This is not a mini-review but an acknowledgement that last night’s post-premiere tweets didn’t lie: Nothing more to say until the embargo breaks tonight (or technically tomorrow) at 12:01 am, but rest assured Star Wars: The Force Awakens hit the sweet spot with an overwhelming majority of last night’s premiere-attenders. Two or three guys were “meh”-ing it but everyone else was happy. Daisy Ridley and John Boyega (no longer a sanitation engineer in my head but a kind of a young and beautiful Muhammad Ali with drillbit eye contact and lightning-fast emotional reflexes) hit the pitches over and over with a nice clean crack-of-the-bat. Pic whooshes and soars and skims along in a super-efficient and “fan-friendly” way — you’d have to be some kind of committed shithead to put it down with any conviction. The premiere itself wasn’t a clusterfuck after all — huge but nicely handled — hats off to Disney. It felt cold as a witch’s tit in Chicago last night — windy, blustery. Even inside the big party tent. But the piping-hot mashed potatoes were delicious.
We all know that winning a Best Actor Oscar is not so much about the quality of a performance (although that obviously counts) as a compelling narrative that Academy voters want to cheer or express a kinship with. Two years ago Matthew McConaughey‘s narrative (actor saves career from romcom suffocation by switching to quality-level roles) won over Leonardo DiCaprio‘s (gifted, much-nominated actor delivers bravura, ironically over-the-top performance and scores big-time with legendary quaalude scene). This year DiCaprio, back in the game with his all-in Revenant performance, has a new compelling narrative — he suffered, he froze, he ate animal organs, he gutted a dead horse and crawled inside the carcass, he brilliantly simulated being attacked by a bear, etc.
But the suffering thing needs to be coupled with a supplementary narrative, which is that the Wolf quaalude scene is too good, too classic and too hilarious to have been deemed insufficient for a win. Amends need to be made. This is why Leo must and shall win over Black Mass‘s Johnny Depp. Depp, no question, gives a fascinating performance as a stone-cold sociopath but what’s the narrative? I’ll tell you what the narrative is. Depp was super-rich from the Pirate movies but he needed to expand his repertoire so he manned up and found his groove by wearing a heavily hair-sprayed Whitey Bulger wig and Alaskan-husky contact lenses.
No one is happy about plans to deliver Alien: Covenant, Ridley Scott‘s third Alien movie, on 10.6.17. Everyone worships the original, hugely influential Alien (’79) but despises the financially successful ($403 million) calamity d’estime that was Prometheus (’12). This latest and final Alien is, of course, an attempt to mitigate the horrid experience of Prometheus, a movie so infuriatingly awful that it launched the “Scott is over” meme. The compassionate thing would be to smother this project in the crib and never do another Alien movie ever again. Move on, find new worlds, create new poetry. But there’s big money to be made from Alien: Covenant, obviously, and so here we are. I’m sure Scott intends to deliver an Alien movie that the fans wanted from Prometheus but didn’t get.
I’m naturally presuming that the malevolent Damon Lindelof, mind-fucking predator and destroyer of realms, won’t be allowed with 500 miles of this project.
Prometheus “is impressively composed and colder than a witch’s boob in Siberia,” I wrote on 6.1.12. “It’s visually striking, spiritually frigid, emotionally unengaging, at times intriguing but never fascinating. It’s technically impressive, of course — what else would you expect from an expensive Scott sci-fier? And the scary stuff takes hold in the final third. But it delivers an unsatisfying story that leaves you…uhm, cold.
I haven’t time write a full-on review because of commitments to attend four schmooze parties today (brunches for Carol and Mr. Holmes‘ Ian McKellen at 11 am, a 3pm gathering for Beasts of No Nation and a soiree for the Spotlight gang at 5 pm), but my estimation of Adam McKay‘s The Big Short shot way up last night when I caught it for a second time. I still don’t get a good portion of the flim-flam jargon and I still find the financial milieu rank and appalling, but the second viewing was the charm. I honestly feel like a slightly wiser and better person for having seen it. Seriously…it expanded my horizons. Obviously not in a Bhagavad Gita sense but in a crusty, eye-rolling fashion. It’s not a rumor — we live in a country that is largely ruled by financial criminals and the people they’ve bought off.
The Big Short is a fascinating deep dive into a galaxy I’ve never really visited before, and after doing some research yesterday and skimming through the Michael Lewis book I suddenly awoke to the film, or somehow found that switch that allowed my brain to not only accept but savor what the movie is pushing.
Advice to HE readers: If you want to half-understand and therefore enjoy The Big Short, you need to do one of the following: (a) see it twice like I have — it really makes a difference, (b) acquire some personal experience in investments and/or the high-end financial markets, (c) arrange to be born into a wealthy, connected family that talks about financial crap at the breakfast table, or (d) be smarter than me, Scott Feinberg, Sasha Stone and other blogaroonies who had a little trouble with it the other night. But if you have more brain power, family wealth, some experience in the market and a willingness to see The Big Short a second time, the curtains will part and you’ll find a special arousal, a spark, a little bit of Tom Wolfe‘s “aha!” phenomenon.
The apparently troubled Jane Got A Gun will open in the U.S. next February. Two and two-thirds years ago (mid-March of 2013) director Lynn Ramsey quit the film and was quickly replaced by Gavin O’Connor (Warrior, Pride and Glory, Miracle). O’Connor is a good director but the vibes aren’t right. Wiki boilerplate: Pic was set to be distributed in the U.S. by Relativity Media on 8.29.14, but then Relativity cancelled that on 4.10.14, switching the opening to a 2.20.15 release, which was then shifted to 9.4.15. And then Relativity sold the film to the Weinstein Co. amid their filing for bankruptcy. Pic opens in France on 11.25.
On top of which there’s my Joel Edgerton problem — i.e., whatever he’s in, I’ve learned that I probably won’t like it. The last full-bore Edgerton performance I’ve been down with was in Animal Kingdom. (He was fine in Zero Dark Thirty but that was barely more than a muscle cameo.) I didn’t like him in Black Mass or The Gift. I didn’t like him as Ramses in Exodus: Gods and Kings or as Tom Buchanan in The Great Gatsby. He’s marginally more tolerable than Ben Mendelsohn but that’s not saying much.
Jane Got A Gun is basically Edgerton and Natalie Portman up against a passel of bad guys, including Ewan McGregor.
Wells to Universal: “Please hint that you’re thinking about maybe platforming Joel and Ethan Coen‘s Hail Caesar! sometime in December before the wide break in February? Just for the fun of it? I’ve read the script and it’s a peach, this thing. It’ll be great to have a Coen Bros. knucklehead comedy to put on my Ten Best of 2015 list.” By the way: If you look at the cast list on the Hail, Casear! Wikipedia Page you’ll notice that Patrick Fischler, David Krumholtz and Fisher Stevens portray “Communist screenwriter[s]” and that Dolph Lundgren plays “a Soviet submarine commander.” Do the math. Wouldn’t it be a kick, hypothetically speaking, if an early ’50s Hollywood farce was predicated on the notion that HUAC, John Wayne, Cecil B. Demille, Robert Taylor, Adolphe Menjou, Gary Cooper and all the other witch-hunters were right? And that there was, in fact, a cabal of Hollywood commie screenwriters in league with Stalinist Russia, and that they were plotting to undermine American Democratic values and maybe even take over? New Beverly double-bill in July 2016: Hail Caesar! and Jay Roach‘s Trumbo.
I attended this morning’s press screening of Robert Zemeckis‘ The Walk at IMAX headquarters in Playa del Rey. I found the first 100 minutes fairly dreadful — over-acted, “cute”, hamboned, like some kind of Gene Kelly musical…as manipulative and ungenuine and disrespectful of reality as any Hollywood bullshit fantasy you’ve ever sat through. But the last 25 minutes deliver one of the greatest visual knockout experiences I’ve ever seen on an IMAX screen. This finale is so good that I have no choice to but recommend The Walk despite all the awful stuff.
Yes, that’s my review in a nutshell — The Walk will make you feel nauseous but you need to see the finale so I’m sorry but you’ll have to suffer through it. 98% of the time a movie that drives you nuts for the first three-quarters will deliver a sucky finish. But not this time.
What Zemeckis has done is take the real-life, inspirational saga of wire-walker Phillippe Petit (played by Joseph Gordon Levitt), the ginger-haired Frenchman who walked on a wire between the World Trade Center towers eight times on the morning of 8.7.74, and turn it into cliched, manipulative, family-friendly oatmeal.
James Marsh‘s Man on Wire (’09) took the exact same material and made one of the most fascinating and spiritually uplifting docs of the 21st Century. Zemeckis’ film is basically Man on Wire for megaplex idiots — for the fine citizens who need to feel scared or awed and have everything spelled out for them, as if they’re eight or nine years old. If you’re a fan of dumbing stuff down for whatever reason, you’ll love The Walk. It has laughs, charm, love, silliness, slapstick, quirky humor, thrills, passion, suspense! And broad strokes every which way. And that knockout ending!
I now have a good idea what it was like for Petit to walk between the towers on that fateful morning. Seriously. Try watching this segment without moaning or groaning or gripping your knees. Try looking down 110 stories in 3D from Petit’s POV. Go ahead, give it a shot. The words “holy” and “shit” will form in your mind. Whether or not you say them is up to you.
The notion that Eddie Redmayne might win a second Best Actor Oscar for his performance as Einer Wegener/Lili Elbe in Tom Hooper‘s The Danish Girl (Focus Features, 11.27) died last night in Toronto.
Okay, it didn’t die but it certainly downshifted. And the cause of that downshift was the film itself, a reasonably decent effort which screened for press & industry yesterday morning and the public last night. It seemed to play well enough, but it didn’t seem to lift anyone off the ground either. And Redmayne seems caught in a kindly web of calculation. As submissive and devotional and brave as his performance is — you have to give him credit and respect for really letting Lili into his soul — the effort is gently muffled by Lucinda Coxon‘s script (based on David Evershoff‘s same-titled book) and Hooper’s direction, which feels overly poised and burnished and finally confining.
The Danish Girl is a finely rendered, exquisitely sensitive, middle-of-the-road Oscar-bait film that will win respect and applause among the 50-plus Hollywood guild & Academy set. But it’s almost bloodless — well acted, handsomely captured and intriguing to some extent, lulling and softly emotional but never fascinating and absolutely dead fucking terrified of doing or saying anything that might be construed as brash or nervy or irreverent or out of synch with today’s p.c. drumbeat.
I felt like I was outside this movie all the way through, and while it’s extremely subtle and well-tuned, I decided at the 45-minute mark that I probably don’t want to watch it a second time. It certainly doesn’t pop any corks or build enough steam to make any tea kettles whistle. I appreciated the effort but I didn’t feel engaged, and I even felt bored from time to time.
You have to get out and about, and you can’t give in to paranoia. You have to trust in the basic decency of the vast majority of people walking around. I do, at least. If there’s something twitchy in some guy walking down the aisles at Thrifty or CVS you can always sense this on some level so you just have to play it by ear and hope for the best. But deep down there’s a general feeling out there that a significant percentage of wacko types (which society has always had) are ready to go postal at any moment, and the recent shooting in Virginia is the latest of many, many reminders. It’s a very small percentage, thank fate and fortune, and an even smaller micro-percentage in liberal enclaves like West Los Angeles, but there’s nonetheless a tiny sliver of the populace today that is ready to murder strangers or co-workers or children in an elementary school when they reach their breaking point. I really, really don’t remember this malignancy being as noticable or persistent in…I don’t know when it began to seem more ominous. It’s been creeping and spreading outward for decades, but it seems to have gotten worse over the last 10 or 15 years. Post-9/11, post-Obama’s election…something. Obviously I realize that “seems” is not a statistical reality. I agree, in any case, with everything Cenk Uygur says here:
Yesterday a tally of the best (i.e., most popular, significant, important or essential) films by women directors surfaced on Cinemafanatic.com, a blog by movie-worshipper and journalistic pinch-hitter Marya Gates. The list came from a poll that Gates conducted of “over 500 critics, filmmakers, bloggers, historians, professors and casual film viewers.” I agree with nearly every film that made it. Not with the rankings in some cases, but the list is a reasonable one. Except, that is, for Amy Heckerling‘s Clueless being the #1 film of them all.
True, Clueless has 142 votes compared to the 144 votes cast for Sofia Coppola‘s Lost in Translation so maybe Gates just forget to switch them out, but even Clueless in second place is pretty weird. Clueless above Zero Dark Thirty, The Piano, The Hurt Locker, Orlando, Winter’s Bone, et. al.?
Awards Daily‘s Sasha Stone posted a piece about the poll earlier today and had this to say:
“Again, not criticizing Clueless but to me when you’re talking about ‘best’ you’re not talking about ‘favorite.’ You’re talking about incomparable works of art that are unequivocal. The Coen brothers, Scorsese, Hitchcock, Fincher, Coppola, Welles…on the female side, Campion, Bigelow, Wertmuller, Kent, Coppola, Ramsay, DuVernay, etc. I’m going to say it because probably no one else will. No one wants to be the one who is the asshole in the room shitting all over something as beautiful as this poll. And I’m not shitting on it. I’m not even shitting on Clueless.
“I’m just saying that if women want to really compete, if they want to really be taken seriously as artists on par with their male counterparts, we have to up the game a little here.”
Thanks to Forbes.com’s Natalie Robehmed and her 8.20 story about the highest-paid actresses over the last 12 months, I’m finally paying attention to Bingbing Fan, a hot Chinese actress who pulled down $21 million (pre-tax) from roles in X-Men: Days of Future Past and The White-Haired Witch of Lunar Kingdom plus commercial endorsement revenue from Chopard and L’Oreal. Fine. Hello, Bingbing!
And now that I’ve made Ms. Fan’s acquaintance, I’d…well, I think I’d like to go back to not contemplating her if that’s okay. It’s not just my aversion to Asian cinema (sorry) and particularly historical Asian cinema (especially if it involves swords) but…I’m not going to go there. Let’s drop it.
The big news about the Forbes survey is not that all these women are doing so well but that guys are getting paid a lot more.
How many of the top earners made their dough by acting in really good films and how many brought in the dough with shitty mass-market projects and/or commercial endorsements? Just about all of them.
I’ve never felt any kinship with Hillary Clinton, but a press-conference remark that she shared yesterday in Las Vegas not only made me laugh — it almost made me want to hug her. From The Hill‘s Ben Kamisar: “Asked if her email server, which has been turned over to the Department of Justice, had been wiped clean, Clinton initially shrugged and later joked, ‘Like with a cloth or something? I don’t know how it works digitally at all.'”
Clinton may have had dark Machiavellian reasons for deleting all those emails, but I suspect that most of the tale is contained within that “cloth” quote. Like many boomer and GenX women I’ve known, Clinton is just a technical klutz. That’s it. Coupled with her natural tendency towards secrecy and paranoid thinking about the people who are out to get her, that’s probably the whole thing. If she was more knowledgable about email accounts and had to do it all over again, she’d almost certainly not repeat this mistake. But she made it and now she’s stuck in it.
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