly has struck out or been thrown out at first, and they’re just not being fair or honest. They’re basically saying “because this film isn’t as authentic as it could have been in some respects, and because it isn’t political-minded in a way that we’d prefer and because of two or three aesthetic choices that we disapprove of, and because most of us have been dying to take Farrelly down anyway…for all these reasons we’re going to do our best to kill Beer Run.
“Some of you will pay to see it and find it a decent enough thing, and we don’t care about that. We’re writing from within the social-political membrane of an elite cabal and that’s all your going to get from us…elite cabal viewpoints.”
This is the value of myself and Hollywood Elsewhere — a site that occasionally has the character and the courage to say that a film achieving a level of ground-rule double accomplishment is nothing to be ashamed of, and is certainly nothing to trash or urinate upon. The Greatest Beer Run is what it is, and I know it’s a decent (and sometimes better-than-decent) thing as far as it goes.
I absolutely approved of the central arc or journey of the story, which I summarized above. And yet I gradually understood more and more that, to paraphrase Richard Masur in Risky Business, it’s not quite good enough to be called Ivy League. It might’ve worked but it didn’t quite get there. Perhaps the scope was too vast — a spotty but sprawling Apocalypse Now-ish war flick with a civilian perspective — and it simply exceeded Farrelly’s grasp. Which is nothing to be ashamed of as he clearly tried like hell. And like I’ve said two or three times, a few portions hit the mark, and now and then it surprises you.
I was definitely surprised by Farrelly’s decision to play “Cherish,” the 1966 Association song, on the soundtrack as a suspected Vietcong collaborator is brutally murdered. The song has been set up earlier in the film when Chickie tells his barroom buds that he really likes it, but at the same time a viewer will have to admit that “Cherish” is one hell of a counterpoint, given what’s being depicted.
On a 2001 Charlie Rose Show about Stanley Kubrick: A Life in Pictures, Christiane Kubrick was asked to define a certain personality trait or mental attitude that genius-level filmmakers seem to share in common. She said this is unknowable and therein lies the fascination.
HE says “holdupski.” HE defines that mindset as an educated “fuck it” thing…mindful and respectful of artistic history and precedent, but not especially intimidated by same…an attitude that says “okay, these other filmmakers did it this or that way and that’s fine, but I’m here now and this is my film so fuck ’em if they can’t take a joke.”
In a phrase, a genius artist is often possessed of a certain kind of reverent irreverence.
Every major-league director I’ve spoken with in person over the decades (and we’re talking quite a few) shares this trait.
While watching this I was also struck by how radiantly young the 59 year-old Martin Scorsese looked during this taping, certainly compared to now. Guys in their 50s and even their early 60s can look really great if they’ve watched their diets and haven’t done too many drugs in their youth. And it’s believed that Scorsese, remember, was a total cokehead in the mid ’70s so he came out of that dungeon without too many bruises.
Even if I do say so myself, one of HE’s most enjoyably-written pans appeared on or about 10.3.17, or a little more than five years ago. I am genuinely proud of some of the phrases, sentences and paragraphs in this thing, particularly the following:
“It lasts an eternity — I checked my watch at least five or six times, and my muttered mantra all through it was ‘I don’t give a shit about any of this, I don’t give a shit about any of this, I don’t give a shit about any of this’ — but it’s certainly a major vision thing. Pay your $16 dollars and sink into a thoroughly gloomy realm of super-holograms (including ones of Frank Sinatra and Vegas-era Elvis Presley), rot, ruin and industrial scrap, a toxic shithole populated with grim-faced characters you would just as soon squash as look at, a world of hair-grease and sprayed sweat and impassive, cold-death expressions, and all of it blanketed with rain, snow, sludge and chemical mud-glop.
“And oh, yeah, for a story that you won’t give two shits about. A dingleberry doodle plot involving memory implants and oscured lineage and a secret no one must know (no one! just ask Jared Leto!) and a little wooden horse with a date (6.10.21) carved into the base, and some shit-hooey about original replicant creator Eldon Tyrell having given Rachael, the experimental replicant played by Sean Young in the ’82 original, the organic potential to reproduce and blah blah. And a narrative pace that will slow your own pulse and make your eyelids flutter and descend, and a growing need to escape into the outer lobby so you can order a hot dog and check your messages.
“BR49 should have run two hours, not two hours and 44 minutes.
“Do yourself a favor…seriously. Before seeing it this weekend, read the Wikipedia synopsis. Doing so will remove the irritating, hard-to-follow story tease and allow you to just concentrate on the visuals, which is all this thing is about anyway. It doesn’t matter anyway — nothing does, it’s all shit and distraction, you’re all just contributing to the Warner Bros. bottom line, to Ryan Gosling and Harrison Ford‘s wealth while you subtract from your own. We’re all punks, fools, suckers, knaves. Warner Bros. pours a little whiskey onto the plastic floor, and like Ford’s Blade Runner wolf dog we lick it right up.
“Fuck the story, fuck the lineage factor, fuck it all. Just sink into the chilly murderous vibe and Gosling’s impassive, glazed-over robot eyes, and Ford’s subtle emotional delivery (has he ever cried before on-screen?). Nobody cares and it doesn’t fucking matter if RG or Ford or Kevin Tsujihara are replicants. I’m a replicant with the capability of siring children and writing a daily column. What difference does it make if I’m an android or not, or if I dream of electric sheep? Nobody cares, nothing matters, it’s all bullshit.
“What of the virtual-reality ho chick, the homicidal super-bitch and the brittle, tough-cookie supervisor played by Ana de Armas, Sylvia Hoeks and Robin Wright? Smart women will not be pleased. (After the show a friend was listening to a whipsmart feminist deploring these characters and the phony, piss-poor writing.) For these are cardboard, non-dimensional figures (women acting like men or fulfilling men’s fantasies) who would never be hatched by a woman screenwriter. Grow some soul and awareness, Hampton Fancher and Michael Green.
“How important is Gosling’s little wooden horse, and how does it feed into everything else? I’m still scratching my head about that, but I’m sure someone will explain it later today. Is Gosling’s ‘Joe’ the replicant son of you-know-who? I didn’t give a shit. Is there any kind of emotionally satisfying undercurrent in any of this? Fuck no.
“There’s one moment — one! — that made me sit up in my seat and say to myself ‘wait, hold on, this is semi-poignant.’ But the spoiler whiners will kill me if I get specific. It involves Ford and a younger woman — I’ll leave it at that.
“I knew this wouldn’t be a glorious, all-around triumph. I knew it would be brilliant but problematic. I knew not to trust those rave reviews written by balding, bespectacled and/or heavyset dweebs. If they’d written ‘it’s a bear to sit through and it makes you feel like shit, but it’s a masterpiece,’ okay, but too many of them just wrote ‘it’s a masterpiece!’ This is why people don’t trust critics. They live in their own world.