A new film by John Michael McDonagh (The Guard, Calvary) demands attention, and there’s no disputing the fact that War Against Everyone did well when it premiered last February in Berlin. “Imagine if Quentin Tarantino directed Starsky and Hutch and didn’t mess it up with his whole malignant misanthropic, misogynistic look-at-me thing. The result would be McDonagh’s snort-milk-out-your-nose-funny buddy cop comedy. Michael Peña and Alexander Skarsgard play Bob and Terry, co-dependent corrupt Albuquerque pigs snorting and shooting their way to tumble a supercilious English Lord (Divergent‘s Theo James) into horseracing, heists, and kiddy porn.” — from a non-bylined Vanity Fair review filed from Berlin.

You can’t glide your way through the Berlin Film Festival. Cannes is a breeze compared to this place. You have to put on your learning cap, screw down your focus and study the paperwork and submit to a lot of crowding and lines and trying to figure out how the fuck this and that works. The wifi around the Berlin Hyatt, which is only a block from the Berlinale Palast, is so overburdened that you learn quickly to just put your phone away and not even try. There were two midday press screenings today for The Grand Budapest Hotel, and I for one felt like a steer in an over-packed stockyard. In Cannes those with a pink badge with a yellow pastille can just slip right in, and even those with lesser badges wait in well-organized lines. There wasn’t even a line to get into Budapest this morning. It was a mob scene. At least I learned how things work around here.

Best Film (Golden Bear) — Child’s Pose, d: Calin Peter Netzer (Romania); Jury Grand Prix (Silver Bear) — An Episode in the Life of an Iron Picker, d: Danis Tanovic (Bosnia); Best Director (Silver Bear) — David Gordon Green for Prince Avalanche; Best Actress (Silver Bear) — Paulina Garcia, Gloria; Best Actor (Silver Bear) — Nazif Mujic, An Episode in the Life of an Iron Picker (Bosnia); Best screenplay (Silver Bear) — Jafar Panahi and Kamboziya Partovi, Closed Curtain; Outstanding artistic contribution (Silver Bear) — Kazakh cameraman Aziz Zhambakiyev, Harmony Lessons; Alfred Bauer Prize (honoring innovation) — Vic + Flo Saw a Bear, d: Denis Cote (Canada).

D. Strauss’s EXBERLINER Berlinale blog continues on this, the first day of the festival. I’ve gotten a general impression over the years that more drinking happens at the Berlin Film Festival than at any other, in large part (I assume) because Berlin is perhaps the most extreme party-animal town in the world.

Chalamet in Berlin: “I’m very proud right now…Bones and All, A Complete Unknown and Marty Supreme…and no one knows what Marty Supreme is yet.”

Marty Supreme (A24, 12.25.25) is a fictionalized biopic about the late Marty Reisman (1930-20120), a seriously professional ping-pong player who won tons of medals at the World Table Tennis Championships between the late ’40s and ’60s. Produced, directed and co-written by “crazy” Josh Safdie. Pic was co-produced by Chalamet, in addition to playing Reisman. Longtime Safdie collaborator Ronald Bronstein co-wrote the script.

Why in the world would Martin Scorsese want to make another Jesus film? 35 years ago he delivered his magnum opus with The Last Temptation of Christ…he did it, nailed it, nothing left to prove. Especially with Terrence Malick‘s The Way of the Wind, a parable-driven Jesus flick he’s been editing for somewhere between four and five years, possibly debuting later this year. On top of which belief in Christian dogma has been plummeting for decades, and especially this century.

At a Berlinale press conference earlier today Scorsese said he’s still “contemplating” the approach to his Jesus film.

“What kind of film I’m not quite sure, but I want to make something unique and different that could be thought-provoking and I hope also entertaining. I’m not quite sure yet how to go about it. But once we finish our rounds here of promoting [Killers of the Flower Moon], maybe I’ll get some sleep and then wake up and I’ll have this fresh idea on how to do it.”

HE suggestion: Forget the Nazarene and do another gangster flick, only faster-moving this time. Faster and less contemplative and no old guys. As John Ford was to the western, Martin Scorsese is to northeastern-region goombah crime flicks.

HE is pre-approving Tina Satter‘s Reality (HBO Max, 5.23). Directed by Satter from a screenplay she co-wrote with James Paul Dallas and adapted from the FBI interrogation transcript of American intelligence whistleblower Reality Winner, pic premiered with glowing reviews during last February’s Berlinale. Sydney Sweeney, Marchánt Davis and Josh Hamilton on top.

“Reality transcends staginess as a strikingly well-realized piece of filmmaking, using judicious sound design and expressive lighting to gain a surreally vivid edge.” — from Tim Robey’s Telegraph review.
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From yesterday’s (2.17) rave Deadline review of Matt Johnson‘s BlackBerry. It was written by Pete Hammond, who in all fairness and full disclosure should have perhaps disclosed that he was a devotional BlackBerry guy for many years:

“Who knew a Canadian biopic of an infamous smartphone could be this entertaining, even poignant and moving? I am here to tell you today’s world premiere Berlin Film Festival competition entry BlackBerry is all that and more.

“In the hands of co-writer, director and co-star Matt Johnson (The Dirties), this long and winding tale of the rise and fall of the BlackBerry, the revolutionary device that first combined a computer with a phone all in one, is at once wonderfully funny, suspenseful and ultimately tragic. Here is a business story that has it all, and has much in common with other movies that focus on iconic tales of new-age businesses like The Social Network, Moneyball and The Big Short. Those movies had the likes of Aaron Sorkin and Adam McKay behind them, and this one ought to really put its chief architect Johnson on the cinematic map.

“Centering on nerdy and inventive Mike Lazaridis (a terrific and never better Jay Baruchel) and Jim Balsillie (Glenn Howerton — sensational), Johnson’s film starts in 1996 with the emergence of this unheard of idea of a phone that can also send and receive emails with its keyboard built into a magical device no one in the tech world had achieved before these Canadian dreamers actually found a way to make it work.

From a review of same by Screen Daily‘s Lee Marshall:

“Johnson and co-writer Matthew Miller turn the story of [the BlackBerry’s] brisk rise and meteoric fall into a kind of breathless tech fever dream, a relentless but addictive downbeat human comedy about the struggle to stay on top in a fast-moving industry.

“Previously something of an indie slacker-comedy and mockumentary specialist, Canadian director Johnson (Operation Avalanche) should achieve international visibility with a film that was picked up by Paramount for the bulk of worldwide rights just prior to its Berlin competition debut (North America, the Middle East, Scandinavia and airline rights were previously sold by co-financier XYZ Films).”

Hammond again: “Audiences in the film’s core 30-60 age bracket will likely have David Fincher’s 2010 drama about the rise of Facebook — and perhaps also Danny Boyle’s 2015 Apple drama Steve Jobs — in mind, and BlackBerry doesn’t suffer by comparison.

“The big difference is that BlackBerry filters out the white noise to focus entirely on the workplace. We have no idea if the film’s two central characters, tech genius and RIM co-founder Mike Lazaridis (Jay Baruchel) and the company’s hard-nosed, borderline psychotic business head, Jim Balsillie (Glenn Howerton), are in relationships with anyone. We see Balsillie at home alone for a few brief seconds; the rest of the action takes place in the workshop and boardrooms.

“But first it is Lazaridis and his freewheeling, loopy but tech-smart buddy Douglas Fregin (played endearingly by Johnson himself), along with their unsophisticated tech-y friends, who are out to convince the world they can deliver on the promise of their then unnamed invention. Once they bring a sharp and uber-aggressive businessman, Balsillie, into their company Research In Motion, an idea from nerd-land turns into a reality — especially when Balsillie manages to convince Bell Atlantic, particularly chief skeptic John Woodman (Saul Rubinek), of its value for their servers.

“On its way to market the BlackBerry must overcome all sorts of obstacles and impossible business deals, but by the early aughts it is a superstar, beloved by everyone from U.S. presidents to celebrities to average joes — a life-changing communication device. It is a dream come true until shady business deals, infighting and most damaging Steve Jobs and the iPhone combine to bring it crashing down.