In my recently-posted piece about the 2014 New York Film Critics Circle winners, I expressed profound puzzlement about Marion Cotillard winning the Best Actress prize for her performances in Jean-Pierre and Luc Dardennes‘ Two Days, One Night as well as James Gray‘s The Immigrant. “Where did this Immigrant love come from?,” I asked. “What cabal of James Gray loyalists got together and rammed this through?”
A few minutes ago a friend explained that nobody has been talking about Cotillard as a Best Actress candidate at least partly because of the lackluster backing of the Weinstein Company.
“This in spite of the fact that The Immigrant had rave reviews pretty across the board when it opened last spring (76 on Metacritic to Imitation Game‘s 71 and Theory of Everything‘s 72). But I know, I know…it’s so much more interesting to theorize a burgeoning James Gray loyalist cabal in the NYFCC than going off the empirical evidence!”
“The problem I have with James Gray and why critics love him, I think, is essentially because he’s a cold filmmaker. I’m sure he envisions himself as Kubrick-lite and maybe so since Kubrick also had chilly water flowing through his veins. But none of Gray’s films invite you in — they keep you at arm’s length as an observer, not a participant. Critics tends to dismiss filmmakers who emphasize emotional content. Even Hitchcock, who thrived on emotion, was dismissed in his time. Gray is obviously intelligent but his films exude the sensibility of a calculating, emotionally distant academic.” — Received this afternoon from a filmmaker friend.
For years I’ve been moaning and groaning about the James Gray cabal — a fraternity of elite critics, cultureburg foo-foos and film festival staffers who’ve sworn by Gray‘s films for years, and for reasons that to me have always seemed thin or specious. It’s not Gray’s films that have gotten in my craw as much as the constant overpraise.
James Gray (safari hat, beard, earphones) directing The Lost City of Z with Charlie Hunnam. Why isn’t Gray rocking the short sleeve T-shirted look that the crew guy is wearing? He looks like a tourist who’s been asked to step off the Jungle Safari boat in Disneyland, especially with that fanny pack and those long khaki sleeves. If you’re going to wear a safari hat you need to go cowboy style (i.e., Dennis Hopper in Apocalypse Now). And if not that, a standard-issue director’s baseball cap.
I was actually okay with (i.e., not disturbed or offended by) Gray’s New York-centric films for nearly 20 years — Little Odessa, The Yards, We Own The Night, Two Lovers and Blood Ties (a fraternal crime thriller written by Gray but directed by Guillaume Canet).
But The Immigrant was mostly a drag (“A well-made, respectably authentic period drama, but the pace is slow and the story ho-hums…I must have looked at my watch six or seven times”) and The Lost City Of Z was, I felt, all but impossible. I wanted to escape less than 30 minutes in but I was with a paying audience at Alice Tully Hall and felt I had to stick it out. It was hell.
Excerpt #1: “I don’t get it. And now, six features into James Gray’s directing career, I think I am done apologizing for it. My experience of Gray’s films has been, consistently, ‘great acting…why doesn’t the story work?’ And yet, some of the smartest critics I know are true devotees of everything Gray does. They must be hip to something that I’m not seeing, right?”
Except for a Romy Schneider doc early this evening, HE is seeing almost nothing today. Entirely due to the horrors of the system, which is responding better now but was partly impossible on Monday and Tuesday and completely uncooperative early this morning.
But Thursday will be a serious day — Kyrill Serebrennikov‘s Zhena Chaikovskogo at 8:30 am, James Gray‘s Armageddon Time at 6:30 pm, and Jerzy Skolimowski‘s EO at 10:15 pm.
As I’m not a member of the infamous “”James Gray cabal” and because I’ve spoken to a friend who caught a research screening of Armageddon Time, I’m considering a re-think by attending Alexandre Moix‘s Patrick Dewaere, Mon Heros at 7:15 pm.
The following nine boldfaced Cannes Competition titles have my interest, but generally speaking I’m feeling a bit underwhelmed this morning. Okay, a little bummed out.
The absence of Ari Aster‘s Disappointment Blvd. is, for me, a painful wound. If this allegedly four-hour epic had been included, Cannes ’22 would have taken on an extra dimension. Without it, it feels diminished.
I look at this rundown and I experience an imperceptible slump in my soul.
And I have to ask myself, “What will Clayton Davis say about these films?” He can wet himself over the non-competitive titles — Baz Luhrman‘s Elvis, Joseph Kosinski‘s Top Gun: Maverick, George Miller‘s Three Thousand Years of Longing — but then what? HE will be waiting with bated breath to see what Davis thinks of Cristian Mungiu‘s RMN.
HOLY SPIDER by Ali ABBASI
LES AMANDIERS by Valeria BRUNI TEDESCHI CRIMES OF THE FUTURE (Les crimes du futur) by David CRONENBERG TORI ET LOKITA (Tori and Lokita) by Jean-Pierre et Luc DARDENNE STARS AT NOON by Claire Denis
CLOSE by Lukas DHONT
FRÈRE ET SŒUR by Arnaud DESPLECHIN
ARMAGEDDON TIME by James Gray BROKER by KORE-EDA Hirokazu
NOSTALGIA by Mario MARTONE RMN by Cristian MUNGIU TRIANGLE OF SADNESS by Ruben ÖSTLUND HAEOJIL GYEOLSIM (Decision to leave) by PARK Chan-Wook SHOWING UP by Kelly REICHARDT
LEILA’S BROTHERS by Saeed ROUSTAEE
BOY FROM HEAVEN by Tarik SALEH
ZHENA CHAIKOVSKOGO (Tchaïkovski’s wife) by Kirill SEREBRENNIKOV HI-HAN (Eo) by Jerzy SKOLIMOWSKI
Word around the campfire was that Armageddon Time wouldn’t be showing in Cannes, but a last-minute switcheroo happened, or so it appears. Okay, fine. The “James Gray cabal” has been a powerful force for years so I’m not totally surprised. But I’ve spoken to a guy who saw it recently and…okay, I won’t say anything.
Posted this morning (9.22) on Facebook by veteran film journalist Lewis Beale. The Times staffer who didn’t approve of his War of the Worlds location piece getting prominent, above-the-fold placement sounds an awful lot like a certain someone associated with TheWrap, but I wasn’t directly involved so I wouldn’t know.
On the other hand Matt Zoller Seitz is saying that if a secular elite critic who worships James Gray…if this person is underpaid and has to constantly “chase checks” and doesn’t have health insurance, he/she can’t be a secular elitist. Trust me — Seitz knows the truth of it. He knows that the James Gray cabal (strong in New York, dominant in Paris) lives on its own aesthetic planet and has almost no sense of what it’s like to be Joe and Jane Popcorn, and no understanding or interest in what Joe or Jane care about and/or are looking for when they go to see a film.
I might despise people who laugh too loud in bars, but I’ve always understood the Joe Popcorn realm. I come from New Jersey, I ride around on a rumble-hog, and I eat hot dogs from time to time. I get it.
Such is the ardor and devotion of the notorious James Gray cabal that when a fellow who is either a member or temporarily posing as one — New Yorker critic Anthony Lane — tries to gently dismiss Gray’s The Lost City of Z (Amazon Bleecker, 4.14), he can’t help but dance a little side-step. Which wouldn’t be a problem if you weren’t muttering to yourself, “C’mon, man…spit it out.”
One, do not trust the 89% Rotten Tomatoes rating — the foo-foos have been worshipping Gray for years and will almost always give him a pass no matter what. I’ve said two or three times that this film will empty the sand out of your hourglass and make you feel imprisoned in your theatre seat. On top of which you must always, always beware of the word “fantasia” if the speaker isn’t referring to a 1940 animated Disney feature. Remember also that Lane is obliged to show a certain deference to David Grann‘s “The Lost City of Z,” which ran in The New Yorker before being published in book form.
New Yorker illustration by Wesley Allsbrook.
Two excerpts tell the tale:
Lane excerpt #1: “Gray has borrowed the title [of the book], and he dramatizes many of the episodes to which Grann and other writers have referred. Yet the movie that results should not be combed for historical truth. It is best approached, I would say, as a fantasia on Fawcettian themes.”
Lane excerpt #2: “Does The Lost City of Z count as an action movie? It seems more like a study in restlessness. You could frame Percy Fawcett as desperate, deluded, and ill-prepared. [But] Gray’s Fawcett is a sturdy and somewhat monotonous creature, who, for all the strivings of Charlie Hunnam, does not consume us.”
I re-posted my reactions, originally penned after catching The Lost City of Z at the 2016 NY Film Festival, on 2.23.17.
Reading Robbie Collin‘s recent pronouncement that The Lost City of Z (Amazon/Bleecker, 4.14) is an “instant classic” really rankled my ass. It’s a slow, tension-free dirge — a film that inspires thoughts of escape with the first 30 minutes — with a dead-fish lead performance by Charlie Hunnam. Beware of the James Gray cabal! — they live in a different world than you or I.
From my 12.22.16 review: Around the 25-minute mark I was starting to feel concerned about how much longer The Lost City of Z would last. I looked at my watch…Jesus God, almost another two hours!
“I was sitting in a rear-center seat in Alice Tully Hall, and for some wimpish reason I didn’t want to get up and risk stepping on 15 or 16 pairs of feet on the way out so I figured, ‘Stop it…be a man and stick this out…you can do it.’
“I made it to the end but it was brutal, dawg. By the time The Lost City of Z I had concluded that I really, really don’t want to watch another movie with Charlie Hunnam in the lead.
My honest gut reaction was “these films don’t seem to radiate the upscale pot-stirring pedigree that NYFF selections have in the past. So what’s going on here?”
Ever since the 2010 NYFF launched with The Social Network people like me have been looking to NYFF films to provoke, get people talking and occasionally figure in awards-season discussions.
I’m sorry but The 13th, 20th Century Women (which I’ve heard stuff about) and The Lost City of Z just don’t strike me as rock ‘n’ roll. They certainly don’t match anyone’s concept of upscale, dweeb-curated, Amy Taubin or Dennis Lim-approved, possible-award-conversation-level movies that the NYFF has tended to favor in the past.
They seem to me like the kind of films that respectable second-tier festivals (Seattle, Savannah, Key Key West) would highlight and make a big hoo-hah about.
Once again a critics group has championed an under-promoted Weinstein Co. film. Last Monday a James Gray cabal within the New York Film Critics Circle championed Marion Cotillard‘s performances in the Weinstein Co.’s all-but-ignored The Immigrant (as well as her fine work in Two Days, One Night), and yesterday the Boston Online Film Critics Association (BOFCA) named Snowpiercer, which the Weinstein Co. hasn’t been pushing much either, as Best Picture. They also honored Tilda Swinton‘s Snowpiercer performance (which 90% of Academy fogies have never offing heard of, much less seen) as their Best Supporting Actress pick.
The great Tilda Swinton in Snowpiercer — a delicious supporting performance all-but-guaranteed to be blown off by aging Academy farts.
HE loves spirited eccentricity in handing out year-end awards, and BOFCA has certainly offered a taste of that. Along with some perfectly sensible calls like choosing Birdman‘s Alejandro G. Inarritu as Best Director. And Calvary‘s Brendan Gleeson as Best Actor. And Two Days, One Night‘s Cotillard as Best Actress (this plus NYFCC makes two). And Birdman‘s great Edward Norton as Best Supporting Actor. And heralding Birdman‘s Emmanuel Lubezki for Best Cinematography. And naming Jennifer Kent‘s The Babadook as one of the ten best of the year. And honoring James Herbert & Laura Jennings for their editing on Edge of Tomorrow.
Four days ago Ben Kenigsberg posted a N.Y. Times piece about Otto Preminger‘s Anatomy of a Murder (’59). It praises the Jimmy Stewart courtroom drama, which costarred Ben Gazzara, Lee Remick and George C. Scott. It especially admires Preminger’s willingness to “trust [that] audiences will dwell in gray areas.”
Here’s a passage that made me sit up: “While some other Preminger films of the era (’58’s Bonjour Tristesse, ’59’s Porgy and Bess) used widescreen formats like CinemaScope or Todd-AO, Anatomy of a Murder instead favors claustrophobic compositions that ask viewers to judge several characters’ reactions at once.”
Excuse me but if Kenigsberg had tracked down the boxy (1.37:1) version of Anatomy of a Murder, which is only available on a 21-year-old Sony Home Video 480p DVD, he would have realized that in no way, shape or form is this a claustrophobically-framed film. It’s actually loose and roomy and quite relaxed and laid-back…in my view the exact opposite of cramped and congested. Because it has room to move and room to breathe…because it inhales and exhales that northern Michigan air like a jazz-loving attorney on a fishing trip.
“Otto Preminger‘s 1959 film looks sublime at 1.37. Needle sharp and comfortable with acres and acres of head space. Plus it’s the version that was shown on TV for decades. It looks stodgy and kind of grandfatherly, true, but that’s fine because it’s your grandfather’s movie in a sense. Boxy is beautiful.
“It is perverse if not diseased for Criterion to deliver their 2012 Bluray version — obviously the best that Anatomy of a Murder has ever looked on home screens — with one third of the originally captured image chopped off. Flip the situation over and put yourself in the shoes of a Criterion bigwig and ask yourself, ‘Where is the harm in going with the airier, boxier version?’ Answer: ‘No harm at all.’ Unless you’re persuaded by the 1.85 fascist cabal that a 1.37 aspect ratio reduces the appeal of a Bluray because the 16 x 9 plasma/LED/LCD screen won’t be fully occupied.”
The above comparison show that cropping the image down to 1.85 from 1.37 doesn’t kill the visual intention. In the 1.85 version Stewart simply has less breathing room above and below his head. But the comparison below makes my case. Consider a scene between Stewart and Gazarra in a small jail cell. The boxier version is clearly the preferred way to go. It feels natural and plain. The 1.85 version delivers a feeling of confinement, obviously, but Otto Preminger wasn’t an impressionist. He was a very matter-of-fact, point-focus-and-shoot type of guy.”
Movie actors either magnetize, neutralize or leave you cold. Charlie Hunnam has always made me feel…not that much. I didn’t even notice him in Cold Mountain (’03) and ChildrenofMen (’06). He popped through to some extent, I guess, in Guillermo del Toro‘s Pacific Rim (’13) and Crimson Peak (’15), but I was still left wondering what it was that Hunnam supposedly had. I didn’t feel anything special, whatever it was.
Then I caught his performance as legendary explorer Percy Fawcett in James Gray‘s The Lost City of Z, maybe nine or ten weeks ago at the New York Film Festival, and I said to myself, “Okay, that’s it…I really don’t like this guy…I don’t like his voice, his hair, his stiff manner of speech, the absence of magnetism, the deadness in his eyes.”
I began saying this to myself around the 25-minute mark. At the same time I was starting to feel concerned about how much longer The Lost City of Z would last. I looked at my watch….Jesus God, almost another two hours!
I was sitting in a rear-center seat in Alice Tully Hall, and for some wimpish reason I didn’t want to get up and risk stepping on 15 or 16 pairs of feet on the way out so I figured, “Stop it..be a man and stick this out…you can do it.”
I made it to the end but it was brutal, dawg. By the time The Lost City of Z I had concluded that I really, really don’t want to watch another movie with Hunnam in the lead.
An obsessive who wound up tramping through the Brazilian jungle on seven different expeditions in order to find a lost civilization, the 58 year-old Fawcett disappeared on the final trek, which ended sometime in late May of 1925. The Lost City of Z is about Fawcett’s numerous jungle explorations, which began in ’06 and ended, as noted, some 19 years later.
I’ve never watched a film about exploring exotic realms that has had less energy, less excitement, less of a pulse. I was just watching the damn thing and hoping against hope that Hunnam would be killed by a native spear or a wild animal or by falling off a cliff into raging rapids. I knew he wouldn’t die until the end of the film, but I wanted blood all the same. I started imagining ways to kill him. Anything to take my mind off the film.
Variety‘s Owen Gleiberman has called Gray’s film “Apocalypse Now meets Masterpiece Theatre,” except there’s no Kurtz and certainly no payoff at the end. It’s not exactly torture to sit through, but it’s pretty close to that.
If you’ve read this column for any length of time you know about the “JamesGraycabal,” and that these guys will pretty much worship anything Gray does. I swear to God there’s somethingwrongwiththesecabalguys but let’s not get hung up on this one point.
Gray’s film is based upon a 2009 book of the same name by David Grann. Maybe that’s the best way to go — read Grann’s book and then wade through the film. All I can say for sure is that I was dead fucking bored.
