In keeping with longstanding tradition, Steven Soderbergh not only directed No Sudden Move but shot it (as Peter Andrews) and edited it (as Mary Ann Bernard). I was particularly struck by the visual signature this time as Soderbergh apparentlyused some kind of spherical wide-angled lens thatoccasionallydelivers what looks like a 2.2:1 aspect ratio, and which compresses images on the sides.
The No Sudden Move visuals also struck me as similar to the distinctive framings that were seen in Alfonso Gomez-Rejon‘s The Current War, which was shot by Chung Chung-hoon. Lots of headroom and elbow room. Objects squeezed on the sides.
And yet very few critics have even mentioned this curious (or certainly noteworthy) visual approach.
Posted on 10.22.19: Sometime in early ’79 I worked as a manager or co-manager of the Carnegie Hall Cinema. It was such a fascinating and blessed place to work in that I didn’t mind being paid next to nothing. It was easily my second favorite job of my 20s, the first being a Checker Cab driver in Boston, which yielded intrigue and adventure on near-daily basis.
My employer was the late Sid Geffen, the eccentric, moustachioed real estate hotshot who had launched a not-for-profit repertory cinema company (the Center for Public Cinema), and at the time was running both the Carnegie and Bleecker Street Cinemas.
For a few months Sid was also the publisher of the Thousand Eyes Cinema Guide, for which I served as managing editor.
So I loved the CHC job and worked really at fulfilling my duties, but I was never much for math and accounting. I was eventually canned over this deficiency, although I wouldn’t say I had a cavalier attitude. I just didn’t (and still don’t) have the mentality of an exacting numbers guy.
Back in those days we sold numbered cardboard tickets at the upstairs, street-level booth, and it was my daily responsibility to insert the ticket roll under the booth desk and to note the number of the ticket when the day began, and of course the number at closing time.
Don’t ask me how this happened, but one day I put the ticket roll into the ticket-feeding device with the numbers reversed, starting high and ending low. I realized my error a couple of hours later, but by that time several tickets had been sold. I reasoned that ticket sales would simply have to be calculated in reverse order this one time. Awkward or irksome, but hardly a tragedy.
Sid didn’t see it that way. One accounting mistake would probably beget another, he figured. His exact words: “We’re going to have to terminate our relationship, Jeff.”
Sid fired a lot of people. One time a Carnegie ticket seller (female, 20something) was robbed at gunpoint, and then was hit by the exact same guy two days later. Sid fired her, figuring she was either in on it or a bad-luck Jonah.
I don’t recall Sid ever using conventional phrases like “I’m letting you go.” He had his own phrase-ology.
I recall hearing about a conversation between a fellow employee whom Sid had decided to get rid of, but was loathe to say this in so many words. Guy: “So Sid, you’re firing me, right?” Sid: “No, I’m graduating you. I’m holding you back from your destiny, and now you’re free.”
Why do I keep thinking that Steven Soderbergh‘s No Sudden Move (HBO Max, 7.1) is called One False Move? The latter is a title of a 1992 Carl Franklin thriller that starred Billy Bob Thornton. (The late Gene Siskel reportedly called Franklin’s film his favorite of that year.) All I’m saying (and this is not any kind of dismissing opinion) is that Soderbergh’s title refuses to stick in my head but Franklin’s does.
As squalid crime films go, No Sudden Move, which I watched yesterday, is relatively decent. Okay, better than decent. Okay, pretty good. The two main desperadoes, Curt Goynes and Ronald Russo, are played with a certain natural confidence by the relentlessly smoking Don Cheadle and the constantly booze-sipping Benicio del Toro…both of whom are in their early to mid 50s. They know how to play these kinds of guys without straining or overthinking, and their confidence is infectious. Make that seriously pleasurable.
One False…No Sudden Moves is basically about everyone betraying or double-crossing everyone else…what else is new? “Trust no one and act accordingly” is the mantra of every grubby crime film made over the last 75 years. Make that 80 or 90.
I loved, loved, LOVED the old (i.e., mid ’50s) cars! Then again all the cars are newish looking, and they all look like they just came out of a car wash. Where are the dusty or dented beaters from the mid to late ’40s?
Perhaps the plotting of Ed Solomon‘s script is a little too complex and labrynthian for its own good, but the density and mutterings and head-scratching aspects didn’t bother me much. Okay, I had to watch it a second time to figure out a couple of things, but at least I liked it sufficiently to want to do that.
Brendan Fraser totally owns his obesity here…he’s out-trollops Orson Welles in Touch of Evil with one hand tied behind his back…I’m telling you that he’s a fat, fat, fat, FATTER, TOTALLY take-it-or-leave-it FATASS in this thing and he doesn’t care, and his performance as some kind of amiable but judgmental middle-management criminal is really good besides. The man is back, I’m telling you. Is he fatter than Steven Schirripa‘s “Bobby Baccalieri“? You tell me.
Other standouts include a pair of conniving, sociopathic female characters (Frankie Shaw as Paula Cole and Uncut Gems‘ Julia Fox as Vanessa Capelli, i.e., the wife of Ray Liotta‘s Frank Capelli). The spirit of Gloria Grahame lives within them.
But Matt Damon TOTALLY TAKES CHARGE during the final 20 or 25 minutes…he’s easily the most articulate character…hell, the ONLY smoothly articulate character in the entire film, and I fell for him right away. Because of this one cameo-level performance, Damon has earned 100% forgiveness for his performance in Alexander Payne‘s Downsizing. I’m also forgiving him for his forthcoming performance in Tom McCarthy‘s Stillwater, in which he plays an Oklahoma bumblefuck trying to clear his daughter (Abigail Breslin) of a murder conviction.
I honestly couldn’t figure out what the super-cool Bill Duke and his squad of Black henchmen had to do with catalytic converters. And I still don’t understand who those two guys were in the restaurant scene (one of them was bald) who started shooting when Cheadle, Fraser, Del Toro and Liotta drew their weapons.
HE approves of every damn performance in this film, but especially those from David Harbour (ethically compromised businessman), Jon Hamm (droll detective), Amy Seimetz (sullen, pissed-off housewife), Kieran Culkin (unshaven psycho), Noah Jupe (I’m getting sick of Jupe always playing brave, stand-up teenagers) and Liotta.
I liked No Sudden Move, but even now I couldn’t remember the title without looking it up. What could No Sudden Move even mean? If the title had been Life-Transforming Hetero Anal Sex in the Detroit Suburbs, I would’ve remembered that. I also would’ve remembered One Stupid-Ass Move After Another. Anyone would have. Bur No Sudden Move…what is that?
HE has been merged with Patreon for a few days now, and I wish I could say I wasn’t embarassed and irritated by their sluggish behavior so far. But I am.
One, they make users sign in every damn time — you’d think they could adjust the mechanism so users would have to sign in every two or three weeks, like they do with the N.Y. Times. (Are they deliberately trying to irritate people?) Two, they won’t let me charge an annual fee of $49 ($11 cheaper than paying $5 monthly) as an incentive deal. And three, they seem to be making it difficult for HE management to hand out free entry codes to certain friends and colleagues. Why — because they’ll earn slightly less money if they allow people like me to offer comps for five or ten friendos?
Other paywall sites recognize your name and password instantly without requiring a laborious sign-in process. Patreon has been in operation for eight years now. You’d think they’d have the bugs ironed out by now.
I’m really starting to hate the paywall rackets and the racketeers who make and enforce their chickenshit rules.
I considered Substack but couldn’t go there — it would have meant moving out of the HE home that I built with my own two hands (not to mention the proverbial blood, sweat and tears) starting in August ’04 and moving into a small Substack condo unit…totally unacceptable. I tried to get going with Memberful but they also turned out to be obstinate jerks with poor communication skills. It’s such a heartache and a headache.
Why isn’t there an operation out there that offers a paywall structure partnership without a small-minded cheapskate mentality? There are designers who’ve created intelligent paywall software mechanisms (like the Texas-based guy who created the paywall for Graydon Carter‘s Air Mail) but I can’t afford that kind of arrangement. I’m unfortunately stuck with the two-bit racketeers.
What do I have to do — drive up to San Francisco and wait in the lobby of Patreon’s corporate office?
What do Alan Parker‘s Angel Heart and Richard Donner‘s Lethal Weapon have in common, apart from having been released on the same day — 3.6.87? They both advanced what was then a radical new idea in movies — i.e., “the good guy did it.”
“Up until then Hollywood had always portrayed proverbial investigators of criminal activity (a private detective, a big-city detective) as more or less stable and law-abiding, or at least coming from a relatively neutral place when it came to anti-social instincts or behavior. Private detectives Sam Spade and Mickey Spillane had been portrayed as cynical, ethically ambivalent or even semi-sleazy fellows, but they were more or less on the right side of the law. Ditto cops with a badge.
“Then, all of a sudden and on the exact same day, two major Hollywood films said ‘no, not any more…the guy looking into criminal behavior may be just as ruthless or dangerous or hair-trigger violent as your traditional bad guy used to be…things are getting weird out there.'”
I always regarded the late Donald Rumsfeld with a certain detachment mixed with disdain. A Republican hustler, operator, D.C. politician…Gerald Ford‘s Secretary of Defense (’75 to ’77) then George Bush‘s from ’01 to ’06…basically a craggy, cynical, chessboard prick. But I related to Steve Carell‘s version of Rumsfeld in Adam McKay‘s Vice…he was an amiable, recognizable, vulnerable human being. So I’m thinking more about Carell this morning than the Real McCoy…no offense.
At the risk of inviting more idiotic hair-trigger derision, allow me to respond to Quentin Tarantino‘s lament about how he wishes he’d had a sit-down talk with Weinstein about his deranged behavior with women, and how he wishes he’d tried to explain that Harvey can’t do this horrific shit and that it’ll “fuck everything up,” etc.
HE to Tarantino: Nothing you could’ve said to Weinstein would’ve gotten through. Sexual assaulters don’t care about practical logic or social strategies. Sexual criminals are primarily driven by deep-seated rage, and nothing you might’ve said to Harvey would have changed the way he felt about himself (ugly, beastly, no attraction factor to speak of) and his primal anger about being repeatedly shut down by women in his teens and (I’m guessing) even his 20s, and how this transferred into an enormous thunderstorm of fury directed not so much at “women” but at God and creation and his lousy-ass luck…about the shitty hand of a cruel and indifferent God and Harvey’s having been dealt the proverbial Cyrano curse but without the Cyrano poetry and wit and heart….all he had was his film-mogul power, and he allowed his rage to run the show…run it right into the ground.
Angsty Loner to Mr. Lonelyhearts: I’m 16, a high-school junior, and miserable. Partly (mostly?) due to the fact that my hormones are raging while my experience with hetero physical intimacy has been, shall we say, limited.
Which doesn’t mean I haven’t emotionally suffered over this or that dashed relationship. I’ve eaten my heart out over…I don’t know, seven or eight girls since the third grade. Maybe more. And none of the objects of my desire have been more than semi-interested, if that. Girls are fickle and flighty and all over the map, and at the end of the day I don’t seem to have what they want. Even temporarily, I mean. Before their mood changes.
So I know a thing or two about unrequited love or lust or, in the best of situations, a combination of the two that is casually, half-assedly or all-too-briefly reciprocated and then forgotten. One of these days or years the real thing will happen, and when it does…I’ll cross that bridge.
My current obsession is blonde and blue-eyed and a little scatterbrained. Or scatter-hearted. She likes me in spurts, and then some other guy moves in. There are three others she’s enamored of. A cute, stocky, chubby-faced jock. A hippie-ish dude with longish hair, Brooks Brothers shirts and mocassins. And a local cop who’s 27 or 28. And then fourth-place me.
I’ve rolled around with blondie on a bed of pine needles near the local reservoir…once. We made out at a party…once. She slapped me repeatedly at another p\arty, which was her way of saying she wanted my attention. We’ve had some fun times. But I’m strictly backup. So what do I do? Is there any path to salvation in this agonizing situation?
Mr. Lonelyhearts to Angsty Loner: I’m sorry but no, there isn’t. It sounds cruel to say this, but you’re just going to have to suffer through this infatuation and then eventually move on.
One reason you’re in fourth place (and not third, second or even first) is that you’re probably radiating weak, squishy vibes. Probably born of low-self-esteem. If you have any moxie you’ll grow out of that but for the time being it’s your cross to bear.
High-school women are reticent as a rule, and they do hold most of the cards, and if they’re not that interested you can’t stop ’em.
The fact that she’s nursing relationships with four guys simultaneously is a red flag, of course. It means she has self-esteem issues of her own.
It won’t kill you to pine for this flighty little blonde. It hurts, of course, but life is a neve-eending stream of hurt and troubles. Get used to it. Pain makes you stronger if you can take it.
