SmileyMcGrouchpantsJrEsqIII

From the opening quote from Joan Didion, to the first scene's depiction of a car ride being given and its feeling that the *whole country* was like this at the time, kids off from school, meeting each other ... you feel like you're on to something special, and in the hands of a gifted director.

From Mary Harron, director of Jim Jarmusch's favorite film of all time (check the Internet), 'American Psycho' (2000), and depicted *herself* in the Alan Rickman 'CBGB' movie from some years ago, a milieu Jarmusch would have been familiar with, comes a story of the twilight's last gleaming.

Should be later with Paul Thomas Anderson's film of the Pynchon novel, 'Inherent Vice,' as part of not just re-remembering the '60s but the effort, gently but firmly, to replace an awful lot of our historians with artists firing on all cylinders maybe taking a step aside to deal with other realities (see Jarmusch's own 'Gimme Danger,' his documentary about the Stooges, for more).

I recommend it!

It's good.

Get *entranced* ...

Portland, over and out.

;)

#YEAH.

It's surprising how well-*informed* this movie is. In a way, it reminds me of James Foley's 'At Close Range' (which I finally caught up with on Tubi, after watching the Madonna video over and over again on MTV during my teen years): the part when Christopher Walken disabuses his son, played by Sean Penn - and implicitly the *audience* - of certain presuppositions about crime, and criminals, and the criminal *life* ... he laughs and says (something *like*) "What do I *do ... ?? I know - *guys*. We do - *things*." It's the sort of offhand arrangements that goes on down South with drug dealers, with arrangements to work together being canceled & renewed, and a term like "cartels" being a convenience of the RICO statues to *catch* them, being a squirming worm of many segments to pin down most of the time *otherwise*.

It's really good ... !!! It'll keep your dander up.

And James Caan doesn't just seem like he's playing Sonny from 'The Godfather,' although his character is equally intense.

And Willie Nelson is good in this movie too. I never could stand his hits "Always on My Mind" and "On the Road Again," so it's nice to see him in something I approve if, since everybody likes him so much.

So.

Cheers!

Michael Mann fans will rejoice.

*It's never too late to start catching up with things* - if you really *want* to, that is.

Portland, over and out.

• finis. -

;)

#YEAH.

Wow!

Ouch.

Geez.

Gerard Depardieu sure is in trouble in this movie - and it *didn't take long*.

After some partying sequences that seem straight out of '4:44 - The Last Day on Earth' (not a film for climate-change deniers!) and some orgying that seems to come as no surprise to the director of 'The Blackout' (word has it that Matthew Modine got a little freaked out by the *real-life escorts* Abel Ferrara used in the scene!), guess what happens ... ??

Guess ... ??

(Well, I'll leave it for *you* to find out ... !!!)

This is a good movie - don't miss it ... !!!

Abel Ferrara pays extra attention to how working professionals go through their *day*, and it makes for richer *drama*, not *less*.

An added laurel leaf - an extra versatility, an extra *facility* - for an already-mature director.

It's the world we live in, today.

"All for the want of a Blackberry ... "

Based on real-life events.

Compelling, and unmissable.

Recommend it to *others* ... !!!

See for *yourself* ... !!!

;)

#YEAH.

"Little Ricky Lapinski ... "

I already like this movie, and I'm going to review it anyway.

As always, right down to the opening credits, there's this sense of verve, class and *gratefulness* for being able to make movies that pervade Tom Dicillo's movies - it's there from the very first. So why don't they take off like rockets?? I have no idea. I think it comes down to *confidence*, though - some of the humor is pretty dark, and unless you've got a well-read and well-*established* sense of what causes harm in the world, it's hard to laugh at the incidental run-off, and people might end up being freaked out by it and *blaming* the features. Again, this goes for audiences, critics, and distributors/financiers *all three*, but this guy's been contributing to film for the part two, three decades and I don't see people imitating him and taking their cues from him the way they should - they way they did with '80s Jim Jarmusch, say, or Abel Ferrara. Film culture would be a lot richer by now if they had, if this had been the case.

Lastly, DiCillo's joy at using actors is infectious, and has been from the very first - this is the guy who made a star out of Brad Pitt, way-back-when with 'Johnny Suede.' It's an almost-forgotten virtue, what with actor's names appearing in the credits, and them dutifully appearing in the way we know them best. It's like all the casting is done P. R. people and flak agents, a two-way street of being mutually intimidated that resolves itself into a pulling amiability, but not much more or *hardly* any artistic burning-flame, most of the time.

Not so with DiCillo. He feels like he's putting on a play for community theater in his backyard, and you feel like "oh - *that* guy!" or "oh - *her* again!" He shows each actor at their best, as though the act of placing them there has some joyous agency, the "hand of who's behind the camera," as Howard Hawks (paraphrase) once famously put what would come to be known as "auteur theory," before all the theorizing, French or 'New Yorker' or *not*.

So.

I'm only ten minutes in, and already I can tell I'm gonna *like* this movie. Give it a shot!

I'm tellin' *you*.

;)

#WINK.

Bustling with life, effervescence, and verve, Tom DiCillo's movies keep things moving in an amiable kind-of way with blistering critiques humming under the service - so why are they so unappealing to people ... ?? Maybe they ask too much, or provide too much richness - people get a headache, from being used to watching "The Twenty" before features in theaters, and anything more demanding than them (and they've already finished their *popcorn* ... ) just gets under their dander & *irritates*.

----------------- "Dudes - chicks out there - listen up.

"Because the first time I got gonorrhea, I thought I was gonna die!" ----------------- Um.

This one's really good ... !!! You'll probably like it. DiCillo refers to the world we all know about & inhabit, so it's not bereft of signifiers & full of people ordering "generic beer." And he casts Steve Buscemi and Michael Pitt in it, et. Al.

So.

------------------ "I got like five decks of cards, I can bring them *all* over. We can play rummy, it's a *great* game." ------------------ Onward!

Towards *fun*.

This is a class act - you can tell from the opening credits, and already you're wondering why it didn't find its way around some more ... after 'Living in Oblivion' (Tom DiCillo notes, in his filmmaker's diary published with the complete screenplay, that he lost for best original script at the Independent Spirit Awards to "the guy who wrote 'The Usual Suspects'"), it seems that DiCillo slipped off being front-and-center stage, but this is the sort of thing he *specializes* in: the weird, vain, crazy world of filmmaking (and actors! And art! And ... ) *itself*, and all the shots are lively and the set-ups, too, filled with personal investment and affection for all these human types and the foibles they encounter, and perpetuate, and fall *victim* to, themselves ... again, a class act all-around, and doesn't seem to have a lot to do with Billy Wilder in terms of style and *noir* shadings and blah-blah-blah *specifity*, but the overarching concerns are abundantly. He cares about us humans, and makes sure we are able to laugh at ourselves - as though losing our ability to do so would be dire, or at least *detrimental*.

And Matthew Modine made this movie not long after Abel Ferrara's 'The Blackout!' It goes to show that some people were willing to "tweak" thr film industry and themselves, even if public/critical/distributor response wasn't *great*. I didn't see either of these two pictures in the *theater*.

Two thumbs up! (From *me*, anyway ... ha-ha!!!)

;)

#WINK

#WINKAROONY.

It was good!

(Oh that's right - 'The Baffler' made you clueless, and now you can't catch up!)

Oh, well.

The "Rotten Tomatoes" average is 7%, which is abysmal, disparaging and unfair - it must have been a bunch of "too cool for school" reviewers dismissing it as not good enough, ranging from Steve Albini to your usual cast of characters writing for 'Maximum Rock 'N' Roll' to ... A. O. Scott??

Whatever.

This movie is lively, easy to watch and the music's worth its price in gold. Alan Rickman's all-but-unrecognizable, which is good, it means he disappears into the role, and also he finds it pleasurable to do so, a rare occurrence to be on display for an actor, although I think the Willem Dafoe and Susan Sarandon of Paul Schrader's 'Light Sleeper' bear a comparison in terms of seeming to have a good time - another NYC movie, and one about people who keep odd hours.

Enjoy it! I did.

Spare me the *killjoys* -

*Spare* me!

Everyone could stand to learn more about punk. And when there's certain documentaries, so good it's like you hit a geyser, it's like you can't afford to miss them - one would be "Blank City," about the New York '70s scene which interviews everyone from Jim Jarmusch to Richard Kern and Lydia Lunch and Thurston Moore and everyone in-between, and another, also available for free on Tubi (with ads! Just turn the sound off, and wait! Ha-ha! ;) ), is the "White Riot" documentary, surprisingly and with overdue-relevance today, is not about a Clash song you'd heard about and been motivated as so many-vaguely-heard-of concise songs might *be*, but a very *clear and direct response* on the part of them and other punkers to a very real, very heeded-and-endorsed (by Eric Clapton! I'm flummoxed ... wasn't he a *blues fan*, or something ... ?? As people say in the *movie* - but ... ) racist ideologue gaining a lot of notoriety at the time - kind of like Steve Bannon, David Duke or what-all. *Crazy*. Even *nowadays*, it happens - post-'50s *Deep South*, as we're seeing. 'Nuff said.

To that catalog of resistance, add this pleasurable and eye-opening film - how could one have known *all* this stuff? - which features, of course, the brothers MacKaye, of Fugazi and Dischord Records et. Al., of whose latest act Hammered Hulls is tearing things up, the best artist of last year aside from Horsegirl.

*We ain't going nowhere*.

*No*.

Younger than Scorsese, younger than Iggy Pop -

*Sorry about the folks*.

*We ain't giving up*.

See this movie!

You'll be glad you did ...

;)

#WINK.

Just wait 'till the expository, introduction sequence gets boring and burns out your patience, and then they start swearing. Then it gets good.

A lot of people think imdb can be fooled, easily, with that "600 character minimum" stricture they've imposed, to weed out the Interlopers and the spam-bots from the people with the *real commitment* to cinema ... the nascent Sight & Sound and Film Comment types emerging from their buried parts of their, oft-American, English-language-world psyches, like a moth veering towards the light, or a flower reaching up for the sun ... "At last! At last - I have a venue with which to *express* myself ... " A lot of people think the IT tech types are half-asleep, stoner, Solitaire™ players who could fooled by strings of special characters, "£££££" and such.

But I don't think so.

I don't think so at *all* -

I loved this movie!!! I loved this movie more than your own mom, and *my* own apple pie -

( ... so put *that* in your imdb pipe and smoke it!!!)

George Lucas: please stop refraining from returning my calls ...

*Please* ...

Will Ferrell and Jamie Foxx: Up for Oscars™ this year.

*Guaranteed* ...

;)

#YEAH.

Like the recent "Bullet Train," this is a romp - what Glenn Frey called "Heartache Tonight," incidentally ("which, let's face it, is what it is ... " is what he said; look it up!). I don't know why the Glenn Frey quote occurs to me, exactly, but it seems appropriate. All the skewered people and geysers of blood are, like in "Bullet Train," meant in good fun - we're in an area past worrying, here, and Tom Savini's special-effects laden trips aren't the point, here. But, then again, neither is some of the gloomy despondency that accompanies such work - and leads to Eli Roth's "Hostel," which offended Harvey Weinstein (he refused to distribute it) and lead to a whole slew of slow-down-and-dwell-on-it pictures, not the least being James Wan and his "Saw" series, which can't tell if it's ripping off David Fincher's "Seven" (serial killer with a long game plan) or Takashi Miike's "Audition" (well - you know - or you can tell from the *poster*), in any case depriving us of the money shot from the latter because he'd rather keep it off-screen. (*Sigh* ... ) In any event, the energy here is good and constant, and like in "Bullet Train" with its figuring "mansplaining" into the dialogue, here we've entered a diagetic space in film one could only call "post-post-modern"; the group discussions from the beginning and as a continuing thread throughout the film to help with co-dependent relationships seem out of Chuck Palahniuk, whether it's The Narrator in "Fight Club" meeting Darla or, similarly, the guy in "Choke" going to these sort of meetings in an overwrought, desperate bid to connect, make *any* connection - but such is modern life, and the movie skips gaily over such pretenses and pretensions. It wouldn't be much fun if it didn't skip ahead 180 miles and hour, and we weren't already familiar with narcos, group sessions, Asian female cops, young sensitive guys, Nicholas Cage, and, for that matter, the corpus of Chuck Palahniuk - which we are. Why not go? The show I went to in Portland was *sold out*, and it was just a Saturday matineé. Which is the point. Why not go ... ?? Why *not* ... ?? Heh-heh. (Nicholas Cage Dracula Pez™ dispenser coming soon - just kidding!!!)

The second reel couldn't have happened. I'm sorry, but this movie is ridiculous -- and I drove out to the periphery of Portland city-proper, 82nd Ave., where I saw "White Boy Rick" and even "Yoga Hosers" (who cares?) to see this movie. *She can't have done both*. *She can't be riding in the back of the truck with her tied-up friend, and also driving it*. What am I supposed to do, with this ... ?? I'm sitting there, in the audience, with my popcorn and my jaw's agape ... "No -- no no no, that *can't* be ... " -- But yes! Yes it *was*! They've out "Sixth Sense"-d the "Sixth Sense" movie, they've outdone the "Usual Suspects" motive to make you watch the whole thing all over *again* ... it's just, "We say so!" What a modern variant. But it doesn't make any *sense*.

Yes, it's bloody. *But it doesn't make any sense*.

So.

This movie's smart, and it is good - it won't take you but the first scene, a brief but galvanizing one before the opening credits, to realize that if you like "No Country for Old Men" and sons very, very few films of recent years you've got something *else* to watch. I can't believe how good this movie is, and it keeps getting better. The rough respect the characters maintain for each other is plausible, interesting and stands to reason - in a lot of ways, we haven't seen someone stand this tall since Sterling Hayden and Joan Crawford in "Johnny Guitar." See this, and recommend it to everyone you know. It's not a humorless movie, either - what often passes for "importance" in films is gone, the sneering and the one-note anger, and you get the jokeyness of a Lumet, a Coppola, a Scorsese at times. Preserve this movie - it's your good feeling for a time that bocofy knows what their doing in movies anymore, or it's the same old people, or the same old thing. These people certainly *do*. ("Shouldn't someone tell the *Mayor*?" his wife says, affronted that the simp is overlooked by the sheriff and other "men of business" - no surprise, there!!! Funny.)

You'll notice the worrying and the reporters, the carrying's-on and the debate - it's like something out of Pynchon's 'V.' (Florence, not Rome), or the NYU students (and Christopher Walken's head vampire - "You read Burroughs? 'Naked Lunch'?") or the UT Austin students in 'Slacker' and ... what, Oliver Assayas's 'Carlos'? Uli Edel's 'The Baader Meinhof Complex'? The show-boaty Mesrine played by Vincent Cassel starting to turn in a lefty check, in the 2nd of two films about him, called 'Mesrine: Public Enemy #1.'

It has subtly become fashion again to make these films, to insert them into public discourse - even with Marvel™'s ascendancy and their relatively quiet reception.

"There was such a thing as *belief put into action* in those days ... " - as the old anarchist says in 'Slacker,' speaking from the point-of-view of the late '80s, and cuing (in no small part ... ) the '90s into being ...

How well is this working?? I should know - by Assayas's 'Non-Fiction,' the tension seems to be slipping, the reporters doing the endless querying seem to be (imported from) the past to (hopefully) I still then for the *future* ... inquiring minds want to know. Sadly, the Espresso Book Machine mentioned in the movie (" ... yeah ... it can print out a book in less than ten minutes ... ") was used by me, twice, as a self-publishing platform for those hopefully still *holding* those views, but even though I got two featured review in 'Kirkus,' I hardly sold two copies ... about as many as 'Poems by Currer, Ellis, and Acton Bell,' as it happens. And, to add insult to injury, 'Bookforum' folds for good not 6 years later.

Why watch this film ... ?? Do you want to keep that European, undergraduate, collegiate *debater* in you alive ... ?? Or ... *risk* it -

Why not watch it for its own sake.

It's a terrific picture - Ferrara's always are.

Dafoe's in it, and he's never half-asleep, always on the ball.

Why not watch it.

*This is, of course, saying the least of it*.

So.

There you *go* -

Revealing that Tarkovsky dominates over Russian cinema the way that Kubrick dominates here, the reason for this is plain: both serve as artful, artistic correctives to the male-run, hardscrabble-to-survive existence we've all been contented to live with since Rome fell ... or cavepeople used the bone to protect themselves from predator animals, and each other. Think of the scene in 'Andrei Rublev' were the Tartar -- before mocking the Virgin Mary, in honest puzzlement, in an icon portrait inside a chapel ("A virgin birth!" (shaking his head) "What will you Russians think of next ... " -or something) -- says, "Sorry I'm late -- but there was a small town on the way we had to loot & savage, we just couldn't resist" - as though it was the same as *any other reason for being late to a business meeting* ... and you'll get a sense of what's going on, here. The movie's like one long take following the Earthling visitor -- the purported "God" -- around everyplace, and it veers from stimulating to annoying and tiring and simulating a *full day* of walking around, where people live as much as *lose* their lives, and are as *likely* to ... a consummate work of art, ultimately.

(For if it's not our own Middle Ages -- through the "oven mitts" William Gibson once said (science-)fiction affords us, to grapple with issues that would otherwise be too troubling for us to deal with, in a 2004 "Index" magazine interview -- then what is it ... ??

(What ... ??)

A great film.

And quite probably, a classic.

See it.

"Skinamarink" takes you back to the point-of-view of a child, where the house and its gaping holes and dark spaces were cavernous enough to scare you. The grainy film runs to give you something to watch at, to mark time -- it's like continually running water. The film is also for the pleasure of seeing things *being* filmed, like experimental films like Michael Snow's "Wavelength," or "Un Chien Andalou," or "Meshes of the Afternoon," but strung forward to make for a plot and a feature-length film. It's also like the Spielberg-scripted, Tobe Hooper-directed "Poltergeist" in that it's looking at how items left around the house can turn on you, can have a haunted quality and make you feel trapped. And the kids' sense of self and hailing an other is really emotional and moving; just hearing them say "Mom" or "Dad" or lines like "I got scared so I couldn't go back" is enough to break your heart. Also, watching it from the opening credits onward is pure pleasure. This is one of the best pictures ever made. On top of that, it shows how cartoons left running around the house on a TV can have more resonance and *presence* than they were meant to -- again, it's like, in this case, the Spielberg- and Joe Dante-directed segments of "Twilight Zone" were run-throughs for how these things can occupy space, and chaotically spill over. You'll feel like you're in your footsie pajamas *yourself* by the end of this one -- trust me!

"You need to be as small children if you want to enter the Kingdom of Heaven," Jesus is reputed to have said.

Looks like we're already *here* ... !

Amen.

I can't believe this movie. I've never seen anything like it. You can't look away, not even for a second, not even for a single shot -- you're like, "what happened??" and not with trepidation or fear or annoyance you've missed something, you just want to see *every shot*. And you can't tell what's going to happen, either -- you can't even give away spoilers starting with the opening scenes, because even then it would qualify as spoilers because you don't know and can't *tell* what's going to happen. *Even the opening scenes count as spoilers*. This is one of the most majestic and confident cutting-between-time-frames I've ever seen -- it just ropes you in, and every part's equally interesting, every part just furthers the ropes and deepens the mystery. All it does is explain itself, from word one -- and more, and more. None of the sloppy editing and cuts that make an awkward leap in say Danny DeVito's "Hoffa" from the early '90s -- all the movie seems to do is identify bad ideas from other movies, and avoid them. The effect is spellbinding. Nobody's been better than they were in this movie -- they've only been *as good*. You won't be wasting your time watching this movie. I promise you.

It goes to show that if you've got your politics right, you can show characters acting in a more generous, willful, humorous, and strong-spined sort of way - it's how the offstage stuff affects the onstage stuff that matters. It's unknown almost since the turn of the century and George Bernard Shaw and Eugene O'Neill and Clifford Odets - this movies the anti-"Reality Bites," and Occupy provides the cover for recovering our wares that only pre-WWII plays could do; the horror overwhelmed everything else, and people started acting like saps. Witness the afore-mentioned movie and the "Dude, I'm so sorry ... I really meant *this* instead!" way-of proceeding, heavy on the guilt and humorlessness and just begging to be liked - begging you to take it *seriously*.

I really liked this movie a lot - it's a lot more "bubbly" than crap that tried to do it on purpose, and it's more sardonic than anything since "Slacker." (If anything, they bring up being "Yanks" more than that movie did - which is to say, it didn't at all - which is a real funny, time/inclination thing.)

Lorelei Linklater is good. So is the other sister, for that matter.

Highly recommended.

This is a very thrilling, challenging work. Reading (or having read) the society novels of Thackeray, Tolstoy, and Proust, et. Al., might put you in the position to better appreciate this film, a four-hour plunge right down the middle in the guise of a television show adapted from a novel. The truths are as tough as the lack of resorting to easy despair -- check out the look of disappointment on the maid's face early on when she's remonstrated by the master of the house for not coming to the door "the first, but the second time I knocked" and the way she looks at Sugar and carries herself towards the door before she opens it exits it and closes it after waking Sugar and bringing her her morning cup of tea (right? I'm an American) -- clearly she approves. This is a very good movie, and the opening has scenes, shots abs mise en scène out of David Lynch or Ken Russell, to haunt you through the rest of the production, which it does; dream or nightmare, these people are bound by clothes, rooms, and locales in general, which keep them propped up as much as they oppress them. It's a staggering piece of work, for something just thrown up on television, to be honest -- it goes to show what the BBC can do, and what HBO only tries. Romola Garai has reason to be proud for the rest of her life of this movie, and so does that maid. I really liked her.

You'd probably have to have heard these songs to death to like this one (I was born in '72), to be amazed someone finds such value in them. I even like the Le Tigre song -- but then, they had Sadie Benning in the band at the time, so.

But anyway: this is the very best of the post-"Juno" films, up there with "Nick and Norah's Infinite Playlist," but I guess nobody cared enough to keep the vibe going, the torch lit.

I do, though: I *do*.

-EJB/Orwell

(past lives)

But the thing is ... you know Juno Temple is good in most things, but she really breaks your heart ... Dwight Yoakam is almost-unrecognizable, and funnily playing against type ... and who doesn't like to see William H. Macy?

There, is it 600 characters ye--

Like Scorsese's "Hugo" and the Coen Brothers' "A Serious Man" this comes from a place way way back in the psyche, which would've taken much much time to surpass really really terrible events that took place in order to make, or it'd be inappropriate to do so. Get ready to find this movie hard not to like after it flashes "The Fabelmans" at you and gets right into it, right at the start. I normally don't like or cant-*stand* Seth Rogen, but here he's being deployed rather than concocting an offensive script and calling it "comedy," so I don't exactly want to see him dropped off a cliff or consigned to a rubber room or something. Truth be told, this is probably one of the greatest ever made -- it's certainly among Spielberg's most fluid -- and if you can't tear up at a time in it, you're made of stone. Plus, the cameo (diagetically) of John Ford, as a garrulous, Nicholas Ray- and Samuel Fuller-like figure is just what you'd expect, and the nice note to end on. (SPOILER!) Ha.

Admittedly, that tale of gangsters and machine guns dates from a time of assassinations, Vietnam, and people waking up to their own (entitlement) karma -- here, in the biggest "drop down from the perch, and walk amongst us mortals on Earth" effort since the Adam Sandler-starring 'Uncut Gems,' which it resembles in its quick pace and gritty feel, we get another view from the floor which is like more of our lives, and a breath of fresh air, even jusu by example or allegory. Like the (recent) novels of discontent by Halle Butler, it seems a long way back since the Coupland / Linklater / Pagan Kennedy triumvirate of Generation X displeasure and dissatisfaction is finding its way back into mainstream(/indie), articulable narratives ... life is *boring* if it's like '90s sitcoms, or trying to be, or about parking yourself in front of the lesser of Comedy Central™ fate and not much caring if your life could be better, or the years go by without your much noticing, or your not being much different from your (carbon-cut out, if they *are*) parents like it makes much difference. Here, you'll have your teeth and nerves set on edge by more than one set-up -- and if you feel yourself going "Uhh!" and indrawing-breath, there's reasons why: not everyone needs to be climbing up the face of Mount Rushmore in a Hitchcock film to make you nervous. Moreso, and *moreover*, I think the movie makes people nervier and gutsier by plot's end and resolution -- even if Aubrey Plaza's Emily couldn't *really* hop every lilly pad successfully the next one and the next one like she does in the movie, how different is it, really, from any fudged or foisted hero(/ine) who gets to squeezed through the door and the last moment? (Spoiler alert: she doesn't *die*!) Still, this leaves the audience a little more willing to confront catastrophe just to see what happens -- it's a *movie*. And further still, it probably does it's part to help relinquish the grip the unholy triumvirate of Eggers / Foster Wallace / Nick Hornby has had on our lives and intellectual life, and make it easier to reject Noah Baumbach's all-but-bride electing to do a movie about Ken & Barbie, and he himself filming DeLillo's 'White Noise' like he just heard of it last week, with the novella-length treatment a 2-hr. Picture entails. 'Nuff said!

It's about how the imagery is supposed to flood you, fill you entirely. I'm not sure why people don't like it -- they must not have many part lives, these critics, at least not enough to rub shoulders with other ones to have things *crop up* ...

(Maybe they haven't seen Pasolini's "Canterbury Tales" yet -- me neither, I just heard of it.)

Check out 'The Great,' also on Hulu, and then re-watch 'The Favourite,' or at least let it run through your mind again -- what do you think's going on?

Huh?

#dramas

#recall

#totalrecall

An able drama. An able production.

Geez!

(And Joey King, as she does in 'Bullet Train,' shows herself to be a magnet for our attention -- is there any stopping her??)

Kudos.

I say kudos!

;)

This is a fraud movie, the most effective one I know of; everyone in the '80s liked it. Spielberg said the "studios weren't ready for Bob's movies, even though he was ready to make them" or something (it's on Zemeckis's Wikipedia page), but really, I think this was a question of the Spielbergian élan that he can't confer to others but imagines (might be) there ... of all the follow-ups and rip-offs to 'Raiders of the Lost Ark,' the Lucas Star Wars films, 'E. T.,' 'Close Encounters,' and 'Jaws', it's this one that sticks ... not "Young Sherlock Holmes," "Tales of the Gold Monkey," "King Solomon's Mines," "Battle Beyond the Stars," or Spielberg's own "Amazing Stories" and "Twilight Zone" revivals (I'm omitting "Gremlins," but Joe Dante has a vision and style of his own, so bear with me). Zemeckis, later to give us "Forrest Gump" and having already given us "Used Cars" (not a hit, but considered a cult classic, and subversive) and "Romancing the Stone" (funnily enough, one of the biggest hits of the year and everyone was fond of it at the time, though it sticks in no-one's craw *now*; Kathleen Turner had trouble finding movie roles after 'Body Heat,' no-one wanted a husky-voiced Bacall like they wanted a sarcastic Jack Nicholson in Christian Slater, makes have it easier!), once said "he never saw why people disparaged TV so much ... I learned a *lot* from TV!" or something. (Which is where we get "Who Framed Roger Rabbit?" which holds up badly now -- or at least weakly, like water dripping through a sieve. It's not just who cares about these characters now -- or, not to be unkind, but Bob Hoskins either, but let's get real -- but who cares about these *pretenses* now? WB cartoons may come up in "The Shining" but that's about it. I used to watch Saturday morning cartoons every week until I grew out of them, but I'm as little fond of them even as a memory as I am of sugar-coated breakfast cereals, which was supposed to make up for eggs and bacon, much less the breakfast scrambled everyone eats in Portland, where I live, now. I used to be Boba Fett and Yoda for Halloween, get me? Who *cares* about Saturday Morning Cartoons -- at least I *remember* those costumes, those experiences, etc.) Which -- the TV-watching I mean -- makes him like David Mamet. "I grew up during the golden age of television!" he says, or something close to it (I'm quoting from memory), in his relatively-recent book about realizing he's a "conservative." And David Mamet was considered one of the pre-eminent playwrights of our time, certainly when I was in college in the early '90s and Madonna's choosing to do "Speed the Plow" on Broadway was supposed to be significant and "Glengarry Glen Ross" was being made into an all-male, "Reservoir Dogs"-like allstar combatant zone by the Jim Thompson adapter, "After Dark, My Sweet's" James Foley (still the only Mamet, aside from "House of Games," worth seeing, and at that, only once -- who cares about "Heist?" He's too full of himself). Talk about high and low culture! All of a sudden it looks like we're being duped, because we're too shy to construct our own narratives, and can't tell people confident enough to string scenes together with sugary-coated TV motives and direct them into life from "Love's Labor Lost." I say phooey on this movie. All it teaches is contempt -- and you can tell this from the reviews on here, they're all replete with it. Crispin Glover was much better (and *memorable*!) in "Wild at Heart" ("I'm making my lunch!"). Who could forget *that*?

I am surprised at how often movies with unearned jokes just trundle along, with graphic violence that's upsetting (not the case here) nor gleeful graphic *enough* sometimes -- again, not the case here. It took a *lot* of post-'90s cinema for this to go down as palatable but it's adult entertainment, for adults, and you'll go to see something else next week -- you might not think of "Neuromancer" or "Blade Runner," but you might think of "Hello Kitty!" and it's not a piece of crap. The conceit that a bunch of hired killers conduct themselves like day traders or other corporate types in good-natured but serious competition with each other is gamely handled, and it's hard not to be charmed by (nearly) everyone in the whole thing, even if there's too many characters to keep them all in your hand at the same time and the choice to keep everything trundling along and light if graphic entertainment is some of them fall off your mental radar. "Murder on the Orient Express" and "Silver Streak" maybe are inevitably in the background as precursors, and Joey King as a trapped-on-the-train suspect type is charming as ever -- this could be her breakthrough role to super-stardom, watch it happen without your really *noticing*, next -- and Brad Pitt proves once again he's awfully hard not to like. The dénouement goes on for a while, but what doesn't these days with CGI to dispense? "I'm sorry, forgive me, I'm mansplaining!" comes up. "Are you going to get that?" comes up. What's not to like?

This is one of the grossest of the "guilt" movies of recent years, and it's all for *naught* -- it has nothing to do with the Narcos, even though it's set in Texas, and, perturbably, this is supposed to be *why* these people get away with such behavior (the "nocturnal animals" of the title -- or, alternately, the non-ficitonal film-within-the-film in which the wife is anathema and *unique* to her husband, who never heard of alternative types who go out for coffee at the only Greek diner or Denny's (see Murakami, "After Dark") open after 11 pm ... but hey, right? Everyone's an alien species when you're trying to be *deep*!).

I've seen harder-hitting, more gut-wrenching stuff on Tubi, as of late, for free, some of it starring *Harvey Keitel*, that didn't make you feel like such a louse for watching it ... and didn't go to the crass extent the soundtrack-makers did (check it out -- is this *fiction*, or what? Eww!).

Two hundred thumbs down.

Every *filmmaker*: You *must* see "Heathers," "Pump Up the Volume," "Trust," "Slacker," "Simple Men," and "Raiders of the Lost Ark" -- perhaps in that *order* -- or you simply don't know what you're doing. You're re-drawing the map, getting lost, and making us sick and *sad*.

Thank *you* ...

(Jake Gyllenhaal's been better. Shaving off the beard was a *bad* idea -- why should they *recognize* him? It was *dark* besides -- why *do* that?

(And yet, it's par for the course when you're supposed to swallow the whole deal.)

Lame.

#getajobtomford

#getajob

;)