Presumably a fair percentage of the HE chorus saw Ari Aster‘s Eddington yesterday. I’m presuming that many are agreeing with my judgment from last May’s Cannes Film Festival, which is that it’s a strange, mildly interesting civil war drama that, boiled down, is a dull horror sinkhole laced with political satire…a pandemic atmosphere downer dive.

I should probably bend over backwards by re-watching it this weekend, but I really, really didn’t derive much enjoyment, much less any sense of cinematic satori, two months ago.

I’ve jumbled up some previous comments and thrown them out on the floor like Mia Farrow playing scrabble in Rosemary’s Baby…

Bingo #1: I’ll admit to feeling aroused or at least awoken during the last 45 when Eddington abandons all sense of restraint and it becomes The Wild Bunch on steroids.

Bingo #2: Yes, this is a smart and aggressive political satire of sorts, but it’s basically just a narrative version of the same X-treme left vs. X-treme right insanity that we’ve all been living with since the start of the pandemic, if not 2018 or ’19…

Bingo #3: I’m not calling it a “bad” or ineffective film or anything, but it’s basically unexciting and kind of drab and sloppy and not much fun, really. And the chaos is…well, certainly predictable. It has some bizarre surreal humor at times, but mostly it’s a fastball thrown wide of the batter’s box.

Bingo #4: Joaquin Phoenix‘s performance as Joe Cross, the rightwing-ish, initally not-too-crazy, anti-mask sheriff of Eddington, New Mexico…Joaquin’s performance is fairly weak…it’s almost like he’s playing Napoleon again, and that’s not even taking his thigh-slapping schlong prosthetic into account. I simply didn’t like hanging with the guy. There’s something flaccid and fumbling about him. He’s not “entertaining”.

Bingo #5: A smart, increasingly intense, ultimately surreal reflection of the stark raving madness of the COVID years. If you remove the over-the-top violence, it’s basically a movie about the same polarizing rhetorical shit we’ve all been living with since 2020 (or, in my head at least, since 2018). JUST YOUR BASIC AMERICAN POLARIZED MADNESS. Take away the bullets and the brain matter and it reminded me of the comment threads from Hollywood Elsewhere over the last five or six years.

Bingo #6: Pedro Pascal‘s performance as Ted Garcia, the sensibly-liberal mayor of Eddington, is much more grounded and appealing than Joaquin’s.

Bingo #7: The thing Eddington was selling never plugged in, never spoke to me beyond the obvious. It’s all about X-treme left bonker types vs. gun-toting, righty-right over-reactions.

Bingo #8: Emma Stone is pretty much wasted.

An annual $100M production tab (according to Deadline’s Matthew Belloni) means The Late Show with Stephen Colbert costs $8.3M ($8,333,333) each month, resulting in an annual loss of $40M or $3.3M ($3.333,333) per month.

I’m not suggesting that CBS’s decision to pull the plug wasn’t primarily political, but these numbers obviously make no sense.

Colbert’s annual haul is said to be $15M with an alleged per-episode rate of $89K. He can’t host that show for, say, $40K or $50K per episode? That’s not exactly chump change.

If I was running that show my basic message to Colbert and everyone else would be “at the very least this show breaks even…take it or leave it.”

Posted last night by the redoubtable Bob Hightower in the wake of yesterday’s brief Connie Francis obit-slash-tribute — “Not-So–Prudish Girl From New Jersey”:

HE replies:

I’m not “condemning” Francis for having recorded “Nixon’s The One” in 1968. “Not cool” is simply, merely a frowned–upon thing — not a career damaging felony, but in the eyes of her 30-and-under peers (a major social slogan back then was “don’t trust anyone over 30”) certainly a social misdemeanor.

The message of Nixon’s ‘68 campaign was basically “all of this social convulsion stuff has gone too far!”…he was saying “enough with the repulsive, antiwar, pot-smoking hippies and yippies” and was calling for a re-assertion of U.S. pride and traditionalism along with anti-youth-activist repression — in a word “lawnorder”.

A somber, straightlaced, opposite-of-Senator Eugene McCarthy figure, Nixon appealed to the silent majority (law-abiding, tax-paying, Middle American normies) who were saying “enough already!” because things had gotten too crazy with militant antiwar street action and burning cities following the April ‘68 assassination of MLK and the subsequent murder of RFK two months later.

1968 was easily one of the most socially convulsive, politically divisive, tearing-asunder years in U.S. history, primarily due to anti-Vietnam War furor and the concurrent rise of radical left orgs like SDS and the Black Panthers and Abbie Hoffman and Jerry Rubin’s Yippie movement, not to mention the growing social (and sexual) radicalization of college-age, middle- and upper-middle-class youth.

Connie Francis recording that pro-Nixon campaign song was a social identity statement that basically said “I’m with the normies and with Merle Haggard and the Okies from Muskogee**…I’m aligned with your stodgy parents and the billy-club cops and the construction-worker hardhats** and Peter Boyle’s ‘Joe’** and in support of our boys fighting to stop the commies from taking over South Vietnam.”

An overwhelming majority of the left-leaning showbiz community was against the war and was generally in a posture of sympathizing with or at least understanding the tumultuous social changes that were afoot back then, and yet Francis was basically saying “I’m proud of our glorious flag and U.S. traditions (including imperialism abroad) and so I’m with Bob Hope and Anita Bryant and Morey Amsterdam and Pat Boone.”

The U.S. was a free country back then and so Francis was fully, naturally and obviously entitled to her opinions, but you can’t say that in the context of ‘68 her views and political alignments weren’t, at the very, VERY least, “uncool.”

** Yes, I’m aware that Haggard’s “Okie From Muskogee” popped in July of ‘69 and that those World Trade Center construction workers beat up hippie protestors in ‘70, and that John Avildsen’s Joe opened on 7.15.70, but the resentful working-class feelings that drove these social expressions were fully felt and shared in ‘68.

Is it really because of dropping revenues, or is it partly to do with Colbert being a Trump hater?

Connie Francis had a beautiful singing voice…smooth and silky pipes. She knew how to sell a song…she knew how to phrase and breathe just so.

But for the most part, her hit tunes ( “Who’s Sorry Now?”, “Where The Boys Are”, ““Everybody’s Somebody’s Fool”, “Where The Boys Are”) sounded square and swoony.

Born on 12.12.37 and reared by a conservative Italian family in the Crown Heights section of Brooklyn and then Belleville, New Jersey, Francis never said, did or sang anything that sounded like anyone’s idea of “hip.”

In 1968 she actually recorded a theme song for Richard Nixon‘s presidential campaign. Not cool! Meanwhile her ex-boyfriend Bobby Darin was hanging out with Robert F. Kennedy during his ’68 primary campaigns.

But Francis popped out of that straightjacket one time, at least, when she recorded Howard Greenfield and Neil Sedaka‘s “Stupid Cupid” (’58), a plastic pop tune that sold pretty well. Because it was about a young woman confessing to being more or less powerless in the grip of sexual attraction.

The way she sang “and I like it fine” made it clear she was a scamp who really liked making out and whatnot. “I like it fine” meant that when the right guy came along, the blouse was soon unbuttoned.

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Besides ignoring the great Dolores Claiborne, what else was I doing in 1995? I’ll tell you what — I was watching all the other goody-goods.

HE’s top five films of ‘95 are Heat, Se7en, The Usual Suspects, Dolores Claiborne and Crimson Tide.

#6 through #10 are Swimming With Sharks, Leaving Las Vegas, To Die For, Before Sunrise and The Bridges of Madison County.

And then, in this approximate order: Leavibg Las Vegas, Get Shorty, Apollo 13, Living in Oblivion, Operation Dumbo Drop, The Brothers McMullen, Casino, Mighty Aphrodite, Sense and Sensibility, The American President, Toy Story, Nixon, Richard III, Dead Man Walking, Empire Records, The Basketball Diaries, Dangerous Minds, Clockers, Kids, Clueless, Beyond Rangoon. (31 films in all)

Braveheart won 1995’s Best Picture Oscar, but I can’t in all honesty call it one of my faves of that year. I haven’t re-watched it once in the 30 years that have elapsed.

“Sometimes bein’ a bitch is all a woman has to hold on to.”

Because I was lazy and cowardly I chose to avoid Taylor Hackford, Kathy Bates, Tony Gilroy and Gabriel Beristain’s Dolores Claiborne back in the late winter or early spring of ‘95. It really wasn’t cool that I shut this worthy film out, but I finally watched it last night and holy moley mother of God…it’s exceptionally good!

Shot roughly 23 or 24 years before the dawn of the #MeToo movement, it might be the best “most men are cruel and abusive animals, and especially the alcoholic ones” movie I’ve ever seen.

I didn’t experience even a twinge of my usual “okay, here we go again with another serving of rote anti-male diminishnent”…I believed every scene, every line, every plot pivot. It may be the best Hollywood-produced feminist film ever made. I trusted every frame.

It’s almost certainly Hackford’s finest effort, and Beristain’s shifting color schemes (Fuji amber for flashbacks, cold grays for present tense) are truly mesmerizing.

Gilroy’s dialogue is so well-honed and soothingly concise and bracingly articulate.

The co-lead performances by the 46-year-old Bates, whose titular tour de force should’ve won a second Best Actress Oscar in the wake of her startling Misery breakout, and the 32 year-old Jennifer Jason Leigh are keepers. Ditto the supporting David Straitharn, Judy Parfitt, Christopher Plummer and John C. Reilly.

Adapted from Stephen King’s same–titled, best–selling 1992 novel, this Castle Rock production is an exceptionally well-crafted melodrama (almost a kind of realism-based horror film) of the highest calibre…you’re never unaware that you’re chest-deep in a totally classy, #MeToo-ish truth testament made by grade-A people. Because the film is so deftly assembled and therefore persuasive and compelling, Gilroy’s altered adaptation (King’s book was one long first-person confession by Claiborne) isn’t as downerish as it sounds on the surface. And yet it’s basically about small-town confinement, suppressive conditions, domestic misery and exceptional spousal cruelty and abuse, dysfunctional family trauma, incest and blessed revenge.

The final half-hour really pays off in a way that top-tier films used to pay off in the old days (i.e., before the horror of Marvel and D.C., before Stalinist-woke narratives, before streaming multi-part sagas for couch potatoes).

As noted, the Venice Film Festival will announce its slate on Tuesday, 7.22. I’ve updated my Venice Film Festival spitball by killing certain titles like Roofman, One Battle After Another, etc. Here’s my take on 26 all but certain, likely, hopeful or potential inclusions:

HE LEGEND: ++ = extra-positive HE expectations. + = mostly positive expectations. X = meh or negative. XX = dread.

1. After the Hunt (d: Luca Guadagnino) Julia Roberts, Ayo Edebiri, Andrew Garfield, Michael Stuhlbarg, Chloë Sevigny. / ++
2. A House of Dynamite (d: Kathryn Bigelow) / ++
3. Jay Kelly (d: Noah Baumbach) George Clooney, Adam Sandler, Billy Crudup, Laura Dern, Grace Edwards, Stacy Keach, Riley Keough. Emily Mortimer. / ++
4. The Way of the Wind (d: Terrence Malick) / X
5. Bugonia (d: Yorgos Lanthimos) / Neutral

6. The Smashing Machine (d: Benny Safdie) / +
7. No Other Choice (Park Chan-wook) XX / XX
8. Orphan (d: Laszlo Nemes) / ++
9. The Wizard of the Kremlin (d: Olivier Assayas) / ++
10. Father Mother Brother Sister (d: Jim Jarmusch) / Neutral

11. The Ballad of a Small Player (d:Edward Berger) Synopsis: When his past and debts start to catch up, a high-stakes gambler laying low in Macau encounters a kindred spirit who might hold the key to his salvation.” Colin Farrell, Tilda Swinton, Fala Chen. / ++
12. Couture (d: Alice Winocour) +. Angelina Jolie, Louis Garrel, Ella Rumpf, Garance Marillier, Anyier Anei, Finnegan Oldfield. / Neutral.
13. The Cry of the Guards (d: Claire Denis)
14. Chocobar (d: Lucrecia Martel)
15. Sacrifice (d: Romain Gavras)

16. In the Hands of Dante (d: Julian Schnabel) Synopsis of Nick Tosches‘ same-titled 2002 book: “An interweaving of two separate stories, one set in the 14th century in Italy and Sicily and featuring Dante Alighieri, and another set in the autumn of 2001 and featuring a fictionalized version of Tosches as the protagonist. The historical and modern stories alternate as Dante tries to finish writing his magnum opus and goes on a journey for mystical knowledge in Sicily.” Oscar Isaac as Nick Tosches / Dante Alighieri, w/ Jason Momoa, Gerard Butler, Gal Gadot, Sabrina Impacciatore, Franco Nero, Martin Scorsese. ++
17. Ann Lee (d: Mona Fastvold). Amanda Seyfried, Thomasin McKenzie, Lewis Pullman, Christopher Abbott, Tim Blake Nelson, Stacy Martin. / +
18. La Grazia (d: Paolo Sorrentino)
19. An Affair (d: Arnaud Desplechin)
20. Below the Clouds (d: Gianfranco Rosi)

21. Duse (d: Pietro Marcello)
22. Frankenstein (d: Guillermo del Toro) / X

To the preceding I would add “what’s wrong with the following?” and “why not?”

23. Scott Cooper‘s Springsteen: Deliver Me from Nowhere (20th Century, sometime in the fall). Jeremy Allen White as Bruce Springsteen in another boomer nostalgia pic, focusing on the recording of Nebraska (’82). Costarring Stephen Graham, Odessa Young, Paul Walter Hauser, Gaby Hoffmann, Johnny Cannizzaro, Harrison Gilbertson, Marc Maron.

24. Chloe Zhao‘s Hamnet (Focus Features, no date) — Fictional tale about Mr. and Mrs. William Shakespeare coping with the death of their son. Jessie Buckley, Paul Mescal (!), Joe Alwyn, Emily Watson.

25. Switzerland (d: Anton Corbijn)

26. Fuze (d: David Mackenzie)

Imagine if James Gunn had decided that instead of David Corenswet‘s Superman getting badly beaten up every seven or eight minutes….imagine if Gunn had decided instead to have Corenswet attend a golden superhero award ceremony every seven or eight minutes and be handed a gleaming Oscar-sized trophy…imagine how repetitve and punishing this would be over a two-and-a-half-hour period. But this is what Superman actually does by having Corenswet get walloped this frequently. It drives you crazy. The repetition is insane.

Announcement: I will not be watching Superman. Thank you Mikepic.twitter.com/HyXDEJ6map

— Dave Portnoy (@stoolpresidente) July 15, 2025

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As I wrote last February, an early draft of After The Hunt “planted expectations that Julia Roberts‘ lead performance might stir convos about a Best Actress nomination and perhaps the ultimate gold trophy itself. She’s playing one of those well-sculpted, sturm und drang roles that older actresses have always pined for.”

From Samantha Bergeson’s 7.16.25 IndieWire story:

Posted on 2.17.25:

Earlier today I read an early draft of Nora Garrett‘s After The Hunt screenplay, a #MeToo rape accusation drama that feels like a splicing of Todd Field‘s TAR, David Mamet‘s Oleanna and Ruben Ostlund‘s The Square.

It’s the basis of an upcoming Luca Guadagnino film that MGM-Amazon will release on October 10th — a whipsmart, dialogue-driven, pressure-cooker thing with Julia Roberts toplining.

Strong supporting performances from Andrew Garfield, The Bear‘s Ayo Edebiri, Michael Stuhlbarg and Chloe Sevigny will presumably round things out.

World of Reel‘s Jordan Ruimy recently reported that Hunt had test-screened in early December. He also sketched it out as one of those jarring, controversial, hot-button melodramas that stir the soup among educated audiences.

HE is guessing Hunt will debut six months hence at the Venice Film Festival.

Garrett’s page-turning screenplay (which a friend found on Reddit) vaguely summons the downswirling mood of Frank Perry‘s DiaryofaMadHousewife…if Perry’s 1970 film had been set in the realm of elite academia and concerned a middle-aged female professor (Roberts) on the brink of tenure.

Guadagnino (Queer, Challengers, CallMeByYourName) made some changes to Garrett’s Swedish-flavored scenario before filming it last summer in London and Cambridge.

That’s as far as I’ll go description-wise, but the screenplay did plant expectations of Roberts’ performance possibly stirring convos about a Best Actress trophy. She’s playing one of those well-sculpted, sturmunddrang roles that older actresses have always pined for.

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