Henry Fonda starred in a pair of classic films during a four-month period in the mid ’50s — Alfred Hitchcock‘s The Wrong Man (opened 12.22.56) and Sidney Lumet‘s 12 Angry Men (4.10.57). Both were financial disappointments, but this didn’t matter in the long run. Today the film snobs (i.e., guys like Glenn Kenny and Richard Brody) absolutely worship the Hitchcock while your hoi polloi, hot-dog-eating Average Joes (i.e., film mavens like myself) tend to prefer the Lumet.

Both are first-rate efforts. Blurays of both are sitting on my bookshelves. While I certainly don’t “dislike” The Wrong Man, it is (be honest) a bummerish film that basically says one thing for 96% of its length — “This Queens-residing, moderate-mannered family man and musician is unlucky and therefore fucked.”

I feel a much greater degree of affection and camaraderie for 12 Angry Men.

Sometime last night San Franciscco Chronicle critic Bob Strauss declared that The Wrong Man is “better” than 12 Angry Men. I tapped out a reply this morning:

“The Wrong Man is certainly ‘well made’ as far as that term goes or allows, but it mainly plays like a suffocatingly Kafka-esque thing, a chilly and rather downish and dull procedural about what it’s like for an innocent man (Fonda’s Chris Ballestrero, a Stork Club bass player) to be caught in the vines and tendrils of a judicial system that regards him as guilty of theft, and then what it’s like when his wife (played by Vera Miles) begins to succumb to depression and mental illness.

“The Hitchcockian care and craft levels are there in every frame, but watching The Wrong Man is like sinking into a pit of quicksand and being helpless to climb out…deeper and deeper into the slithery muck. Artier than 12 Angry Men — moodier, more visually expressive — but so much grimmer.

“And what a cast of dispirited downheads! Poor Fonda and Miles. Those suspicious, hawk-eyed detectives (the borough-sounding Harold J. Stone and the younger, WASP-ier Charles Cooper). The none-too-bright women from the insurance company who mistakenly identify Fonda as the thief. The intelligent and personable attorney (Anthony Quayle) who tries to defend Fonda in court. The woman who plays Fonda’s mother and even the two young sons. They’re all part of the same oozy swamp, and then the stuff begins to seep into your pores and down into your lungs and gradually you’re asphyxiated.

“It all alleviates when the real bad guy is captured at the very end. My favorite shot is when Cooper happens to spot the bad guy being brought into the police station. He walks outside, starts down the street and then begins to realize that the bad guy looks an awful lot like Fonda, and so he turns around and goes back inside.

“But that’s one good moment in a movie that’s all about being slowly smothered by a large bureaucratic judicial octopus. Compare this to the 15 or 20 diverting, emotionally engaging, character-rich or soul-stirring moments in 12 Angry Men, which is also one of the most inventively staged and shot confined-space films in cinema history.

“I’m sorry but only a Get Out-worshipping contrarian film snob would call The Wrong Man “better” than Sidney Lumet’s 1957 classic. For all I know Kenny and Brody feel the same way. (And don’t forget that these guys are Marnie fans also.)”

My God, the NYC jurors in 12 Angry Men could have been theoretically assigned to Chris Balistrero’s suspicion-of-robbery trial instead of the boy-allegedly-stabbing-his-father murder case, and then they would’ve died of boredom. As juror Robert Webber says early on, “Boy, these cases can be the dullest…”

A good portion of the critical community has ixnayed Lee Daniels‘ The United States vs. Billie Holiday (Hulu, 2.26) — 67% Rotten Tomatoes, 54% Metacritic. But everyone (HE included) approves of Andra Day‘s performance as Holiday, so there’s that.

It’s a story about heroin-using, velvet-toned Billie Holiday, perhaps the greatest American blues singer of the 20th Century, and the constant persecution of the poor woman in the late ’40s and ’50s by Federal Bureau of Narcotics honcho Harry Anslinger (Garrett Hedlund) and a charming, lower-level agent named Jimmy Fletcher (Trevante Rhodes) whom Holiday “takes a shine to” despite being a predator.

We’re not just talking about an authoritarian campaign to eliminate the scourge of drugs and needles but a racist determination to punish Holiday for occasionally (often?) singing “Strange Fruit,” a protest song about lynching of African Americans. Anslinger and others in his realm felt that the song might goad African Americans into this or that form of social protest.

The movie basically says that (a) Holiday won’t stop using smack (obviously regrettable but then again she’s not hurting anyone except herself) and (b) Anslinger and his goons won’t stop arresting and harassing her and making her life miserable. And it goes on and on like that for 130 minutes, give or take.

Holiday finally dies in 1959 at age 44. She could have had a gentler, happier life, or at least one less defined by persecution.

I didn’t “enjoy” watching Daniels’ film — it’s an absolute slog to sit through. I was looking at the time code and muttering “lemme outta here” over and over. But at the same time it’s his most rigorous, ambitious and meticulously mounted film (period detail and all) and so I had to admit that it’s his “best” film. especially when compared to his previous four stabs at direction, none of which I was especially knocked out by — Shadowboxer, Precious, The Paperboy, Lee Daniels’ The Butler.

When I say “best” I mean that it’s his biggest, boldest “try” — a film that’s not just about a certain character but about the whole racist enchilada of the U.S. of A. in the bad old days of the ’40s and ’50s.

On 1.28 I wrote that Day‘s performance “as the gifted, tortured, persecuted and self-destructive Holiday is obviously an Oscar-calibre thang…Andra Day for Best Actress, Andra Day for Best Actress, Andra Day for Best Actress.”

“Gone Girl is a gas, and I mean that in a truly fascinating ass-wind sense. It’s a wonderfully tight, highly disciplined, utterly delightful ‘who killed the missing wife?’ flick by a master craftsman, but don’t kid yourself about it being just on that level. It’s much more than a rote crime melodrama. Gone Girl is basically an entertaining sociology lecture from Professor Fincher. A blistering assessment of American upscale marriages and social values and self-fuckitude like you’ve never quite seen. How do I get outta here? Look at how miserable we manage to make each other…togetherness! And the pigslop tabloid media brigade…God!

“Women and men are going to have sharply different reactions to Gone Girl, but for openers guys are going to go ‘wow…whoa’ and some feminists are going to howl ‘is this a comprehensive portrait of 2014 male misogyny or what?’ This view is complicated, of course, by the fact that Gillian Flynn, a whip-smart ex-Entertainment Weekly staffer, wrote the book to begin with. On the other hand Fincher brings the shit home.

“Gone Girl is a deliciously cold, twisted, half-satiric portrait of elite American values — the whole rotten state of disillusioned post-2008 married yuppie barforama. And fuck me. It’s 10:18 pm on a lovely warm night in midtown Manhattan. I’ve just uploaded two pics and two short videos of the post-Gone Girl press conference at Leows Lincoln Square, and now I have about 15 minutes before heading over to the post-gala party at Tavern on the Green. Later.” — posted on 9.26.14.

Posted on 10.7.14: “Two days ago a Glenn Whipp L.A. Times piece drove a stake through Gone Girl‘s Best Picture chances. The article assessed reactions to last Saturday’s Academy screening of David Fincher‘s film, and the basic take-away was that the 50-plus crowd was mostly underwhelmed or ‘subdued.’

“Nobody Whipp spoke to seemed to understand that Gone Girl is a kind of Luis Bunuel film, and that Gillian Flynn‘s story is only the half of it, that the film is really about the social-cultural undercurrent…about all of us.

“One Academy guy told Whipp that ‘this is first-class filmmaking but, like a lot of [Fincher’s] other movies, you admire it more than you enjoy it.’ In other words, first-class chops and socially pungent content aren’t enjoyable enough. This guy wants to laugh, to be charmed, hugged and caressed, to have his heart melted down. ‘What did I just see?’ one Oscar-nominated producer said to Whipp as he walked along Wilshire Boulevard to his car. ‘That’s it? Really? I’ve seen better social commentary in a good episode of Bob’s Burgers!’

“You can lead a 62 year-old Academy member to a screening, but you can’t make him ‘see’ it. Yes, I wish that just one time Academy members could stand inside my shoes. They’d know what a drag it is to report about them.” — posted on 10.7.14.

Word around the campfire sez that Cannes Film Festival honcho Thierry Fremaux doesn’t like the idea of a masked festival starting on Tuesday, July 6. He doesn’t want to half-ass it — Fremaux wants a classic event in which everyone can relax and breathe openly and be human beings while dressed in sweaters and scarves.

World of Reel‘s Jordan Ruimy, who has some kind of pipeline going with a French guy who hears things, reports that Fremaux is mulling the idea of bumping Cannes all the way into October. Maybe. He couldn’t do it concurrent with the big September festivals so he’d have to choose October.

The thinking (please stop me if I’m wrong) is that if worldwide vaccinations proceed at a good pace then maybe things could get back to normal in, say, six or seven months time. Maybe. Right now, as I’m sure most of you agree, the July 6th date (less than five months henceforth) is probably too soon. I don’t think we’ll REALLY be in the clear until the spring of ’22. At best.

If this turns out to be true, I’m very, VERY sorry about Wes Anderson‘s The French Dispatch and Leos Carax‘s Annette once again getting the shaft end of the stick and having to recalculate strategies. If this happens, of course. I know nothing for a fact.

Ruimy #1, posted on 1.18.21: “I reported in January that the Cannes Film Festival was very serious in eyeing a September/October event this year. It turns out the intel was accurate.”

Ruimy #2: “It seems as though the head honcho of the biggest and most important film festival in the world isn’t opposed to moving the event into the fall. [This] would have to do with Fremaux not being a fan of experiencing a ‘middle ground’ version of the festival. Meaning, he wants Cannes 2021 to be without masks or other PPE. And if that’s the case where France requires that people wore masks at large public events, then he’d rather just wait it out saying, ‘The middle ground is the worst.'”

Ruimy #3: “A Cannes that happens after Venice, Telluride, Toronto and potentially NYFF would throw everything out of whack.”

Uptown film festival veteran: “I’ve long suspected that launching Cannes ’21 on July 6th was a pipe dream. It felt weird and wrong that Thierry would even try it. But the fall? Maybe he will meld it with his Lyon thing?”

Posted on 1.27.21.

I’ve seen and admired Nick Jarecki‘s Crisis (Quiver, 2.26), a skillfully wrought, multi-charactered, Traffic-like drama about the intrigues and ravages of the opioid epidemic. It began shooting roughly two years ago, and was ready to roll out by early ’20, or roughly a year ago.

I don’t know how it would have fared critically or commercially if the pandemic hadn’t hit, but I know two things. One, Crisis (originally called Dreamland) deserves everyone’s respect, and two, it doesn’t deserve to contend with so much as a single bad Armie Hammer joke.

As Jake Kelly, an undercover double agent dealking with users and sellers and basically in quicksand up to his neck, Hammer delivers a steady, no-frills performance. He doesn’t try to do anything the cute or charismatic way. Crisis is a complex ensemble piece, but at the same time as lean and trim as anyone could imagine, and trouper-wise Hammer fits right in. He holds back.

Not once during my viewing did I think about Hammer’s recent travails. Okay, I did think about them but mostly I was muttering “this is what good cinema does…it brings you in and shuts the world out….nice deal.”

I was also thinking that whatever Hammer might have gotten wrong in terms of excessive zeal or showing a lack of sensitivity or consideration for this or that B&D partner, his troubles are his own turf’s. No overlap, leave it alone.

The same consideration should, of course, be given to the other two Hammer films opening this year — Kenneth Branagh‘s Death on the Nile (20th Century, 9.17) and Taika Waititi Next Goal Wins, which will probably “open” during the ’21 and early ’22 award season.

“After all, I was there — in the house, in the room — and I know both my father and mother and what each is capable of a whole lot better than you.” — from Moses Farrow‘s “A Son Speaks Out,” 5.23.18.

And yet Allen v. Farrow (HBO Max, 2.21) suggests that perhaps Moses wasn’t in Frog Hollow that day, or that he wasn’t around much or was off walking or sulking. The doc focuses hard on Moses in episode #4 and does what it can to discredit him. I can’t recall precisely if the contrary information is offered in episode #3 or episode #4, but it arrives when the doc quotes Woody Allen‘s testimony in the 1993 Judge Wilk child custody case.

Although the doc doesn’t excerpt any passages from “A Son Speaks Out“, it passes along a Moses statement about his being at the house and seeing this or that, and then it flashes a statement on the screen: “Allen, during his testimony [at Judge Wilk’s custody hearing], said Moses “was nowhere to be seen” that day, or words to that effect. (I wish I had frame-captured this — my bad.)

And yet at the beginning of his essay Moses writes that he “was present for everything that transpired in our house before, during, and after the alleged event.”

If, like me, you dismiss a notion that Moses was lying when he wrote that he was there “before, durng and after”, it sounds as if Allen v. Farrow directors Kirby Dick and Amy Ziering are being dishonest on this particular point, at least as far as blowing smoke up viewers’ asses is concerned.

I’m especially bothered — flummoxed is a better word — by the “train set in the attic” thing. Dylan said the train was choo-chooing around the attic — the actual quote is “circling around the attic” — during the alleged assault. In episode #4 an undated Connecticut police drawing (or “schematic”) of the attic crawl space shows a circular (or oblong-shaped) train track of some kind, but why not a photo? Why wasn’t it dated? Who’s the artist?

Moses, on the other hand, wrote flat-out that there was no train set in the attic — period. (He said an electric train set was actually in a first-floor converted garage playroom that the boys used.) Why is this unresolved in the doc? Why didn’t Dylan mention a train set in her earlier statements? Why didn’t the doc drill down and clear this up one way or the other? Who drew the schematic?

Undated police-issued drawing of Frog Hollow attic crawl space, presented in episode #4 of Allen v. Farrow.

Here’s the link.

This is a terrible, terrible ending….”that really sucks, lady!” But a little riff by Esquire‘s Anna Grace Lee kinda blows too.

The first snafu is the headline — “An Alternate Titanic Ending Has Been Revealed and Boy, Did They Dodge a Bullet.” The alternate ending was actually posted on YouTube seven and a half years ago — 9.27.13.

And then Lee describes the last shot as follows: “And then we watch the epic transformation of the dark ruins into the vibrant vision that was the ship before disaster, where all the passengers greet young Rose as she reunites with Jack.”

Yeah, true, except what we’re actually seeing is Rose being greeted by dead people (characters who knew Rose before going down with the ship) as she enters a dreamscape version of the first-class grand salon.”

What makes this fantasy scene perfect is that it’s a musical number from a stage production of Carousel sans melody, especially with Leonardo DiCaprio waiting atop the staircase and facing the grand clock. And because it confirms what we all want to believe, that upon the moment of death we’ll be greeted by friends and family as we return to some form of life eternal, and with white light streaming in.

“What do you…Rita! how are you!…Bob, how do you explain that lifeless Alexander The Great flick with Richard Burton, Claire Bloom and Fredric March? I mean, that movie just laid there like an uncooked, unseasoned filet of flounder. You need to jump into something, man…I don’t know, some kind of intense, contemporary, character-driven thing. Something about pool sharks or street gangs, something loose and jazzy and French New Wavey…”

Last night I marathoned through all four episodes of Kirby Dick and Amy Ziering‘s Allen v. Farrow (HBO Max, 2.21.). Speaking as a longtime Woody Allen admirer and defender, I found it unsettling, more than a little disturbing and, I regret to say, a half–persuasive hit job. I was impressed with the chops, the craft and the sculpting, but I took notes as I watched and here’s a sampling:

“This is a hit job, probing but selectively so…a one-sided presentation, a stacked deck…Mia’s tale is so sanitized, so chaste…beware the perverted monster…I have to admit that it feels creepy…’smothering energy, suffocating closeness‘….Woody was clearly too invested in an emotionally intense, overly touchy relationship with Dylan…directions on how to suck his thumb?…this is so FOUL…give me a break!…so the Yale-New Haven investigators were determined to exonerate Woody?…why would they go to such lengths to distort?…why would they destroy their notes?…Paul Williams was muzzled?…what about the three kids who died under Mia’s care, two of them by suicide?…this is very bad for Woody but at the same time it’s not an open book, warts–and–all approach…the doc is totally in the tank for the Mia narrative.”

All through the first three hours (the fourth is mostly wrap-up) I was…be honest…quietly horrified. A pit of my stomach feeling that began to spread into my spleen. A terrible sensation. As in “oh, no…”

For 29 years I never realized (and nobody ever told me) that Soon-Yi is pronounced Soon-EEE, not Soon-YEE. Five words: “Jeff, the ‘Y’ is silent.”

Allen v. Farrow is a hit job, all right, but at the same time I was persuaded that what was being presented was honest as far as it went. The doc DOES lie by omission quite a lot, but I was also persuaded that the overly intense affection that Woody exhibited for Dylan was wrong. I could feel it. Diseased. Not right.

Then again Showbiz411‘s Roger Friedman might have had a point when he wrote that someone needs to give Mia a special Oscar for the performance of her life.

I just can’t understand Moses Farrow and his 5.23.18 “A Son Speaks Out” essay. What he wrote doesn’t square AT ALL with the Mia, Kirby & Amy narrative that sank into my system last night. So who’s lying? Mia is obviously lying by omission, but so, it seems (what else am I to think?), is Moses apparently, and I feel so angry about the possibility that he might’ve led me down the garden path.

What kind of diseased dysfunction would goad Moses into blowing that much smoke? How could he write what he wrote and not mean it? I’m almost beside myself with fury.

Moses’ essay, after all, has been the cornerstone of my belief in Woody’s presumed innocence for three years now.

And really…how is it that in all of his 85 years Woody never ONCE violated or over-stepped with anyone else? It’s so baffling. One single five-minute horror episode that happened on 8.4.92 when he was 57 years old, and the rest of his life is essentially spotless. My understanding of human behavior argues with what I saw last night. At the same time there was that awful feeling…

How in God’s name did those nannies let Woody take Dylan away like that? They had been put on HIGH ALERT, for God’s sake. “Don’t let him be alone with her,” they were told. He clearly had what seemed like pervy or at the very least inappropriate inclinations, etc. What kind of sociopath nanny would let Dylan go off with him? They looked for Woody and Dylan for 20 minutes and couldn’t find them? Frog Hollow isn’t that big.

I just took Clayton Davis‘s “How To Avoid Being Too Much of a White Person When You Vote for Year-End Awards” quiz. The idea is to check off all the current award-seeking films that (a) meet the Academy’s forthcoming diversity requirements, and (b) fall under the categories of Representative (20), LGBTQ (10), Taboo Issues (5), Disabilities (5) and Women Filmmakers (15). One point per film. 55 points total.

Clayton’s minimum passing score is 30. I got a 29. 16 out of 20 “Representative” films. Big fail on LGBTQs, 3 out of 5 “taboos”, etc. I pledge to do better in ’21.

Clayton statement #1: “It’s important to say what this form is NOT. It is not a demand that you vote for these films. It is not a guide for a diversity quota so more people of color are represented in the film industry. It is not a document made to make a voter feel guilty about liking Green Book more than Roma or preferring Crash to Brokeback Mountain.” [HE comment: In 2018 and early ’19 there was definitely a coordinated campaign to shame and belittle fans of Green Book — it won the Best Picture Oscar anyway.]

Clayton statement #2: “It’s deeply believed that if industry voters have enough films of diverse and inclusive voices, there will never be a need for any quota or mandate, as people fear or suggest. To go further, Hollywood executives and producers will see the return on those investments with box receipts. Films like Lee Daniels’ The Butler ($116 million) and Get Out ($176 million) were smash hits with modest budgets, with the latter winning an Academy Award for best original screenplay (Jordan Peele).”

2020 films that are vaguely or mostly Anglo-favoring, non-representative, non-LGBTQ, non-taboo, etc.: Underwater, Dolittle, The Gentlemen, The Last Full Measure, The Rhythm Section, Birds of Prey, The Lodge, Horse Girl, Fantasy Island, Downhill, The Last Thing He Wanted, The Night Clerk, The Invisible Man, The Way Back, The Burnt Orange Heresy, Swallow, The Hunt, Lost Girls, The Roads Not Taken, Never Rarely Sometimes Always, Resistance, The Main Event, Extraction, Bad Education, The Wretched, Capone, Blood and Money, The Lovebirds, Artemis Fowl, The King of Staten Island, You Should Have Left, Irresistible, Greyhound, Palm Springs, An American Pickle, Waiting for the Barbarians, Tesla, Bill & Ted Face the Music, I’m Thinking of Ending Things , The Devil All the Time, The Nest, Blackbird, The Trial of the Chicago 7, Kajillionaire, The Boys in the Band, On the Rocks, The War with Grandpa, A Rainy Day in New York, Borat Subsequent Moviefilm, Jungleland, Let Him Go, Hillbilly Elegy, Mank, Dreamland, Sound of Metal, The Christmas Chronicles 2, Uncle Frank, The Prom, Let Them All Talk, Wonder Woman 1984, News of the World, Promising Young Woman, Pieces of a Woman.

When your constituents are suffering from a lack of electricity during extremely cold temperatures, only a stone sociopath Senator would fly to Cancun in order to bask in mid ’80s heat. It doesn’t matter what Ted Cruz‘s administrative abilities may have been to help alleviate the situation. Winging off to Mexico at the height of a major disaster is comically atrocious theatre.

It’s basically a rightwing thing — the world is for the few — some are able to climb to the top but most struggle in the middle and many slide to the bottom….that’s life!

Truth-Serum Cruz: “I happen to be one of the few creme de la creme types with the option to escape this Arctic nightmare. What do you want me to do, hand out free blankets and extra underwear off the back of a truck? Hand out free hot coffee? If you don’t like the fact that I’m in Cancun, tough shit. Try and vote me out if you can, but let me tell you something — the dumbshits who support me like the fact that I’m chlllin’ in Cancun. Because they’d like to be here with me.”