Three months after catching it on a huge Westwood screen, I re-watched Paul Thomas Anderson‘s Licorice Pizza on a subtitled DVD screener. From the comfort of my living room…me and the cats.

It played a little better this time. I’ve been kicking it around and thinking it through all these weeks, and I still say that the finale in which Alana Haim and Cooper Hoffman finally embrace like they mean it…this is still the best scene.

Yes, Pizza is still episodic and meandering, but that’s the idea and I get that now. And I still respect the courage that Anderson showed when he included those two scenes involving John Michael Higgins‘ Jerry Frick and his two (i.e., successive) Japanese wives. The courage, I mean, to say “presentism can blow me…the ’70s were the ’70s, and I’m going to stay true to how things were back then.”

But I have to say that the whole Jon Peters sequence rubbed me the wrong way…again.

If Hoffman’s “Gary Valentine” is one thing besides a good actor, he’s an ambitious businessman (water beds, pinball machines). He knows that a business owner has to keep it together and respect the rules of commerce and keep things at par with his customers. And yet while installing a water bed at the home of a semi-famous guy who’s dating Barbara Streisand, Gary decides that Peters’ bullying manner and asshole personality is bad news and that he has to be somehow flipped off. And so, despite Peters having said there’ll be hell to pay if Gary messes his house up, Gary pulls the watering hose out of the bed and tosses it on the floor, and then he and Alana blow out of Peters’ home and jump into the big truck.

What does Gary think will happen as a result? That the hyper-aggressive Peters will just forget about it? He knows that Peters will hunt him down and turn his life into a raging sea. It’s therefore a completely idiotic scene, and one that completely undermines Gary’s character, and yet Anderson makes it almost entirely about everyone being short of gas.

That aside, Pizza seemed a slightly better film than when I saw it at the Village Westwood on Saturday, November 6th. It’s a much more interesting and humanistic and life-like film than The Power of the Dog.

A trailer for Baz Luhrmann‘s Elvis pops on Thursday — three months before its likely Cannes debut, a bit more than four months before it opens on 6.24. And I’m taking this moment to voice a concern.

Austin Butler is Luhrmann’s Elvis, and ever since this was announced I’ve been wondering why. Because Butler doesn’t look like Elvis. He doesn’t have those surly eyes and lips, I mean, or that vaguely bashful “aw shucks” Memphis rockabilly thing. And he sure as shit isn’t pretty enough.

You have to wonder why Luhrmann didn’t choose someone who could actually be the resuscitated, back-from-the-dead Elvis of the ’50s. There are dozens of spot-on Elvis imitators out there (and a few on YouTube), and a certain portion of these can probably act. Nobody wants to watch a guy who doesn’t quite look or sound like the Real McCoy — they want to watch something close to a dead ringer. So why didn’t Luhrmann find one?

I’ve been worried about Butler ever since he played his big scene as Charles “Tex” Watson in Once Upon A Time in Hollywood (“I’m the devil, and I’m here to do the devil’s bizness!”). The instant he said that line, I muttered to myself, “Nope…not good enough.”

When it comes to handing out Oscars, the dumbest tendency among Academy voters is to honor the “most acting” — shouting, weeping, ranting, hair-pulling, howling. The second dumbest is a tendency to favor performances that involve heavy makeup and/or weight alteration.

Southern friendo to HE: 14 times the winners of makeup Oscars have won because they altered the appearance of a nominated actor (lead or supporting).  Eight of those wins correlated with the actor winning. I’m going back to the 80s. But in terms of recent history, it’s five out of seven.

HE to Southern Friendo: What are the recents again?

Southern friendo to HE: The five are La Vie en Rose, Iron Lady, Les Miserables, Dallas Buyers Club and Darkest Hour. All I’m saying is that if Eyes of Tammy Faye wins makeup, Jessica Chastain has a damn good shot at winning Best Actress,

HE to Southern Friendo: That’s ridiculous!

Southern friendo to HE: Nevertheless.

HE to Southern Friendo: Matthew McConaughey lost weight for Dallas Buyers Club. No makeup.

Southern Friendo to HE: A friend did the makeup on Jared Leto and he won. Doesn’t matter about the weight. it’s a statistic, plain and simple. Like Film Editing nominations correlating with Best Pic winners.

HE to Southern Friendo: My God, the stupidity! Not you — the stupid Academy members who vote for makeup acting.

The jokes, material and general pizazz factor may be engaging and even hilarious come March 27th, but we all understand the reasons why Amy Schumer, Regina Hall and Wanda Sykes have been hired to co-host this year’s Academy Awards ceremony.

One, the wokeness factor — three women, two BIPOCS, the right kind of progressive attitude. (Don”t even dispute this.). And two, Film Twitter will leave them alone while any dude (or dudes) who might have been chosen would have been picked apart and savaged for this or that past misdeed, one way or the other.

“Every choice Hollywood makes, whether it’s hosting a show or casting a movie, is done out of fear — fear of bad headlines, fear of Twitter, fear of that wave of hysteria that made them get rid of their host in the first place.” — Awards Daily‘s Sasha Stone, just a few minutes ago.

Adrien Lyne’s Deep Water (Hulu, 3.18) may be an intriguing sexual thriller, but it seems like an odd yesteryear thing — filmed before almost anyone on the planet had even heard of Covid ‘19, and a full year before Donald Trump decisively lost to Joe Biden in the election of early November 2020. And of course, the Ben Affleck-Ana de Armas affair was just kicking into gear, and Bennifer II was far beyond the horizon.

Due respect and sincere condolences upon the passing of producer-director Ivan Reitman, who was 75. This is a huge boomer death — one that will make a lot of people feel anxious and shaken, and prompt them to take a deep breath and wonder what might be around the corner.

Reitman’s hottest period was between the late ’70s and the late ’90s, and his biggest film, of course, was the original Ghostbusters (’84), which most of the world adored and which I hated from the get-go. And I really, really hated Ghostbusters II.

Reitman made his first big mark as the producer of National Lampoon’s Animal House (’78), which exploded all over — it was the first time the SNL brand (and particularly John Belushi) connected massively in movie theatres.

Reitman was first, last and always a director and producer of mainstream popular entertainments. He always sought to please, his stuff was always audience-friendly, and his instincts were not absurdly anti-highbrow but they were certainly tidy and middle-class. He was a smooth operator (especially from the mid ’80s on) and he knew how to coax and encourage good comic performances, but he never, ever went over any audience member’s head.

Which Reitman-directed films do I think were exceptionally fine or which I at least really liked (i.e., laughed with) and went “wow, that was really pleasurable and a profound home run”? Answer: None.

But early on Reitman made two dopey, infectious comedies of immaturity, Meatballs (’79) and Stripes (’81)…films that had a cool Bill Murray spirit…a stoner feeling, a fuck-it vibe. I was also satisfied by the three Arnold Schwarzenegger films — Twins, Kindergarten Cop and Junior. And I was half-okay with Dave, Father’s Day and Draft Day.

Can anyone name a line of dialogue from a Reitman film that has lived on for decades? I’ve just thought of one from Stripes — Warren Oates saying “lighten up, Francis.”

Reitman knew exactly how to make successful “Ivan Reitman films” but he never directed or produced a truly brilliant or profound knockout, or an emotional powerhouse in the vein of, say, Heaven Can Wait or Groundhog Day or Planes, Trains & Automobiles or As Good as It Gets or Broadcast News.

Okay, I take that back — Up In The Air (’09), which his director-writer son Jason did an excellent job with and which Reitman Sr. produced, was in that elite fraternity.

Reitman’s instincts were kind of Ron Howard-ish, only a bit more anarchic or semi-experimental or stir-fried. He wasn’t really a “heart” guy (not like Howard or Jim Brooks or even John Hughes) except in the case of Junior, a comedy about a guy who gets pregnant.

I’ll say more tomorrow and I’m sure I’ll modify what I’ve just written later this evening. I’m very sorry about Reitman’s passing; 75 isn’t that old.

#RIPIvanReitman https://t.co/fCg4umrYJN

— Erik Childress (@EriktheMovieman) February 14, 2022

This Rear Window fan poster was composed by Jonathan Burton. The immediate question, of course, is why does James Stewart‘s L.B. Jeffries, a Greenwich Village-residing photographer with a broken leg and a wealthy, high-society girlfriend (Grace Kelly)…why does Jeffries have a massive bald spot, partially covered by greasy hair strands? Stewart wore his usual toupee in this 1954 classic. Is he half-bald because Burton himself is half-bald? What kind of illustrator does this? And what’s with the jug ears?

Based on a 1959 Tennessee Williams play, the film version of The Night of the Iguana (’64), directed by John Huston, is rather awful, which is to say dreary and stifled. But I’ve always wanted to visit Mismaloya, the small Mexican beach village (just south of Puerto Vallarta) where it was shot. The main stars were Richard Burton, Ava Gardner, Deborah Kerr and Sue Lyon. Elizabeth Taylor hung around during most of the filming. Huston wound up buying a home nearby.

People stopped watching films on VHS when DVDs emerged, or sometime in mid ’97. Pretty much everyone had adopted DVDs by the turn of the century, or roughly 21 years ago. (The first DVD players were priced at $799 and up.) And yet a couple of days ago some ornery old codger posted a photo of his Alfred Hitchcock VHS library.

https://apple.news/IKh3Y9WHmQB6oaC-vJDMyjg