Is That All There Is?

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Iran has pussy-bombed a U.S. airbase near Doha, but where’s the big boom-boom-boom…where’s the light show? The target was Al Udeid Air Base, the largest US military installation in the Middle East. Forward headquarters for U.S. Central Command (CENTCOM) — houses approximately 10,000 US troops. Here’s hoping U.S. casualties, if any, are minimal.

Diddling, Deck Shuffling, etc.

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Michael Angelo Covino and Kyle Marvin‘s Splitsville (Neon, 8.22) screened oddly, remotely, curiously in Cannes last month. Blame Neon. Always programmed against some must-see competition film…get outta my life. Plus Covino and Marvin costar in it, and I’m telling you right now I don’t like relationship movies that costar funny-looking guys. I prefer slick, clever, handsome guys to be paired off with…okay, not necessarily super-hot but at least moderately hot women.

163 Greatest Films of the 21st Century

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N.Y. Times staffers are in the process of posting their roster of the 100 finest films of the 21st Century.

For comparison’s sake, HE is hereby re-posting its own grand list of the 163 best films of the century. Yes, that’s right…one-six-three.

HE’s list is all broken up into sections. It over-emphasizes certain years and under-counts others…a mess. But at least it’s comprehensive.

And unlike the Times list, HE’s films have been chosen without the slightest regard for woke bonafides..…no attention yea or nay paid to sex, race, identity, LGBTQ or trans credentials. Measured solely by cinematic chops, emotional wholeness, unity, vigor, reach, poetic simplicity, etc.

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42 Best of the First Decade (’00 to ’09): Zodiac, Memento, Traffic, Amores perros, United 93, Children of Men, Adaptation, City of God, The Pianist, The Lives of Others, Sexy Beast, Avatar, There Will Be Blood, Michael Clayton, Almost Famous (the “Untitled” DVD director’s cut), 4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days, Collateral, Dancer in the Dark, A Serious Man, Girlfight, The Departed, Babel, Ghost World, In the Bedroom, Talk to Her, Bloody Sunday, No Country For Old Men, The Quiet American, Whale Rider, Road to Perdition, Open Range, Touching the Void, Maria Full of Grace, Up In The Air, The Hurt Locker, Million Dollar Baby, The Motorcycle Diaries, An Education, Man on Wire, Revolutionary Road, Che and Volver. (42)

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Best of 2010: The Social Network, The Fighter, Black Swan, Inside Job, Let Me In, A Prophet, Animal Kingdom, Rabbit Hole, The Tillman Story, Winter’s Bone  (10).

Best of 2011 (ditto): A Separation, Moneyball, Drive, Contagion, X-Men: First Class, Attack the Block (6).

Best of 2012: Zero Dark Thirty, Silver Linings Playbook, Amour, Beasts of the Southern Wild, Barbara, The Grey, Moonrise Kingdom. (7).

Best of 2013: The Wolf of Wall Street, 12 Years A Slave, Inside Llewyn Davis, Her, Dallas Buyers Club, Before Midnight, The Past, Frances Ha (8).

Best of 2014: Birdman, Citizen Four, Leviathan, Gone Girl, Boyhood, Locke, Wild Tales. (7)

Best of 2015: Spotlight, The Revenant; Mad Max: Fury Road; Beasts of No Nation; Love & Mercy, Son of Saul; Brooklyn; Carol, Everest, Ant-Man; The Big Short. (10)

Best of 2016 (So Far): Manchester By The Sea, A Bigger Splash, The Witch, Eye in the Sky, The Confirmation, The Invitation. (6)

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Best of 2017: (1) Luca Guadagnino‘s Call Me My Your Name, (2) Chris Nolan‘s Dunkirk, (3) Greta Gerwig‘s Lady Bird, (4) Ruben Ostlund‘s The Square, (5) Matt Reeves‘ War For The Planet of the Apes, (6) Darren Aronofsky‘s mother!, (7) Michael Showalter’s The Big Sick, (8) Martin McDonagh‘s Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri, (9) Edgar Wright‘s Baby Driver, (10) Sean Baker‘s The Florida Project, (11) John Curran‘s Chappaquiddick, (12) Andrey Zvyagintsev‘s Loveless, (13) Guillermo del Toro‘s The Shape of Water, (14) David Lowery‘s A Ghost Story, (15) David Gordon Green‘s Stronger, (16) David Michod and Brad Pitt‘s War Machine, (18) Joseph Kosinski‘s Only The Brave, (19) Jordan Peele‘s Get Out and (20) Denis Villneuve‘s Blade Runner 2049.

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Best of 2018: Tied for first place: Bjorn Runge‘s The Wife (Sony Pictures Classics, 8.17) and Paul Schrader‘s First Reformed; 3. Ari Aster‘s Hereditary; 4. Stefano Sollima‘s Sicario — Day of the Soldado; 5. Chris McQuarrie and Tom Cruise‘s Mission : Impossible — Fallout; 6. John Krasinski‘s A Quiet Place; 7. Eugene Jarecki‘s The King; 8. Alfonso Cuaron‘s Roma; 9. Peter Farrelly‘s Green Book; 10. Lynne Ramsay‘s You Were Never Really Here, 11. Tony Zierra‘s Filmworker, 12. Andrej Zvyagintsev‘s Loveless, 13. Jeremiah Zagar‘s We The Animals, 14. Tony Gilroy‘s Beirut, 16. Wes Anderson‘s Isle of Dogs; 16. Bo Burnham‘s Eighth Grade; 17. Morgan Neville‘s Won’t You Be My Neighbor; 18. Ryan Coogler‘s Black Panther; 19. Matt Tyrnauer‘s Scotty and the Secret History of Hollywood; 20. Betsy West; Julie Cohen‘s RBG; 21. Spike Lee‘s BlackKKlansman; 22. Antoine Fuqua‘s The Equalizer 2; and 23. John Curran‘s Chappaquiddick.

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Best of 2019 (16)

1. Martin Scorsese‘s The Irishman, 
2. Todd Phillips‘ Joker, 
3. Kent Jones‘ Diane / “All Hail Diane — 2019’s Best Film So Far“, filed on 3.27.19.
4. Lulu Wang‘s The Farewell / “The Farewell Is Among Year’s Best,” filed on 7.3.19.
5. Robert Eggers‘ The Lighthouse / “This Way Lies Madness,” filed on 5.19.19.
6. Craig Zahler‘s Dragged Across Concrete / “All Hail Dragged Across Concrete,” filed on 3.21.19.
7. FX’s Fosse/Verdon / Fosse/Verdon (Theatrical, Exquisite, Pizazzy, Deep Blue,” filed on 4.25.19.
8. A.J. Eaton and Cameron Crowe‘s David Crosby: Remember My Name / “Crosby Doc Hurts Real Good,” filed on 1.27.19.
9. Quentin Tarantino‘s Once Upon A Time in Hollywood / “Once Upon A Time in Hollywood Is…‘, filed on 5.21.19.
10. Russo Brothers‘ Avengers: Endgame / “Okay With Nominating Endgame For Best Picture Oscar,” filed on 5.4.19.
11. Ari Aster‘s Midsommar / “Midsommar Inevitability,” filed on 6.25.19.
12. Martin Scorsese‘s Rolling Thunder Revue: A Bob Dylan Story / “Rolling Along With Scorsese/Dylan” filed on 6.10.19.
13. Olivia Wilde‘s Booksmart / “This Time SXSW Hype Was Genuine“, filed on 4.25.19.
14. Celine Sciamma‘s Portrait of a Lady on Fire / “By my sights as close to perfect as a gently erotic, deeply passionate period drama could be,” excepted from “Midnight Panini,” filed on 5.21.19.
15. Dan Reed‘s Leaving Neverland / “After Tomorrow, Jackson’s Name Will Be Mud“, filed on 3.2.19.
16. Mads Brugger‘s Cold Case Hammarskjöld / “Riveting, Occasionally Oddball Cold Case”, posted on 1.29.19.

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HE’s top films of the 2020-2025 period thus far: (1) Roman Polanski‘s J’Accuse (which premiered in Europe in late ’19 but wasn’t pirated for U.S. consumption until early ’20), (2) Sean Baker‘s Anora, (3) Joachim Trier‘s Sentimental Value, (4) Steven Zallian‘s Ripley, (5) Edward Berger‘s Conclave, (6) Steve McQueen‘s Mangrove, (7) David Fincher‘s The Killer, (8) Pedro Almodovar‘s Parallel Mothers, (9) Reinaldo Marcus Green‘s King Richard, (10) Tran Anh Hung‘s The Taste of Things (The Pot au Feu).

Second Grouping of Ten: (11) Guy Ritchie‘s The Covenant, (12) Joseph Kosinski‘s Top Gun: Maverick, (13) Hasan Hadi‘s The President’s Cake, (14) Janicza Bravo’s Zola, (15) Joachim Trier’s The Worst Person in the World, (16) Mike Leigh’s Hard Truths, (17) Eva Victor’s Sorry Baby, (18) Yorgos Lanthimos’ Poor Things, (19) Bradley Cooper‘s Maestro, (20) Alexander Payne‘s The Holdovers.

Third Grouping of Ten: (21) Audrey Diwan‘s Happening, (22) Jasmila Žbanić‘s Quo Vadis, Aida?, (23) Errol Morris‘s The Pigeon Tunnel, (24) Ali Abbasi‘s The Apprentice, (25) Alice Rohrwacher‘s La Chimera, (26) Anders Thomas Jensen‘s Riders of Justice, (27) Jon Watts‘ Spider-Man: No Way Home, (28) Peter Jackson‘s The Beatles: Get Back, (29) Cristian Mungiu‘s R.M.N., (30) Todd Field‘s TAR.

Last Licks: (31) Alejandro G. Iñárritu‘s Bardo, False Chronicle of a Handful of Truths; (32) Aaron Sorkin‘s The Trial of the Chicago 7, (33) Judd Apatow‘s The King of Staten Island, (34) Michael Winterbottom‘s The Trip to Greece, (35) Diao Yinan‘s The Wild Goose Lake, (36) Chloe Zhao‘s Nomadland, (37) Jon M. Chu‘s In The Heights, (38) Steven Spielberg‘s West Side Story.

An Impending Airstrike-in-Tel-Aviv Evacuation Segment? This Is Nothing!

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Yesterday CNN’s Anderson Cooper, Clarissa Ward and Jeremy Diamond haul-assed into a bomb shelter after receiving a 10-minute warning of an incoming missile in Tel Aviv. Nobody wants any correspondents to suffer harm or trauma, but this segment pales in comparison with last week’s video of an Iranian TV news studio taking a hit. Not Hollywood enough, lacks dramatic force. Cooper is way too cool and composed. Obviously I’m kidding but still.

Why Is Michael Shannon Succumbing to Hair Loss?

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I’ve been a major Michael Shannon fan since 2008’s Revolutionary Road, and I really don’t want him to become Robert Duvall. All he has to do is visit my Prague hair guy (or a similar specialist in Istanbul) and he’ll be out of the woods. Why can’t he just hang on to what he’s had going all these years? Where’s the upside in losing his hairline? Imagine if Paul McCartney had begun to seriously lose hair follicles at age 50. or if the same had happened to Cary Grant. Bald McCartney or bald Grant would have destroyed their brands.

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Best Scene in a Medium-Strength Film No One Remembers, Much Less Talks About

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In this climactic scene from The Ugly American (’63), director George Englund‘s decision to cut to an overhead shot at the 4:05 mark — a shot that emphasizes the internal collapse of Marlon Brando‘s Harrison MacWhite character, the U.S. ambassador to the ficional Sarkhan, a stand-in for Vietnam — is the finest moment in an otherwise decent but dramatically plodding film.

Nonetheless The Ugly American, adapted by Stewart Stern and released seven months before JFK’s murder, when U.S. military assistance to Vietnam was relatively modest and restrained…here was a mainstream Universal release unambiguously stating that this country’s anti-Communist policy in Vietnam was largely based on ignorance and military bluster and doomed to fail.

Mostly shot on Universal sound stages, The Ugly American received mixed reviews and no Oscar nominations, and went belly-up at the box office. But it foretold the greatest Anerican foreign policy tragedy of the 20th Century.

Charles Grodin Knew He’d Beaten Eddie Albert

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…when Albert began to repeatedly raise the go-away bribe figure in five-thousand-dollar increments.

His conservative Minnesota banker in Elaine May‘s The Heartbreak Kid was Albert‘s finest feature-film role ever. He was 65 when it was filmed. It resulted in his being nominated for a Best Supporting Actor Oscar. Albert passed 20 years ago — 5.26.05.

Was this also Charles Grodin‘s finest role? He was 35 or 36 when Elaine May‘s The Heartbreak Kid was shot in ’71. A Wilton resident during his final 20 years or eo, Grodin passed in 2021 at age 86.

ChatGPT: “While in Wilton, Grodin was an involved member of the community. He supported the Wilton Library and its writing awards. He also appeared at the Ridgefield Playhouse multiple times, sharing stories and even performing a one-man show based on his experiences.”

All Hail BBC’s Martine Croxall!

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Would that other independent-minded employees of woke-minded orgs exhibit the same plain-spoken character and clarity of mind that the BBC’s Martine Croxall showed yesterday.

Instead of saying “pregnant people”, Croxall corrected the copy on the fly by simply saying “women.”

Recent specific example: Imagine if N.Y. Times reporters Luke Smith and Madeline Coleman, authors of “Fast, Loud, Very Hollywood — But Will Race Fans Love It or Hate It?”, had written in paragraph #36 that “around 40 percent of the F1 fanbase are, for the most part, biofemales” rather than “around 40 percent of the F1 fanbase identify as women”.

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The Real Guy Haines

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Alfred Hitchcock‘s Strangers on a Train (’51) is an adaptation of Patricia Highsmith‘s 1950 novel. But until this evening I had never read Highsmith’s original story, which is markedly different from the screenplay by Raymond Chandler and Czenzi Ormonde:

Highsmith: “Architect Guy Haines wants to divorce his unfaithful wife, Miriam, to marry the woman he loves, Anne Faulkner. While on a train to see his wife, he meets Charles Anthony Bruno, a psychopathic playboy who proposes an idea to “exchange murders”: Bruno will kill Miriam if Guy kills Bruno’s father. Neither of them will have a motive, and the police will have no reason to suspect either of them.

“Guy does not take Bruno seriously, but Bruno kills Guy’s wife while Guy is away in Mexico.

“Bruno informs Guy of his crime, but Guy hesitates to turn him in to the police. He realizes that Bruno could claim Guy’s complicity in the planned exchange murders; however, the longer he remains silent, the more he implicates himself.

“This implicit guilt becomes stronger as in the coming months Bruno makes appearances demanding that Guy honor his part of the bargain. After Bruno starts writing anonymous letters to Guy’s friends and colleagues, the pressure becomes too great, and Guy murders Bruno’s father.

“Subsequently, Guy is consumed by guilt, whereas Bruno seeks Guy’s company as if nothing had happened. He makes an uninvited appearance at Guy’s wedding, causing a scene. At the same time, a private detective who had worked for Bruno’s father and who suspects Bruno of having arranged the murder of his father, establishes the connection between Bruno and Guy that began with the train ride, and suspects Bruno of Miriam’s murder. Guy also becomes implicated due to his contradictions about the acquaintance with Bruno.

“When Bruno falls overboard during a sailing cruise, Guy identifies so strongly with Bruno that he tries to rescue him under threat to his own life. Nevertheless, Bruno drowns, and the murder investigation is closed.

“Guy, however, is plagued by guilt, and confesses the double murder to Miriam’s former lover. This man, however, does not condemn Guy, and instead dismisses Miriam, as well as women in general, while enjoying Guy’s liquor. The detective who had been investigating the murders overhears Guy’s confession, however, and confronts him. Guy turns himself over to the detective immediately.”

Hanks’ “Wilson” Performance Skirts The Perverse

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On HE’s list of the best 25 films of 2007, Charlie Wilson’s War ranks 22nd. There’s a reason for that, and it has nothing to do with Aaron Sorkin’s whip- smart screenplay or Mike Nichols’ directorial finesse or Philip Seymour Hoffman’s fine performance as that cynical, cigarette-smoking CIA guy (he’s actually magnificent).

The (admittedly slight) problem is Tom Hanks’ casting as the droll titular character. The real-life Wilson, a cunning, well-liked Texas Congressman in his day, was a libertine (fucked women, slurped booze, snorted coke), and as smooth and charming as Hanks is overall, there’s just no believing his Wilson is a party animal with a hard-on. He can’t sell it. There’s no erasing that Hanksian modesty, decency, reserve.

Nor am I a huge fan of Julia Roberts’ performance as real-life Texas socialite Joanne Herring…too poised and brittle, overly conspicuous acting…she won’t stop saying lines.