Right after Olivia Wilde‘s The Invite premiered at Sundance last January, Rotten Tomatoes gave it a 91% positive rating while Metacritic only gave it a 76% score. Fuck does that mean? Critics can be such niggly-piggly pissheads.
I will be sorely disappointed if I can’t wheedle my way into a market screening of The Invite next month in Cannes. It’s a hot title. There will have to be a market screening or two.
Kat Coiro and Ryan Engle’s You, Me & Tuscany (Universal, 4.10) is obviously a synthetic romcom…fake backdrops, a fizzy Nancy Meyers vibe, big-studio lighting, a slick American sensibility…aimed at younger women of color who’ve never been to Europe, much less to Tuscany.
No self-respecting straight dude of any tribe or persuasion would see this effing thing on his own volition. Obviously a featherweight bauble.
The vaguely chubby Halle Bailey (The Little Mermaid, The Color Purple) and the hunky Rege-Jean Page (Bridgerton, Black Bag) are the fated-to-fall-head-over-heels twosome. Something tells me there won’t be any sex scenes….no Todd Haynes-level rim jobs.
Is this the first “falling in love in Tuscany” flick costarring a black couple? Ten months ago the following paragraph appeared in a Feminegra story about Coiro’s film (then titled Italianna):
Over the last 25 years I’ve roamed all over Tuscany, having visited…I don’t know, eight or nine times. I’m always attracted to Tuscany-set films because I know the general area and am always hoping to spot some village or piazza I’ve been to. I love the warm evening aromas over there. I love scootering from town to town. I love walking through the vineyards just before sunset.
There’s a section of a 4.7.26 IndieWire interview with Coiro that gave me pause. The scary part isn’t that she loves classic romcoms directed by Nancy Meyers and Richard Curtis, although that’s bad enough. The scary part is that she lumps Meyers and Curtis in with Preston Sturges.
Until this morning I’d never thought of Sturges as a romcom guy. I’ve always thought of him as a social satirist who used fast-paced love-story plots as structures to hang his witty razmatazz material from. His films were always about social themes that were “bigger” than, say, the mere diversion of Joel McCrea</strong> and Veronica Lake falling in love.
From Bailey’s Wiki page:
“Bailey began a relationship with DDG, an American YouTuber and rapper, in December 2021. On December 22, 2023, Bailey gave birth to their son. On October 3, 2024, DDG announced that he and Bailey had split after almost three years of dating but would continue to be “best friends” and raise their son together. In May 2025, Bailey was granted a restraining order against DDG, following allegations of abuse. She was also granted temporary physical and legal custody of their son. DDG, who was granted his own temporary restraining order against Bailey, filed a motion to prevent her from leaving the U.S. with their son, claiming Bailey was a ‘risk’ to herself and their child, but was denied until a further hearing.”
Now that‘s a good basis for a romcom!
Sen. Thomas Jordan (John McGiver) on a certain buffoon who might as well be a “paid Soviet agent”.
In a recent review, DVD Beaver’s Gary W. Tooze has posted a condemnation of yet another Criterion teal vandalizing, the victim in this case being John Boorman‘s Point Blank (’67) on an upcoming 4K Bluray (due on 4.21.26).
This is par for the course when it comes to the teal gremlins in the employ of Criterion, which has been producing teal-tinted Blurays since 2018 or thereabouts. But the apparent Point Blank ruination is doubly shocking because the forthcoming Bluray (a 4K and a 1080p version are included) has been “approved” by the film’s 93-year-old director John Boorman.
How could Boorman have possibly okayed this**? How could he have surveyed this desecration and said “even though the color grading ignores what this 1967 film, a classic jewel in the crown of my career, has always looked like, the tealish makeover or mauling is…well, it is what it is. Criterion has its own visual take and I will not protest.”
I’ve been looking at Point Blank for many decades (theatrically, cable, DVD, Bluray), and I know what the color grading looks like as well as Boorman does so don’t tell me.
Presuming that the Tooze screen captures are accurate, this is yet another atrocity. Who was (or is) the evil maestro behind the teal tinting? The infamous Lee Kline or some anonymous disciple, some flunky, some Criterion stooge?
From Gary W. Tooze‘s recently posted DVD Beaver review of Criterion’s new Point Blank 4K Bluray (streeting on 4.21.26):
“Unfortunately the Criterion has a noticeable teal-heavy color grade in many scenes. This is part of a long-running complaint about Criterion’s modern 4K restorations, often called the ‘Criterion teal disease’ or ‘teal push’ in home video communities.
“Natural blues, greys, and even some skin tones or concrete surfaces in the film lean noticeably toward cyan/teal-green, which can make the image feel colder and more ‘modern/digital’ than the warmer, more naturalistic (yet still stylized) look of the earlier Warner Bluray or DVD releases.
“Dark blue suits [have turned] light blue and Angie Dickinson‘s orange bathrobe [has turned] deep red.
“[The film] still works cinematically, but color timing is the most divisive aspect of this restoration.”
** Presuming, of course, that Tooze’s screen captures are accurate representations.
Congrats to the ultra-dweeby Guy Lodge, a longtime Variety stringer and an insightful film nut, upon his hiring as Variety‘s new co-chief film critic, replacing Peter Debruge and now on equal footing with co-honcho Owen Gleiberman.
HE admired and respected Lodge all through the first 15 or so years of this century. We first met 20 or so years ago…drinks in London, Cannes schmoozings, a dinner in Paris, etc. And then Lodge went wokey-woke and snooty-snoot in the late teens. Okay, fine…almost all film critics are woke these days and Lodge, an excellent writer, is no different. But he can also be, to be fair, a reasonably supple mainstream guy on occasion.
12 years ago I was delighted by Lodge’s praise for Olivier Assayas‘ Personal Shopper: “Among the many things that appear to be on Assayas’s mind is the disembodied — and disembodying — nature of modern-day communication and social media, which makes ghosts of us all to those with whom we text far more than we talk. Perhaps no film has ever made the mobile phone quite such an instrument of tension: the on-screen iPhone ellipsis of an incoming message takes on a breath-halting urgency here. No more should be revealed about the film’s gliding, glassy sashay through multiple, splintered genres and levels of consciousness – except to say that Assayas, working in the high-concept, game-playing vein of his Irma Vep and demonlover, is in shivery control of it all.”
Three or four years later the woke virus began to manifest, and Lodge was infected along with the rest. A certain tone of dutiful cult servitude began to settle in.
From “A Fifth Body Snatchers is Required“, posted on 1.9.18: “Friends and family members of seed-pod film critics have begun to notice a certain robotic manner and a glassy, out-to-lunch look in their eyes. Local constable: “But he looks like his picture, madam. Obviously he’s Guy Lodge, the Variety critic.” Mrs. Lodge: “But it isn’t him, I’m telling you. Something is missing. It’s just not Guy!”
Posted three and a half years ago:
Posted on 12.7.25: “Variety’s Guy Lodge, the bespectacled king of the Cannes filmcrit dweebs, has totally raved about Mascha Schilinski’s Sound of Falling. I respect Lodge’s willingness to drop to his knees and kowtow to a feminist filmmaker who has the chutzpah to subject viewers to a drip-drip gloom virus, but at the same time I think he’s either left the planet or had simply decided to praise this fairly infuriating film no matter what.”
Who could have foreseen on 2.1.26 that the missing and presumed-kidnapped Nancy Guthrie, beloved mom of TODAY‘s Savannah Guthrie, would still be missing nine weeks later, and that the Tuscon fuzz and the FBI still wouldn’t have clue #1 as to what exactly happened or where she is or anything?
I wonder if any of the principals involved have seen or even heard of Peter Weir‘s Picnic at Hanging Rock?
Two more ransom notes have been reported by TMZ, only they aren’t about where Nancy Guthrie may or may not be — it’s about where her body is. The first note, received on Monday, says “she is dead.”
TMZ’s Harvey Levin: “We got another letter today from this person, an email saying ‘I know where her body is, and who the kidnapper is…give me half a bitcoin and I’ll tell you.'”
13 years expired between the 12.18.09 debut of James Cameron‘s Avatar and his aquatic follow-up, Avatar: The Way of Water, which opened on 12.16.22. A long wait.
But that’s nothing compared to the 20 year gap between David Frankel‘s The Devil Wears Prada and The Devil Wears Prada 2, which opens on 5.1.26 — a mere 3 and 1/2 weeks hence.
Everyone, of course, is 20 years older. Way back in ’06 Meryl Streep was 56 or 57, Anne Hathaway was 24, Emily Blunt was 23, Stanley Tucci was 56, etc. And the material is…well, who knows if it’s dated or not? But the concept certainly is.
Will there be any references to deranged fashion industry wokeism, which is apparently ebbing as we speak. Will anyone mention the mercifully brief vogue of plus-sized women in underwear and fragrance ads? Will the film allow a glimpse of any trans runway models? The only portion I’m really looking forward to is the Milan footage.
And no serving of 21st Century filmmaking has looked or sounded better than this. As good as here and there, but none better.
In Todd Haynes’ 1930s-era De Noche, which is currently filming in Mexico, Pedro Pascal plays a gay Los Angeles detective who falls in love with a younger hunky teacher with dark watery eyes (Danny Ramirez) and hoo boy, the cock-and-balls-and-sweaty-scrotum action is hot and unceasing…
We’re talking donkey dicks, gross animal members, rim jobs, hum jobs, hand jobs, fisting, blowjobs, slippery ass jobs, golden showers, squish jobs, jobby-type jobs…dick dick dick dick dick dick dick dick dick dick dick dick dick dick, etc.
They decide to leave for Mexico for more of the same with some tortillas and sautéed shrimp and a little tequila and lime on the side.
Except hardboiled L.A. detectives never walked around with chin whiskers and neck-beard growth. You can come up with any bullshit grooming fantasy that floats your boat, but detectives didn’t grow chin beards in the mid to late 1930s.
They just didn’t, and THAT’S THAT. Ask Jake Gittes or Roman Polanski or John Huston.
Last night’s Suddenly, Last Summer Facebook commentary (Dale Launer, Rick Segreda, Meredith Brody, myself):
I’ve tried watching Suddenly, Last Summer twice, and have failed — given up — both times. I couldn’t handle the bulk of it, I mean. The interminable middle section. Yes, I’ve seen the powerful finale (an anguished Elizabeth Taylor recalling her memory of cousin Sebastian’s grotesque death), but I could never shake the feeling that this Joseph L. Mankiewicz film was psychologically diseased, and that the disease was somehow catching.
Before my second viewing (streaming) I told myself “shake off your negative attitudes and show respect for these people…Mank, Tennessee Williams, Taylor, Katharine Hepburn, Montgomery Clift, Gore Vidal.” But it once again made me feel oppressed and infected.
Oh, and the predatory “street urchins” were straight out of William S. Burroughs’ “The Wild Boys.” Dirt-poor, dark-complexioned street cannibals with boners. And they don’t really “eat” Sebastian whole. They eat portions, cutlets.
Posted on 2.14.18: Joseph Mankiewicz‘s Suddenly Last Summer is good for one thing — the stills of 27 year-old Elizabeth Taylor that were taken during filming.
She was still slender back then, or a couple of years away from that Cleopatra-era plumpness (heavy drinking + pasta) that began to overtake her features in ’61. Taylor was always a well-respected actress (Giant, Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, Butterfield 8), but she always seemed to be conspicuously “acting.” I always found her voice shrill and grating on some level, especially when called upon to show anger or outrage and emotional distress. But from the early to late ’50s she was quite the visual package.
Suddenly Last Summer ends with a shocking revelation about Taylor’s mentally unstable character having witnessed her gay cousin, Sebastian Venable, being eaten alive — cannibalized — by a pack of feral young boys.
The bizarre finale was obviously intended as some kind of metaphorical condemnation of gay sexuality. Sebastian’s rich mother (Katharine Hepburn) is so appalled and disgusted by suspicions of Sebastian’s lifestyle that she wants Taylor lobotomized in order to suppress any notion that the cannibal incident happened. It’s quite ugly and joyless, this film. Rage, repression, self-loathing.
From Wikipage: “Following A Streetcar Named Desire (’51) and Cat on a Hot Tin Roof (’58), Suddenly, Last Summer was the third Williams film that dealt with the subject of homosexuality, although it was far more explicit in its treatment than either of the previous films were allowed to be under the Motion Picture Production Code.
“Working in conjunction with the National Legion of Decency, the Production Code Administration gave the filmmakers special dispensation to depict Sebastian Venable, declaring, ‘Since the film illustrates the horrors of such a lifestyle, it can be considered moral in theme even though it deals with sexual perversion.”
“The horrors of such a lifestyle”! No wonder Tennessee Williams disavowed any direct participation, even though it was based on a 1958 one-act play he’d written for an off-Broadway venue. The play was adapted for the screen by Gore Vidal.
If Trump wanted to convey fierce disrespect or acidic disdain, the more appropriate “bastards”’ adjectives would have been “despicable” “godless”, “reptilian”, “seething”, “self-destructive”, etc.
“Crazy bastards” means “eccentric nutters with a genius scheme, or at least one I didn’t see coming”. Crazy as in wily, foxy, deceptive.
