Over the last 13 years Ryan Coogler has directed one truly searing and formidable drama — the riveting, socially impactful, fact-based Fruitvale Station (’13) — followed by four urgent, high-octane exercises in glossy, aggressively unsubtle formula schlock — Creed (’15), Black Panther (’18), Black Panther: Wakanda Forever (’22) and Sinners (’25).

If Coogler’s first four films had been Creed, the two Panthers and Sinners, and then he’d suddenly upped his game by directing and releasing Fruitvale Station in ’25, nobody would be be cheering louder or arguing more passionately for Fruitvale winning a Best Picture trophy than myself.

I’m sorry but Sinners just isn’t an Oscar-worthy Best Picture thang — it’s a Arkoffian exercise in formulaic, manipulative, mass-audience Jiffy popcorn (Delta blues, white Irish vampires, cunnilingus, KKK yokels). It’s obviously been impactful and has made a shitload of dough-ray-me, but it lacks the vibrational spirit and resonant, rock-solid integrity of a true-blue Best Picture winner. It’s basically an exploitation film, and Academy POCs and wokeys don’t care. They just want to feel good about themselves, or they want their team to prevail or whatever.

God help us, but One Battle After Another, which I admire for the chops at least, might lose out to Sinners.

Friendo: “I think the first hour of Sinners is great. The vampire half, less so. The last third…a mess. But I was never bored.”

From Tom Junod‘s “The Last Swinger“, a GQ profile of Tony Curtis published 30 years ago (April 1996):

,/p>

Read more

From “The Bride! Is the Latest Example of a New Wave of Feminist Horror,” a Variety piece by Kennedy French, posted on 3.6.26:

“When Maggie Gyllenhaal sat down to rewatch The Bride of Frankenstein, the 1935 James Whale classic, she wasn’t prepared for what she didn’t see. The Bride appears for only two minutes. She says nothing. She looks at the creature she was built to love, screams once and is blown up. She was made for a man who disgusted her, in a world that gave her no say in the matter. And then she was gone.

“’She finds herself in such an insane situation,’ Gyllenhaal said in a press conference promoting the film. ‘Having been brought back from the dead without her consent to be the wife of someone that she’s never met.’ That absence — a character conjured into existence, denied everything and eliminated — fueled The Bride!, her new film starring Jessie Buckley and Christian Bale.

“The film’s ambition, in Gyllenhaal’s words, is sweeping: ‘A celebration of all of the parts of all of us that will not fit into the box that we’ve been told we need to fit into.'”

HE reply: Gyllenhaal and French are imagining things. Boris Karloff‘s monster doesn’t want Lanchester to become his bride or satisfy him sexually…not at all. He’s simply looking for gentle friendship — the same kind of humanitarian caring that the old man in the forest offered him…a warm fire, soup, wine, bread, a cigar. Karloff doesn’t paw or stroke or even caress Lanchester. He certainly doesn’t try to use or dominate her sexually. He simply holds her hand and whimpers “friend?…friend?”

Posted by Politico‘s Erica Orden (3.5.36, 9:30 pm EST)

“The Justice Department [has] posted a trio of FBI interviews with a woman who’s alleged that President Donald Trump sexually assaulted her when she was a young teenager after she was introduced to him by Jeffrey Epstein.

“The woman’s central allegation, according to FBI summaries of her interviews with investigators, known as FBI 302s, is that Trump hit her after she bit his penis when he attempted to force her to perform oral sex.

“In the files, dated between August and October 2019, the woman, whose name is redacted, alleges that when she was between 13 and 15 years old, Epstein took her to either New York or New Jersey, where, “in a very tall building with huge rooms,” he introduced her to Trump. Trump, she said, “didn’t like that I was a boy-girl,” which the interview notes interpreted to mean tomboy.

“The woman said other people were present, but she couldn’t recall who. Trump asked them to leave the room, then said “something to the effect of, ‘Let me teach you how little girls are supposed to be,’” according to the interview notes. Trump then unzipped his pants and put her head “down to his penis,” she recalled in the interview. She said she “bit the shit out of it.” In response, she said he pulled her hair and punched her on the side of her head.

“‘Get this little bitch the hell out of here,’ the woman recalled him saying.”

From the corner of B’way and 43rd you can see the golden Ben-Hur signage atop the Loew’s State marquee at B’way and 45th; ditto the building signage above it. You can also spot the DeMille’s Psycho billboard at Seventh Ave. amd 47th.

Ben-Hur had opened in late November of ’59 and was still playing on a reserved-seat basis eight months later. Psycho opened on 6.16.60.

,/p>

Written by Daryl Hannah and posted in the N.Y. Times on 3.6.26:

“The character ‘Daryl Hannah’ portrayed in the series is not even a remotely accurate representation of my life, my conduct or my relationship with John. The actions and behaviors attributed to me are untrue.

“I have never used cocaine in my life or hosted cocaine-fueled parties. I have never pressured anyone into marriage. I have never desecrated any family heirloom or intruded upon anyone’s private memorial. I have never planted any story in the press. I never compared Jacqueline Onassis’ death to a dog’s.

“It’s appalling to me that I even have to defend myself against a television show. These are not creative embellishments of personality. They are assertions about conduct — and they are false.

“When so many people watch a dramatization that uses a real name, real-life consequences follow. In the weeks since the series aired, I have received many hostile and even threatening messages from viewers who seem to believe the portrayal is factual. When entertainment borrows a real person’s name, it can permanently impact her reputation.

“I know that as an actress I will be in the public eye. I’ve endured a number of outrageous lies, crappy stories and unflattering characterizations before. I chose not to battle them but to focus on my work and respect my loved ones by keeping my private life private. But my silence should not be mistaken for agreement with lies. Apparently, my discretion makes me a target.”

Hannah, in short, has basically told Ryan Murphy, Nina Jacobson, Brad Simpson, Connor Hines and the other Love Story producers to go fug themselves.

No one will ever, ever accuse The Bride! of being plodding or conventional.  It is really, really looney-tunes in a headache-inducing way.  Manic this and that, turned up to eleven or even twelve.  

Thematically it exudes sputtering feminist rage and an all-around, never-say-die contempt for…well, dudes, obviously, but also the sensibilities of Joe and Jane Popcorn. It all but vomits in their laps.   

It’s wildly “creative”, you bet, but it also struck me as Maggie Gyllenhaal’s professional suicide note.

Friendo:  “Stop it!  Maggie Gyllenhaal will be fine! Mark my words: She’ll make another film every bit as good as The Lost Daughter.”

HE to Friendo:  “Okay. She just had to get the spitting, shrieking rage out of her system, you’re saying.

“But Jessie Buckley’s licking, cat-shrieking, super-wackazoid performance is all on the surface. Superficially grotesque. Will you please tell me what she was so enraged about in that opening nightclub scene? She was just growling, howling and hissing…it all boils down to showboating.

“We all know Martin Landau’s famous observation that when called upon to play a character with a drinking problem, only bad actors pretend to be sloppy drunk. Real alcoholics do everything in their power to conceal the fact that they’re bombed. 

“Buckley is delivering a howling, brute-male-hating feminist fury, but she’s so unplugged and such an exhibitionist in this instance, she’s like Landau’s bad actor playing a lush.

“Thank God for the logical, plain-spoken normality of Annette Bening’s Dr. Cornelia Euphronious; ditto Peter Sarsgaard’s Jake Wiles, a grubby, unshaven detective on Ida and Frank’s trail.”

Lawrence Sher’s cinematography is heavily blanketed in inky shadow, and to no discernible benefit. HE to Sher: A palette of gloopy darkness is not, in and of itself, a cool way to go. Really. And yet so many dp’s feel otherwise these days. I’m not talking about traditional Gordon Willis stylings, which were always choice and immaculate. I’m taking about sheer mud.

One good thing: There’s a vigorously well-choreographed dance sequence inside a swanky Chicago nightclub, Buckley’s “Ida” and Christian Bale‘s “Frank” front and center. It woke me up and put me into a vaguely hopeful place. “Hey, this is half-decent”, I muttered to myself. “Good, good…keep it up.” And then the mood was shattered by gunfire.

Oh, and by the way: 3D films requiring 3D glasses didn’t come along in the early ‘50s — they became ubiquitous in the mid ‘30s! You need to bone up on your cinema history, pal.



Seriously, Gyllenhaal’s alternate 3D reality is another eccentric splurge thing. The film is full of them. A lot of movie-watching on Frank’s part. And Frank and Ida are performers in the films. Which is “fun” in a certain fuck-all, Purple Rose of Cairo sense.

…are the things you chickened out on when young, or even not too long ago. Or avoided because they seemed too thorny or challenging.

“Of all words by thought or pen, none so sad as ‘it might have been’” — spoken by Stanley Holloway in The Lavender Hill Mob (‘51).

“Building a model from your own material…that’s how this works…it’s about taking out all the technical, logistical stuff that gets in the way.” — from Ben Affleck‘s attempt to explain Interpositive.

The fact that I’m flirting with the idea of buying a 4K UHD Bluray version of Hell or High Water, even though i’ve seen it five or six times….this means something.

Posted on 11.13.16:

Trump voter hinterland food (smoked meats, ribs, baked beans, mac ‘n’ cheese) served at Hell or High Water party.