It was obvious from the Toronto get-go that Marc Abraham‘s I Saw The Light, the latest biopic about a self-destructive musical genius, wouldn’t be cutting the award-season mustard. I called it a “mostly downish, spotty and not very enjoyable Hanks Williams biopic,” and a majority of the critical community — 69% if you apply a reverse Rotten Tomatoes subtraction — agreed that it was less than essential viewing. So it’s no surprise that Sony Pictures Classics has decided to bump I Saw The Light from a previously slated (and costly) 11.28 opening to 3.25.16 — the elephant’s graveyard. SPC Co-President Tom Bernard has told Deadline‘s Pete Hammond they were “happy” with the reception the film received at TIFF and that this “wasn’t a factor” in shifting the date. If you want to believe that, go right ahead.

Darren Aronofsky’s The Whale is a strange and shadowed study of self-imposed confinement. Brendan Fraser’s Charlie is a suffering sad sack, all right. I felt for the poor bloated guy, but what a tragedy. What a ghastly, grotesque experiment in plumbing the depths of regret and self-loathing, not to mention the drip-drip process of slow suicide.

Charlie’s choking-on-a-sandwich scene is one for the ages; ditto his eating binge + vomiting scene. Ditto his sweat-soaked, white-light death scene (i.e., my favorite moment in the film). James Whale and Todd Browning would be impressed; so would Montgomery Clift.

Obviously an intelligent filmed play, and mildly pleasurable for that. Fraser’s performance is a whopping, tearful freak show, but I felt the heart of it. And I was moved by that final gasp (partly a cry of release) when he finally goes to God. And yes, I’m proud that I got through it. I‘ve been terrified of watching this film for months, and now I’m past that hurdle. And I’ll never have to watch it again.

I was planning on taking a couple of Connecticut friendos to a showing of Sam Mendes‘ Empire of Light (Seachlight, 12.9) this weekend, except it’s primarily playing in Manhattan so I guess not. Empire won’t open wide until 12.23.

Searchlight is doing a gradual roll-out due to the usual concerns. Empire was critically roughed up during Telluride ‘22, and the current critic aggregate ratings — 45% on Rotten Tomatoes, 53% on Metacritic — have probably lowered audience interest.

Which means, of course, that it’s not very good…right? Wrong. Empire of Light is a bull’s-eye everything movie — delicate, mesmerizing, perfectly timed and balanced and calculated just so.

Set in an English seaside town (Margate) in the early ’80s, it’s a bittersweet, humanistic, somewhat gauzy tale of a short-lived May-October affair as well as a nostalgic recollection of movies and the exhibition business as they existed 40-plus years ago. Exactingly directed and written by Mendes in what I believe is his finest effort yet, pic contains yet another brilliant performance by the great Olivia Colman and an exciting mainstream-cinema debut from the obviously talented (and very good-looking) Michael Ward.

I haven’t yet seen Avatar 2: The Way of Water, but screw it…Empire of Light is HE’s choice for the absolute Best Film of 2022. Seriously, no question.

I also honestly believe that the Empire of Light haters (including IndieWire‘s David Ehrlich, L.A Times‘ Justin Chang, The Telegraph‘s Tim Robey, The Globe and Mail‘s Barry Hertz) have done their readers a huge disservice. They’ve brought a terrible, brutal blight upon a film that they know is a first-class effort — as wise, particular and well-honed as they come.

The haters have shat upon on a film that many significant others are convinced is rich and fulfilling…they’ve crapped all over it because Mendes had the chutzpah (or the temerity?) to cast the young, Jamaican-born Ward as Stephen, a 20-something theatre employee who falls into a brief, tender affair with Colman’s emotionally unstable, far-side-of-40 Hillary…because a 2022 white filmmaker is not allowed to present a character of color according to the values of bygone eras….because woke presentism requires that black characters have to be strong, firm and formidable and that no racist hate can be visited upon them …and because it’s simply not cool, the haters seem to feel, for Ward’s character to engage in sexual congress (however brief) with an older, mentally unstable woman.

I know what this film is and how well it works, and I think the Empire of Light haters should be ashamed of themselves.

The thing that sparks or drives deep-down feelings when it comes to yay-nay reviews of films…that thing is often not honestly expressed or admitted to. The fact that nobody (except Barry Hertz) has expressed anger about the racial thing…about what some seem to believe is a manipulative and opportunistic attempt on Mendes’ part to use an affair between Colman and Ward to punch up some kind of contemporary current…the apparent fact is that the haters feel that Mendes’ film is sending out the wrong 2022 message. Don’t show us how bad things were 40 years ago for people of color; show us how much better things are today.

Green Book was attacked by the same crowd for telling its tale according to the social standards and values of 1962. The wokesters wanted it told and interpreted according to 2018 standards, and they went ballistic trying to kill it for that. It’s the same deal here.

It’s one thing for a critic to say that Empire of Light isn’t his or her cup of tea….that’s fine. But many of these critics are looking to kill Mendes’ film. They want it shunned and stomped upon, and that, to me, suggests that something else is going on. Either way the Searchlight people can hear the growling and smell the drops of blood.

Wokesters see themselves as white-knight defenders and protectors of BIPOCs and LGBTQs and all marginalized groups, and as infantile and obstinate as this sounds, I believe they hate this film because they simply don’t want to see Ward’s character becoming intimate with an unbalanced, Lithium-medicating white woman in her late 40s. Nor do they want to watch Stephen dodge the assaults of racist, Thatcher-era skinheads and cranky old codgers who resent his presence as a ticket-taker. Mendes is too good of a filmmaker to play the presentism game.

Before seeing Empire of Light I had trouble believing that such an affair, however discreet or short-lived, was likely between two such characters in 1980 England, especially with the National Front goons running around. I was in London in December 1980 and I felt it. I saw skinheads on the Underground and read the anti-immigrant graffiti and felt the vibe to some extent, but guess what? The movie sells it anyway. I was charmed into accepting the terms.

Because of Colman and Ward and the rest of the cast (especially Tanya Moodie as Stephen’s mom)…because of Mendes’ writing and direction and Roger Deakins‘s cinematography, and the soothing musical score by Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross as well as the general aura of sublime, on-target realism…somehow it works. All of it. I believed every character, every situation.

Okay, every now and then it feels a bit emotionally forced or a touch on-the-nose. But not to any wounding extent. Because I was willing to forgive. It goes like that when you really like a film.

I can’t fully convey…I can’t even half-convey what a pleasure it’s been to watch Lightyear (a) piss off traditional fans (Chris Evans…what happened to Tim Allen?), (b) inspire a Toronto theatre manager to post a warning, (b) trigger homophobes with a harmless lesbian kiss and then (d) open to a lousy $51 million domestic — a good $25 if not $30 million short of what handicappers had projected. And I never even saw the damn thing…that’s the best part!

=

Sometimes in the science of Oscarology it takes a few years to understand the political reasons (for all Oscar triumphs are political) behind this or that winner snagging a trophy.

Take the Moonlight win, for example. Thanks to Spike Lee’s refreshing frankness, we can now safely assume that the deciding factor behind Barry Jenkins’ film beating La La Land was about Academy members being able to tell themselves that #OscarsSoWhite had been squarely faced and responsibly negated.

But in the days following the 2.26.17 Oscar telecast, many were saying “of course!…of course Moonlight was obviously better than La La Land!…on top of which it was wrong for a white guy to love jazz.”

I didn’t feel that way, but the mob was on a roll.

“Putting Moonlight To Bed,” posted on 3.4.17: “This is several days old and yesterday’s news, but a 2.28 Hollywood Reporter piece by Stephen Galloway that derided the echo chamber of Oscar punditry and the failure of the know-it-alls to foresee Moonlight‘s Best Picture win (“Why the Pundits Were Wrong With the La La Land Prediction“) was wrong in two respects.

“One, whoda thunk it? Even now I find it perplexing that Moonlight won. A finely rendered, movingly captured story of small-scale hurt and healing, it’s just not drillbitty or spellbinding enough. I wasn’t the least bit jarred, much less lifted out of my seat, when I first saw it at Telluride. Moonlight is simply a tale of emotional isolation, bruising and outreach and a world-shattering handjob on the beach…Jesus, calm down.

“As I was shuffling out of the Chuck Jones I kept saying to myself “That‘s a masterpiece?” (Peter Sellars, sitting in front of me, had insisted it was before the screening started.) If there was ever a Best Picture contender that screamed ‘affection and accolades but no Oscar cigar,’ it was Moonlight. And the Oscar pundits knew that. Everyone did.

“So I don’t know what happened — I really don’t get it.**

“I’ve already made my point about Moonlight in the Ozarks. It’s just a head-scratcher. And two, Galloway’s contention that only pipsqueaks with zero followings were predicting or calling for a Moonlight win is wrong.

“As I noted just after the Oscars, esteemed Toronto Star critic Pete Howell and Rotten Tomatoes‘ Matt Atchity were predicting a Moonlight win on the Gurus of Gold and Gold Derby charts. As I also noted, Awards Daily‘s Sasha Stone hopped aboard the Moonlight train at the very last millisecond, although she stuck to La La Land for her Gurus of Gold ballot. These are facts, and Galloway’s dismissing Howell and Atchity was an unfair oversight.”

** It wasn’t safe to say that Moonlight ‘s win was about Academy members covering their ass until Lee said this on 6.21.17. After that it was olly-olly-in-come-free.

Right after emerging from a ten-minute flight aboard the Blue Origin capsule, 90 year-old Bill Shatner was clearly moved. He had seen the earth from God’s perspective, and experienced, he said, perhaps the most profound moment of his life.

Thought #1: “We say, ‘Oh that’s blue sky.’ And then suddenly you shoot through it and all of a sudden you’re looking into blackness.” Thought #2: “Everyone needs to have the philosophical understanding of what we’re doing to Earth.”

Anyway, the former Captain Kirk — silver-haired, squinty-eyed, hale and hearty and a bit stiff — tried to share a few reflective, meditative thoughts with Amazon honcho Jeff Bezos. But the asshats behind them were making so much noise screaming and popping champagne corks that Bezos was torn — he wanted to hear Shatner’s thoughts but on the other hand there was the cool spray of Dom Perignon and “whooaa-whoo-whoo!” behind him. Yeah!

The asshats were basically celebrating themselves — “We did this! We rose above the earth because Jeff chose us but also because we were good enough to be chosen!” But Shatner had deeper, humbler things on his mind. Think of the Dave Bowman star child looking down upon our blue planet at the end of 2001 A Space Odyssey…that’s Shatner.

Most of us, I suspect, feel nothing but derision and contempt for the others. Imagine emerging from your first visit to the Sistine Chapel and high-fiving your homies and going “whoo-hooo…we saw the Michalengelo!”

The reason that critics love Michael Sarnoski‘s Pig (Neon, 7.16) is because it’s saying something about the undercurrent of civilized American life in the year 2021. It’s saying two things actually. Thing #1 is “something fundamental and spiritual is missing in our lives.” Thing #2 is “the reason that fundamental thing is missing is because we’ve exiled it…we’ve shown it the door and shouted ‘get out of our house!…you’re not stylish enough!'”

Pig stars the burly, bearded, bruised and overweight Nicolas Cage, and costars Alex Wolff and Adam Arkin. It’s about a former bigtime Portland chef (Cage’s Rob Feld) who’s quit the restaurant business to become a reclusive-hermit truffle forager in the forest. The plot is about Feld’s pet pig being kidnapped and Feld trying to get it back.

It has soul, Pig does. It conveys a reverence for the unseen. (Remember my recent riff about how the most interesting films focus on invisible things? This is one of those films.) Pig is slow and obstinate in some ways, but it believes in the holiness of earth and nature and fine food and wine, and it’s saying that the urban sophisticated realm that most of us live in is…lacking. “Not real” in certain important ways. Lacking in a holy mystical current, lacking in the solemn fundamentals.

But just because Pig is snail-paced and under-written and filmed in shadows and subdued blue-ish light doesn’t mean it’s a great film. I think it’s definitely an interesting and in some ways a valuable film with the eternal things on its mind, etc. But I didn’t “love” it. I was down with it, but the funereal pace bothered me after the 55 or 60-minute mark. I actually decided to take a break at the one-hour mark because I knew it would maintain this same shuffling gait to the end.

I also got tired of looking at Cage’s bloody, beat-up, swollen face. Okay, his performance has a certain ruined integrity. Beaten up by intruders and left with dried sticky blood on his face and forehead throughout 85% of the film. Long gray ratty hair. No hot water, no shower, no change of socks…a sad forest hermit roaming around Portland as he tries to get to the bottom of things.

But Feld is no dummy, and we’re asked to believe that this 50ish truffle whisperer, who spends most of the film speaking to this and that person involved in the Portland restaurant business, wouldn’t clean himself up before making the rounds. He’s clearly not an idiot, and yet Feld is so caught up in the purity thing that he doesn’t clean the fucking dried blood off his face? You know what that is? That’s filmmaker hubris. Sarnoski is saying “Feld is too much of a truffle samurai to even think of cleaning himself up…he’s too angry, too enraged, too possessed to bother about appearances.” That’s movie bullshit.

The basic drill in the two Quiet Place films is that making the slightest sound can lead to terrible death. Because the idiotic, fang-toothed, gaping-cranial-plate crab monsters, constantly on the prowl for humans (not to eat but merely to kill), have highly attuned hearing, and all you have to do is drop a pair of scissors on the floor to put yourself in harm’s way. And so your entire life is about “shishhhhh” — be careful, step lightly, quiet as a mouse.

This is my life, in a sense, every night in West Hollywood.

After 10 pm or thereabouts I go into Quiet Place mode for fear of rousing a certain light sleeper in a nearby bedroom. The slightest jarring sound will result in a hellish response. The crack of a triple-A battery falling off the coffee table and onto the wood floor…the accidental clinking of a glass or the rattle of cutlery in the kitchen or the unwrapping of a loaf of bread…even the creaking of the floorboards in certain areas of the living room will lead to terrible repercussions. The punishment can happen straight off or sometimes the next morning, when your failure to maintain absolute radio silence the night before will be topic #1.

Due to no fault of their own light sleepers are unable to recover once woken up, you see, and their mood the following day, trust me, is inevitably sour and sullen. Light sleepers float on the surface of the pond, and woe betide anyone who rouses them from fragile slumber.

Deep sleepers like myself sink to the bottom of the pond, and are generally oblivious to odd glass-clinking or battery-dropping sounds. I can sleep anywhere, in almost environment. I can lie down on the floor of a carpeted airport lounge and nod off in less than two or three minutes.

This color test footage for Rowland Lee‘s Son of Frankenstein (released on 1.13.39), was probably shot in the early fall of ’38. This clip has been on YouTube since 2011, but I saw it for the first time today. It’s actually the first color image I’d ever seen of Karloff in Frankenstein monster makeup, period.

The makeup genius was Jack Pierce (1889 — 1968). Yes, that’s Pierce getting strangled starting at the 45-second mark.

Karloff’s tongue improv (35-second mark) is good for a chuckle, but what genuinely surprised me was the mint-green skin. Widely circulated color snaps of Peter Boyle‘s Young Frankenstein monster (’74) also showed green skin, but I always thought that was a one-off. One presumes that the mint-green makeup was chosen by director Mel Brooks and Young Frankenstein dp Gerald Hirschfield because it delivers an extra-deathly pallor in monochrome.

Either way I’d never read or been told that Boris Karloff‘s monster had the same skin shade, at least as far as Son of Frankenstein was concerned. No clues if Karloff and Pierce went green for the previous two he starred in, Frankenstein (’31) and Bride of Frankenstein (’35).

I’d actually come to believe, based on a December 2012 visit to Guillermo del Toro’s “Bleak House,” that Karloff’s monster had mostly grayish skin with perhaps (at most) a faint hint of green. (The below photo, taken on 12.22.12, shows life-sized wax models of Pierce working on Karloff for James Whale‘s 1931 original.) Nobody is a more exacting historian or connoisseur of classic monsters than GDT, so I naturally presumed that the skin tone on Karloff’s wax model was accurate. I stand corrected.

One of many shots snapped at Guillermo del Toro’s “Bleak House” — posted on 12.22.12.

3:50 pm Pacific: The clock struck midnight in Paris an hour ago, and there wasn’t much hoopla (appropriately) because of the citywide lockdown. The joy is fueled by the departure of 2020…relief and a belief that ’21 might be an improvement. Maybe, probably…let’s hope.

Posted on 12.31.13: “I say this every year, but no New Year’s Eve celebration of any kind will ever match what the kids and I saw in front of the Eiffel Tower when 1999 gave way to 2000. A bit dippy from champagne and standing about two city blocks in front of the Eiffel Tower and watching the greatest fireworks display in history. And then walking all the way back to Montmartre with thousands on the streets after the civil servants shut the Metro down at 1 a.m. No cabs anywhere.

There’s no question that (a) dying is a part of life, (b) we’re all gonna get there and (c) there’s nothing like a little wit and levity to brighten our awareness of the inevitable. And yes, Dick Johnson Is Dead has ratings of 100% and 89% on RT and Metacritic, respectively.

The user scores on these aggregate sites, however, are somewhat lower — 7.4 on Metacritic, 8.1 on RT. And that’s where the real truth lies.

Never, ever trust critics when it comes to films like this. They’re not allowed to be honest about their deep-down feelings about anything, and they know it and so do readers. Which is one of the ways in which Hollywood Elsewhere is different.

I watched my father and mother approach death and deal with the physical and mental decline aspects, and they weren’t especially happy about it, I can tell you. At the very end my mother just said “fuck it” and refused to eat or even talk with me or Jett when we last visited her. She just wanted it to be over.

I’m sorry but I’d rather contemplate life and all its myriad intrigues, expectations and pitfalls than the absolute finality of “lights out and adios muchachos”. And I really, really don’t want to submit to a meditation about old-age dementia.

If a deep dive into old age is required, give me Stephen Walker and Bob Cilman‘s Young At Heart (’07). I loved this film, and so did my mom when I finally managed to show it to her.

I’m not refusing to watch Dick Johnson Is Dead. I’m actually nudging myself in that direction by the very act of writing this riff.

But at the same time I’m a bit like Terrence Stamp in The Hit — philosophically or even serenely accepting of death on a certain level, but when the proverbial John Hurt figure pulls out the gun and says “we’re gonna do it now, Willy,” my reaction would be “not now…it’s tomorrow…we have to get to Paris first…you’re not doing the job…not now!”

Keith Watson’s Slant review: “A drawback to Johnson’s deliberately gimmicky style—which includes glitzy visions of Dick in heaven surrounded by notable personages as diverse as Frederick Douglass, Sigmund Freud, and Bruce Lee—is that it doesn’t allow us to access her father as a person. We feel his warmth and his abiding love for his family, but we learn relatively little of his personal history beyond the highlights.

“Dick’s attitude toward his own death is so breezy and his relationship with Johnson so frictionless that the film can at times feel remarkably undramatic.”

Producer pally: “Why aren’t you reviewing Palm Springs or Relic? Everyone wants to know which new films to watch. You’re getting wrapped up in the dark day-to-day malaise of our limited lives and it’s attracting the very worst from your snarkier readers. I love your column but your joy in reviewing good movies like The Outpost is getting trampled by the anger and bitterness of some posts.

“Your readers come for escape and inspiration. They are looking for some respite from despair. That’s what good movies can do, isn’t it? Don’t forget that part. It’s important.”

HE to producer pally: “Thanks for being a good hombre and a supportive friend. And yeah, escape and inspiration are important. People’s souls need watering but I can’t just turn on the garden hose like Mr. Greenjeans. That’s not how writing works. I have to be true to life in all its burdensome glory and the day-to-day bubble, bubble, toil and trouble AS IT IS, now how you or certain readers might want it to be. I am not a slap-happy escapist — never have been, never will be.

“I just saw Palm Springs last night. And First Cow, finally. Assembling articles as we speak. I wouldn’t watch Relic with a knife at my back.”