50 Years Ago: The Best of Times, The Worst of Times

I was 15, going on 16, and it happened during my summer break as a student at St. Aloysius High School in New Orleans. Since the previous September, I’d been reviewing movies for the school paper, The Aloysian. (My first review: In the Heat of the Night, a movie that forever changed how I looked at and thought about movies.) The vice-principal evidently was impressed: He recommended me to Joseph Larose, the entertainment editor of the city's weekly Catholic newspaper, The Clarion Herald, as someone who could occasionally fill in as a second-string film critic.

And so, on the morning of Wednesday, June 5, 1968, when the issue officially dated June 6 started popping up in people's mailboxes throughout the city, I could see the very first review I ever wrote for a professional publication -- a thumbs-up appraisal of Wild in the Streets. This should have been the happiest day of my life.

But, of course, it wasn't: I woke up to news that Robert F. Kennedy was barely clinging to life after being shot in Los Angeles. And then, alas, the next day was worse.

I love film. And I will be happy to celebrate on Tuesday the 50^th anniversary of my career as a film critic. But I must admit: My gratitude for what happened  — and for what continues to happen, as I continue to write about what I love  — remains inextricably entwined with regret for what might have been. Maybe that’s why I take to heart these words from my favorite filmmaker, Francois Truffaut: “For me, cinema is not a sad imitation of life. It is an improvement on life.”

A tribute to Vittorio Taviani: My 1987 review of Good Morning, Babylon

Note: To honor Vittorio Taviani, who passed away this weekend, I am posting my original review of Good Morning, Babylon — my favorite of the many films he co-directed with his brother, Paolo Taviani — which I first saw at the 1987 Cannes Film Festival.  

There is a kind of immortality one obtains only through art. And that is what Paolo and Vittorio Taviani lovingly celebrate in Good Morning, Babylon, their richly textured, radiantly photographed fable of Old World tradition and New World innovation.

The film follows two young brothers from their Tuscan village, where their family works at restoring the splendor of time-ravaged cathedrals, to the Hollywood of 1916, where D.W. Griffith is inventing the syntax of the first great 20th-century art form, cinema.

Griffith, played as an avuncular visionary by Charles Dance, becomes a father figure for Nicola (Vincent Spano) and Andrea (Joaquim De Almeida), and invites them to bring their artistic legacy to his most ambitious epic, Intolerance. The stonemasons eagerly accept, and wind up constructing eight huge elephants as temple decorations in the silent classic's lavish Babylon sequence. Not coincidentally, the elephants are large-scale replicas of designs they carved for a cathedral back in their home village.

The Tavianis, heretofore best known for their folk tales about Italian peasantry (Padre Padrone, Night of the Shooting Stars), doubtless see much of themselves in Nicola and Andrea. Like the young immigrants, the Tavianis are inseparable collaborators who were raised in a rural Tuscan village, and who grew up to accept cinema as their means of artistic expression and spiritual self-preservation.

Perhaps because of these strong autobiographical links, and most definitely because of the Tavianis' great love for film, Good Morning, Babylon is highly romanticized in its rendering of its lead characters, and in its depiction of early Hollywood as a golden-lit wonderland. The actors, technicians and directors are seen as exuberant pioneers, intoxicated with the knowledge they are doing and making things no one ever has before. For them, filmmaking is at once a daunting adventure, a raucous ritual, and a means of joining total strangers as lovers and comrades on and off the set.

After decades of movies that have taken a far less generous attitude toward the Hollywood dream factory, Good Morning, Babylon comes as a refreshing, reinvigorating change. It reminds us of a time marked by innocence and idealism, and of the reasons why many of us fell in love with movies in the first place. Throughout the film, a mood of ingenuous optimism is beautifully sustained — musical, almost, in its intensity.

The performances are perfectly attuned to the unaffected sincerity of the Tavianis’ celebration. A good thing, too. With a misplaced touch of irony, or a self-conscious emphasis on the wrong line, the whole illusion would be shattered. Dance risks audience ridicule when, as Griffith, he joyfully exclaims, “I love moviemaking!” But even if you smile at the character’s unabashed enthusiasm, you won't laugh.

Vincent Spano and Joaquim De Almeida offer virile, vibrant performances as Nicola and Andrea. They are defiantly proud men, particularly when their worth is challenged by snide studio executives. (“We are the sons of the sons of the sons of Michelangelo and Leonardo! Whose sons are you?”) But they can be comically endearing in their exasperation at bad fortune. At one low point on the road to Hollywood, Andrea snaps at Nicola. “I'd die of pity if I saw somebody like you and me!”

Greta Scacchi and Desiree Becker are utterly charming as bit players who fall in love with the Tuscan immigrants, despite their initial resolve to date only directors or producers. In one of the movie's sweetest scenes, each brother offers his sweetheart a firefly he has captured. Then, as a comic counterpoint, the brothers, not quite fully fluent in English, try their hand at love letters — using flowery phrases such as “You are as beautiful as a snowy mountain!” — that become a running gag all over the studio backlot.

Occasionally, the Tavianis reveal their own awkwardness at working in another language. Some of the English dialogue sounds affected and overly precise, like a too-literal translation. (English subtitles are provided for Italian-language scenes.) At other times, the measured pacing and the gorgeous landscapes, familiar from the Tavianis’ Italian films, seem distractingly inappropriate for this particular story.

In the end, though, the relatively minor flaws of Good Morning, Babylon are easily overlooked. The final scene, where Nicola and Andrea make a valiant attempt to literally immortalize themselves through their new art, achieves a deeply affecting, bittersweet poignancy. It is an altogether fitting conclusion for a movie that pays such eloquent tribute to the magic of moviemaking.

Gone but not forgotten: Selena

Twenty-three years ago today, Texas-born Mexican-American singer-songwriter Selena Quintanilla -- a budding superstar poised to make a major breakthrough with first English-language album -- was taken from us all too soon at age 23. Here is a link to a 1996 Los Angeles Times story I wrote after visiting the San Antonio set of Selena -- the biopic that Gregory Nava intended as a tribute to the fallen star. Even though, as Nava admitted to me at the time, "this is a movie I wish I wasn't making." And here is Selena herself, live and in concert -- her last concert -- at the Houston Astrodome.

The Force is only sporadically with The Director and the Jedi

From my 3.12.18 Variety review: “One can easily discern an informative and affecting documentary short — maybe 20 or 30 minutes long — embedded amid the ungainly sprawl that is The Director and the Jedi, a SXSW Film Festival world premiere offering set for wide release March 27 as a bonus behind-the-scenes feature on the home-video release of Star Wars: The Last Jedi. As its title might indicate, the film works best whenever director Anthony Wonke narrows his focus to concentrate on the complex working relationship between Rian Johnson, the rising young filmmaker who dove into the deep end of the pool by accepting the challenge of writing and directing Episode VIII of the Star Wars franchise, and Mark Hamill, AKA Luke Skywalker, who remained a good soldier, despite serious misgivings, even after being told his iconic character would be a battlefield casualty in Johnson’s scenario.” You can read the rest of my Variety review here.

Sorry, Neil Young fans: Paradox sucks

From my 3.15.18 Varietyreview: “Think of it as a piece of anti-nostalgia. Paradox, a waste of time made bearable only by its brevity, plays like a bad acid flashback from the 1970s, a time when similarly self-conscious trippy pastiches of rock music and genre conventions proliferated on the midnight-movie circuit. Think of Zachariah or Rainbow Bridge, no matter how hard you’ve tried to forget them, and you’ll have some idea what awaits you here. And if you’ve never seen those films, well, consider yourself fortunate. You might do well to keep your lucky streak going.”

Paradox now is available for streaming on Netflix. You can read the rest of my Variety review here.

Jason Isaacs talks about The Death of Stalin, the Orange Oompa Loompa in the White House, and the sheer joy of playing someone who has run out of them to give

Long before he was cast as the casually terrifying Field Marshal Georgy Zhukov in The Death of Stalin, the critically acclaimed, shockingly funny black comedy directed and co-written by Armando Iannucci (In the Loop, HBO’s Veep), Jason Isaacs already had quite a few rogues on his resume. Chief among his credits: Col. William Tavington, the sadistic British officer who makes life miserable for Mel Gibson’s reluctant Revolutionary War hero in The Patriot; a demented researcher at a dubious rehabilitation clinic in A Cure for Wellness; and, of course, the dreaded Lucius Malfoy in the Harry Potter movie franchise.

But in Iannucci’s film, which expands its slow-rollout run into Houston, Nashville and other markets today, Isaacs dials the intimidation level up to 11 — while clearly having the time of his life.

His Zhokov struts into a maelstrom of shifting loyalties, competing power plays and ever-increasing paranoia that erupts in 1953 Moscow following the demise of Joseph Stalin (Adrian McLoughlin), the Communist leader who ruled and nearly ruined his country with a whim of iron while demanding, and receiving, sycophantic support for his reign of terror. The Russian tyrant’s sudden death generates fear and loathing — and, in some cases, unbridled ambition — among a Soviet Central Committee that includes the malleable deputy general secretary Georgy Malenkov (Jeffrey Tambor), Machiavellian secret police commander Lavrentiy Beria (Simon Russell Beale); anxious foreign minister Vyacheslav Molotov (Michael Palin); and the improbably savvy (or perhaps just plain lucky) Nikita Khrushchev (Steve Buscemi). Zhokov looms large above them all, with all the sneering authority and brass-balled confidence of a kingmaker who controls every situation — and, not incidentally, commands the Red Army.

Be forewarned: The Death of Stalin is a brutally hilarious comedy about an unstable despot who inspired adoration even from those he exploited and oppressed, and the movie doesn’t shy away from acknowledging the atrocities committed in his name by his loyal lackeys. But don’t let that keep you away. “As Stanley Kubrick did with Dr. Strangelove,” critic Bilge Ebiri wrote in The Village Voice, “Iannucci has built a satire not by twisting the truth but by nudging reality just a few inches further in the direction it was already going. It should not be incumbent on people of good sense to hold their laughter in the face of such absurd evil. If anything, laughter should be a requirement — because only in well-observed ridicule can we sometimes find a power strong enough to put such monsters in their places. And make no mistake about it: These are monsters, not ghosts. The Death of Stalin might be set in 1953, but you don’t have to look hard at it to see today.”

Isaacs phoned me a few days ago to talk about The Death of Stalin, the movie’s surprisingly compelling contemporary relevance, and the sheer joy that comes from portraying a character who always is absolutely certain — with ample justification — he is the smartest and scariest guy in the room. Here are some highlights from our conversation.

How much did you know about this period in Russian history before you signed on to play Field Marshal Georgy Zhukov?

It was unknown to me. I didn’t know anything about Stalin — and I certainly was shocked to find out how much of the film is true. I’ve seen audiences fall out of their seats laughing — and it is incredibly funny, albeit the comedy comes from tension and terror — but so many of the insane episodes in the film happened. Stalin did make them all sit and watch cowboy films all night long. And the orchestra did have to record [a symphony performance] three times for him. His son did lose a whole hockey team. And when he woke up after they thought he was dead and pointed at a strange painting, they did try to interpret his gesture for hours. And he did lie in a puddle of his own urine for days because they were too frightened to get a doctor — in case they got the wrong doctor, and he came back to life and killed them for it.

Years ago, I talked to Malcolm McDowell about his portrayal of H.G. Wells in Time After Time. In that movie, Welles was depicted as painfully shy around women. But when McDowell picked up a biography to do research, one of the first things he read was that Wells really was a notorious rake. So he figured, well, he’d better toss the book aside and just play what was in the script. Did you do much research about Zhukov?

Well, if you talk to Andrea Riceborough, who plays Svetlana Stalin, she’d say she read a giant weighty tome, this book called Stalin’s Daughter, and then looked in various other tomes. Me?  I glanced at a Wikipedia page — and what became clear instantly was that Zhukov was the only person that could speak the truth to Stalin. The only person who wasn’t in any way fearful. And that was reflected in the script. And then, most usefully to me, I saw a photo of him. I noted this man standing like a peacock puffing out his giant chest, on which he wore 10,000 medals, and I thought, “Who does that?” And apparently he was one of the first people ever to do that, and then it was a fashion picked up by Idi Amin and various other people. And I thought, “OK, I know everything I needed to know. This is a man without whom a coup is not going to take place.” So, whereas everyone else in the story was still terrified of Stalin’s size, of his shadow, Zhukov is a guy who knows that they’re all after [his approval]. Without the Red Army, no one can be in charge. And that was all I needed.

I don’t want to give away any spoilers…

Well, Stalin dies. I think it’s safe to say that for a start.

True enough. It’s kind of like Death of Salesman — you know where that one is going, too. But there’s a scene in Death of Stalin where you’re suddenly really scary. And then, when you see how much you’re terrifying someone, you let them know you’re kidding. And the poor guy is so relieved, you can’t help thinking he might pass out anyway. When you read a scene like that in a script, do you find yourself thinking how much fun it will be to play?

Well, funny enough, that’s the one moment that I remember from the entire shooting that I came up with. Everything else — look, I know the film feels and looks improvised. And when we’ve done stuff with the media and Q&A’s, as we’re doing at the moment in cinemas, people always ask, “How much of it was improvised?” The answer is, none of it. It was all incredibly tightly scripted. But that bit, I came up with. There was just something about playing this character, and about this plot. It’s cheap therapy for anybody who’s a people pleaser to be someone who doesn’t give a flying fuck what anyone else thinks of him, because they hold all the cards. It’s a very juicy thing to do.

Of course, it’s kind-sorta ironic that this movie is coming out at a time when there have been, ahem, questions about what nefarious connections Russia’s current leader might have with the current U.S. President.

What’s really ironic about this is that [Death of Stalin] was written and shot a long time before Trump was even a candidate. But other people have made other connections. Since it’s been out there, I was at a screening where somebody came out of the audience and said to Armando, “Thank you for telling our story.” And it turned out they were from Zimbabwe. They saw it as about Mugabe, and the climate of terror around Mugabe, and what the cult of personality had done to that country.

And in fact, when we were shooting, Brexit happened. I had the day off to go and take part in the commemoration of The Battle of the Somme — and I met David Cameron, the British Prime Minister who had just resigned because of the Brexit vote. He asked me what I was doing and I said a film about the scrabbling for power in the absence of Stalin. And he said, “Sounds like my daily life in Downing Street.”

So there are all kinds of shadows. With the Orange Oompa Loompa in the White House, nowhere was that more obvious than during that extraordinary cabinet meeting that he held where cameras went around and everyone had to pay homage to him in the most cringe-worthy way. But in fact, it could be any situation where the cult of personality and the strength of one character means that everybody else loses their moral compass.

Can you see a day in the not so distant future when someone makes a black comedy about Donald Trump?

The problem with Trump is that he’s beyond satire. He is his own satirist, Donald Trump. The whole thing is some strange kind of Andy Kaufman performance art with monumentally cataclysmic consequences. At the time of Stalin, people lived in utter terror. Because let’s not forget, and the film doesn’t forget, that he sent tens of millions of people to their deaths. But the one thing people had to save their sanity was jokes. And people would circulate joke books about Stalin. Even as they slept full clothed facing the possibility that they’d be spirited away in the middle of the night and shipped off to a gulag. Thankfully, we’re not quite there yet with Trump.

Death was so arbitrary at that time that the slightest joke, even a bad joke, could do you in. Stalin was delusional, narcissistic to an extraordinary degree. Nobody was safe anywhere. In fact, only Zhukov was. The parallels of course to the White House, and the turnover of staff, are extraordinary. They might not get sent to a gulag and shot, but they’re sent out into the media wilderness. Which I suppose is worse for half of them.

Have you ever worked with a director you thought was as mercurial and dictatorial as Stalin?

Oh, God yeah. I’m not so professionally suicidal as to tell you who I’m talking about — but yeah, I’ve worked with some crazy despots. With directors, you see, we’re all parts of their train sets. And they can be as benign as they want, or they can be monstrous. And I’ve worked with all types.

Is it at all difficult being in a situation where you’re playing a character who spooks the hell out of just about every other character? Does that affect how you interact with the other members of the cast?

No, because I was surrounded by heroes of mine. Comedy gods. The hardest thing about doing that film was to decide who to sit next to at lunch. I’m a massive fan of all of them, and I was desperate to talk to Jeffery Tambor about The Larry Sanders Show, and Michael Palin about Monty Python, and then Steve Buscemi about everything he's ever done. The thing is, everybody is so great at their job, and from so many different disciplines. The lead in the film in many ways is Lavrentiy Beria, played by Simon Russell Beale, who’s a massive superstar of the theater in Britain, but unknown to film audiences. And I’ve seen almost everything he’s done — he’s played the lead in all the Shakespeare plays and all the Russian plays — and I knew he was hilariously funny. The whole experience of making the film was embarrassingly enjoyable.

Of course, this isn’t the first time you’ve played an unpleasant character. Do you ever encounter people in public who confuse you with the roles you’ve played? Like, after all those nasty things your character did in The Patriot — did total strangers walk up to you on the street and spit at you?

[Laughs] You know what, I’ll tell you what’s odd — and I still don’t understand it to this day. I’ve been doing this job for a very, very long time. And I’ve found that they may do that when you’re on television, but they don’t do it when you're in films. They confuse you with television characters all the time. I have a friend who was in a show and got beaten up on the subway in England, on the tube, because his character had stolen someone’s purse. With me, instead, they come up and they say, “So sorry, don't take this the wrong way, but I really hated you in The Patriot.” Or, “I was scared of you in Harry Potter.” But they never confuse me for the characters. It doesn’t happen. People love the bad guys. They love to hate, they like the fact that they get riled up.

Finally, you’re a native of Liverpool. How do you think that prepared you for your career? What do you think growing up there gave you?

What did it give? Well, first of all, everybody in Liverpool is a standup comedian — even though only three percent of them are funny. Everybody is always trying to entertain. Literally everybody. You get into a taxi at Lime Street Station, and it starts, and it never switches off until you leave. So, it’s a culture down there, and there are certain cities that are always like that.

And the other thing, I suppose, is it inadvertently gave me is ability to do accents. Because I used to talk like [a Liverpudlian] until I was a teenager. But you can’t really survive as an actor if that’s your accent, so you’ve got to learn to do other voices. So I learned early on. We moved to London when I was a kid, and I was incredibly self-conscious of my accent. So, overnight I went from sounding like a Beatle to sounding like Ray Winstone. Then I went to university, and they all sounded like Hugh Grant. And so did I in a couple of days. And I’m speaking to you from New York, but I’m currently working in Los Angeles shooting a film. I’m playing an American, and I do the accent all day. And I find myself at night in a restaurant, and I’m halfway through a conversation with someone before I think, “Shit! This isn’t my voice!” That’s when I go, “OK, I’m talking like myself again.” But the fact that I came from Liverpool made me very mobile when it comes to dialects.

Really, I’m unbelievably well paid to put on makeup and do silly voices. It’s stunning to me. But I’m glad — because I’ve got no other skills.

Coming soon on Netflix: 6 Balloons

From my 3.19.18 Variety review: “By turns intensely naturalistic and brutally stylized, 6 Balloons mercilessly turns screws and escalates dread while spinning a worst-case scenario about the fraying family ties between a heroin addict, who’s chronically incapable of curbing his self-destructive appetite, and his sister, who’s buckling under the weight of the latest in a long series of his impossible demands. Writer-director Marja-Lewis Ryan drew upon the real-life experiences of producer Samantha Housman while developing her edgy scenario, and audaciously cast in the lead roles two actors best known for their work in comedy — Abbi Jacobson (of Broad City) and Dave Franco. The movie leaves you with a deep respect for the willingness evidenced by Ryan and her collaborators to take several gambles that pay off dramatically and emotionally. But be forewarned: If your own experiences mirror in any way what unfolds in 6 Balloons, it also will leave you more than a little bruised.”

6 Balloons starts streaming April 6 on Netflix. You can read the rest of my review here.

Didn't Ask, Didn't Tell — But I'm glad to see Faye Dunaway returning to the Oscarcast

Last year at the Dallas International Film Festival, it was my privilege and honor to host an onstage Q&A with Faye Dunaway before a 50^th anniversary screening of Arthur Penn’s Bonnie and Clyde. Keep in mind: This event occurred March 30 — less than five weeks after the embarrassing kerfuffle at the 89^th Academy Awards. And to be totally honest, I was a little surprised that Dunaway agreed to appeared in public so soon after she and co-presenter Warren Beatty were targeted with so much ageist-tinged mockery on social media (and elsewhere) in the wake of that infamous mix-up.

And so, when we sat down to sort out our game plan the night before the Q&A, I began the conversation by saying, “OK, just so you’ll know: I don’t think there’s any need to talk about the Oscars.” Dunaway smiled and nodded. And then we proceeded to discuss more important things. Like, you know, her acting career. (She seemed very surprised, and happy, when I told her how much I admired her performance as Maggie, the deeply troubled Marilyn Monroe figure, in a 1974 TV production of Arthur Miller’s After the Fall.)

The Q&A went over extremely well. And I must confess: I got a big laugh, from Dunaway and the audience, when, after she gleefully described playing a “naughty” character in another great Arthur Penn movie, Little Big Man, I responded: “You know, Faye, I’ve always dreamed of hearing you tell me how naughty you are.”

But here’s the thing: When I opened things up so members of the audience could ask questions — no one asked about the Oscars. No one. I guess they, too, didn’t think it would be in good taste to bring up the subject. 

Flash forward a year, and I see in Variety that Dunaway and Beatty have been invited to present the Best Picture award again this Sunday at the 90^th annual Academy Awards. Good for them — they are great sports. And I’m really, really keeping my fingers crossed…

BTW: Here is a link to a piece I did on Faye Dunaway for Cowboys & Indians Magazine — because, in my other life, I am a cowboy.

They Remain (No Matter How Much You Might Want Them To Leave

From my 2.27.18 Variety review: “‘You know how this is going to end,’ a character portentously intones to no one in particular at the start of They Remain, writer-director Philip Gelatt’s ponderously moody suspense drama about scientific researchers who may or may not fall under the influence of supernatural forces while observing flora and fauna in a remote woodland area. Unfortunately, those words prove to be less of a cryptic warning than a blunt appraisal. After enduring the first 10 minutes or so this pretentious twaddle, anyone with previous exposure to similarly affected slow-burn thrillers will know they’re destined for a long onslaught of murky symbolism, stilted dialogue, mannered performances, and brain-fogging confusion, leading to a conclusion that is satisfying only because it signals the termination of an enervating journey. In short: They Remain is a movie that lives down to your worst expectations.” You can read the rest of my Variety review here.

Review: Survivors Guide to Prsion

From my 2.23.18 Variety review: “If ever a proselytizing documentary could be described as assaultive, Survivors Guide to Prison might sport that label as a badge of honor. Filmmaker Matthew Cooke (How to Make Money Selling Drugs) launches a frenetic barrage of facts and figures, cautionary tutorials, and worst-case scenarios, in the manner of someone wielding blunt instruments to strike illuminative sparks. His outrage likely will prove highly contagious for audiences exposed to his free-wheeling critique of the U.S. criminal justice system, which starts out as a series of practical warnings to anyone (of any racial or ethnic background) maneuvering through close encounters with zealous cops and aggressive prosecutors — the useful advice includes admonitions to be polite and, if possible, shut the hell up — and gradually expands in scope to question the need to incarcerate so many people in a supposedly free society.” You can read the rest of my Variety review of Survivors Guide to Prison — which is now available on various streaming platforms — here.

Roddy McDowall shows you why it might not be such a good idea to arm teachers

Perhaps President Trump and other folks who want teachers to start packing heat should watch Mark L. Lester’s classic 1982 B-movie Class of 1984. If not the entire film, then at least this memorable scene.

And this I say unto three: Samson underwhelms

From my 2.15.18 Variety review: "Despite the limitations of their obviously limited budget, the makers of Samson strive mightily to provide the scope and sweep of an Old Hollywood biblical epic while offering their take on the classic tale about a mighty hero who falls from grace after a tonsorial malfunction. Unfortunately, there’s nothing miraculous about this latest product from Pure Flix Entertainment, an outfit that’s recently scored considerably greater success with such modern-day faith-based fare as Woodlawn, God’s Not Dead and The Case for Christ. Even if you’re willing to forgive the laughably fake beards, the unconvincing computer-generated imagery, and a man-versus-lion skirmish that might have embarrassed Ed Wood, the overall clunkiness of this enterprise may tempt you to shout rude things at the screen." You can read the rest of my review here.

Nicolas Cage dials it down in Looking Glass

From my 2.17.18 Variety review: "Nicolas Cage continues to pad his resume with VOD-centric B-movies of wildly varying quality, demonstrating, if not discerning taste, then a prodigious work ethic that would have served him well as a Warner Bros. contract player during the 1930s and ’40s. Looking Glass, the latest in his seemingly endless parade of low-rent star vehicles, is notable mostly for showcasing a relatively restrained performance by the often manic actor. During almost the entirely of this derivative melodrama, a slow-burn scenario about strange doings at a second-rate desert motel, Cage tamps down his trademark tendency toward ravenous scenery chewing. He remains admirably disciplined even during scenes in which one of his co-stars is prematurely giving the game away by doing everything short of screaming, 'I’m the mad killer! I’m the mad killer!'" You can read the rest of my review here.

Opening Friday: Small Town Crime

From my 3.21.17 Variety review: “It looks like John Hawkes is carving a niche for himself on the seedier streets of neo-noir. Two years ago, the impressively protean character actor essayed a low-rent shamus who discovers himself — and finds himself wanting — while searching for a missing young woman in Dennis Hauck’s intriguingly time-scrambled Too Late. Now he’s back on the case as another scuffed-up gumshoe in Small Town Crime, a hardboiled melodrama with a heart of tarnished gold. Written and directed by sibling filmmakers Ian and Eshom Nelms with equal measures of respect and skepticism for pulp conventions, the movie comes across as neither pastiche nor parody, but rather as a seriously down-and-dirty crime story with a savage sense of humor. The just-complicated-enough plot could pass for a lesser-known narrative of Elmore Leonard. At the center of it all, Hawkes stands tall — or at least he tries to, even when his character is staggering drunkenly, or passing out altogether.”

Small Town Crime will be available starting 1.19.18 in theatrical and VOD release.

And the HFCS winner is: Lady Bird

OK, I had promised myself I would resist any and all temptation to make bad puns about the movie’s title, but… Well, to quote my late father’s favorite author, Oscar Wilde: I can resist anything but temptation. So…

Writer-director Greta Gerwig’s Lady Bird continued to feather its nest as a dominant awards-season presence Saturday evening when it received no fewer than three awards  —  Best Picture, Best Screenplay and Best Director — at the 11^th annual Houston Film Critics Society Awards.

Among the other winners:

ACTRESS — Sally Hawkins, The Shape of Water.

ACTOR — James Franco, The Disaster Artist.

SUPPORTING ACTRESS — Allison Janney, I, Tonya.

SUPPORTING ACTOR — Sam Rockwell, Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri.

ORIGINAL SCORE — Alexander Desplat, The Shape of Water.

ORIGINAL SONG — “Remember Me,” Coco.

CINEMATOGRAPHY — Roger Deakins, Blade Runner 2049.

FOREIGN LANGUAGE FILM — Thelma.

ANIMATED FILM — Coco.

VISUAL EFFECTS — Blade Runner 2049.

MOVIE POSTER — The Shape of Water.

TEXAS INDEPENDENT FILM — A Ghost Story.

TEXAS INDEPENDENT FILM VISIONARY AWARD — The Secret Life of Lance Letscher, directed by Sandra Adair.

HFCS HUMANITARIAN AWARD — Jim “Mattress Mac” McIngvale.

OUTSTANDING CONTRIBUTION TO CINEMA — Q-Fest.

It was my distinct honor and privilege to offer a HFCS Lifetime Achievement Award tribute to Harry Dean Stanton. But wait, there’s more: When I was introduced prior to that presentation, I was identified as “Variety film critic and stable genius Joe Leydon.” So, again, I could not resist: When I later announced that the winner of the Best Documentary award was Brett Morgen’s Jane, I told the awards show audience at MATCH: “I look forward to this film’s premiere on The Gorilla Channel...”

Saturday Night Feature: Remembering Harry Dean Stanton at the HFCS Awards

It will be my privilege to present a tribute to the late, great Harry Dean Stanton this Saturday, Jan. 6, at the 11^th annual Houston Film Critics Society Movie Awards. But don’t worry: There will be more to the program than just my humble attempt to honor a legend.

The awards show — set to start at 7 pm at the Midtown Arts and Theater Center Houston (MATCH) in Downtown H-Town — will be highlighted by the presentation of awards for excellence in 2017 movies. Nominees in the Best Picture category include: The Big Sick, Call Me By Your Name, Dunkirk, The Florida Project, Get Out, Lady Bird, Logan, The Post, The Shape of Water and Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri.

But wait, there’s more: There will be silent auctions of movie memorabilia, extended displays of clips from nominated films, and a tribute to local furniture store mogul and philanthropist Jim McIngvale (who, no kidding, produced the 1991 action-comedy Sidekicks starring Chuck Norris and Jonathan Brandis).

“Each year, the Houston Film Critics Society follows a thorough screening process to identify the best of the year’s films,” says HFCS president Joshua Starnes. “Our annual awards ceremony lets us honor the best as we invite the community to celebrate the magic of film.”

You can find a full list of HFCS nominations here, more detail on the awards show program here, and ticket ordering information here. And yes, I will be signing autographs for a nominal fee. (OK, I made up that last part.)

Yes, Colossal is No. 1 on My Top 10 of 2017

To begin with my standard disclaimer: This may be my list of the Top 10 Movies of 2017 – but it’s not necessarily a rundown of the year’s 10 Best Movies. Because, quite frankly, I haven’t seen every single movie released anywhere in the US during the past 12 months. But this most certainly is a list of my favorite films to open in US theaters in 2017. These are, of course, purely arbitrary and totally subjective choices. And I’ll freely admit that, a decade or so hence, I might look back on the following lineup and want to make additions or deletions. (Maybe I’ll even get over my traditionalist hang-ups, and toss a Netflix-only title or two into the mix.) At this point in time, however, I can honestly state these are the 2017 releases that impressed me most. And best. So there. And before anyone asks about any films that are not on this list, let me offer this blanket response: Those films may indeed be noteworthy. But I liked these more.

Colossal. For me, writer-director Nacho Vigalondo’s audacious genre mashup was the perfect movie for 2017, a year bound to be forever remembered as the moment in time when the tide started to turn for women who have been intimidated, subjugated and otherwise humiliated (verbally or physically) for far too long. Better still, it’s a splendidly imaginative and exceptionally well-acted entertainment, with Anne Hathaway perfectly cast as a self-destructive and psychologically wounded writer who finally finds the strength to save herself — after fortuitously mind-melding with a humongous kaiju — and Jason Sudeikis boldly cast against type as a deceptively ingratiating under-achiever who’s unveiled as a control-freakish monster. As I said: The perfect movie for 2017, and maybe even better as the gateway to the year of Time’s Up.

Lucky. To repeat what I wrote in my Variety review after the 2017 SXSW premiere of John Carroll Lynch’s directorial debut: “Everything Harry Dean Stanton has done in his career, and his life, has brought him to his moment of triumph in Lucky, an unassumingly wonderful little film about nothing in particular and everything that’s important.” Stanton gives the performance of a lifetime in this life-affirming dramedy about a proud eccentric facing death. (Ironically, the much admired character actor passed away, at age 91, just weeks before the movie’s theatrical release.) And he gets strong support from an ensemble supporting cast that includes David Lynch as the distraught owner of a runaway tortoise, James Darren as a putatively reformed ne’er-do-well, and Beth Grant as the gregarious but not infinitely patient owner of the title character’s favorite watering hole.

Wind River. Howard Hawks famously defined a good movie as one that has three good scenes and no bad ones. Taylor Sheridan’s furiously mournful yet ultimately hopeful drama about violent crime and cruel punishment in a wintery stretch of Wyoming is a great movie with at least three great scenes, two of them featuring extended conversations between Jeremy Renner as a soul-wounded animal tracker pressed into service as a manhunter, and Gil Birmingham as the grieving father of the young Native American woman whose murder has sparked the manhunt. The third scene? Take your pick: Either an edgy standoff between two heavily armed groups that builds slowly, mercilessly, to chaotic mayhem, or the brutally efficient forced-feeding of just desserts during the hugely satisfying climax.

Kedi. Yes, Ceyda Torun’s magically graceful and effortlessly engaging documentary about free-roaming felines in Istanbul is the greatest cat video ever made. You have a problem with that?

Truman. Cesc Gay’s richly amusing and deeply affecting film about two friends (Ricardo Darin of The Secret in the Eyes and Javier Camara of Narcos and The Young Pope) who enjoy a final reunion under the shadow of impending death made only a fleeting appearance in US theaters in 2017, nearly two years after I reviewed the Spanish-produced dramedy at the 2015 Toronto Film Festival. On the other hand: For what it’s worth, it’s one of the very few 2017 release to score a 100 percent Fresh rating on Rotten Tomatoes. So don’t just take my word for it: This is an unjustly overlooked gem that is more than worth the effort to seek it out.

I, Tonya. Equal parts inspired faux documentary and incisive character study, Craig Gillespie’s casually astonishing satirical drama is an altogether worthy showcase for Margot Robbie’s gold-medal-worthy performance of notorious ice skater Tonya Harding as a world-class athlete who was never allowed to completely transcend her white-trash roots. And speaking of golden prizes: Here’s hoping Allison Janney winds up in the winner’s circle on Oscar night for her fearless performance as Tonya’s spectacularly appalling mother.

The Big Sick. Arguably the most warm-hearted and explosively funny movie ever made about generation gaps, cultural clashes, and medically induced comas, director Michael Showalter’s Sundance Film Festival favorite is a marvelously messy love story crossed with an arrested-adolescent coming-of-age narrative, shrewdly and sensitively written by real-life marrieds Kumail Nanjiani and Emily Gordon, and skillfully performed  by Nanjiani and Zoe Kazan as lovers driven apart by his feckless indecision and reunited by her life-threatening illness. Extra added attractions: Scene-stealers Holly Hunter and Ray Romano as the ailing woman’s seemingly mismatched parents, and Zenobia Shroff and Anupam Kher as the immature fellow’s traditional Muslim immigrant mom and dad.

Last Flag Flying. Richard Linklater’s “spiritual sequel” (or whatever) to 1973’s The Last Detail — which, like this film, was based on a novel by co-scriptwriter Darryl Ponicsan — works beautifully on its own terms as a profanely funny and affectingly melancholy dramedy about three Vietnam War vets (a dead-solid-perfect trio of Steve Carell, Bryan Cranston, and Laurence Fishburne) who are reunited, whether they want to be or not, when one of them is informed that his son has been killed in the Iraq War. Better still, and more so than any other film I can think of since Alexander Payne’s  Nebraska (2013), it ends precisely when it should.

The Post. I remain convinced that Steven Spielberg’s Lincoln (2012), a fleet and gripping drama about the backroom arm-twisting and deal-making that led to passage of the 13^th Amendment to the US Constitution, actually was a metaphor for President Barack Obama’s campaign to win passage for the Affordable Care Act. (And not just because co-star Hal Holbrook looked so much like an aged Ted Kennedy, a strong supporter of the legislation.) Likewise, I am convinced that Spielberg’s The Post, a similarly swift-paced and engrossingly suspenseful film about the Washington Post’s 1971 decision to print The Pentagon Papers, actually is an inspiring exhortation for watchdog journalism in our Age of Trump. As critic David Thomson wrote in The New Republic about Spielberg’s earlier film: “It’s very good, but that’s not the point. It’s necessary.”

Lady Bird. The amazing Saoirse Ronan is by turns endearing and annoying and selfish and sympathetic and all kinds of other amazing things that she absolutely has to be as the self-named title character in writer-director Greta Gerwig’s free-form yet tightly disciplined coming-of-age comedy-drama. Set in Sacramento, California during her 2002-03 senior year at a Catholic high school, the film charts Lady Bird’s sometimes warm, sometimes rocky and sometimes surprising interactions with, among others, her passive-aggressive mom (Laurie Metcalf), her mild-mannered and newly unemployed father (Tracy Letts), the best friend she briefly betrays (Beanie Feldstein), the caddish boyfriend who’s altogether unworthy of claiming her virginity (Timothée Chalamet), and Sister Sarah Joan (Lois Smith), the principal who knows Lady Bird almost as well as we come to know her by the end of Gerwig’s irresistibly embraceable movie.

Happy 122nd Birthday to Cinema!

On December 28, 1895, cinema in projected form was presented for the first time to a paying audience by two French brothers, Auguste and Louis Lumiere (pictured above), owners of a photographic studio in Lyons. They went to Paris to demonstrate their cinématographe -- the name they'd given their combination camera and projector -- by showcasing short films they had shot with their hand-cranked innovation.

According to legend: At the Grand Café at 14 Boulevard des Capucines, a man stood outside the building all day on December 28, handing out programs to passers-by. But cold weather kept many people from stopping. As a result, only 33 tickets were sold for the first show.

When the lights went down that evening in a makeshift theater in the basement of the Grand Café, a white screen was lit up with a photographic projection showing the doors of the Lumiere factory in Lyon. Without warning, the factory doors were flung open, releasing a stream of workers... and, wonder of wonders, everything moved. The audience was stunned.

This first film was entitled La sortie de l'usine Lumière à Lyon (Workers Leaving the Lumière Factory). Ten more short scenes followed, each reel roughly 17 meters in length, including Baby's Dinner (kinda-sorta the first home movie by proud parents, later echoed by Spike Lee in Lumiere & Company) and The Sprinkler Sprinkled (arguably the first slapstick comedy, involving a man, his garden hose and a practical joker).

Within a week, with no advertising but word of mouth, more than 2,000 spectators visited the Grand Café each day, each paying the admission price of one franc. The crowds were so huge, police had to be called in to maintain order. The age of cinema had begun. Vive le cinema.

Angela Lansbury to online lynch mob: Piss off

In response to scolds and trolls who criticized and/or misrepresented her earlier statements about sexual harassment and abuse of women, Angela Lansbury -- who, at 92, clearly has run out of fucks to give -- issued the following statement tonight:

"There is no excuse whatsoever for men to harass women in an abusive sexual manner.  And, I am devastated that anyone should deem me capable of thinking otherwise.

"Those who have known the quality of my work and the many public statements I have made over the course of my life, must know, that I am a strong supporter of Women's Rights.

"Lastly, I would like to add that I am troubled by how quickly and brutishly some have taken my comments out of context and attempted to blame my generation, my age, or my mindset, without having read the entirety of what I said."

So there.

Happy Trails to Sam Shepard

In my other life, I am a cowboy. Well, OK, I am a contributing editor for Cowboys & Indians magazine. Over on the magazine's website, I have paid tribute to the prodigiously talented Sam Shepard. And yes, my obit contains respectful mention of Wim Wenders' criminally under-rated Don't Come Knocking, a film that showcases one Shepard's all-time finest performances.