Charlie Kaufman’s I’m Thinking Of Ending Things (Netflix, 9.4) is a quietly surreal and spooky relationship film between…well, that’s the question. Nominally between withdrawn 30something “Jake” (Jesse Plemons) and his perceptive but unnamed girlfriend (Jessie Buckley), but also involving Jake’s oddball parents (Toni Collette, David Thewlis) and the rural Oklahoma town and farmhouse where Jake grew up.

More eerie than scary and captured in bluish gray hues by Cold War dp Lukasz Zal, it goes from oddly unnerving and “wait a minute” to “wait, what?” And not incidentally because of an allegiance with Richard Rodgers and Oscar Hammerstein‘s “Oklahoma!“, and without a single shock cut.

I was going to describe it as a macabre Meet The Parents but naahh. Kaufman’s film isn’t really “like” anything but itself and the same-titled 2016 Iain Reid book it’s based upon. But if you insist Buckley has the Ben Stiller role.

It’s well constructed and pays off with a twist, but for me I’m Thinking of Ending Things is a subdued horror fantasy about the grayness and drudgery of downish, diminished lives in gothic Middle America…propelled by inventive, oddly compelling performances from the four leads…a relationship flick that has nowhere to go but into the cellar of despair and “the pit of man’s fears” a la Rod Serling.

For me, this is a film that asks “how much did you hate the tortures of high school and your dreary upbringing? And can you ever escape those influences?”  On one level Thewlis and Collette could be horror-film characters but on another they’re everyone’s mom-and-dad nightmare, everything you want to escape from but at the same time are drawn to or at least stuck with.

Have I mentioned that Kaufman applies his low-key surrealism with remarkable confidence?  But it doesn’t give in to that. It builds into something else.

Being somewhat familiar with Reid’s novel, I was aware going in that “something else” alludes to the realm of unreliable narration and characters having the same thoughts and in fact being even closer than the reader might first imagine, etc. But to me this aspect seemed more distracting than illuminating, and so I chose to more or less ignore it.

Does the film deliver too much in the way of Kaufman-esque downerism? Not this time.  The same currents of resignation and despair and self-loathing that permeated (to varying degrees) Being John Malkovich, Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, Adaptation, Synecdoche and Anomalilsa?  Yes, but this time with an extra dimension.

I’m talking about a surreal third-act blending with the lore of “Oklahoma!” and particularly the dream sequences and Agnes de Mille’s choreography and how it all meshes into a final mind-bending whole with a snow-covered car and frozen sheep, a dead pig or two and a sad 70something high-school janitor…that’s all I’m saying. 

I felt disturbed, transported, creeped out and yet oddly amazed. How many films are this unusual, this creepy, this what-the-fuck and yet strangely harmonized? 

It’s a melancholy dreamscape piece that goes for broke and swings for the fences and pulls off an amazing synthesis.

HE to friendo: I felt befuddled when it was reported that Brad Pitt was hanging out with Alia Shawkat. And then relief when it was announced they were just pallies.

Now I’m feeling even better. A 30-years-younger girlfriend (i.e., Nicole Poturalski) is the way to go…the way it should be for stinking-rich, top-of-the-world guys like Pitt. (Beat, beat) Yes, I’m kidding somewhat.

Friendo to HE: I thought you’d be happy to see he’s putting his fine genetic disposition to good use. Yes, I know you’re half-kidding.

HE to friendo: If I was in Pitt’s shoes and wanted to be with someone younger, for image purposes I’d probably restrict myself to, say, a 20-year age gap. No more than 25. Nicole wouldn’t be as much of a thing if she were, say, 30 or 35 years old. Just my two cents.

Friendo to HE: Yeah. If I was an older dude (mid 50s and up) I’d definitely date younger women if I could. Unless, you know, I’m also looking for deeper conversations.

Multiingual German model Nicole Poturalski.

I’m the daughter of Jerry and Becki Falwell and I have some things to say!! pic.twitter.com/0FoWqgm5ZU

— blaire erskine (@blaireerskine) August 24, 2020

Sometime around ’72 or ’73 a girlfriend told me about being in an Upper East Side bar late at night, and how somebody played “Hey, Jude” on the jukebox and the volume, she said, was cranked up to 10 or 11, and the song just filled the room and before you knew it the whole crowd…every 20something or early-30something patron, most of them drunk…everyone was singing right along and was just floating on this orgasmic all-together vibe and that wow, she never forgot it.

When I first heard this story I remember thinking “okay, cool” but at the same time thinking, “Jesus, I don’t know…a tavern full of happy drunks singing a Beatles song and swaying to the music…on some level that doesn’t sound like an especially cool scene, given the kind of people you’d find in Upper East Side bars back then…the kind of TGIF bar that the National Lampoon guys made fun of in early ’75 with a talking-balloon piece called “An Evening at Dingleberries.”

“In Armando Iannucci‘s color-blind The Personal History of David Copperfield (Searchlight, 8.28), we’re supposed to believe that in 19th Century London. a time of great racism and diminishing returns for anyone who wasn’t white, Dev Patel’s tramp could rise from impoverished orphan to hot-as-shit Victorian writer in the blink-of-an-eye.

“The book’s original questioning of Victorian values and general social attitudes have been largely sidelined for a conventional rise-and-fall story, albeit beautifully shot in wide lens by Zac Nicholson.

“Of course, complaining about the mid-1800s story not having a white Anglo European lead might irk some the wrong way. I don’t mean to imply inclusive casting is a bad thing. Indeed, it’s become one of the most important and revelatory movements in the film industry this century. But letting bygones be bygones, Charles Dickens’ original vision when he released ‘David Copperfield,’ that of the social class struggles in Victorian England, does appear to be delivered in historically naive fashion in the hands by Iannucci.

“Patel’s casting is nonetheless odd as the film never even asks us to question his lineage, despite his parents being as white as can be on both sides.” — from Jordan Ruimy’s 8.25 review (“Inclusive Take On Dickens’ Classic Tale Rings Hollow”).

In a short video released today, Joe Biden has condemned the “needless violence” in Kenosha, Wisconsin in the wake of police shooting Jacob Blake. “Protesting brutality is a right and absolutely necessary, but burning down communities is not protest — it’s needless violence. Violence that endangers lives, violence that guts businesses and shutters businesses that serve the community…that’s wrong.”

“It seems like just yesterday when I was plagiarizing Michelle Obama‘s speech at our 2016 convention…”

I actually thought that Melania Trump‘s Cuban military get-up was half-decent. I sort of admired her determination to step outside the usual red and robin’s egg blue dresses that Republican women often wear, and embrace a kind of stylish guerilla outfit. Some said it reminded them of Ilsa, She-Wolf of the SS, but Melania hasn’t the aggressive and conniving temperament to be a sadistic dominatrix. She’s not the only gold-digger, opportunist and fascist ornament out there — she just has a bigger pedestal.

Melania did seem vaguely terrified as she delivered her remarks (“…theese terrible pandemic in theese difficult times”), and God knows her eyes were glaring with some kind of extreme emotion. As Virginia Heffernan wrote in a 4.27.18 L.A. Times piece, “She appears desperate but never sheds a tear.”

But I have nothing but condemnation for her wanton destruction of Jackie Kennedy‘s Rose Garden, ripping out the crab apple trees and making it look like some kind of cemetery….good God.

There will no Tenet press screenings this week or even next week in Los Angeles. (Or so I understand.) The earliest way for Los Angeles-based journos to see Chris Nolan‘s film is to drive to Las Vegas and catch an early access commercial screening at one of plexes, with the first showings beginning at 5 pm. As it happens Team Hollywood Elsewhere will be in Flagstaff that day, but catching a 5 pm showing won’t work within the schedule. We’ll try and catch it in Flagstaff the following weekend.

"Can you tell us what Tenet is about?" https://t.co/6zUsuQ5Zf7

— Alex Billington (@firstshowing) August 24, 2020

The Peasants, a respected novel by Wladyslaw Reymont tells the hard-knocks story of a peasant girl named Jagna forced to marry a much older, wealthy farmer, Maciej Boryna, despite her love for his son Antek. Jagna eventually becomes the object of envy and hate with the villagers and must fight to preserve her independence.

Set in the Polish countryside between the 19th and 20th centuries, the story is fused with the changing seasons, back-breaking labor in the fields, and the traditional local holidays.

The Peasants was originally adapted in 1973 by director Jan Rybkowski — it was actually a geature film version of a 1972 TV series called Chlopi.

The forthcoming, all-painted The Peasants, directed by Polish filmmaker Dorota Kobiela (The Flying Machine, Loving Vincent). The screenplay by Dorota Kobiela and Hugh Welchman is also based on the Reymont novel. Pic is expected to surface in 2022.

The album should be called “Strange Days”, and their performing name should be JoeKam. And the below copy should read IF THIS WAS AN ALBUM COVER…

Is this London? The theatre looks to me like the Odeon BFI MAX but what do I know? Mission Impossible 7‘s Tom Cruise and director-writer Chris McQuarrie plus camera crew. Mission: Impossible 7 will open on 11.19.21. A sequel, also directed by McQuarrie, will be released on 11.4.22.