True Topanga Canyon story: It was around ’84, maybe ’85. I was platonically chummy with Kathryn, a whipsmart production executive, a woman with a good heart who suffered no fools. She was sharing a sizable home in Topanga Canyon with a couple of others, and every so often would invite friends over on a Saturday … Read more
Last March the intemperate, hyperventilating woke jackal mob did their best to bring about my death. It was partly about HE having posted an insensitive comment, albeit one that might have been mentioned by any half-attuned industry insider who knows how Oscar-voting sentiments tend to work on deep-down levels. It was mainly a matter of … Read more
I saw Tom McCarthy‘s Stillwater last night, and except for the “wait, what the fuck just happened?” section during the last 25 or so minutes it’s not half bad. It’s longish (140 minutes) but not in a punishing way, plus unusual and complex and definitely, absolutely not a “Liam Neeson goes to France to crack … Read more
[4:40 mark] “This film, today, is a satisfactory…uh, triumphant film for me, but it’s a smaller audience because documentaries don’t get worldwide attention. We’re selling it very nicely here, in Europe, and we’ll see where it goes. But America will remain a tough market.” — Oliver Stone, director of JFK Revisited: Through The Looking Glass, … Read more
…but it wasn’t. Because Amazon decided early on to campaign Small Axe, the Steve McQueen anthology series that began on British TV and which included Mangrove, a brilliant Chicago 7-like courtroom drama, for Emmy awards. This decision was greeted with shock and surprise by award-season handicappers because of the high regard in which Mangrove and … Read more
The 20th anniversary of the 9/11 attacks will fall on Saturday, 9.11.21 — roughly 8 and 1/2 weeks from now. It’ll be treated as a fairly big deal by everyone, I suspect, and by the mainstream media in particular. Documentary tributes, historical assessments, first-hand recollections, etc. But after repeatedly looking back at the particulars and … Read more
From Todd McCarthy’s Deadline pan, posted on 7.12: “Breathing in the air that the master breathed, staying in his home and becoming saturated with all manner of first-hand Bergman-iana has in no way qualified Bergman Island writer-director Mia Hansen-Love to be mentioned in the same breath as the late Swedish master Ingmar Bergman, much less … Read more
True story from a critic friend, edited by the author so as to obscure his/her identity: I know it’s wrong to speak ill of the dead. But I so enjoy telling this story. Let me start like this: Any job description in a help-wanted ad seeking to hire a critic should include these words: “Must … Read more
The opening of Quentin Tarantino‘s Jackie Brown is a tracking shot of the titular character (Pam Grier) on a moving treadmill inside LAX. Right away you’re noticing how stiff she is — no noticable reaction to her surroundings. Grier’s almost entirely frozen features (she blinks three or four times but otherwise doesn’t move a muscle) … Read more
“No Sudden Move (HBO Max, 7.1) is an ambitious, light-spirited, high-twist modernist noir in the tradition of Devil in a Blue Dress and Steven Soderbergh’s own Out of Sight. “Soderbergh, who shot and edited the film, works with a knack for the drama of amorality: the off-kilter camera angles, the lean mean mood of hardboiled … Read more
Now that Rita Moreno: Just A Girl Who Decided To Go For It (Roadside, 6.18) is finally about to open, here’s a re-post of my 2.1.21 review (i.e., “Moreno’s Life Was No Bed of Roses“): The life and career of the dynamic Rita Moreno is given a proud upward spin in Mariem Pérez Riera‘s Rita … Read more
Friendo: You’re going to absolutely hate In The Heights (Warner Bros., 6.10.21). HE: Why will I hate it? I like the energy in the trailers. Obviously more part of our world than West Side Story. Friendo: I think you’ll hate it, but who knows! It’s a woke jerkoff fest. HE: Do you like musicals? Friendo: … Read more