I visited the Academy Museum yesterday. Due respect but after 100 minutes of wandering around I felt that the $25 entrance fee was too high. It’s an impressive collection of exhibits that tell a certain kind of film history, but I felt slightly burned. The phrase I muttered two or three times was “this…this is it?”
For this is a huge, four-story, super-expensive apology installation. In room after room and in display after display, the museum says the following: “The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences is very, very sorry that white men ran the film industry for 100 years straight, and there are doubtless too many white men running things now, but at least things are changing now for the better — women, Black artists, Asian-Americans, Native Americans and other POCs are making significant inroads, and we the Academy are proudly standing beside them and doing what we can to give them more power and say-so.
You’re given the distinct idea that North by Northwest is kind of an evil film, and that it might be better if Hitchcock, Ernest Lehman, Cary Grant and others involved were to be cancelled posthumously.
The best part of the museum is the viewing platform atop the rounded Death Star portion — the view of central Los Angeles is spellbinding. Otherwise you can have it.
And I enjoyed it thoroughly. I was never bored, and was seriously impressed with Cary Fukanaga‘s pacing, cutting, visual discipline and overall chops. There’s never any doubt that this is a grade-A package made by grade-A people. Plus it’s Craig’s best Bond since Casino Royale, and one of the best overall. And knowing about the ending didn’t fucking matter at all. There’s a difference between watching a film as an adult, and watching one as an infant.
The pleasure of any film is in the way it unfolds — that special-touch factor, the art of it, the timing, the polish, the undercurrent, the first-classiness of it all. How the story is told, not the story itself…right? Singer, not song.
On top of which Craig doesn’t play a boorish old-school sexist. He never has really. He plays a good, decent, smart, non-arrogant fellow in No Time to Die, and when the big moment comes it’s rather sad and classically invested in. And that’s where I shed my single, solitary tear.
Let no one doubt that the ending of No Time To Die was written by people who are terrified of seeming tethered to the past (who isn’t?), and are triply terrified of wokester (especially #MeToo) wrath, and that the ending was written to make a point — i.e., we’re in a new world, and there’ll be no more of that old “shaken, not stirred” broth…that smooth, sexist, tuxedo-wearing, martini-sipping swagger. We’re ending that shit here and now.
And it’s completely foolish and stupid, by the way, for the film to say at the end of the closing credits that JAMES BOND WILL RETURN. No Time To Die is not a Marvel or a D.C. film.
Friendo to HE: “I can’t say for sure what the Bond producers will do, but there’s way too much money on the table for them to just say goodbye to James Bond. And Barbara Broccoli is on record as saying that the character won’t be a woman. Bond will be back, with a new actor (probably a Caucasian), and they’ll present it as a reboot.”
HE to Friendo: “But they’ve conclusively eliminated that possibility. The only way to get around this would be inject Marvel and D.C.-styled plotting.”
The Stalinist prison guard living inside Dear White People showrunner and writer Jaclyn Moore has emerged. For she’s attempting to persuade Netflix to zotz Dave Chappelle‘s The Closer because his remarks about trans people, she feels, are prejudicial and uncool.
Last night Moore stated on Twitter and Instagram that she’ll no longer work with Netflix after watching The Closer. “After the Chappelle special, I can’t do this anymore,” Moore wrote. “I won’t work for Netflix again as long as they keep promoting and profiting from dangerous transphobic content.”
If I was a Netflix honcho, I would reply to Moore as follows: “I hear you. You’re not altogether wrong. Chappelle’s views on trans women certainly don’t mirror our own, and we hope you and your community understand that. This aside, we deplore Stalinist censorship and don’t approve of efforts by anyone to muzzle anyone, least of all a brilliant comic whose entire career has been about considering the view of persons like yourself and occasionally saying ‘nope, not me, sorry.'”
HE to Moore: Anyone who partially describes Chappelle as a “goofy” comic doesn’t really hear him or get where he’s coming from, no offense. He’s not goofy or wacky, and he doesn’t live in a doo-wacky, doo-wacky, wah-wah world.
Chappelle: “In our country, you can shoot and kill a n***a, but you better not hurt a gay person’s feelings.”
I caught Stephen Karam‘s The Humans (A24, 11.24) early yesterday afternoon. It won’t open for another six or seven weeks, but it was reviewed out of Toronto so it’s fair to jump in.
This is a highly respectable, surprisingly “cinematic” adaptation of Karam’s 2016 play, which he’s filmed unconventionally by emphasizing distance and apartness and narrow hallways and deep shadows, with a particular emphasis on material rot inside the apartment walls and a general sense of architectural foreboding and claustrophobia.
All the performances are top-notch, especially Jane Houdyshell‘s. Her performance as the maritally betrayed, care-worn mother of two grown daughters (played by Beanie Feldstein and Amy Schumer) is almost Oscar-level. It needs an extra “acting” scene or two, but she’s very good.
As usual I had trouble understanding all of Feldstein’s dialogue, as she always seems to emphasize emotional tonality and a certain sing-song manner of speaking as opposed to adhering to the old-fashioned practice of (I know this is a bad word but I’m going to say it anyway) diction.
Oh, and I didn’t believe for a single millisecond that South Korean heartthrob Stephen Yeun would partner with Feldstein, a seriously overweight woman in her late 20s…a woman who is headed for serious health problems down the road if she doesn’t follow in her brother’s path and drop some serious pounds. Feldstein and Yeun just aren’t a match, not in the actual world that I’ve been living in for several decades, but along with “presentism” and color-blind casting it’s also become a “thing” to cast obese actors in this or that role and then require their fellow cast members to pretend that obesity is fine and normal and “who cares?”
Schumer is fine as the depressed older sister.
The warmest emotional moment comes when the murmuring, blank-faced, Alzheimer-afflicted June Squibb (as grandma) joins in and says grace. Twice. This plus the Thanksgiving “what we’re thankful for” moments at the table are the only emotional touchstones in the whole film.
Richard Jenkins, Houdyshell’s husband, confesses to having lost his job (and therefore — did I hear this wrong? — his pension and insurance) due to an apparently brief affair with a coworker. In short, after being with a company for X number of years, they decided to cut his head off and destroy his life because of a single workplace sexual episode. And then the two daughters, after hearing of this, have to lay their #MeToo-ish judgments on withered old dad, along with their natural resentment for his having hurt their mother’s feelings, etc.
May I say something? 74 year-old Jenkins is too old to have had an affair. The workout club manager he played in Burn After Reading, maybe, or the guy in The Visitor or the gay FBI agent in Flirting With Disaster but his Humans dad is way, way past it. Grey haired, paunchy, neck wattle…forget it. In movies as in life you’re allowed to have crazy extramarital affairs up until your early 60s (if you look good), but not beyond that.
Let’s be honest here — this is an “artfully” shot (oooh, look…80% of the time Karam keeps the camera a good 20 to 30 feet away from the actors!) but VERY morose film about some seriously depressed people whose lives are almost certainly on the way down with no hope of escape or redemption. It isn’t long before you feel stuck — imprisoned — in this apartment, and in Karam’s play. No tension, no gathering story strands….it’s just slow-paced conversational misery and confession and gloom.
The Humans is certainly not comedic. Yes, there’s an element of horror in the building itself — it’s a terrible, TERRIBLE place to have a Thanksgiving dinner in, much less reside in, what with the groanings and stompings and filthy windows and pus bubbles and canker sores on the walls. And it’s not just this family of seven that’s stuck in this horrible environment — we’re all stuck in it, and there’s no getting out.
In the display 'Backdrop: An Invisible Art,' dominated by a wall-size backdrop from the climax of North by Northwest, we learn that Mount Rushmore, which serves no historical or political purpose in the movie, 'has a controversial and painful history.'"
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“The Oscars need to stay classy and aspirational, but they increasingly alienate vast swatches of moviegoers who see them as simply representing woke limousine liberals. The board of governors often have blind spots when it comes to marketing themselves, and the Oscars. As they cater to ABC’s demands for a popular show with younger appeal, the board also makes dumbfounding rule changes — like not announcing all the craft categories, or Best Popular Film, requiring voters to be active — that generate so much blowback that they wind up reversing themselves.
“Some Hollywood insiders think the Oscars should be more democratized. ‘The Oscars are only vital for the industry future if they can engage their widest possible audience in celebrating the cinema, finding ways to make it relevant to many, fun, inspiring and important to culture,’ says one independent producer, adding that the awards ‘risk further alienating the public by continuing to feel self-congratulatory, insular, and elitist.”
Paul Schrader to Thompson: “It’s the big spotlight. We saw last year what happens when you put a dimmer on the big spotlight. It probably would have been better just to have a virtual announcement last year. It made the awards feel small, which is death to the concept of the Academy Awards. We have to reassert its place as the big show.”
The Soderbergh Oscars all but murdered the notion of the Oscars being “big” in any sense of that term. In one fell swoop they became the woke death-pill Oscars…Oscars trapped in an elite rhetorical closet…a combination of a “we need to share our stories at length” and “lemme outta here so I can snort some heroin in the bathroom” …the Oscar telecast from a train station that injected anunprecedentedsurgeofdespair.
Nobody wants to watch another Oscar telecast like that again…ever.
“The Unchosen One” is a curiously moving short doc (15:58), directed by Ben Proudfoot, about how feelings of loss and hurt have lingered inside ex-child actor Devon Michael, now 32. They resulted from Michael not being chosen by George Lucas to play Anakin Skywalker in The Phantom Menace (’99).
Michael was one of three finalists for the role — himself, Almost Famous costar Michael Angarano and Jake Lloyd. Lloyd got the part, of course, and we all know how critics and fanboys responded.
Would things have turned out any better if Michael had been chosen? Perhaps not given the quality of Lucas’s film and the presence of Jar-Jar Binks, but my sense is that he probably would have been better than Lloyd, partly because of a certain curt intensity and directness of manner — guarded but watchful — and partly because almost anyone would’ve been an improvement over Lloyd. I’ve always presumed that Lucas chose Lloyd at least partly because of his cute looks.
I’m again recalling that moment when hundreds (including Paul Thomas Anderson) poured into Mann’s Village in Westwood to see the world premiere of the Phantom Menace trailer. It happened in the early afternoon of Thursday, 11.6.98. Every Los Angeles film fanatic with blood in his or her veins was there. The movie that nobody stayed for after the trailer was shown was Edward Zwick ‘s The Siege, which the crowd was mocking with a chant….”Siege!Siege! Siege!”
And then The Phantom Menace opened on 5.19.99, and the whole thing came tumbling down. It doesn’t matter how much money that mostly tedious film made. In the minds of many it destroyed the Star Wars theology. True believers were shattered, crestfallen.
Antoine Fuqua and Jake Gyllenhaal‘s The Guilty (Netflix, 10.1 — currently in theatres) is a fairly exacting remake of Gustav Moller’s same-titled original, which starred Jakob Cedergren as a suspended beat cop working as a 911 call-center responder, and dealing with an apparent abduction of a youngish mother by her ex-husband.
The Fuqua-Gyllenhaal uses almost the same story, mostly the same dialogue (written or more precisely polished by True Detective‘s Nic Pizzolato), many of the same shots, same tick-tock suspense factor.
I watched Moller’s film before the Fuqua, and I’m telling you right now that the Danish version is way better. Like Moller’s, Jake and Antoine’s version is a single-set thriller that’s all closeups and MCUs and computer screens. The Moller takes place in a Copenhagen call center; the Fuqua-Guyllenhaal is set inside a Los Angeles complex during a major fire and is constantly reaching for the big moments, and is marred by Gyllenhaal’s over-acting.
Moller’s version unfolds in a straight, matter-of-fact fashion — the story happens on its own terms and the suspense isn’t diminished by the subdued tone.
I’m sorry that Fuqua didn’t tell Gyllenhaal to turn it down and ease up. The result is too much sweating, too many hostile outbursts, and too much showboat weeping at the end.
And speaking of weeping, Riley Keough‘s voice performance as the abducted wife is infuriating as she cries and whines and moans in a one-note way. Her character has every reason to feel traumatized and terrified, of course, but the Danish actress in the same role (Jessica Dinnage) occasionally downshifts and delivers a change-up or two, and is much more interesting for that.
As the 45-minute mark in the Fuqua version approached, I was muttering to Keough “Jesus, can you deliver one line of dialogue without sounding like MinnieMouse on a bad acid trip, fighting back the terror and the tears?”
Peter Sarsgaard, Ethan Hawke, Eli Goree and Paul Dano also do some voice-acting, but there’s no recognizing them.
From Anne Applebaum‘s “The New Puritans,” published in The Atlantic on 8.31.21: “For the moral crime of adultery, Hester Prynne must wear a scarlet A pinned to her dress for the rest of her life. On the outskirts of Boston, she lives in exile. No one will socialize with her — not even those who have quietly committed similar sins, among them the father of her child, the saintly village preacher. The scarlet letter has ‘the effect of a spell, taking her out of the ordinary relations with humanity, and enclosing her in a sphere by herself.’ ”
“We read that story with a certain self-satisfaction,” Applebaumobserves. “Such an old-fashioned tale! [For] we now live in a land governed by the rule of law; we have procedures designed to prevent the meting-out of unfair punishment. Scarlet letters are a thing of the past.
“Except, of course, they aren’t. Right here in America, right now, it is possible to meet people who have lost everything — jobs, money, friends, colleagues — after violating no laws, and sometimes no workplace rules either. Instead, they have broken (or are accused of having broken) social codes having to do with race, sex, personal behavior, or even acceptable humor, which may not have existed five years ago or maybe five months ago. Some have made egregious errors of judgment. Some have done nothing at all. It is not always easy to tell.”
As most HE readers know, I got “Scarlet Letter”-ed last March when Critics Choice honchos Joey Berlin and John DeSimio booted me out of their organization after being pressured by hysterical wokesters after I posted a sentence written by someone other than myself — a sentence which sat on HE for an hour or less before I took it down.
This eviction gave certain publicists an excuse to take me off their screening invite lists, etc. Six weeks ago I wrote Joey and John a letter about this incident. I was going to keep it private but what do I have to lose by sharing it at this point?
HE to Joey Berlin and John DeSimio of Critics Choice Association (CCA) — sent on 8.6.21.
Happy Midsummer Night’s Dream and best to your families.
I was just wondering if you guys know or care what your decision to boot me out of Critics Choice last March….a cowardly move which was ABSOLUTELY NOT over “a pattern of offensive, insensitive and unprofessional behavior,” as you told the trades (neither of you ever said a damn thing to me about any alleged issues ever, and I mean not so much as a single email or text) but over a single short paragraph in a post THAT I DIDN’T EVEN WRITE (did you even know that?) and that I took down less than an hour later…
I was just wondering if you have any idea what that hysterically overblown and thoroughly minor-in-the eyes-of-God episode did to the fortunes of Hollywood Elsewhere? Maybe you do have an idea. Maybe you don’t give a shit, or maybe you’ve chuckled about it over drinks.
I was never that attached to the fortunes (soaring or otherwise) of the Critics Choice Association. I was happy to nominate and vote and attend the annual Barker Hangar shebang, but I ate and slept pretty well before I became a member. It really wasn’t that big a deal to me, but you guys sure as hell poisoned the well when you booted me out.
Tell me truthfully, man to man…have either of you ever had a hand in a decision that helped to damage a fellow journalist’s career? Have you ever lowered the boom on someone and brought serious trauma into their life? Let’s assume you guys don’t do this on a regular basis and let me ask a question — why did you LIE about the particulars when you cut me loose? You know I didn’t cause any grief for CCA before this one dumb thing, and yet you claimed otherwise.
The feature version isn’t half bad, but strategy-wise it’s primarily aimed at landing Chastain a Best Actress nomination, which will probably happen. She’s playing either one of the most self-deluding or notoriously insincere American frauds of all time, and Chastain really pours her heart out — she’s not satirizing this big-hearted, indisputably grotesque woman but she is playing it very broadly. Because Tammy Faye Bakker wasn’t exactly a woman of subtlety or great spiritual depth, and of course the silver eyeshade + false eyelashes makeup is half the performance.
The movie gives Chastain a big “pour it out, sing it loud” moment at the end, but there’s not a lot of “there” there.
The film is a straightbiopic — completely rote, right down the middle, all the expected beats of a rise-and-fall saga, no surprises.
Start to finish televangelist Jim Bakker (Andrew Garfield, playing a variation of the same anxious bunny-puppy he’s always been) and wife Tammy Faye constantly speak to everyone (including each other) in the language of homilies and bromides about God wanting us to live an abundant life, and they’re so obviously hustlers and grifters from the get-go. What you see is what you get — these people are half serious believers and half Satan worshippers. They really think that God (a Great Being in the sky with a personality) wants them to live a flush life with all the perks…if they love Him enough and really wear their hearts on their sleeves and keep the spirit going.
As Variety‘s Owen Gleibermanwrote the other day, The Eyes of Tammy Faye is basically what used to be called a “TV movie” — moderately flat photography, not a lot of style…this happens, that happens, this happens and then the next thing happens. I didn’t hate it and I was half-engaged for the most part, but it definitely improves when the tragic downfall stuff kicks in during the final third.
Friendo: “There’s no denying that even for a biopic, it’s prose, not poetry. That’s why I’m not really drawn to seeing it again. It’s lumpy and chronological, etc. And yes, the documentary is great.
“But to me the actors — not just Chastain but Garfield also (darker than usual — he really makes Bakker a sociopath) — weren’t just having ‘fun in a broad way.’ I think their performances are actually quite psychological, and that the movie is too. That’s what’s interesting about it. It ushers us right inside the deluded, fraudulent, curious psychology of the Bakkers even more than the doc did. It may not be as good a film; but it does something a little different. That said, I don’t expect it to have much traction with audiences.”
Inside last night’s AMC Dine-In plex on Maxella, I ordered a regular-sized bag of popcorn and a Diet Coke. “That’ll be $18,” the girl said. Something froze inside, perhaps a twinge of hostility. I apologized and cancelled the order.
At the Aero on Montana, they call a popcorn and a small Coke combo a “Roosevelt” or something that sounds like that. The cost is $6 or thereabouts, maybe $7.
There’s a small restaurant-deli not far from the Maxella plex, across the street and 100 yards down. 45 minutes before the show, I ordered a small salad with two spicy meatballs on the side. I had envisioned a tab of $16 or $18 or $20, somewhere in that realm. “$26 plus a suggested tip of $4 for a total of $30,” the computer said. I politely cancelled the order.
Adding insult to injury to my AMC Dine-In experience, during the Noovies! promo crap that they show before the trailers and the feature, I had to watch Collider’s Perri Nemiroff announce a slate of hellish upcoming features (CG-driven, high-velocity, barf-bag franchise stuff). It has been my view all along that Nemiroff smiles too much, and way too strenuously at that. Now she’s shilling for Satan.
Plus our viewing experience was suffering from gross soundattenuation. As I struggled to hear Jessica Chastain and Andrew Garfield mouth Jim-and-Tammy dialogue, boomy bass tones from the theatre next door kept intruding. I could actually hear the melody from Lou Reed’s “A Perfect Day,” which is used for the Spencer trailer, bleeding through.
I’m thinking of a climactic scene from Roland Joffe‘s Fat Man and Little Boy when J. Robert Oppenheimer (Dwight Schultz), wearing tinted eye goggles, is witnessing the first nuclear explosion outside Los Alamos (or wherever it happened) from inside a sand-bag bunker, and kind of convulsing at the sight of it, the wind velocity causing his mouth to contort, exposing his teeth. At first he seems to be thinking “my God, what have we done?” Then you realize he’s excited by this stunning sight. Triumphant, in fact. High-fiving a colleague. Not “I am become death, destroyer of worlds” but “Yo, we did it!!!”
Give Joffe credit — this is a powerful cinematic moment.