Eliza Hittmann’s Never Rarely Sometimes Always (Focus Features, 3.13 / nationwide on 4.3) was hailed during Sundance ’20 as the American answer to Cristian Mungiu‘s Four Months, Three Weeks and Two Days. Pic stars the Mary Elizabeth Winstead-resembling Sidney Flanigan as a pregnant teenager and Talia Ryder as her cousin. The story is about their trek from rural Pennsylvania to New York City to find a safe abortion clinic.

“Hittman’s work as a filmmaker is always understated, remarkable in its precision and honesty in dealing with serious issues. Never Rarely Sometimes Always nails the troubling reality of reproductive rights in America today, highlighting how few options are available to vulnerable women. There’s a sense of dread which haunts the film as its teenage protagonists attempt to navigate the complex healthcare system while also dealing with predatory men. But there’s not an ounce of melodrama to be found.” — Little White Lies‘ Hannah Woodhead, 1.31.20.

It would appear that Gerard Bush and Christopher Renz‘s Antebellum (Lionsgate, 4.24) is a female-branded revisiting of Twelve Years A Slave by way of H.G. Wells. Successful author Veronica Henley (Janelle Monae) suddenly becomes a slave in the cotton fields after time-travelling back to the Antebellum pre-Civil War South. The trailer tells us, however, that it’s Veronica’s fate “to save us from our past.” So she’s going to overturn slavery in the same way that Rod Taylor lead an Eloi rebellion against the Morlocks? Or lead a Spartacus-like revolt a la Birth of a Nation? Or maybe a little Harriet action? Or transport her plantation pallies back to 2020 and find them jobs in online publishing?

The Daily Beast is reporting that “some” employees of the Hachette Book Group “walked out” of the publisher’s U.S. offices today in protest of the company’s decision to publish Apropos of Nothing, a new memoir by Woody Allen. According to the story, this cabal of #MeToo blacklisters has “been furious” with a decision by Hachette imprint Grand Central Publishing to release Allen’s book “despite allegations that Allen molested his adopted daughter Dylan Farrow.”

This is why everyone hates the wokester Khmer Rouge and the whole cancel-culture mentality. Because they’re totalitarian brutes at heart, and because in this instance they (the Hachette squad that walked out, I mean) are illogically opposed to what is indicated by the facts. This is one instance in which “believe the victim” is a highly questionable guideline.

Here, for the 19th time, is the HE argument:

(1) There is no evidence to support Dylan’s claim. But there’s a fair amount of evidence and ample indications that Mia Farrow, enraged by Woody’s romance with Soon-Yi Previn, made it all up to “get” Woody during an early ’90s custody battle, and as part of this determination coached Dylan to make the claims that she did. I happen to personally believe this scenario. There’s simply no rational, even-handed way to side with the “I believe Dylan Farrow” camp.

(2) If after reading Moses Farrow’s 5.23.18 essay (“A Son Speaks Out“) as well as Robert Weide’s “Q & A with Dylan Farrow” (12.13.17) and Daphne Merkin’s 9.16.18 Soon-Yi Previn interview…if after reading these personal testimonies along with the Wikipedia summary of the case you’re still an unmitigated Dylan ally…if you haven’t at least concluded there’s a highly significant amount of ambiguity and uncertainty in this whole mishegoss, then I don’t know what to say to you. There’s probably nothing that can be said to you.

(3) Excerpt from Yale–New Haven Hospital Child Sexual Abuse Clinic report (issued in 1993): “It is our expert opinion that Dylan was not sexually abused by Mr. Allen. Further, we believe that Dylan’s statements on videotape and her statements to us during our evaluation do not refer to actual events that occurred to her on August 4th, 1992.

(4) “In developing our opinion we considered three hypotheses to explain Dylan’s statements. First, that Dylan’s statements were true and that Mr. Allen had sexually abused her; second, that Dylan’s statements were not true but were made up by an emotionally vulnerable child who was caught up in a disturbed family and who was responding to the stresses in the family; and third, that Dylan was coached or influenced by her mother, Ms. Farrow. While we can conclude that Dylan was not sexually abused, we can not be definite about whether the second formulation by itself or the third formulation by itself is true. We believe that it is more likely that a combination of these two formulations best explains Dylan’s allegations of sexual abuse.”

When did the near-dictatorship of twist endings — the all-but-mandatory belief in the necessity of “holy shit, didn’t see that one coming!” finales — sink into the minds and souls of screenwriters, directors, producers and studio chiefs? Because outside the realm of modestly proportioned personal relationship dramas like The Way Back or the forthcoming Never Rarely Sometimes Always, it’s a very rare thing to not encounter a twist ending of some kind. Especially in the genre, thriller and fantasy arenas.

I only know that as God is my father, witness, co-partner and cruel taskmaster I’ve come to really and truly hate this affliction, this cancer, this oppression, this entrapment.

People have been bemoaning the twist syndrome for a long while, I realize, but where did it all begin? With O. Henry, right? Rod Serling‘s The Twilight Zone (’59 to ’64), the episodes of which almost always ended with a twist, is also partly to blame. Along with M. Night Shyamalan‘s The Sixth Sense, of course. I only know that this feeling of being cornered and suffocated by twist endings (like the way The Invisible Man ended) is awful. I’m sure there are many exceptions to the rule, but like to assemble a list of significant 21st Century genre films that didn’t end with (a) a twist or (b) a set-up for a sequel.

Remember the mostly organic realism of Saving Private Ryan (’98)? Well, you can forget that aesthetic as far as Aaron Schneider‘s Greyhound (Sony, 6.12) is concerned. Yeah, it’s another Tom Hanks “dad” movie (stolid guy, old-fashioned values, facing adversity and tough odds, grace under pressure) but if you ignore the interior shots, the Greyhound trailer looks like a damn CG cartoon.

The phrase that’s coming to mind is “Call of the Wild on the North Atlantic” — another digitally created, steroid-injected World War II film a la Roland Emmerich‘s Midway.

Remember Mark Robson‘s The Bridges at Toko-Ri (’54)? Or Humphrey Bogart‘s Action on the North Atlantic? Or Cary Grant‘s Destination Tokyo? They were all mostly or partially shot on sound stages and “faked” to a significant degree, but they nonetheless conveyed a certain tactile reality — a feeling that is plainly lacking in Aaron Schneider’s video-game fantasy, at least as presented in this trailer.

Remember The Enemy Below? Or Otto Preminger‘s In Harm’s Way? Or Sink The Bismarck? Or Alfred Hitchcock‘s Lifeboat, which was shot entirely in a studio tank? These and other films presented at least a semblance of reality on the high seas during World War II. Real ships, real submarines, real salt water, real waves — not a Sony Playstation recreation.

I understand and respect the fact that “a portion of principal photography for the film was filmed aboard the USS Kidd, a World War II-era Fletcher-class destroyer museum ship in Baton Rouge, Louisiana,” but the outdoor action footage simply doesn’t look real. Everything looks fucking fake.

Is the bottom-line purpose of this film to promote the video-game version that will follow the theatrical release? Because that’s what it looks like.

Endorsement-wise, Senator Elizabeth Warren has decided to hold her cards to her chest. She didn’t endorse Biden or Bernie this morning but is (a) catching her breath, (b) keeping her own counsel, (c) calculating the angle of the dangle, or (d) waiting for the needle to move one way or the other. In short, she chickened out.

Earlier: As expected, Senator Elizabeth Warren is quitting the Democratic primary. Who will she endorse? Not Bernie. Warren knows which way the wind is blowing. The decision has been made to come together on Typewriter Joe, and if she’s smart (i.e., if Warren doesn’t want make enemies and cause trouble) she’ll follow suit. Bernie-ism must be petted and indulged and then put to sleep, and the Bernie bruhs…well, nothing will stop those assholes. As they did in ’16, a significant portion of the Sanders faithful (i.e., guys who don’t brush their teeth regularly, don’t tuck their shirts in and don’t pay their cable bills on time) will probably end up voting for The Beast.

Two days ago I asked my Côte d’Azur Airbnb host for a refund on my Cannes Film Festival rental, citing the force majeure of COV-19. So far there’s been nothing but radio silence. So last night I appealed to Airbnb management for assistance.

This morning came a new report in Variety (see below).

As filed by Indiewire’s Chris Lindahl:

Who will be bold and brave enough to attend the 2020 South by Southwest Film Festival, and in so doing risk catching the coronavirus and possibly dying as a result? Dying like a dog, coughing and hacking and spitting up phlegm and wheezing your last in a ratty motel room with a single bare bulb swinging back and forth from the ceiling.

I’m kidding. Only 11 cases of COV-19 have been confirmed in Texas and coronavirus only kills old people, but people are bailing on SXSW (3.13 through 3.22) regardless. Netflix has cancelled five film screenings and a panel. Apple has pulled out also, canceling three screenings. Amazon announced its withdrawal last night, cancelling screenings of two films. Mashable, Facebook, Twitter, Intel and TikTok will also be avoiding Austin.

Hollywood Elsewhere will fearlessly attend for a few days regardless. I have my own sanitary towelettes.

I’m sorry but I found Guiseppe Capotondi‘s The Burnt Orange Heresy strangely sodden and downish. I didn’t hate it and actually respected it for what it is — a heart of darkness tale about the wealthy and insincere. It’s a “good” film, I suppose **, but I’ll never watch it again. I felt vaguely drained when it ended.

It basically left me uncharmed and un-intrigued and wondering who would be so bone stupid as to try and dispose of a body in three or four feet of water? And in the daytime yet! And who, for that matter, would allow a certain dangerous fingerprint to be seen and inspected and wondered about by untold hundreds or thousands of art-gallery browsers?

Based on the same-titled 1971 book by Charles Willeford (who also wrote Miami Blues), Heresy is a kind of moral depravity drama about the fine fakery of art or the artfulness of fine fakery. Art forgery, pretension, specious assessments that persuade certain wealthy people to part with immense sums for this or that object d’art, empty myth and the general film-flammery of it all…fuck all or fuck off or whatever.

It’s basically a four character thing, and all it does, really, is hover. It never lands (not really) or generates much in the way of intrigue or suspense. It does give you a certain queasy feeling. Which is something.

The main protagonists, Milan-based art critic James Figueras (Claes Bang) and a watchful Minnesota tourist named Berenice Hollis (Elizabeth Debicki) are, for lack of a better term, the main protagonists. They meet at the very beginning and quickly fuck, and before you know it are cruising west in Figueras’ Range Rover to visit the super-wealthy Joseph Cassidy (Mick Jagger) at his Lake Como villa.

Figeuras has an ethically questionable past, it seems, and Cassidy has discovered this, which is why he’s invited the Man from Milan to discuss a slightly dicey proposition.

A bearded J.D. Salinger-like painter named Jerome Debney (Donald Sutherland) lives on the grounds nearby, and Cassidy wants Figueras to steal one of his fabled paintings, even though Debney hasn’t sold or even shown any paintings in years. (He’s painted a few but has burnt them all, apparently.) And so the keenly ambitious Figueras, still with the stork-like Hollis, is soon chatting with Debney and before you know it…a surprise. A great feeling of disappointment, in fact, that knocks Figueras for a loop.

And before you know it there is great anger, flames, a forgery, a sudden disappearance, a death by stupidity (the victim, I mean, is too stupid to understand that expressing fierce moral outrage at an art crime is not the brightest idea when confronting the perpetrator) and a certain after-feeling of “uh-oh, I wasn’t smart enough to play my cards in such a way that I won’t get caught.”

Jagger gives the most amusing and flavorful performance. That Cheshire cat grin of his. I loved Bang in The Square and this time…well, he’s good enough. I didn’t get the wonderfulness of Debicki when I saw her in Widows, and I still don’t. Sutherland is okay as the reclusive painter but he doesn’t (i.e, isn’t allowed to) radiate much.

There isn’t a huge amount of Lake Como footage, but what little I saw I enjoyed. I’ve never actually been there — the closest I came was when I visited the nearby Locarno Film Festival in ’03. It was in the middle of a brutal heat wave, and the boys and I swam in Lago Maggiore every day.

** It doesn’t stink.

I guess I was kinda hoping that Elizabeth Warren would, despite her hopeless situation, stick it out and thereby split the left progressive vote, or at least siphon some of that support from the Bernie Sanders campaign. And I’m saying this as someone who loves Warren and would love to see her win the nomination and beat Trump. But she can’t, of course. She won’t. She just isn’t popular enough, and under-educated bumblefucks don’t seem to like her at all.

Filed at 3:49 Pacific by The Washington Post‘s Annie Linskey and Sean Sullivan: “Top surrogates and allies of Senators of Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders are discussing ways for their two camps to unite and push a common liberal agenda, with the expectation that Warren is likely to leave the presidential campaign soon, according to two people familiar with the talks.

“The conversations, which are in an early phase, largely involve members of Congress who back Sanders reaching out to those in Warren’s camp to explore the prospect that Warren might endorse him.

“They are also appealing to Warren’s supporters to switch their allegiance to Sanders, according two people with direct knowledge of the conversations who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss delicate discussions that are supposed to be confidential.

“The whirlwind of activity reflects the rapid changes in a Democratic primary that is still very much in transition. As late as Tuesday, many Warren allies believed she would stay in the race until the Democratic convention, despite her poor showing to date in the primaries, in hopes of retaining her clout and influencing the eventual nominee.”

Last Friday I mentioned something I’d heard about Gavin O’Connor and Ben Affleck‘s The Way Back, a sports redemption drama about an alcoholic basketball coach. The thing that I heard (and that I shared) is that “it’s not Hoosiers.” I saw it the night before last, and it isn’t.

But you know what? In some ways Brad Inglesby‘s script is as dramatically reputable as Hoosiers — it’s rooted in a real, recognizable, occasionally unfair world of fundamentally decent but occasionally flawed people. And O’Connor’s direction is respectably lean and dutiful, pared-to-the-bone and bullshit-free.

And Affleck’s lead performance…well, he certainly knows what it’s like to be a middle-aged drunk, doesn’t he? That authority and experience filter through. The cynicism, the swearing, the hair-trigger eruptions, the lethargy.

And the film itself is definitely decent. Not levitational but sturdy. I’m giving it an eight. Not an eight-point-five but an honest eight.

Because, for the most part, it isn’t Hoosiers. It’s a step-by-step story about a guy with a serious problem, and while it’s embroidered and punctuated with basketball issues and strategies and the usual ups and downs, it doesn’t turn on the game. It turns on what Affleck’s character, a divorced construction worker who gives up boozing after taking a coaching gig for the same South Bay basketball team that he gloriously played for in the early ’90s, does about his addiction.

It’s not a “let’s man up and put our problems behind us so we can win the playoffs” drama — it’s an emotional (and psychological) saga of a guy who’s furious about something ghastly that happened to him and his ex-wife, and about how he copes with this terrible scar on his heart and soul.

Does he (or more precisely can he) leave the past where it is and live as best he can in the present? Or not? That is the question.

I loved how The Way Back isn’t afraid of Jack’s rage and subliminal longing for self-destruction — it digs right down into that pit. It isn’t the least bit tidy or sanded down or escapist.

What didn’t I like about The Way Back? The horrible San Pedro atmosphere, for one — the blue-collar resignation, the sight of distant harbor cranes and the constant sound of drilling and construction machinery and the hilly typography and the faintly run-down pre-war bungalows and the atmosphere of fog and moisture and the faint flickerings of despair. What a ghastly town in which to exist! (Notice I didn’t say “live” — the best you can do in a town like San Pedro is mark time and hope for a “get out of jail” card.)

If I was somehow stuck in San Pedro (or wherever the hell the film was shot…Carson? Signal Hill?) with no chance of escape, I wouldn’t embrace alcoholism but I’d be sorely tempted to find some form of escape. The whole ugly South Bay sprawl…later.

Another thing that bothered me is a decision to use a certain family tragedy, conveyed around the halfway mark, to explain Affleck’s boozing, and, we’re told, why he had turned to the bottle before and why it only takes a little sharp prodding to make him jump back in. It’s called “laying it on a bit thick” or, you know, overly precise cause-and-effect plotting.

Back in the early ’90s I passed along a boozing story (not my own) to my father, who’d became an AA devotee in ‘75. He found it darkly amusing. It was about a mild-mannered AA dilletante who’d been in and out of sobriety for years, but who notably began bending the elbow again because things were going so well in his life. He felt that the Gods were being so nice to him and so amazingly gracious and charitable that he could celebrate this fact without paying the price. “Wow, the sun is shining and things are going so great…I can start drinking again and have a lot of fun in the evenings, like I did in high school and college!” Hilarious.

Critic pally: “That’s not only a great story but it’s quite typical of something. Drinking because you think things are going just great is one of the best excuses for (functional) alcoholism out there. You’ve mastered your life, and you will master the drinking! Insidiously, that’s part of how it masters you.”

SPOILER:

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