“Pictures were made for entertainment; messages should be delivered by Western Union.” ~ Samuel Goldwyn
I love the movies.
For years I went almost every day to the flickers. You can do that if you live in the 6th arrondissement or East Village where loads of cinemas are within a fifteen minute walk.
I honestly believe that I grew up emotionally in the cinemas of Paris and lower Manhattan. I’m probably one of the few Americans to have seen all of Cassavette’s films on the big screen… and obviously I LOVED seeing 3–4 films per day at the Cannes Film Festival. I was so enthralled by Atom Egoyan’s “Exotica” that I ran back to my hotel after the afternoon screening, donned my sullied thriftstore tuxedo, and ran back to the Croisette to see it again in competition.
I particularly loved going to the earliest show possible on Fridays, before the critics’ opinions could sour my suspension of disbelief.
Secreting away to a parallel universe for two hours.
I’ve never been much for this reality. As Philip Rieff told my roommate at Penn, “Mister Israel should pursue a career in the entertainment industry because I’m sure he leads a fantastic imaginary life.”
But watching Jeremy Allen White sit cock-eyed in a diner and brood for two hours over a violent, mentally ill, alcoholic father, then discover psychotherapy, is not my idea of a good time.
Having the astonishingly talented and daring Emma Stone lecture me on the plight and blight of humanity extinguishing itself from the planet also fails to get a bump on the ol’ good-time meter.
Bugonia would have been a wonderful play — roughly 4 1/2 speaking roles and an iconic basement set… but somehow it transmutes into yet another reason for the right to loathe people like me, the radical left, as well as Hollywood. Stellar acting, amazing cinematography, and an unrecognizable Jesse Plemons, so filthy that you synesthetically smell him as just as well as Gary Oldman in “Slow Horses.” Thirty years ago when I met Leonardo DiCaprio, I told him that upon leaving “What’s Eating Gilbert Grape?” my French girlfriend asked, “I wonder how they got a retarded kid to act so well?” (Obviously during an epoch when you could still utter the “r” word without being pilloried). So kudos to spectrum-y thespian Aidan Delbis who is riveting as the spectrum-y cousin. But the film becomes such a heavy-handed allegory that it sucks the life out of the magnificent Georgia exteriors, which are as spectacular as the West Texas landscapes in “Hell or High Water.”
And listen, nobody is going to shed a tear about the rough suburban childhood of someone who sublimated that trauma into twenty of the most poignant rock songs of the last fifty years, thousands of 4 hour scintillating performances entertaining millions of diehard fans that amounts a catalog worth hundreds of millions of dollars.
The true artist triumphs over the big bad record company.
That’s the message. I just saved two hours of your life and $17.
Jeremy Strong — who, from the little I know about him, is a truly odd human being — is genius as Jon Landau. But that still ain’t worth seventeen bucks. If the name “Springsteen” wasn’t in the title and script, the film would have never been made. On the other hand, Aaron Sorkin’s psychological reconstruction of Steve Jobs I consider to be absolutely brilliant, so I know that I can suspend disbelief for a bio-pic.
This weekend go see “One Battle After Another.” It’s a masterpiece whose only possible flaw is that Benicio del Toro doesn’t have more screen time.
