I’m sorry my Black Widow review is so late in arriving. I only saw it last night, and I’m not even sure I can write anything that won’t bore everyone silly. It opened last Friday and everyone has already moved on, and it was so dreadful to sit through…really. This morning Jordan Ruimy called Black Widow “unwatchable.” He’s not wrong.

It has, at least, a fairly obvious feminist metaphor. Black Widows are a worldwide network of ruthless female assassins, trained in a Russian-organized “red room” program run by Ray Winstone‘s “General Dreykov” with their minds totally controlled in some kind of zombie-ish fashion. The film’s basic focus is on a pair of Black Widow sisters — Natasha Romanov (Scarlett Johansson) and Yelena Belova (Florence Pugh) — whose younger selves we first meet in a 1995 flashback prelude. But the key thing is the discovery of an antidote that can potentially free the Widow army from Dreykov’s chemical control and allow them to self-determine.

So that’s the basic MacGuffin — an elusive but sought-after antidote that allows an army of female warriors to throw off the yoke of male oppression. But of course, Black Widow is about a lot more than that central idea. Unfortunately.

I knew I would suffer through this godawful thing. I knew it would pound and narcotize me to death and suffocate what’s left of my soul, and boy, did it ever. It was serious formulaic torture, but I had to watch it, I felt, and in front of a big-ass screen with a suitably loud WHOMP-THROMP-EERURRP sound system. Once again I sat in the handicapped row, and before the 8 pm show began I was already weakened by 20 minutes of trailer pulp…idiot-level action movies designed to make you vomit and scream. And then, finally…

Directed by Cate Shortland and running 134 minutes, Black Widow begins quietly — that flashback sequence in suburban Ohio. A brief acquaintance with Russian undercover agents Alexei Shostakov (David Harbour) and Melina Vostokoff (a digitally de-aged Rachel Weisz) and their “surrogate” daughters Natasha (Ever Anderson) and Yelena (Violet McGraw).

I was immediately intrigued by the 13 year-old Anderson, who has a much more interesting face (indications of emotional complexity, soulful eyes) than Johansson and Pugh combined. I was thinking to myself, “Okay, maybe…”

And then Black Widow loses its mind. The family is suddenly armed and loaded and on the run, being chased by weaponized bad guys (U.S. authorities?). They jump on a private plane…or three of them do while Harbour shoots it out — recklessly, absurdly — with the pursuers on the tarmac. Then he ridiculously leaps into the plane wing as he continues to fire, and of course no one gets hit with a bullet as the plane ascends into the darkness…right away I was muttering “this is so infuriating, so friggin’ stupid.”

Marvel is all formula, all pandering, all the time. Except for Avengers: Endgame, Ant Man and Joe Johnston‘s Captain America and maybe one or two others, Marvel films are almost always a gruesome experience. Aimed at American none-too-brights, Marvel films “charm” and “thrill” like hooded executioners. They oppress and suffocate the soul. Head-pounding aggression. Sardonic attitudes.

Poor Ray Winstone, I was thinking…stuck playing another Mr. Big goon. And what’s happened to poor William Hurt? He looks too thin, barely resembles himself.

My head was spinning, screaming. Can I take another 100 minutes of this shit?

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Last night I watched Robert Bresson‘s L’Argent (’83) — a chilly but devastating morality tale of how society will, depending on the bad breaks, occasionally turn a relative innocent into a beast. It’s quietly commanding film — a visually plain, low-temperature thing, and at the same time immensely sad (as opposed to downerish) and impossible to forget.

I hadn’t seen L’Argent (Bresson’s last) start to finish since my first viewing in ’83. It was a nourishing sit. But somewhere in the middle of this unusually short film (83 minutes), I was struck by something else.

Yvon, the lead character and tragic victim of the piece, is played by Christian Patey, who seemed to be his early 20s. (Which would make him roughly 60 today.) He looks like a young James Marsden mixed with some early ’50s Jeffrey Hunter and the late Jim Morrison before he became a pot-bellied beer drinker. In short, more exquisite than “good looking.”

Except Patey is not (or wasn’t back then) an expressive actor — in L’Argent he barely emotes. Bresson surely knew of Patey’s limitations, but chose him anyway because he figured that Patey didn’t need to “act” — his eyes, mouth and cheekbones conveyed everything about Yvon’s essence — a basic settled-in decency by way of a kind of deft neutrality — steady, soft-spoken, unruffled.

Is Patey believable as an axe murderer, which is what he truthfully confesses to being during L’Argent‘s last couple of minutes? Nope, and I’m not just talking about looks but whom or what he actually seemed to be within.

And it didn’t matter anyway. Call it whatever you prefer but Patey was a pleasure to hang with — you trusted in his apparent decency. The fact that he was cut from the same basic cloth as the young Tyrone Power, Rock Hudson, Guy Madison, Tab Hunter, Tony Curtis and others from this fraternity didn’t hurt either.

Hollywood lived by this formula for decades, of course, casting good-looking (or exceptionally good looking) actors for their looks alone, knowing full well that they wouldn’t last unless they were able to somehow reach into their hurt and transcend their looks or at least pick up some professional skills. Some managed that, many didn’t.

All to say that over the last 10 or 15 years Christian Patey-level attractiveness hasn’t seemed to matter all that much in terms of casting, certainly in the indie community.

Here’s how I put it four years ago (“When Ax-Blade Handsomeness Was Okay“): “Ax-blade handsomeness isn’t trusted, much less admired these days. It’s even despised in certain quarters. Because it’s now synonymous with callow opportunism or to-the-manor-born arrogance. Men regarded as ‘too’ good-looking are presumed to be tainted on some level — perhaps even in league with the one-percenters and up to no good. This kind of social shorthand has been around since Wall Street types and bankers began to go wild in the mid ’80s.

When the well is dry and you have to wash the car (not to mention pay money to see Black Effing Widow), post Times Square marquee photos.

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The word along the Croisette is that certain distributors have either pulled their films out of the 2021 Toronto Film Festival or are seriously thinking about same. Why? Because (a) the Telluride and Venice festivals, unlike Toronto, are not leaning on streaming, and (b) distributors greatly prefer live-audience projection screenings.

Why is Toronto a mostly-streaming festival this year? Because the Canadian government is being extremely cautious about the new Delta strain of Covid, despite high rates of vaccination.

In short, this is not Toronto’s year. Which is a good thing, of course, as Toronto, like Sundance, has become a repressive and prejudicial wokester festival. All hail Telluride and Cannes…festivals that believe in art, freedom of ideas and fair access.

Ingmar Bergman‘s Scenes From a Marriage (’73) was originally a six-part Swedish miniseries that ran 281 minutes; the shorter, theatrically released version ran 167 minutes. It costarred Liv Ullmann, HE nemesis Erland Josephson and Bibi Andersson.

In Hagai Levi’s remake of the Bergman series, a multi-episode thing that will air on HBO in September, a woke switch scheme has been hatched. Instead of Jessica Chastain playing Ullman and Oscar Isaac playing Josephson, Isaacson plays Ullmann and Chastain is doing Josephson. (Or so I’m told.)

The miniseries is exec produced by a boatload of people, but Isaac, Chastain and Williams are among them.

The good-looking Isaac (i.e., Poe Dameron) is only 42, but with his gray hair and beard he looks at least 50 if not 55. It’s obviously a choice and there’s nothing “wrong” with this…just saying. Chastain is no spring chicken (the clock never relents), but she looks fine. Ditto Williams.

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Black Widow (which I will finally submit to this afternoon, God help me) is mulch product. You knew that, right? Of course you did. Mulch is the source of our shared Hollywood ennui…the muck at the bottom of the dried-up lake…the disease that keeps on infecting…the gas that fills the room.

Except for a smattering of elite, award-season stand-alones (currently screening in Cannes, and soon-to-screen in Venice and Telluride) and select forthcoming streamers like HBO’s Scenes From A Marriage (Bergman remake), Hollywood makes almost nothing but mulch these days. The streaming + re-emerging feature realm is flooded with the stuff …empty, inane, meaningless, spirit-less, jizz-whiz “content” crapola that nobody wants to see or cares about, but they’re made anyway because the zone-outs and knuckle-draggers, who not only lack taste but don’t seem to even know what taste is (because they haven’t accumulated a sufficient amount of distastes or they feel that having distastes is somehow prejudicial or culturally dismissive), need stuff to watch. And so they watch this crap (including anthology series…what’s the difference?) day in and day out.

The following mulch-product is trailering as we speak…The Witcher: Season 2…Jason Momoa in Sweet Girl…Elijah Wood in No Man of God…Playing God…The Swarm (blood-sucking grasshoppers!)…Chapelwaite (19th century horror-drama with Adrien Brody)…Woodstock 99: Peace, Love, and Rage (festival revelers were angry and anti-social at Max Yasgur‘s farm!…boomers suck!)…She Ball…The North Water…Queenpins…Mr. Corman (Joseph Gordon-Levitt as a presumably inspirational teacher)…Marvel‘s What If…?…Disney’s Encanto…The Addams Family 2…American Underdog…Kingdom: Ashin of the North…Resort to Love…The Kissing Booth 3…The King’s Man…Fear Street Part 2: 1978…blah, blah.

…should’ve been on Richard Branson’s Virgin Galactic flight this morning. Because without a Joe Schmoe presence it’s just a brash elitist stunt…”look at what this billionaire can do…hah! Because I can!”

What is weightlessness? It’s nothing. 53 years ago that Pan Am space stewardess wearing “grip shoes” was weightless in 2001: A Space Odyssey, and it was almost nothing even then. Ditto Gary Lockwood, Keir Dullea and William Sylvester…who cares? The Apollo 13 guys — Tom Hanks, Kevin Bacon, Bill Paxton, director Ron Howard — were weightless on the vomit comet 25 or 26 years ago, and most of us shrugged and said “okay, cool, but what else can we read about?”

By “average schmoe” I don’t mean some person who works for Door Dash or Target or Southwest Airlines — I mean anyone who has to work for a living, which can obviously include six-figure earners.

Long-festering allegations about an alleged secret alteration of the 8mm Abraham Zapruder film of the Dealey Plaza murder…an alteration that allegedly began late in the evening of 11.23.63 and was completed sometime near dawn on Sunday, 11.24…this, I’ve been told, is a significant focus of Oliver Stone’s JFK Revisited: Through The Looking Glass. Reading through all this stuff makes your brain ache, and my gut still says there’s something fundamentally flakey about the Zapruder alteration scenario, and yet…

Oliver Stone speaking to Deadline’s Tom Grater:

The Hollywood Reporter‘s Scott Feinberg “suspects” that Juho Kuosmanen‘s Compartment No.6, which screened on Saturday, may be “the first serious contender for the Palme d’Or.” Because of the alleged quality of it and the enthusiastic audience response.

Before you buy the hype, consider the trailer (top) and especially the bottom clip, in which the costars, Seidi Haarla (Finnish) and Yuriy Borisov (Russian), chat inside a small train compartment.

And ask yourself how many minutes you’d want to spend listening to the drunken Borisov boast and cackle as he blows his rancid smoke and drops ashes all over the place…I was feeling repulsed rather quickly. Imagine having to listen to this jerk for hours on end as he lights up cigarette after cigarette…dear God.

Boilerplate synopsis: “Compartment No. 6 is the story of a young Finnish woman who escapes an enigmatic love affair in Moscow by boarding a train to the Arctic port of Murmansk. Forced to share the long ride and a tiny sleeping car with a Russian miner, the unexpected encounter leads the occupants of compartment no. 6 to face the truth about their own yearning for human connection.”

Sean Penn‘s Flag Day (UA Releasing, 8.13) has opened in Cannes to pretty good reviews. These Cote d’Azur tributes led me to a realization that the 40th anniversary of Taps, in which Penn gave his first significant (if supporting) performance, isn’t far off. And so…

Am I a bigger fan of Penn’s acting than his efforts at directing? Yes. How many of his performances over the past 40 are serious keepers? By my count, 16. The stellar award-worthy perfs mixed with the likable, even-toned mezzo-mezzos. Here’s my list:

1. Jeff Spiccoli (stoner) in Fast Times at Ridgemont High (’82)…certainly.
2. Daulton Lee (drug dealer, seller of CIA intelligence reports to Russians in Mexico City) in The Falcon and the Snowman (’85)…no question.
3. Brad Whitewood, Jr. in At Close Range (’86)…Chris Walken owns this film, but Penn was a close second.
4. Officer Danny McGavin in Dennis Hopper‘s Colors (’88).
5. Sgt. Tony Meserve in Brian DePalma‘s Casualties of War (’89).
6. Terry Noonan in Phil Joanou‘s State of Grace (’90)…not a towering performance but an abovep-average one.
7. Frizzy-haired David Kleinfeld in Brian DePalma‘s Carlito’s Way (’93).
8. Death row prisoner Matthew Poncelet in Tim Robbins‘ Dead Man Walking (’95).
9. Eddie in Anthony Drazan‘s Hurlyburly (’98) — a better play than a film, but Penn was exceptional.
10. Sgt. Welsh in Terrence Malick’s The Thin Red Line (’98).
11. Emmet Ray in Woody Allen‘s Sweet and Lowdown (’99) — Django Reinhardt meets La Strada.
12. James “Jimmy” Markum in Clint Eastwood‘s Mystic River (’03).
13. Paul Rivers in Alejandro G. Inarritu‘s 21 Grams (’03).
14. Tobin Keller in Sydney Pollack‘s The Interpreter.
15. Harvey Milk in Gus Van Sant‘s Milk (’08).
16. Joseph Wilson in Doug Liman‘s Fair Game (’10).

What films, if any, have I unfairly omitted? I’ve tried to be tough here — strictly doubles, triples and homers…no singles or bunts.

In response to yesterday’s “Anderson Ducking Cannes Journos” story, a certain HE “friendo” asked, “Isn’t it obvious that Wes doesn’t want to be asked questions about Scott Rudin?”

To which I responded, “I guess so, now that you mention it.

“If I were Anderson and that were to come up. I would just say ‘sorry but I’m not going to comment about Scott. He’s always been a first-rate producer and a total professional with me. I’m very sorry about the reports of abusive behavior directed toward his staffers but that’s not my responsibility and I’m certainly not going to get into it here in Cannes.”

A journo pally has suggested HE readers might want to (a) name a critically-acclaimed director whose films they despise, and (b) explain why in 50 to 75 words.

The only director I can think of whose work I really, really don’t like is Todd Solondz (Happiness, Welcome to the Dollhouse, Palindromes, Life During Wartime, Dark Horse, Wiener-Dog). That’s not to say I don’t respect Solondz’s “brand”, or that I would argue with anyone who might insist that he’s one of the indie greats. He’s ballsy — I’ll give him that much. Courage of his convictions, unmistakable signature, etc. And I’m saying this as one who was raised in suburban New Jersey (i.e., not Essex County but Union).

I just know that the films of Todd Solondz tend to make me feel soiled and icky and lethargic. Yeah, I know — that’s the point.

From “Hating Wiener-Dog,” posted on 1.22.16: “Todd Solondz‘s Weiner-Dog, a morose and depressive slog about a dachsund passing from owner to owner and bearing the sins of mankind, screened at the Eccles tonight. It’s about futility, fuck it, banality, depression, ennui, emptiness, death, random cruelty, Down Syndrome and cancer.

“Solondz reportedly told an interviewer today that he intended a blend of Au Hasard Balthasar and Benji. I’ve always hated Solondz and his dweeby, depressive attitude and particularly his attachment to depressive losers. I began hating this film early on, and it was agony sitting through to the end (which I was determined to do no matter what).

“Animal lovers…I was about to post a warning but they can fend for themselves. As Weiner-Dog began a woman sitting behind me was making that ‘awwuhhah’ sound as the camera regarded the lovable dachshund, and I was muttering to myself or more precisely to God “please don’t make me listen to this woman make ‘awwuhhah‘ sounds all through this thing.” Well, she stopped. (On this note Solondz was my ally.) At the very end an older woman sitting next to me was moaning ‘Why did he do that? Why did he do that?’ Go, Todd!”