I was thrown pretty hard by that early Oppenheimer scene with the poisoned green apple. Actually a lethal apple, injected by Cillian Murphy‘s titular character with liquid cyanide. The intended victim is Patrick Blackett (James Darcy), a Cambridge University instructor and physicist whom Oppie despises.

At the very last minute Oppie comes to his senses, realizes that murdering a professor may impact his life adversely, runs back to the classroom and prevents the apple from being consumed. Except the guy who almost bites into it isn’t Blackett but Danish physicist Niels Bohr (Kenneth Branagh).

Post-injection my immediate thoughts were (a) “the fuck?”, (b) “What kind of loose-cannon psycho twerp is this asshole? Who does this kind of thing?”; (c) “Oppie almost killed once so who’s the next possible victim? Will he strangle Florence Pugh‘s Jean Tatlock after having sex with her? Will he stab Robert Downey, Jr.‘s Lewis Strauss in the back of the neck with an icepick?

Once you’ve opened the Pandora’s Box of premeditated murder, character-wise you can’t close it. And so the cyanide apple half-hovers over the entire film. Or it did for me, at least.

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It was apparent earlier today that some are still clinging to the idea that Alan Parker and Bo Goldman‘s Shoot The Moon (’82) is a formidable, first-rate family melodrama. I thought it was a gloomy drag when I first saw it 41 years ago, and I feel the same today. Here’s how I put it on 10.2.21, in the wake of Albert Finney‘s passing:

A few weeks after Finney’s death I re-watched Alan Parker and Bo Goldman‘s’s Shoot The Moon (’82). Not on Amazon, but on the big screen at Hollywood’s American Cinematheque.

It didn’t work out. The film drove me nuts from the get-go, mainly because of the use of solitary weeping scenes (three or four within the first half-hour) and the relentless chaotic energy from the four impish daughters of Finney and Diane Keaton. It was getting late and I just couldn’t take it. I bailed at the 45-minute mark.

The “obnoxious argument in a nice restaurant” scene indicates what’s wrong with the film. It has a striking, abrasive vibe, but it doesn’t work because there’s no sense of social or directorial restraint. If only Parker had told Finney and Keaton to try and keep their voices down in the early stages, and then gradually lose control. Nobody is this gauche, this oblivious to fellow diners.

The balding, red-haired guy with his back to the camera (James Cranna) played “Gerald” in the Beverly Hills heroin-dealing scene in Karel Reisz‘s Who’ll Stop The Rain?.

Which other films aspire to be as relentlessly gloomy as Shoot The Moon? I’m talking about films that give you no mirth, no oxygen. A steady drip-drip-drip of depression, foul moods, anger, downishness.

The downside being that Elvis Presley is played by a towering, Paul Bunyan-sized Jacob Elordi, and lead protagonist Priscilla is played by a nearly dwarf-sized Cailee Spaeny.

The Barbera quote is from a 7.25 Deadline interview, posted by Andreas Wiseman.

via GIPHY

From Richard Brody‘s 7.26 review of Chris Nolan‘s Oppenheimer:

Thanks all the same but that’s still a hard “ixnay.”

After much thought and consternation I’ve decided that grief recovery dramas are a bad thing to wade into, and that they’re actually a sub-genre of sorts…a shamelessly whorish one.

And that’s not a putdown of Manchester From The Sea because Casey Affleck doesn’t recover from grief at the end — he’s stuck in the swamp and will never climb out.

The only grief recovery drama I’ve truly admired is Robert Redford‘s Ordinary People (’80) — the sadness in that film gets me each and every time.

Otherwise I’ve had it with this genre. HE to grieving characters: I’m not saying “snap out of it!” like Cher in Moonstruck, but I am saying i’ve no interest in holding your clammy hand as you moan and writhe and quake with sorrow.

Note: I’m not referring to real life and actual grief, of course, but to the exploitation of same by the wrong people.

I’ve no sympathy or empathy for a rock musician who wrote, sang, played and struggled his way up the ladder and into a hallowed realm of fame, acclaim and considerable wealth, and then turned around and said time and again that he was “uncomfortable” with fame. Poor baby. Life is so hard.

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Not coming to a theatre near you. Not even playing at a North American film festival (including Telluride!). Because the monsters are calling the shots on Maple Street, and that means Polanski’s The Palace has also been kibboshed.

James Stewart was committed to wearing rugs from around 1949 or ‘50 onward. And yes, okay, I guess his thinning thatch during the making of Rear Window (‘54) made him look “older” and therefore too old for the 24 year-old Grace Kelly. I get all that. But he wasn’t that far gone.

You can immediately feel confidence and stylistic swagger in this scene from Roman Polanski‘s The Palace. The lighting and staging and whipsmart dialogue and generally disciplined atmosphere are aces…anything but rote. It’s obvious that a major-league director shot and blocked this scene out to the last precise detail.

If it wasn’t Polanski at the helm of this dark period comedy (shot in Gstaad), it could be early ’70s Bernardo Bertolucci or Luchino Visconti.

The cinematographer is Pawel Edelman (The Pianist, An Officer and a Spy, The Ghost Writer).

So that’s not Mads Mikkelsen as the top hotel guy? MM isn’t listed in the IMDB or Wikipedia credits, but it sure looks like him (or his twin brother).

I would much rather see The Palace than sit through Kate Winslet‘s Lee, which will debut in Toronto. Winslet trashed Polanski and Woody Allen three years ago, and I’m not about to forgive her any time soon.

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