First, as one who was friendly with Matt Drudge in the mid to late ’90s, I’m seriously impressed with Billy Eichner‘s impersonation of the guy (voice, physical resemblance, the hat) in the below clip from episode #2 of Impeachment. Listen to Eichner’s voice between :21 and :27 — “I hear you’re working on a new story about another woman our dear leader harassed.” Sounds a lot like the Real McCoy — just saying.
It’s odd how Impeachment producers have obviously gone to a great deal of trouble to make various cast members closely resemble the characters they’re playing, and yet they chose Beanie Feldstein to play Monica Lewinsky.
Second, there’s a scene in which Hillary is enraged at Bill for having lied to her about the Lewinsky thing. Hillary is far from stupid, and everyone knew Bill was an incorrigible hound when he was Governor of Arkansas in the ’80s and early ’90s. Plus everyone understands that leopards almost never change their spots. So what’s the possible basis for Hillary feeling betrayed and enraged over yet another infidelity during their White House years?
Hillary had a right to feel angry, of course, but about looking foolish by telling reporters that her husband was innocent. Bill broke their agreement by getting caught, and that made Hillary look like a liar or a fool. Generally speaking she obviously knew who he was in terms of randy behavior (watch Primary Colors) and couldn’t have been shocked to learn that he and Lewinsky had been intimate.
** We saw Titanic together on the Paramount lot in late November ’97, and a few weeks earlier he dropped by the People offices in West L.A. at my request to help me with a technical problem.
Login with Patreon to view this post
Award-seeking fall movies often spark bitter disputes. God knows Green Book did, and I was an ardent fan of that film all through the ’18 and early ’19 season. I didn’t “believe” that Green Book had a certain humanity and emotional poignancy that would connect with Average Joes in the Academy and the guilds — I knew it did and would.
Green Book wasn’t the deepest or most complex film in the world, but for a character-driven period flick about a pair of flawed but recognizably human fellows and the way things unfortunately were back in 1962, it rang true. And I knew people would respond to that fact. I was 90% sure that the wokester take-down efforts would come to naught because Green Book had the heart, the cards and the horses.
But now, God help us, it’s starting to appear that Kenneth Branagh‘s mawkish and treacly Belfast might be able to Green Book its way into the Best Picture category, and perhaps even into a win. As God is my witness and on the soul of my soon-to-be-born grandchild, Belfast isn’t worth the candle. I wouldn’t call it a calamity — it’s watchable and even interesting from time to time, and it delivers a certain bounce when Cieran Hinds is around — but it doesn’t have anything magical going on.
I knew after catching Belfast in Telluride that certain industry softies (i.e. the Sid Ganis brigade) would call it magnificent and heart-touching, etc. But I didn’t take them seriously. Competently made lump-in-the-throat movies, however treacly they may seem to some of us, will always win a certain portion of the crowd.
But this morning it hit me that the Belfast forces may be more numerous than I realized, and that they may be gaining strength. Awards Radar‘s Joey Magidson tweeted a few hours after seeing Belfast in Toronto that it may`go all the way and become “our” Best Picture winner, and that it’s “absolutely beautiful.” TheWrap‘s Steve Pond, a sensible and attuned pulse-taker who knows the difference between wheat and chaff, apparently attended the same TIFF screening and wrote directly after that it’s “visually stunning, emotionally wrenching and gloriously human.”
I feel drained and absolutely dumbfounded that we’re hearing such keen praise are for such a pandering and sentimental effort, a drama that partly incorporates the spirit of The Wonder Years (a thought posted by IndieWire‘s David Ehrlich) or even Leave It to Beaver (a view shared this morning by World of Reel‘s Jordan Ruimy), than to John Boorman‘s Hope and Glory or Alfonso Cuaron‘s Roma.
Pond: “Visually stunning, emotionally wrenching and gloriously human, Belfast takes one short period from Branagh’s life and finds in it a coming-of-age story, a portrait of a city fracturing in an instant and a profoundly moving lament for what’s been lost during decades of strife in his homeland of Northern Ireland. Plus it’s funny as hell — because if anybody knows how to laugh in the face of tragedy, it’s the Irish.”
Not only is Belfast not funny as hell — it tries for a tone of heartfelt amusement, but I didn’t so much as crack a smile.
Ruimy: “Belfast is rendered in rather ineffective and obvious ways — the first crush, going to the cinema, an absent father, Catholic school. Young Jude Hill, as a Branagh stand-in named Buddy, brings an insufferable amount of wide-eyed twee. [And] the whole thing sorely lacks a point-of-view, and so we never really get to know the boy well enough to become emotionally invested in the story. The end result is a mix of scattershot moments that want to feel personal and lovable, but end up isolating us. Too on-the-nose and lacking grit, Belfast plays like an odd mix of Roma and Jojo Rabbit.”
From Stephanie Grisham‘s “I’ll Take Your Questions Now: What I Saw At The Trump White House” (Harper Collins, 10.5):
…if this or that anti-vaxxer passes on. Veronica Wolski could’ve taken the stab and saved herself. She didn’t because she was an idiot. Now there’s one less rightwing nutbag spreading toxic gas…works for me.
Posted today (9.13.21) by Jeff Bridges: “My cancer is in remission — the 9″ x 12” mass has shrunk down to the size of a marble. Covid kicked my ass pretty good, but I’m double vaccinated and feeling pretty good. I heard that the vaccine can help folks with Long Haulers. Maybe that’s the cause of my quick improvement.”
There’s only one way to see Julia Ducournau‘s Titane (Neon, 10.1)**, the “body horror” thriller that won the Palme d’Or last July, and that’s on a big screen. I’d ideally like to see it on a huge IMAX screen, which of course will never happen.
** Titanium
Originally posted from Lauterbrunnen, Switzerland on 6.17.12: “Early yesterday afternoon I was expecting to meet Jett and Dylan at the modest Alpine-styled cabin we’re renting in Lauterbrunnen, but they weren’t there when I arrived. So I texted them and they said they were in town and would be along. The problem was that they had the only key to the place, and I was coping with a slight call of nature. But I figured I’d wait it out.
“The minutes dragged on and they didn’t show. The little devil on my left shoulder began to think about taking care of business behind the cabin. ‘No!,’ said the angel on my right shoulder, ‘don’t be an animal!’ But Jett and Dylan were taking their time.
“I looked around and noticed a narrow driveway behind the cabin — a possible problem. But nobody had driven by in quite a while. I also considered the fact that the rear of the cabin is sheltered from view by a hilly mound. Quiet, quiet, no cars, no cars. The devil won out and I stepped behind the cabin.
“Four or five seconds later a car drove up the driveway with a family in it, and with a three-year-old staring and pointing at me from the back-seat window. Five seconds after that another car drove by with a pretty girl at the wheel. She also checked me out.
“If I hadn’t stepped behind the cabin, those two cars would have never driven by.”
It took me a while but I’ve finally watched three of the four episodes in Spike Lee‘s NYC Epicenters 9/11->2021½. It’s easily one of Lee’s finest film achievements; I would even call it miraculous. Due to the fact that you can feel the soul of New York City glowing and flowing through all of it.
Episode 3, which runs two hours, focuses on the 9/11 attacks, and provides perhaps the most emotionally fulfilling and heartfelt recapturing of that day, ever. It’s so good I’m thinking of watching it again soon.
Episode 1, which is about NYC’s response to the Covid crisis, is also magnificent except, in my opinion, for one aspect. Unless I missed something, Lee doesn’t really grapple with the relatively low percentages of African American vaccinations in New York State and elsewhere.
Something like 80 million U.S. citizens have sidestepped Covid vaccinations, and we will never get out of this hole as long as tens of millions of idiots continue to refuse.
An adult all alone and on a phone, having to talk his or her way out of a tough, high-pressure situation. I don’t know how many times this set-up has been built into a compelling feature, but I’m thinking at least four**.
The very best is Steven Knight‘s Locke (’14), an 85-minute character study about a construction foreman (Tom Hardy) grappling with issues of personal vs. professional responsibility. Three years ago Gustav Möller‘s The Guilty, a gripping, Danish-made crime thriller that I just re-watched yesterday, delivered similar cards. Last weekend a same-titled remake, directed by Antoine Fuqua and starring Jake Gyllenhaal, played at the Toronto Film Festival, and will debut theatrically on 9.24 before hitting Netflix.
And now there’s Phillip Noyce‘s Lakewood, which stars Naomi Watts as Amy, a widowed, small-town mom reacting not only to news of a Parkland-esque high school shooting, but to the possibility that her sullen and estranged son Noah (Colton Gobbo) may be involved in some way.
More than two-thirds of this 84-minute film (roughly 47 minutes) are focused solely on Amy and her iPhone in a remote wooded area. We’re talking about a torrent of smooth steadicam footage plus several overhead drone shots and some elegant editing (kudos to Lee Haugen), plus Watts stressing, emoting and hyperventilating her head off — a one-woman tour de force.
Right away I was thinking that Noah might be the shooter, and that, you bet, made me sit up and focus all the more. And that’s all I’ll discuss in this vein.
My second reaction was about Amy’s iPhone, and what an amazing reach it has. She’s in a woodsy area a few miles from town (I didn’t catch how many reception bars were showing) and yet she experiences only a couple of signal drop-outs, and she’s watching all kinds of video and whatnot without a hitch. I was also impressed by her iPhone’s battery — what power! (I never leave home without a back-up battery for my iPhone 12 Max Pro — I have too many active apps and the battery is always draining hand over fist.)
Despite all that’s going on at the high school and having to juggle all kinds of incoming info, Amy continues to jog during most of her phone marathon. If there’s one thing that all Lakewood viewers will be dead certain of, it’s that Watts will stumble and suffer an ankle injury. I was telepathically begging her not to. HE to Watts: “C’mon, stop…don’t…there are all kinds of obstacles on your forest path and you obviously need to focus so just start speed-walking”…down she goes!
The pace of Lakewood is very fast and cranked up, and Amy is nothing if not resourceful. She manages to persuade an auto mechanic whom she doesn’t know to supply crucial information about Noah’s whereabouts, as well as info about the possible shooter’s name and contact info. All kinds of conversations and complications ensue, and you’re always aware that Chris Sparling‘s script is determined to increase the stress and suspense factors.
Most of these efforts felt reasonable to me, or at least not overly challenging or irksome. Lakewood is a thriller. I didn’t fight it. I accepted the rules and requirements.
- Really Nice Ride
To my great surprise and delight, Christy Hall‘s Daddio, which I was remiss in not seeing during last year’s Telluride...
More » - Live-Blogging “Bad Boys: Ride or Die”
7:45 pm: Okay, the initial light-hearted section (repartee, wedding, hospital, afterlife Joey Pants, healthy diet) was enjoyable, but Jesus, when...
More » - One of the Better Apes Franchise Flicks
It took me a full month to see Wes Ball and Josh Friedman‘s Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes...
More »
- The Pull of Exceptional History
The Kamala surge is, I believe, mainly about two things — (a) people feeling lit up or joyful about being...
More » - If I Was Costner, I’d Probably Throw In The Towel
Unless Part Two of Kevin Costner‘s Horizon (Warner Bros., 8.16) somehow improves upon the sluggish initial installment and delivers something...
More » - Delicious, Demonic Otto Gross
For me, A Dangerous Method (2011) is David Cronenberg‘s tastiest and wickedest film — intense, sexually upfront and occasionally arousing...
More »