At 11 am this morning I caught Potsy Ponciroli‘s Motor City, an animal-level exploitation bruiser (set in 1977 Detroit!) that’s noteworthy for experimenting with crafting a grotesquely violent cheeseball revenge-splatter film with almost zero dialogue.

Last night (Friday) I saw Jane Pollard and Iain Forsyth‘s Broken English (the Marianne Faithful tribute doc, running 96 minutes) and Kent Jones‘ Late Fame (also 96 minutes!), and I can’t really write about either with a 10:15 pm screening of Jim Jarmusch‘s Father Mother Sister Brother breathing down my neck.

It’s a shitty feeling, being this far behind. Sometimes I’m able to just bang stuff out
willy-nilly, and other times it’s a struggle.

Even if I was flush, I wouldn’t pay $500 per night for any Venice hotel room. (I would, however, pay $500 for a perfect pair of Italian-made suede lace-ups, if money was no object. Or the right kind of sweater or suit.) And yet you can’t say that these videos, forwarded by festival-attending friends, don’t convey a certain lusciousness. Worth $500 per night? You tell me.

It’s important to watch these videos with good, strong sound.

I don’t have instant comprehensive recall of each and chapter of Seymour Hersh‘s reporting career, but I know a lot about it.

Seven years ago I read a few chapters from Hersh’s “Reporter“, and it was almost entirely riveting.

So I wasn’t exactly blown away by Laura Poitras and Mark Obenhaus‘s Cover-Up, as I knew many of the stories and details and whatnot. It was nonetheless immensely soothing to watch.

Anyone with the slightest interest in Hersh’s work or who understands that the calibre of journalism that Hersh delivered in the ’60s, ’70s, ’80s and ’90s is pretty much absent today, please see it for affirmation’s sake. Even those who know nothing of Hersh’s work, seeing Cover-Up is pretty close to essential. The thought is that others might try to follow Hersh’s example, and that it can only do good to spread the gospel.

From Hersh’s “Looking for Calley“, published in a 2018 issue of Harpers

Hersh: By early 1969, most of the members of Charlie Company had completed their tours and returned home. I was then a thirty-two-year-old freelance reporter in Washington, D.C. Determined to understand how young men — boys, really — could have done this, I spent weeks pursuing them. In many cases, they talked openly and, for the most part, honestly with me, describing what they did at My Lai and how they planned to live with the memory of it.

In testimony before an Army inquiry, some of the soldiers acknowledged being at the ditch but claimed that they had disobeyed Calley, who was ordering them to kill. They said that one of the main shooters, along with Calley himself, had been Private First Class Paul Meadlo. The truth remains elusive, but one G.I. described to me a moment that most of his fellow-soldiers, I later learned, remembered vividly. At Calley’s order, Meadlo and others had fired round after round into the ditch and tossed in a few grenades.

“Nightmare From half A Century Ago“, an HE post that appeared on 6.17.18:

It’s hard to set aside time to read a book when you’re already putting in several hours a day on a column plus the usual chores, reveries and occasional screenings. Last night I nonetheless read five or six chapters of Seymour Hersh‘s “Reporter“, which hit stores less than two weeks ago.

I read the ones about Hersh serving as an Associated Press Pentagon reporter and as press secretary for the presidential campaign of Eugene McCarthy in late ’67 and ’68, and two chapters about his breaking the My Lai massacre story — “Finding Calley” and “A National Disgrace.”

Of course and indisputably, “Reporter” is a page-turner. First-rate writing and reporting — pruned to the bone, no wasted words. I was completely hooked and immersed, and then appalled all over again when I got to the Calley chapter. After I finished I found “Finding Calley” in a recent Harper’s post.

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I don’t care if Gavin Newsom has personal flaws…who doesn’t? I don’t care if he’s fucked up here and there. I don’t care if he was complicit in allowing San Francisco to become the leading American poop-on-the-sidewalks city….a city in which unchallenged shoplifting and breaking into parked cars became an accepted thing. And I don’t care if he seems hollow, or even if he is hollow to a certain extent.

I certainly don’t approve of Newsom’s views on gender-affirming care, which he needs to evolve out of. But being a tap-dancer, he probably will.

What I do care about is that Newsom is more or less sane, and that he’s standing up against Trump in various showboating, muscle-car ways…I care that a big-state governor is flat-out calling Trump a bad guy and defying his ass and telling him to go eff himself. Because Newsom believes in and stands for, at the very least, a pre-Trumpian sense of decency and constitutional normality and proportionality…he supports a pretty good semblance of representative democracy, and that really matters. He leans left but is primarily a skillful tap-dancer…he’s mainly fluid and adaptable…he blows with the wind, and that’s all you can expect of a clever politician these days.

I would much rather see him move into the Oval Office on 1.20.29 than J.D. Vance…c’mon.

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…or you’re fucked. Saturday tourist groups ruin everything. They’ve always been a kind of plague, and have certainly ruined my day thus far.

Update: I barely managed to attend my 11 am screening of Vladlena Sandu‘s Memory, a personal recollection doc about the horrid Chechnyan war trauma of the ’90s. I entered the darkened Sala Serla with seconds to spare.

How moved or devastated did I feel while watching Sandu’s “hypnotic prose poem” (per Deadline‘s Damon Wise)? It’s quietly impactful and sobering, but it’s fair to respectfully note that the idea of war in any form being a hellish, brutalizing experience for combatants and civilians alike…I had contemplated this bruising reality countless times before this morning’s screening. That said, Sandu’s film us quite jolting, harrowing. Full respect.

The enclosed Lido village that the Venice Film Festival folks maintain is so damn fraternal and comforting. It’s all green and grand and flush and pine-scenty, and the cappuccinos at the indoor and outdooor cafes (at least three or four) are transporting.

Everyone is cool and approved, wearing lanyard press badges or the purchased kind, and there are no loud vulgarians or drunken gigglers. It’s all cool and settled down, everyone floating on the same vibe. It’s like being a member of some kind of flush, elegant country club on the Adriatic.

Many of us know what hardcore film festivals are like —- 18 hour days, fighting exhaustion at every turn — and it’s no vacation, but at the same time we’re all channeling a certain communal spirit. And the early-morning and late-night vaporetto rides are calming and altogether wonderful.

It rained heavily late last night, and again this afternoon. You just roll with it.

I’m back in Castello now, sitting solitary at a plastic cafe table. A half-hour ago the midnight church bell rang, echoing all over the city. Like the bells of Notre Dame.

Tonight’s screenings were Broken English and Late Fame. Both are about intimate portraiture, modest and soft-spoken and internal, and I don’t mind saying I found them touching and actually delightful.

I immediately fell in love with the opening frames of Luca Guadagnino‘s After The Hunt, or more precisely the amplified sound of a slowly ticking clock — an aural statement that says “ominous stuff is brewing, you bet.”

Though I was fully familiar with the basic story bones, having read an early draft of Nora Garrett‘s original screenplay, a #MeToo rape accusation drama mostly set on the Yale campus, I was pulled in all over again.

Largely because After The Hunt is not a simple point-and-shoot capturing of Garrett’s script, but a Guadagnino re-think…a stirring, a modification, an enhancement. Assured, unforced and deliberate, Luca’s version fascinates by not pushing too hard…by advancing the campus mystery in a gradual, step-by-step way.

I was actually kind of startled — pleasantly — by his decision to keep things on the subdued side. No sharply raised voices or glaring expressions or slamming doors or anyone throwing things around.

Except, that is, for a tantrum thrown by Andrew Garfield’s Hank Gibson, a professor who’s up for tenure — a reaction to his having been accused of sexually assaulting Ayo Edibiri‘s Maggie Price, an allegedly mediocre philosophy student, the daughter of super-wealthy parents, and a lesbian.

Maggie is a key story figure, not just because of this alleged assault but also because of her protege relationship with Julia Roberts‘ Alma Imhoff, a whipsmart, well-liked, seriously admired Yale professor who’s also in line for tenure. (It’s an either-or choice between Alma and Hank.) But as things develop and social pressure increases, Alma and Maggie’s relationship becomes less and less trusting, and then tips over into hostility.

I was mostly taken by a tone of ambiguity that manifests in the third act. A haunting ambiguity mixed with stabs of suspicion. And, not incidentally, by a somewhat instructive score by Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross.

Did a drunken Hank in fact assault Maggie after a boozy, low-key party at the home of Alma and Fredrik, her bearded, laser-focused psychiatrist husband (Michael Stuhlbarg)? Who’s lying or fudging the truth?

I for one didn’t want to believe Maggie’s accusation, as she is an all-too-typical, hyper-sensitive, woked-up Zoomer…a product of #MeToo theology who seemingly lives to take offense or at least sneer at white-male privilege, and seems almost eager to unsheath the deer rifle and plug Garfield.

Hank doesn’t respect Maggie, by the way, because he strongly suspects that she’s plagiarized a social-analysis essay she’s been working on for quite some time.

Through an array of voices, Guadagnino’s rewrite doesn’t shrink from sharing disdainful, eye-rolling views of the recent #MeToo terror climate and the general “all white guys are bad” belief system, and so I, gripped by ny own persuasions, was hoping Maggie would get some kind of comeuppance.

Alas, things are not that simple.

The only thing that threw me was the appearance of Maggie’s girlfriend, Alex, who is played by Lio Mehiel, a gay female who uses “they” pronouns and, to my surprise, has absolutely no breasts at all, and I mean not even the tell-tale surgical scars that some lesbians have after boob-removing surgery.

Last February I wrote that Garrett’s screenplay “feels like a splicing of Todd Field‘s TAR, David Mamet‘s Oleanna and Ruben Ostlund‘s The Square.”

This is pretty much how the film feels, although Ostlund’s satirical jabbing was far more pronounced. Hunt leaves you to grapple with your own persuasions and suspicions. It is my take (feel free to disagree) that the film offers no final, clear-cut resolution that delivers an unmistakable unmasking of the more or less guilty party (or parties). It doesn’t fully exonerate anyone while keeping at least a couple of doors ajar.

This, I feel, is what makes After The Hunt such a fascinating adult drama. It basically says “what a hard-to-figure shit show these poor academics are caught up in.” Hell, all of us.

I also loved that Guadagnino’s voice — his actual, literal voice — chimes in at the very end, although I won’t say how.

I also wrote that Garrett’s screenplay planted “expectations of Roberts’ performance possibly stirring convos about a Best Actress trophy”, as she’s “playing one of those well-sculpted, sturm und drang roles that older actresses have always pined for.”

This still seems likely but what do I know? Alma is definitely a hider with a major buried secret that doesn’t surface until things have reached a breaking point. She’s certainly no fighter for any kind of ultimate truth, and she’s suffered a social beating that will reverberate big-time.

I firmly decided last night to duck this morning’s 8:30 am screenng of Park Chan–Wook‘s No Other Choice, and I don’t care about the hosannas that the whore contingent is sharing now.

Every time I see a Park Chan-Wook film, I have the same damn reaction — full respect for the visual chops (he’s quite the purveyor of cinematic swoon…a major stylistic maestro) with plot and character internals that feel thin and infuriating.

I’m not saying I won’t see it down the road, or that PCW isn’t a respected filmmaker. But after stumbling into the apartment last night at 1 am after an 18-hour day, soaked and whipped, I definitely didn’t feel that No Other Choice was worth the pain of rising at 6 am.

Dogged rush-line persistence got me into last night’s 7:30 pm press screening of Luca Guadagnino‘s After The Hunt…eureka! (HE’s approving review posts this evening, roughly 12 hours from now.) And then I went straight into Cover-Up, the life-of-Seymour Hersh documentary by Laura Poitras and Mark Obenhaus….also posting this evening, but it was pure journalistic pleasure.

Three films on today’s agenda, although this could get whittled down to two — Giulio Bertelli‘s The Pornographer (an LBGTQ entry), Iain Forsyth and Jane Pollard‘s Broken English, some kind of doc hybrid (“a genre-defying act of resilience and rebellion”) about the late Marianne Faithfull(7:45 pm), and Kent Jones‘ Late Fame (9:30 pm).

It was raining fairly heavily when the MC vaporetto dropped me at the San Zacarria-San Marco stop around 12:30 am. No umbrella — I just trudged on through, arriving at the Calle de la Vida apartment pretty much soaked to the bone.

24 hours previously, or around midnight on Wednesday, 8.27 and near the same San Zaccaria location, I came upon a team of EMTs (emergency medical technicians) working on a seriously overweight woman who had collapsed and was lying on her back. She was breathing, at least, but clearly in trouble — they were using what looked to me like an electric jolt device, presumably to get her heart going.

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Noah Baumbach‘s Jay Kelly (Netflix, 11.14) — a reflection-and-meditation piece about a 60ish movie star’s life (in some respects literally George Clooney’s, one gathers or infers, and doubly so during a tribute at the very end which presents a montage of Clooney’s films) — is actually pretty good, and it ends in a very affecting and bittersweet way.

It’s a summary of a rich guy and his famous life and what it’s all meant or seems to mean, and the final emotional residue in terms of friends, family, selfishness, distractions, blessings, highs and lows…really the whole magillah.

It’s generally fast and fleeting and briskly assembled, and is actually reminiscent, in some respects and as curious as this may sound, of Charles Dickens‘ “A Christmas Carol” (in particular the 1951 film version that Brian Desmond Hurst directed and which Alistair Sim brought to life), especially as the film is largely about Clooney’s Kelly absorbing a series of some uncomfortable and sometimes painful realizations about how his business associates, old friends and especially his two daughters really feel about him.

It’s not a masterwork — it doesn’t feel heavy or deep enough, and seems a bit facile at times — and it’s certainly not on the corrupted-adult level of Tony Gilroy‘s Michael Clayton, in which Clooney gave his finest performance.

But Clooney plays it openly and with vulnerability — he knows this line of country like the back of his hand — and the film itself conveys, persuades, penetrates. It sells its own movie-star, “this is the life he’s chosen” narrative.

At times Jay Kelly feels a bit old-fashioned — very “scripted”, very “acted” and a little schmaltzy here and there, and the visual flashback transitions are almost on the level of The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance (’62).

But it finally feels whole and melancholy and solemnly considered, especially at the very end. It’s expansive and exploratory and fully felt, and is very well acted by not just Clooney but by Adam Sandler (as Jay’s manager), Laura Dern (publicist), Billy Crudup (former acting buddy), Riley Keough (daughter #1), Grace Edwards (daughter #2) and Stacy Keach (roguishly “charming” dad on the downswing).

Jay Kelly is a show and a “movie” but it works according to its own delivery terms, and is certainly better than I thought it would be, and the final line absolutely kills — it even brought a tear to my eye.

It’s therefore a solid A-minus or a B-plus, and Clooney and Sandler really touch bottom, bring the goods.

Quibble #1: Everyone in Kelly’s inner circle has pretty much written him off emotionally. They regard him as flaky, immature, undependable, self-absorbed. But that’s what many big-time actors are for the most part, no? Doesn’t everyone accept this? Many and probably most famous actors are in love with themselves first, and their family and friends second. Big deal. Roll with it.

Quibble #2: Billy Crudup plays a 50ish might-have-been actor who resents and is actually enraged at Kelly for having stolen a key part that Crudup had auditioned for and badly wanted at the time, but the annals of film acting are filled with stories about a friend who was just tagging along who wound up getting the role from an impromptu audition instead of the primary guy. Just because Crudup was extra-hungry for the role in question doesn’t mean he was entitled to it, or that he was right for it. Mature people understand that life can be an unfair.

Quibble #3: Nobody would ever refer to a big film tribute event taking place in “Tuscany”…they would say Siena or Florence or Volterra or Radda in Chianti. Just like no one would talk about a similar-type event in the States happening in the “Deep South” or the “Pacific Northwest.”