You can tell right away that Nia DaCosta‘s Candyman isn’t horror crap — that it’s a cut or two above your generic slasher gruel.

It’s quietly spooky, trippy, impressionistic, nightmarish. Largely unreliant on brutal shock cuts. A mix of the meditative and the assaultive, Obviously gorey here and there, but that’s the territory. The buzzing bees made me twitch and whatnot, but that was the intention. I got a little tired looking at Chicago’s Cabrini-Green project over and over, but what was I gonna do?

And I enjoyed the vibey assurance of Yahya Abdul-Mateen II (Bobby Seale in Aaron Sorkin‘s The Trial of the Chicago 7), Teyonah Parris and Colman Domingo.

DaCosta, 31, is a first-rate filmmaker — she has the focus of a professional, a steady hand. She knows how to frame and compose, when to hold and cut away, when to move and hold still.

[SPOILER] And boy, did I love the concluding scene when Parris’s character, Brianna Cartwright, looks at her reflection in the rearview mirror of a cop car with a thuggish white officer in the driver’s seat, calls for Candyman five times (a different emphasis given to each call-out) and before you know it all the boys in blue (who might as well be stand-ins for the killers of George Floyd) are slashed and bloodied and cleavered to death.

Do I want to sit through Candyman again? Naah, that’s okay. Once was enough. But it didn’t annoy me (and for me that’s saying something) and I respected the experience. I’m glad I saw it. My horizons have been slightly broadened. Oh, and DaCosta needs to escape the horror genre. She’s better than that.

Over his 60-year career in films the late, great Harry Dean Stanton wasn’t exactly identified with love scenes. In fact Stanton performed in only one, but it was a doozy. It’s also mildly amusing.

The scene was in Frank Perry‘s Rancho Deluxe (’75) and it was between Stanton’s “Curt,” a naive, none-too-bright, love-struck ranch hand, and Charlene Dallas‘s “Laura Beige,” who pretends to be taken with Curt for nefarious reasons.

Here’s a link to the film — the scene happens around the 1:12 (or 72 minute) mark.

Stanton was roughly 39 when Rancho Deluxe was shot; Dallas was 27. I’m fairly certain this was Stanton’s first and last moment of big-screen intimacy.

There’s a new, restored Rancho Deluxe Bluray available on Tuesday, 8.31.

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John Lennon + Yoko Ono, Sean Ono Lennon, Wes Anderson, Jared Gilman, Scott Coffey, It Takes Three, Hollywood Elsewhere…seven degrees, unbroken circle. My HE riff on It Takes Three appeared on 8.27.

I have this terrible suspicion that the vast majority of vote-eligible Californians aren’t even aware of, much less paying attention to, the 9.14 recall vote, and that something horrible could potentially happen.

Speaking purely from a know-nothing, sniffing-the-breeze spitball perspective, HE agrees that the most likely contenders for the 2022 Best Actress are (a) Respect‘s Jennifer Hudson, (b) House of Gucci‘s Lady Gaga, (c) The Eyes of Tammy Faye‘s Jessica Chastain (i.e., Most Makeup, Best Physical Transformation), (d) Spencer‘s Kristen Stewart and (e) Parallel Mothers‘ Penelope Cruz.

Everyone understands that after three Oscar wins (Fargo, Three Billboards, Nomadland) Frances McDormand has been awarded quite enough, thank you, so forget her being nominated for her Lady Macbeth performance in Joel Coen‘s The Tragedy of Macbeth, if and when some kind of groundswell manifests. I don’t see it happening. Coen’s film is allegedly problematic.

As far as Aaron Sorkin‘s Being The Ricardos is concerned, the word is that Javier Bardem‘s performance as Desi Arnaz outpoints Nicole Kidman‘s as Lucille Ball, so let’s allow nature to take its course.

I’m not saying the fearsome Hurricane Ida isn’t a very serious threat to life and property, but it’s now 2:30 pm New Orleans time and I’m glad to report that things don’t…obviously I know nothing but right now it seems as if the news outlets have oversold it to some extent…emphasis on the “s” word. I wish I was there right now just to experience the drama and discomfort. I hope no lives are ultimately lost, that no one will be hurt, that the “hit” won’t be as bad as forecasted.

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Ed Asner (aka “Lou Grant“) has passed at age 91. He was an excellent, no-bullshit actor and a proud liberal activist. I never spoke to him and I don’t even know someone who knew or dealt with him slightly, but Asner was a real-deal humanist-activist liberal, which is to say he almost certainly didn’t hold with the illiberal wokesters, and if he did hold with those monsters, please don’t tell me about it.

Condolences for friends, fans, colleagues, etc. Asner was a gifted adult actor — diligent, focused, thoughtful and smart as a whip all the way down the line. He lived a good, honorable life, and now he sleeps. His voice performance in Up was the fourth or fifth thing I thought of when I heard the news, if that.

World of Reel‘s Jordan Ruimy has posted a reaction to Matt Reeves‘ The Batman (Warner Bros., 3.4.22).

And if (I say “if”) it indeed turns out to be a “very scary” genre horror film, great. Reeves’ version needed to do something else, go cuckoo-ass, jump the rails — it couldn’t just follow in the glum-dirge tradition of the Affleck imprint.

At the same time you can’t trust fanboys who’ve seen something early, especially when it’s a big brand thing. They’re too pleased with themselves for simply managing to see it. They’re emotionally unstable to a certain extent. You have to take what they say with grain of salt. They’re suddenly imagining themselves as Reeves’ collaborators, to a certain degree. They’re giving him friendly “notes.”

“Very graphic, very dark, very scary,” says Ruimy’s fanboy. And yet the first thing out of his mouth is not to praise RBatz (i.e., Robert Pattinson‘s lead performance) but to enthuse about Paul Dano‘s Riddler performance — “fucking crazy, so fucking scary, I loved every second.”

But his favorite character by far, he says, is Zoe Kravitz‘s Catwoman. “There’s a scene at the end that literally had everyone SCREAMING, everyone gasped…like it was a big NO WAY for everyone…the biggest mike drop.”

Somewhere in the middle he says that Pattinson’s Batman voice is “perfect,” whatever the hell that means.

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Against my better judgment I’m off to submit to fucking Candyman, and if it turns out to be half as unsubtle as some have told me it is, or if I should be shot by a policeman whils strolling through the Grove or if, God forbid, I’m struck by a bolt of lightning, then I’m going to blame some of the people on this thread. And that I do not forgive.

Friendo re Strauss: “Yeah, that’s pretty spot-on. Frankly, the film’s POV — the black characters have been victimized, and a number of corrupt/evil whites get comeuppance — feels like an iteration of classic liberal Hollywood. It’s not a chip-on-the-shoulder ‘take that, whitey!’ movie.”

HE to friendo: “I’m so terrified of sitting through anything that uses a sledgehasmmer.”

Friendo to HE: “It ain’t Ozu. But it is an interesting, curiously ambitious slasher film that plays with the tropes of the post-George Floyd world in a genuinely engaging (if at times overly programmatic) way. I was held by it. And it’s just 90 minutes! It’s nothing to be scared of.”

…in which the habit of moviegoing is at its lowest ebb ever, and certainly nowhere near the semi-regular thing it used to be even in the ’90s and early aughts, and amongst those few intrepid souls who still occasionally flirt with the idea of seeing a film in a theatre, the vast majority don’t have clue #1 who this guy is or what film it’s from or anything. And if you lament this state of affairs (as I am now), you’ll be dismissed as a grumpy, out-of-it asshole who has lost touch with 2021 film culture, if you want to call what’s happening in theatres and in the streaming world “film culture,” and that you’re living inside some cranky membrane.

Which is absolutely not me. Because I for one can’t wait to get ripped and see Dune!