You could argue that this standoff scene between Eddie Albert and Charles Grodin in Elaine May’s The Heartbreak Kid (’72) is Albert’s career-best moment. He’s playing an utterly humorless Midwestern banker who smells deceit and calls it out …and it’s beautiful.

Surely there are other noteworthy scenes in which an older, wiser, sharper character (man or woman) tells a young hustler (either gender) to cut the crap.

Written by Neil Simon: “I see through you. You don’t think I see through you? You could wear two wool sweaters and a raccoon coat, I’d still see through you. ‘There’s no deceit in the cauliflower’? Where do you get ideas like that? Do they just…do they just come out of that New York head of yours?”

During the last 20 or 25 minutes of Peter Yates‘ The Hot Rock (’71), professional thief John Dortmunder (Robert Redford) arranges for a deep-voiced hypnotist named Miasmo (Lynne Gordon) to put an unsuspecting safe-deposit-box teller into a kind of waiting trance state.

The trigger term that will make the teller obey any command is “Afghanistan bananistan”, a deliberately silly invention (presumably dreamt up by screenwriter William Goldman)…a noun-switch takeover in the same vein as “Oscar schmoscar”…obviously.

It goes without saying that there’s no reason on earth for Miasmo to have invented a similar-sounding term, “Afghanistan banana stand.” Why would she do that? Even with a silly attitude what do bananas have do with Afghanistan? Has anyone ever heard of a Kabul fruit seller restricting his goods to just bananas? It’s lame — a needlessly literal term when the much simpler “Afghanistan bananistan” will suffice.

And yet the Hot Rock Wikipedia page nonsensically claims that Miasmo says “Afghanistan banana stand”, and now a copy writer for the Criterion Channel has parroted this interpretation. Can we please nip this one in the bud? “Bananistan” is standard form — “banana stand” is ridiculous.

The wise and sensible John McWhorter feels condescended to, he said on Real Time with Bill Maher two nights ago. Robin DiAngelo‘s “White Fragility“, he complained, basically says that Black people are “hothouse flowers” and “everybody has to tiptoe around us…we’re always crying and always angry and just so very, very delicate. I don’t feel like that person. It should be used to keep the table from wobbling…that is the only use for that book.”

In a 7.15.20 Atlantic piece titled “The Dehumanizing Condescension of White Fragility,” McWhorter said that DiAngelo’s book “openly infantilized Black people” and “simply dehumanized us.”

DiAngelo, he observed, “does not see fit to address why all of this agonizing soul-searching [for residual racism by white people] is necessary to forging change in society. One might ask just how a people can be poised for making change when they have been taught that pretty much anything they say or think is racist and thus antithetical to the good.”

Elon Musk‘s mom obviously takes care of herself, looks great, excellent hair…the best moment came when she said “I love you very much.”

Does the fact that Musk is worth $166 billion constitute “a moral obscenity,” as Bernie Sanders has more or less stated? Great wealth comes with the kind of creative ambition and need to dominate that propels the Musk locomotive, it seems. Would I like a small cut of that fortune transferred to my Citibank checking account? Yes, I would, but the disparity between my own personal worth and Musk’s is not his fault.

I’ve lately been feeling this strange yen to own a Mickey Mouse watch. They were kind of a trendy thing back in the ’90s. (Or was it the ’80s?) I’ll bet there are very few out there who own four-fingered Disney gloves. It takes a certain kind of brazen, fearless psychology to even think about it. What are the odds that someone like, say, Guy Lodge ever considered such a purchase? Just saying.

Two and a half months ago I ranted against the critics who’d posted thumbs-down reviews about Nick Jarecki‘s thoughtful, entirely sufficient Crisis. HE to RT & Metacritic gang: “You guys can’t give a 26% RT rating to a film that’s ambitious and moderately gripping and narratively efficient for the most part…it deserves a pass, for God’s sake! You can say it has an issue or two but nothing fatal…c’mon, it’s more or less fine!”

The same kind of unwarranted dismissals have greeted Phillip Noyce‘s Above Suspicion, which began streaming yesterday. It currently has a 29% RT rating, and a 48% over at Metacritic. And it doesn’t add up. We’ve all seen films that have earned low aggregate critic scores, and we know how they tend to feel and play out. Above Suspicion doesn’t fit this mold at all.

Trust me — this is a first-rate, redneck-love-affair-gone-bad flick that feels like it was made in 1977, and that in itself makes it something to savor on all kinds of levels.

Excerpt from initial HE review, “The Girl From Lonesome Holler”, 7.24.17: “Most people would define ‘redneck film’ as escapist trash in the Burt Reynolds mode, but there have been a small handful that have portrayed rural boondock types and their tough situations in ways that are top-tier and real-deal. My favorites in this realm are John Boorman‘s Deliverance, Billy Bob Thornton‘s Sling Blade, and Lamont Johnson‘s The Last American Hero.

“Noyce’s Above Suspicion is the absolute, dollars-to-donuts equal of these films, or at least a close relation with a similar straight-cards, no-bullshit attitude.”

Why have a majority of critics taken a dump on it? Some simply haven’t liked it — fine. Others may have problems with the social-cultural elements. Critics often give passes to mediocre films because of certain political ingredients. A story about a desperately unhappy trailer-trash wife losing her bearings and getting dumped by her FBI lover doesn’t exactly scream “seal of good wokeness” or “#MeToo-approved.” Some critics may also have a problem with a film reflecting the values and living conditions of rural rightwing backwater types. Most critics will deny it, but they know there are some films they can’t pan while there’s no downside to slamming a film like Above Suspicion. Do the math.

Another issue was the fact that this poor film was snared in distribution troubles for nearly four years, and to some that means “must be problematic.” The trouble had nothing to do with quality, and was caused, in fact, by a couple of cowboy producers.

Empire‘s Al Horner called it “an enveloping if stately paced thriller that doubles up as a portrait of a broken America: one where impoverished people fall into addiction, then into crime and finally into the witness stand, only to be failed by the people meant to protect and serve them.”

Deadline‘s Pete Hammond: “Noyce has captured the feel of a coal-driven small community and the darkness lying beneath the surface. A true-life saga, Above Suspicion benefits from a strong dose of authenticity anchored by a revelatory performance from Emilia Clarke, who nails the demeanor and accent of a doomed soul trying to escape a beaten life. The star’s Game of Thrones fans might find her virtually unrecognizable here, but it is a thoroughly accomplished performance.”

“Suspicion About To Pop Through,” posted on 4.1.21: “Noyce always delivers with clarity and discipline but this is arguably the most arresting forward-thrust action flick he’s done since Clear and Present Danger. Plus it boasts a smart, fat-free, pared-down script by Mississippi Burning‘s Chris Gerolmo, some haunting blue-tinted cinematography by Eliot Davis (Out of Sight, Twilight) and some wonderfully concise editing by Martin Nicholson.

“Above Suspicion damn sure feels like a ’70s film. I mean that in the most complimentary way you could possibly imagine. It’s about real people, tough decisions, yokel culture, corruption, Percocets, hot car sex and lemme outta here. There’s no sense of 21st Century corporate wankery. Adults who believe in real movies made this thing, and they did so with an eye for tension and inevitable plot turns and fates dictated by character and anxiety and, this being rural Kentucky, bad karma and bad luck.”

Even before the shitty reviews surfaced (24% and 32% from Rotten Tomatoes and Metacritic), I had decided that my soul would be bruised and my life diminished by sitting through Land of the Lost. It was basically the combination of dinosaurs, Will Ferrell, Danny McBride and director Brad Silberling (whose Casper I’d hated). I could watch it right on Amazon but I won’t. I wouldn’t watch it on a 12-hour flight to Seoul without wifi.

In the wake of Amazon, Netflix, Time’s Up and others dismissing the foot-dragging, retrograde mindsets among members of the Hollywood Foreign Press Association regarding issues of racial concern, Scarlett Johansson has become the latest voice to throw the besieged organization under the bus.

ScarJo has urged the industry to “step back” from the HFPA (i.e., think about refusing to attend the annual Golden Globe awards) until it does more than offer humanistic homilies and cosmetic changes.

No one would dispute that the HFPA is way too out of the swim of things by Hollywood standards, and that certain members, as Johansson mentioned in a statement to Variety earlier today, have asked “sexist questions” at press conferences “that bordered on sexual harassment.” The HFPA is a myopic outfit. The members live in their own world.

But I have to say that I’d become accustomed to Johansson being more of a headstrong thinker who’s occasionally swum against the tide (the 2018 Rub & Tug transgender thing, stating the following year that she “believes” Woody Allen). A voice is telling me that Johansson was probably urged by her team to speak out against the HFPA in order to shore up her woke credentials.

Seven weeks ago Tatiana and I shared a nice dinner at Spago on Canon. The salmon pizza, accented with red caviar and a light spread of cream cheese, was the hit of the evening. There were a fair number of diners inside and in the outside tent annex, but with room to breathe. You could sense a slight but substantial air of caution.

Last night we returned, and the salmon pizza was almost as good as before. (It wasn’t warm enough.) And there was no ignoring two things about the immediate neighborhood: (a) each and every restaurant was packed to the gills, and (b) commercial Beverly Hills felt like one big street party. Mostly under-35s, and not a whole lot of masks.

I wasn’t frowning because in upscale liberal Los Angeles it really is becoming an olly-olly-in-come-free climate. Not so much within Republican regions and “hesitant” African American communities, but it’s getting better and better in liberal-minded areas. If it weren’t for the idiots we could be more or less out of this nightmare by the mid-to-late summer.

From Maureen Dowd‘s 5.8.21 N.Y. Times column, “Liz Cheney and the Big Lies“: “It must be said that the petite blonde from Wyoming suddenly seems like a Valkyrie amid halflings.

“She is willing to sacrifice her leadership post — and risk her political career — to continue calling out Donald Trump’s Big Lie. She has decided that, if the price of her job is being as unctuous to Trump as Kevin McCarthy is, it isn’t worth it, because McCarthy is totally disgracing himself.

“It has been a dizzying fall for the scion of one of the most powerful political families in the land, a conservative chip off the old block who was once talked about as a comer, someone who could be the first woman president.

“How naïve I was to think that Republicans would be eager to change the channel after Trump cost them the Senate and the White House and unleashed a mob on them.”

An excellent excerpt from Richard Rushfield‘s latest Ankler column, “The 2021 Showbiz State of the Union,” posted on 5.7.21:

“These are not ordinary times for the industry. The systemic collapse of [Steven Soderbergh‘s Oscar show] revealed the hollowness of the core we’re all sitting on. The greatest conglomeration of entertainers the world has ever seen — on the biggest night of the year, center stage, spotlight right on them — were unable to entertain and they didn’t seem terribly concerned with even trying to.”

Kindly HE correction: Anyone, I think, would find it hard to apply the word “entertainers” to all but one of the 2021 Best Picture nominees — Nomadland (melancholy, meditative), The Father (a drip-drip tragedy about decline and degeneration), Judas and the Black Messiah (dour drama about the troops of J. Edgar Hoover closing in and bringing death and destruction in the late ’60s), Mank (interesting, well-made but less than “entertaining”), Minari (except for two or three grandma moments, definitely not entertaining), Promising Young Woman (a waker-upper but the saga of a 30something woman bent on revenge and self-destruction is hardly a delight) and Sound of Metal (spiritually transporting, quietly transformative). Aaron Sorkin‘s The Trial of the Chicago 7 was the only Best Picture nominee that could be called entertaining.

Back to Rushfield: “They couldn’t make jokes, they couldn’t touch the heartstrings, they couldn’t even speak to the concerns of anyone outside Hollywood. Since the Academy last assembled a year ago, there has been a little world-historic event that disrupted the life of the entire planet, not to mention killed millions. By my count, the show made three, extremely passing references to this happening.

“That’s why this felt like an extinction-level event: the night the Hollywood elites walked away from the audience and vice versa. Even with the inner circle’s resident genius and innovator at the helm, they no longer have any understanding of who is the audience, why they are watching — and [they] no longer particularly care.

“And the whirlwind will be reaped.

“A better analogy might be that this was Hollywood’s Ceausescu speech — the moment the crowds turned on the god, and what had been authoritative and inspiring in an instant became ghoulish and pathetic, and his grip on the public slipped away, fatally.”

Nine or ten days ago I ordered a Region B Gaumont Bluray of Roman Polanski‘s J’Accuse. Alas, without English subtitles. An hour ago I popped it in. Before today I’d only seen an Italian-dubbed version with English subs, a 720p pirate torrent. Now I’ve finally seen and heard it properly…in French, 1080p, needle-sharp focus, softly lighted like a film shot during the actual Belle Epoque, perfectly timed and balanced. Watching it with French subtitles helps, although I’d love to see an English-friendly version someday.

It’s Polanski’s fifth masterpiece in the wake of Repulsion, Rosemary’s Baby, Chinatown and The Pianist, and the 21st Century’s answer to Paths of Glory (by way of a good detective yarn). Please read Robert Koehler’s perceptive review in a Summer 2020 edition of Cineaste.