Thirty Years On with Variety

During an especially affecting moment in Spring Forward, one of my favorite films, Ned Beatty – playing a parks and recreation worker on the verge of retirement – marvels to a younger colleague played by Liv Schrieber that, somehow, when he wasn’t looking, several years slipped away: “Time goes by, and it seems like a little time. You turn around, and it was a big time.” How true.

Thirty years is a big time by anybody’s measure. But I’ve had a mostly grand time during my past three decades as a free-lance film critic (and, periodically, essayist and listicle compiler) for Variety, the venerable trade paper that I still think of as The Show Business Bible. That it actually has been three decades is a little disconcerting – has it really been that long? – but never mind. This weekend, it’s also a cause for celebration.

To be precise: My first three free-lance reviews – all of them for films shown at the WorldFest/Houston International Film Festival -- appeared in the weekly edition of Variety dated May 2, 1990. One of the movies just happened to be Red Surf, a melodrama about drug-dealing surfers starring a very young George Clooney. (For the record: the other two were Revenge of the Radioactive Reporter and something called A Girl’s Guide to Sex.) One week later, Variety ran my review of another WorldFest/Houston offering, Chopper Chicks in Zombietown, a spoofy sci-fi B-movie that showcased a very young Billy Bob Thornton in a supporting role. And two weeks after that, I reviewed yet another WorldFest feature: Across the Tracks, a dysfunctional family drama co-starring a very, very young Brad Pitt.

So you see: Right from the start, I’ve specialized in spotting fresh talent for The Show Business Bible. Well, OK: I’ve been lucky enough to be in the right place at the right time to spot fresh talent. Thanks to Variety.

I already was gainfully employed as a film critic for the late, great Houston Post when I was approached – by no less a luminary than Peter Bart himself -- to serve as a Variety stringer. But in my mind, writing for Variety – even back when I started, at a time when film critics didn’t receive a full byline – was not just a step up but a leap forward. To put it simply and hubristically, it was, to my way of thinking, a sign that I had arrived. I had made the grade, passed the test, completed my apprenticeship – and somehow gained entry inside a very select circle. I felt I had become part of a grand tradition. And you know what? I still feel that way.

Blame it on my misspent youth. Back in the mid-to-late '60s, when I was a high school student in New Orleans, I fortuitously discovered The Show Business Bible in a library and was instantly smitten. In fact, I'm not ashamed to say that, while I was growing up, there was something truly magical to me about Variety, my own private gateway to Hollywood and beyond.

On Fridays -- after school or, quite often, very early in the morning, before classes -- I would take the bus downtown to buy Variety at a newsstand. (It took two days for the weekly edition, then published on Wednesdays, to reach N.O.) I would devour all the reviews of movies and plays and TV shows, all the news about movies in production and box-office hits and misses, and gradually master the Variety-ese slanguage so I could fully understand what to the uninitiated must have seemed like indecipherable code. And, of course, I would marvel at the colossal special-edition issues dedicated to film festivals and year-end wrap-ups, all them filled with dozens of full-page ads for forthcoming movies.

I continued to be awestruck by The Show Business Bible well into my twenties and beyond. I still have a photo somewhere that my wife took of me during our first trip together to New York in the mid '70s, long after I had begun my professional writing career. It's a picture of me standing in front of the old Variety office near Times Square -- the one with the big Variety logo emblazoned on a huge ground floor window.  I am smiling a great big goofy kid's smile in the picture, like a True Believer enraptured by his proximity to some hallowed shrine.

So, of course, when Peter Bart called more than 15 years later…

I know, I know: Some of you will be quick to dismiss all of this a sentimental blathering, or shameless self-aggrandizing, or both. And that’s your prerogative. For others, it may seem odd, if not downright incomprehensible, for anyone to still feel so emotionally bound to anything so seemingly antiquated as a newspaper. But, hey, that’s my prerogative. Besides: I’ve also been writing web-only reviews for Vaiety.com for several years now, so it’s not like I’m exclusively an ink-stained wretch. But I remain, deep down, an analogue guy in a digital world, as my heart continues to beat to the rhythm of a printing press. That may change – well, actually, that must change, eventually – but not too soon, I hope.

This is probably where I should write something about all the notable filmmakers whose first films I reviewed for Variety at various and sundry film festivals. And after that, I guess I should toss out ten or twenty titles of films that I got to review before anybody else thanks to my Variety affiliation. But that really would be self-aggrandizing, and I would deserve every brickbat tossed in my general direction. So I’ll leave it at this: I am deeply grateful that I’ve been a part of the Variety team for the past three decades. And I look forward to my next 30 years with the organization. (Assuming, of course, that they'll have me.) Because even though I know that the day may come when print media as we now know it will go the way of 8-track tapes and VHS movies, I’m sure that Variety, in some form, will survive and thrive. And I hope to remain part of its ongoing tradition.

Some random thoughts about the Oklahoma City Bombing, my wife, Chuck Norris, and a spectacularly ill-timed Top Dog

On April 19, 1995, one day after the closing of The Houston Post, at 9:02 am CST, there was a terrorist bomb attack on the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Office Building in Oklahoma City. Sixteen Social Security employees were among the 168 people who were killed. My wife was working for Social Security at the time.

I feared this would be the first in a series of terrorist attacks on federal offices across the entire nation. So, the next day, I begged my wife not to go to work. Her reply: “Fuck it. You lost your job. One of us has to be making money.” I couldn’t argue with that, so I stayed home and cooked dinner and washed dishes.

 Less than two weeks later, I covered for Variety “Top Dog,” an unfortunately ill-timed Chuck Norris dramedy about a San Diego cop, his love-hate relationship with a bomb-sniffing K-9 and, as I said in my review, “right-wing extremists who plant bombs in public buildings as part of their campaign of terror.” The movie wasn’t half-bad, and it certainly wasn’t Chuck’s fault that I got creeped out, but…

BTW: Note in the review the reference to April 20 as Hitler’s birthday. I wonder what fresh hell might await us tomorrow?

Coming soon to Alamo Drafthouse LaCenterra: Tread, a strange and extraordinary documentary.

When I was asked by my Variety editor to contribute a blurb about one of the best films I saw at SXSW 2019, I had this to say about Tread:

“Paul Solet’s remarkably absorbing and suspenseful documentary plays like the flip side of some 1970s rural revenge movie — think Jonathan Kaplan’s White Line Fever, or Jonathan Demme’s Fighting Mad — in which a besieged protagonist turns the tools of his trade into weaponry while battling oppressors. But Marvin Heemeyer, the vindictive welder at the heart of this true-life drama, gradually comes into focus as a delusional sociopath, not a plucky underdog, as he uses a steel-and-concrete-armored bulldozer to cause damage and settle scores in a Colorado mountain town during a 2004 rampage.”

It will be my privilege to introduce the Houston premire of Tread at 7:15 pm Tuesday, Feb. 25, at the Alamo Drafthouse LaCenterra. But wait, there’s more: After the film, director Paul Solet will join us via Skype for a Q&A.

Check out my full Variety review, check out the trailer -- and then check out the movie.

Spider-Fan! Spider-Fan! I'm your friendly neighborhood Spider-Fan!

And that's why my editors at Variety asked me to write this rundown of all six Spider-Man movies, ranking them worst to last. Naturally, the new Spider-Man: Homecoming figures into the mix.

Shin Godzilla: The Batman Begins of Zilla Thrillers

"The Original Gangsta Lizard gets a largely satisfying reboot in Shin Godzilla, a surprisingly clever monster mash best described as the Batman Begins of Zilla Thrillers. Co-directors Hideaki Anno (the cult-fave Evangelion franchise) and Shinji Higuchi (Attack on Titan), working from Anno’s genre-respectful yet realpolitik-savvy screenplay, draw basic elements from Ishiro Honda’s original 1954 Gojira and its many follow-ups — to the point of including a wink-wink, nudge-nudge reference to Goro Naki, a character who loomed large in two sequels — but update the familiar kaiju mythos to a 21st-century world where the sudden appearance of an immense, fire-breathing reptile in Japan can generate all sorts of inter-agency political wrangling, revive terribly unpleasant memories of the country’s militaristic past, and really, really wreak havoc on the value of the yen in global monetary markets.

"In short, Anno and Ishihara operate according to a classic sci-fi game plan: This couldn’t happen. But if it did happen, this probably is what would happen."

You can read the rest of my Variety review of Shin Godzilla — which Funimation Films will release Tuesday, Oct. 11, in theaters throughout North America — here. And you can read my 2014 tribute to Big G here.

Trailer Park: Labyrinth of Lies

At last year's Toronto Film Festival, I had the privilege of reviewing Giulio Ricciarelli's Labyrinth of Lies, an intelligent and arresting fact-based drama about an ambitious German prosecutor's efforts to build cases against Nazi war criminals several years after World War II. The film -- which has been chosen as Germany's entry in the Best Foreign Film category of this year's Academy Awards -- opens soon in U.S. thaters. Here is a look at the trailer -- which, I am shamelessly proud to note, blurbs my original Variety notice.

Back in the saddle at SXSW

So many movies... so little time... Fortunately, my Variety colleagues, as always, know where the buzz is. 

Sharing the love from readers of my review of D'Souza's America

Evidently, my Variety review of America: Imagine the World Without Her, the latest  feature from conservative commentator and author Dinesh D'Souza, has upset some people. Even a few who, judging from their comments on Variety.com, have not actually seen the movie yet. These are a few of my favorite postings, reprinted here verbatim ala cut and paste.

well we can’t tell that you’re not from Hollywood and so left almost Jane Fonda like. ask for me I was born and raised in California & I have been alive for 63 years I have seen my state being torn apart by third world country mentality and the left hatred of our country where is the tolerant hippies of the 60′s what happened to you ate too many mushrooms you are just so hateful the left so intolerant you have to have everything your way wah wah wah wah just sickening I just want to enjoy this movie and lets you just leave your hate filled comments to yourself nobody wants to hear your crap it’s just more crap from Hollywood Hollywood is a tank for Obama and the left and everybody knows it thats why nobody goes to show anymore hello wanna make a page check then put something on there we want to watch case in point films that have meaning and purpose like this 1 4 God’s not dead hello we’re out here we do spend money and you’re not a favorite of mine

The movie addresses the wrongs done. But puts them in context. I think you should stop thinking.

Seems to me as the reviewer is so duped by his educators and leftist elitist mentality he cannot receive the message D’Souza has brought historical fact to back it….obviously the reviewer doesn’t know or just refuses to accept the facts of history…..mainly because he can’t accept the God of the Bible and His interest in the affairs of man when man endeavors to honor Him

Joe Leydon, why do you hate America so much? And if you do hate her so much, why stay, why not surrender your U.S. Citizenship, and move to Cuba, China, or maybe Russia?

Caution! This film refutes the fraudulent leftist narrative that has been promulgated by our schools, media and radical leftist politicos like Obama who’ve been educated by Saul Alinsky and Cloward& Piven & who have overtaken the Democrat Party. 100 Tomatoes! This film is a wonderful history lesson that should be seen by everyone and especially children! Note the disparity in the film’s tomato meter score between the lemming like unthinking socialist critics who post here and the Audience. The leftists don’t want anything that criticizes the big lie socialist narrative which melts under the slightest scrutiny to have wide exposure with an audience. The feeble minded unthinking leftist critics who post here reveal that they’re merely Obama butt boys doing their job and giving a negative review to anything critical of their hollow idol or any expose & critique of Obama’s socialist and cultural Marxist values. If this were a gay themed movie they’d give it 100 Tomatoes before seeing it. This is an excellent thought provoking film by a deep thinking analyst of the contemporary state of socialism and how it’s achieving it’s ends in America. It’s a very precise intelligent critique of the socialist driven narrative that has been perverting, polluting our society for the past 50 years. And in case you haven’t noticed: the socialists are winning!

Of course 81% of the movie goers liked the film, I am certain out of ever 100 people who saw this film 90 of them were conservative. Most leftists aren’t going to waste their money to go watch a movie in which a conservative ex-con white washes history books. It isn’t that most critics are liberal, it is that lefty critics are the only lefties who are probably watching this tripe.

You know, I think that last guy may be on to something.

Coming soon to a theater near you: Paul Walker in Hours

I really like this poster for Hours (which, as you can see, kicks off a limited theatrical run Dec. 13). But, then again, maybe that's because I really, really liked writer-director Eric Heisserer's indie drama, a skillfully suspenseful and impressively plausible thriller starring Paul Walker as a father desperately trying to keep his prematurely born daughter alive in an abandoned New Orleans hospital during and immediately after Hurricane Katrina. In case you missed it, you can read my Variety review -- filed when the flick had its world premiere at SXSW -- here. And you can view the trailer here:

A belated honor for the late Bayard Rustin

Bayard Rustin, an unsung hero of the civil rights movement who helped organize the 1963 March on Washington, is among the 16 people announced Thursday as honorees who'll be receiving the 2013 Presidential Medal of Freedom. (Also on this year's list: Former Washington Post editor Ben Bradlee, country music icon Loretta Lynn, pioneer feminist Gloria Steinem, and a couple of folks named Bill Clinton and Oprah Winfrey.) Unfortunately, his will be a posthumous award -- Rustin died in 1987. Still: Better late than never.

If you'd like to know more about this gentleman -- who, not incidentally, was openly and unashamedly gay at a time when even many nominally progressive activists of all colors were reflexively homophobic -- I'd advise you to take a look at Brother Outsider: The Life of Bayard Rustin, which is available for viewing at Netflix. You can read my Variety review of the prize-winning 2003 documentary here, and view a trailer for it here.

Just call me Joe Leydon: Badass Critic

Thanks @JoeLeydon for the #BADASS review of Bad Kids Go to Hell @Variety #CultClassic http://t.co/1elH0nGi5K pic.twitter.com/o1JN2dbL2Y

— Bad Kids Go To Hell (@BadKidsGoToHell) July 23, 2013

They like me! They really like me!

Bushwhacking The Lone Ranger

The first reviews for The Lone Ranger -- from Variety, The Wrap, Screen Daily and The Hollywood Reporter -- have been posted online. They are not kind.

Lysistrata Jones is ready to Give It Up! for her close-up

Back in 2010, I reviewed for Variety the Dallas Theater Center world premiere of a richly amusing musical comedy based loosely -- very, very loosely -- on Aristophanes’ Lysistrata, the 2,000-year-old Greek play about women who boldly wage a peace campaign by withholding sex from their warrior husbands. (Western fans take note: The play previously inspired The Second Greatest Sex, a 1955 movie musical starring George Nader and, no joke, Mamie Van Doren.) The show -- then aptly titled Give It Up! -- struck me as a spirited delight, one that I described in my review as a "funny, frothy mix of pep, pop and wink-wink naughtiness." I also noted that it "could eventually make the move to Broadway and possibly a subsequent big-screen reiteration."

As it turned out, the show, subsequently re-titled Lysistrata Jones, eventually did make it to Broadway -- and even earned what's known in the trade as a "money review" from The New York Times. (The above photo, featuring Patti Murin -- a veteran of the original DTC premiere -- Josh Segarra and other cast members, is from the New York production.) Unfortunately, it lasted only for 34 previews and 30 regular performances on the Great White Way. (Even so, an original cast album -- featuring a contribution from Jennifer Holliday -- was recorded and released.) But never mind: According to my Variety colleague Justin Kroll, it looks like the second part of my prediction also is coming true, thanks to Houston-born filmmaker Andy Fickman.

Gosh, I haven't been that good at prognosticating since I predicted great things (eventually) for Office Space.

TIFF 2012: Ed Burns talks about The Fitzgerald Family Christmas

Veteran actor and indie filmmaker Ed Burns talks about his latest movie -- The Fitzgerald Family Christmas -- and the current state of indie film distribution in this interview I taped with him and long-time producer Aaron Lubin for Variety at the Toronto Film Festival. (Don't worry -- I don't actually appear on camera. In fact, you don't even hear me asking questions. Frankly, you'll just have to take my word that I had anything to do with this.)

2016 -- An anti-Obama blockbuster

According to Variety, 2016: Obama's America earned $2.2 million at the boxoffice Friday -- with a higher per-screen average than The Expendables 2 and The Bourne Legacy combined. And I'm sure it's all because my Variety review stirred up so much interest. The only question that remains is, was it a thumb's-up rave, or a thumb's down pan? Or simply less than glowing? My response: It was a fair and balanced critique. I review. You decide.

At last! SXSW 2012!

Neither snow nor rain nor heat nor gloom of night shall keep a Variety film critic from his appointed rounds. But let me tell you: The kind of rain I encountered today while driving from H-Town to Austin -- a trip that took me nearly twice as long as it usually does -- can sure as hell slow you down a lot. Fortunately, I've made it to dry land, gotten myself settled, checked out the WiFi in my Extended Stay digs -- and now I'm already to start being festive here at SXSW 2012. A good thing, too, because it looks like some folks may be keeping an eye on me. (Thanks for the shout-out, IndieWire -- I think.)

But, really, I can't complain: After all, there are other festivals I could be covering right now.

Coming soon to a theater near... well, not me, but maybe you

When The Four-Faced Liar premiered last winter at the Slamdance Film Festival, I praised lead players Marja-Lewis Ryan and Emily Peck in my Variety review for "infusing their performances with effective and affecting measures of raw emotion and avid sensuality." Evidently, that wasn't quite explicit enough for the movie's marketers, who perferred to emphasize sensuality over emotion while, er, adjusting my wording for the above trailer. (Wait until the 1:24 mark, and you'll see what I mean.) I suppose I should get outraged, or at least a mite peevish, but what the hell. It's a nice little indie movie, and it showcases some promising talents on both side of the camera, so if not-quite-precisely quoting me can get a few folks to check it out this weekend, when it kicks off its limited theatrical run, well, no harm, no foul. Trust me: I have seen my words twisted worse.

Sweet Crude: The right documentary in the right place at the right time?

Talk about topicality: As the cataclysmic Gulf Oil Spill continues apace – and, not incidentally, as activists gather in Houston to protest at the Chevron shareholders meeting – the Aneglika Film Center will present a special screening of Sweet Crude, an acclaimed documentary about the true cost of oil, the global environmental crisis, and the struggle for resource control in the Niger Delta of Nigeria, at 8:30 p.m. Tuesday.

But wait, there’s more: After the screening, there’ll be a panel discussion with Macon Hawkins, an oil worker who, despite his experiences as a hostage held by Niger Delta militants, remains sympathetic to the needs of the region’s people; Emem Okon, a leader of Nigeria’s women’s movement; Omoyele Sowore, an activist from a Chevron production area in Nigeria, now a U.S.-based journalist; and Sandy Cioffi, director of Sweet Crude, who attracted international attention in April 2008 when she, her production crew and a Nigerian colleague were arrested by members of the Nigerian military in an effort to shut down the film.

And why, you might ask, were those soldiers so eager to impede production of Sweet Crude? Well, maybe they were image-conscious soldiers. As my Variety colleague John Anderson noted in his rave review of the film, Cioffi doesn't paint a pretty picture:

“After 50 years and $700 billion in oil sucked out of the ground by Royal Dutch Shell and its co-conspirator, Chevron, the Niger Delta is among the most polluted places on Earth, says UC Berkeley geography professor Michael Watts, Cioffi's most astute talking head. Watts clarifies something else essential about Nigeria: The exploited African nation is ‘a very shaky, rickety federation" that isn't a natural nation at all, but has always been a ripe candidate for divide-and-conquer colonialism.’

“‘This is not the movie I intended to make,’ Cioffi says in her initial voiceover, explaining she was there to make a movie about a library, the construction of which marked a rare collaboration between the government, oil companies and usually contentious tribal interests. But the students involved used the opening ceremony to mount a protest over their exploited resources, and Cioffi knew she had another movie to make.”

It's a movie that may find a sizeable and concerned audience here in H-Town, which reportedly has one of the largest Nigerian populations of any U.S. city.

20 years on with The Show Business Bible

During an especially affecting moment in Spring Forward, one of my favorite films, Ned Beatty – playing a parks and recreation worker on the verge of retirement – marvels to a younger colleague played by Liv Schrieber that, somehow, when he wasn’t looking, several years slipped away: “Time goes by, and it seems like a little time. You turn around, and it was a big time.” How true.

Twenty years is a big time by anybody’s measure. But I’ve had a mostly grand time during my past two decades as a free-lance film critic (and, periodically, theater critic) for Variety, the venerable trade paper that I still think of as The Show Business Bible. That it actually has been two decades is a little disconcerting – has it really been that long? – but never mind. This weekend, it’s also a cause for celebration.

To be precise: My first three free-lance reviews – all of them for films shown at the WorldFest/Houston International Film Festival -- appeared in the weekly edition of Variety dated May 2, 1990. One of the movies just happened to be Red Surf, a melodrama about drug-dealing surfers starring a very young George Clooney. (For the record: the other two were Revenge of the Radioactive Reporter and something called A Girl’s Guide to Sex.) One week later, Variety ran my review of another WorldFest/Houston offering, Chopper Chicks in Zombietown, a spoofy sci-fi B-movie that showcased a very young Billy Bob Thornton in a supporting role. And two weeks after that, I reviewed yet another WorldFest feature: Across the Tracks, a dysfunctional family drama co-starring a very, very young Brad Pitt.

So you see: Right from the start, I’ve specialized in spotting fresh talent for The Show Business Bible. Well, OK: I’ve been lucky enough to be in the right place at the right time to spot fresh talent. Thanks to Variety.

I already was gainfully employed as a film critic for the late, great Houston Post when I was approached – by no less a luminary than Peter Bart himself -- to serve as a Variety stringer. But in my mind, writing for Variety – even back when I started, at a time when film critics didn’t receive a full byline – was not just a step up but a leap forward. To put it simply and hubristically, it was, to my way of thinking, a sign that I had arrived. I had made the grade, passed the test, completed my apprenticeship – and somehow gained entry inside a very select circle. I felt I had become part of a grand tradition. And you know what? I still feel that way.

Blame on my misspent youth. Back in the mid-to-late '60s, when I was a high school student in New Orleans, I fortuitously discovered The Show Business Bible in a library and was instantly smitten. In fact, I'm not ashamed to say that, while I was growing up, there was something truly magical to me about Variety, my own private gateway to Hollywood and beyond.

On Fridays -- after school or, quite often, very early in the morning, before classes -- I would take the bus downtown to buy Variety at a newsstand. (It took two days for the weekly edition, then published on Wednesdays, to reach N.O.) I would devour all the reviews of movies and plays and TV shows, all the news about movies in production and box-office hits and misses, and gradually master the Variety-ese slanguage so I could fully understand what to the uninitiated must have seemed like indecipherable code. And, of course, I would marvel at the colossal special-edition issues dedicated to film festivals and year-end wrap-ups, all them filled with dozens of full-page ads for forthcoming movies.

I continued to be awestruck buy The Show Business Bible well into my twenties and beyond. I still have a photo somewhere that my wife took of me during our first trip together to New York in the mid '70s, long after I had begun my professional writing career. It's a picture of me standing in front of the old Variety office near Times Square -- the one with the big Variety logo emblazoned on a huge ground floor window.  I am smiling a great big goofy kid's smile in the picture, like a True Believer enraptured by his proximity to some hallowed shrine.

So, of course, when Peter Bart called more than 15 years later…

I know, I know: Some of you will be quick to dismiss all of this a sentimental blathering, or shameless self-aggrandizing, or both. And that’s your prerogative. For others, it may seem odd, if not downright incomprehensible, for anyone to still feel so emotionally bound to anything so seemingly antiquated as a newspaper. But, hey, that’s my prerogative. Besides: I’ve also been writing web-only reviews for Vaiety.com for quite some time now, so it’s not like I’m exclusively an ink-stained wretch. But I remain, deep down, an analogue guy in a digital world, as my heart continues to beat to the rhythm of a printing press. That may change – well, actually, that must change, eventually – but not too soon, I hope.

This is probably where I should write something about all the notable filmmakers whose first films I reviewed for Variety at various and sundry film festivals. And after that, I guess I should toss out ten or twenty titles of films that I got to review before anybody else thanks to my Variety affiliation. But that really would be self-aggrandizing, and I would deserve every brickbat tossed in my general direction. So I’ll leave it at this: I am deeply grateful that I’ve been a part of the Variety team for the past two decades. And I look forward to my next 20 years with the organization. (Assuming, of course, that they'll have me.) Because even though I know that the day may come when print media as we now know it will go the way of 8-track tapes and VHS movies, I’m sure that Variety, in some form, will survive and thrive. And I hope to remain part of its ongoing tradition.

Review: Furry Vengeance

Even as their parents fidget restlessly in their seats and cast yearning glances at wristwatches, small children easily amused by precocious animals and pratfalling grown-ups may have a dandy time with Furry Vengeance. But there's little hope that this broadly played, lamely written and overall overbearing comedy will corral many ticketbuyers old enough for solo jaunts to the megaplex. You can read my full Variety review here.