Two days ago and nearly six years after debuting at the 2019 Venice Film Festival, Roman Polanski‘s An Officer and a Spy finally opened stateside, courtesy of a two-week booking at Manhattan’s Film Forum.

80% of the critics reviewed the actual film as opposed to Polanski’s decades-old personal history, and were naturally, totally thumbs up. There is simply no intelligent way to pan this brilliant film.

20% of the critics chose to review Polanski instead of the film, and these virtue signalling prigs were mixed-positive (but mostly kinda mixed).

You can feel Manohla Dargis’s clenched discomfort at having to acknowledge that An Officer and a Spy “is well-crafted…Polanski’s movies generally are.” And her subsequent relief when she adds that the film’s “contribution to cinema’s role in historical storytelling seems largely as an allegory about Polanski.”

Will there be any other theatrical bookings? Will an HD streaming version be made available? Right now, as before, the only way to see AOAAS is via some pirate torrent or by buying the English-subtitled Russian Bluray, a copy of which is sitting on one of my Bluray shelves.

It’s also the only kind that never dims in intensity, and certainly never runs out of fuel.

The fact that the bearer is guaranteed to suffer is almost rote as almost everyone who’s fallen head-over-heels knows (or eventually comes to know) that “love hurts”…that emotional anguish and even humiliation are almost always part of the deal.

And I don’t want to hear about enduring love between longtime silver-haired marrieds being just as strong and blissful and life-sustaining as ever. That kind of love-through-the-=decades is fine and good and certainly nourishing in a quietly slumbering, almost-nodding-off sort of way, but it doesn’t hurt, and if you can’t feel that terrible stab in the chest, where’s the dimensional residue?

Excellent Lolita montage by HD Film Tributes.

Sinners and Weapons are both supernatural horror films, snd are therefore occupying the same award-season popcorn genre slot. The problem for Sinners is that Weapons is a far superior film. This will soon be known everywhere, by everyone. At which point Sinners will begin to experience a precipitous drop in terms of Oscar nom cred…sorry.

Many will insist that Sinners is the “better” of the two, and that will be their right as citizens of a great democracy. But alongside Weapons, Sinners (which will still be nominated in this or that category because of the identity component) is now more or less finished…no longer the hot-to-trot, bold-as-brass, multi-category contender because Weapons is the sexy new gunslinger in town, and that’s life in the big city, unfair as this sounds.

This will sound funny coming from me, what with my constant contempt for spoiler whiners since this column launched 21 years ago. But you really, really don’t want to read any reviews of Zach Cregger ‘s Weapons before seeing it.

It follows that the community conversation is sure to spill over and spoil. Stay away from X and Reddit chatter and just hightail it down to the plex. I’ll post a deeper-into-it piece sometime tomorrow or maybe Sunday.

I saw it last night in a fairly virginal state, and “blown away” is a reasonably accurate, non-hyperbolic description of my reaction.

I wasn’t just gripped and fascinated by the radical strategy of shifting POVs with occasional plot-point overlaps. I was almost completely unable to guess what would happen next, and you really don’t want to ruin things by reading discussions. And the finale…amazing!

I hate low-rent horror, and Weapons certainly isn’t that — it’s fucking elevated, man! I haven’t been this knocked out by…let’s call it a “horror exercise” rather than a mere horror film…by any thing in this realm since The Babadook.

Except Cregger isn’t just a grade-A horror film guy…he’s a grade–A filmmaker.

All hail Variety’s Peter Debruge for comparing Weapons to a classic, sporadically horrific Grimm Brothers fairy tale (remember the bear slicing open his own stomach? Hansel and Gretel munching on the witch’s fingers?). Totally spot-on.

And an extra-hearty bro hug for Josh Brolin, who has the lead male role but also executive produced this fucking thing. Weapons is absolutely one of the wowser highlights of Brolin’s career, right up there with No Country for Old Men.

When my 6:45 pm Weapons showing ended, a guy sitting behind me clapped and went “whoo-whoo!”

Even when people like a film, they rarely ever clap. This film is masterful…a landmark thing.

Jordan Ruimy agrees with my take and wouldn’t be surprised, he said this morning, if it generates Oscar buzz.

However honestly or dishonestly, this Waltzing with Brando trailer is presenting a film that is more or less a low-key goofball farce. Ghosts can’t throw up, of course, but at the very least Brando’s ghost is wretching.

Yes, I realize that trailers routinely lie and that the film (Iconic, 9.19) may be better than the sell.

On top of which Waltzing, directed and written by Bill Fishman and set between 1969 and 1974, side-dips into the whole Last Tango in Paris thing with Maria Schneider and Bernardo Bertolucci, only a few months after Being Maria screened in NYC.

Read more

If I, an audience member, never watch a depiction of a 19th Century public hanging in which the condemned (a dude) not only experiences sexual arousal but jizz-spurts in front of onlookers as he succumbs to strangulation…if I never sit through such a spectacle (let alone one in a reputedly grotesque Emerald Fennell film) it’ll be too soon.

Compassionate hangman to condemned man: “Do you want to die with your britches on or off? I ask because you may want to maintain a vestige of dignity during your final moment of life. What’s that? To hell with dignity? You want your britches off and your fully tumescent schlong in full view of the citizenry…women, children and nuns?”

The rhythm guitar is catchy as fuck. Joe Walsh is the meastro, I presume.

The Bear’s Ayo Edibiri is obviously surging career-wise. She’s a first-rate actress as far as the Emmy voters are concerned, and her performance as an ambitious academic type in Luca Guadagnino’s After The Hunt, premiering later this month in Venice, will certainly intensify her brand.

And I’m talking about internals here. All the Lido critics and hotshots, trust me, will be fixating on her character’s personality, character, integrity. This is key.

There is nonetheless a sexual aspect to consider (her character alleges that she was assaulted), and even with a general understanding that sexual assault has relatively little to do with an alleged victim’s basic allure, it still has something to do with it…c’mon.

There has to be a non-inflammatory way of saying that whatever Edibiri is thought to possess or radiate as a respected actress, hetero hottie vibes are not part of the package.

Am I allowed to state the obvious, which is that Ayo is no Gugu Mbatha-Raw, no Lena Horne, no Lupita Nyongo, no Whitney Houston, no Diahann Carroll, no Iman, no Rihanna, no Janelle Monae, no Beyoncé, no Zendaya, no Cassie Ventura? Or is this a verboten thing to mention?

Friendo: “Because she’s black and queer and a good actress, she’s the perfect virtue signal.”

Pauline Kael review of Vincent Minnelli’s Two Weeks in Another Town:

Initially posted on 6.17.22:

Joseph McBride to Hal Ashby after early Star Wars screening: “Your kinda days are over, Hal.”
Ashby to McBride: “What about yours, film critic?”
McBride to Ashby: “The difference is I know it.”
Ashby to McBride: “All right, so we’ll all turn in our Arriflxes and Avid editing machines to the Academy, and we’ll all go to work at Pink’s. Is that it?”
McBride to Ashby: “Not quite yet. [turns to George Lucas, standing nearby] We haven’t heard from your friend here.”
Lucas: “I wouldn’t push too far if I were you. Our fight ain’t with you.”
McBride: “It ain’t with me, Lucas?”
Lucas: “No, it ain’t, Joe.”
Ashby: “I wouldn’t pull on Lucas, Joe. [to Will Atkey] Will, you’re a witness to this.”
McBride: “So you’re George Lucas.”
Lucas: “What’s that mean to you, Joe?”
McBride: “I’ve heard about you.”
Lucas: “And what’ve you heard, Joe?”
McBride: “I’ve heard that your movies are injecting an infantile serum into American commercial cinema, and in so doing are helping to destroy a cinematic golden age. You and Steven Spielberg, I mean.”
Lucas: “Prove it.”