The much-anticipated Best Movies of the Decade critics poll will be posted next Tuesday. Sorry for the delay, but a bunch of important critics decided to send me their lists at-the-very-last-minute. In other words, theamount of critics participating has risen considerably since last week, which is why I’ve been delaying the results being posted. The final total seems to be 201 lists.
‘The Matrix' Changed Everything
Has it really been twenty years since The Wachowskis released, more like unleashed actually, “The Matrix” to astonished audiences worldwide? The effect that this movie had was damn-near cathartic for, not just audiences, but producers, writers, directors, choreographers all around the industry. I wrote this about “The Matrix” for Awards Daily in article dated 05.30.16:
Read more‘Apocalypse Now: Final Cut' Now Clocking In at 183 Minutes?
The Tribeca Film Festival is starting this weekend, the big event is, of course, a showing of the 4K “Apocalypse Now: Final Cut,” with Francis Ford Coppola in attendance. As Jeffrey Wells just pointed out on Hollywood-Elsewhere, the runtime of this new cut has been changed on Tribeca’s official site, drastically might I add, from the original 147 minutes to now a much heavier 183 minutes. WTF!?
Read moreIt's Been 20 Years Since ‘The Phantom Menace' Opened
Watching “The Phantom Menace” in a theater for the first time, back in the summer of 1999, was one of the most painful cinematic experiences I’ve ever had to endure. Just painful. No, I was not a “Star Wars” aficionado but I got caught up in the hype, who didn’t? We all desperately wanted to love it, but the end result was, quite frankly, boring. George Lucas tried to expand and build up a new world of characters, but we ended up getting Jar Jar Binks. and Jake Lloyd as the young Anakin Skywalker, the latter a badly miscast and badly written character.
There had been suspicions for many years that George Lucas may not have been the filmmaking genius that he was. Yes, he started off his career with “THX-1138,” “American Graffiti,” and 1977’s “Star Wars” but the creative juice he may have shown in those films was all but over with the three prequels he wrote and directed in 1999, 2002 and 2005.
Lucas’ conception of story is second-to-none, but, as we’ve seen it with his work in Star Wars and Indiana Jones, his directing and writing has always been better handled by the likes of Lawrence Kasdan, Steven Spielberg and especially Irvin Kershner in “The Empire Strikes Back,” still the best SW film ever made. I thought 1983’s Richard Marquand-directed “The Return of the Jedi” was entertaining and probably used as the blueprint by Lucas to develop “Revenge of the Sith.” The problem with Lucas is simple; whenever he inserts himself into writing and hands-on work on the production of a film, although highly commendable, his mad ambitions tend to get the best of him and completely crumble out of control.
Corrected: Thanks to Richard Lanier. The correct years for the prequels were 1999, 2002 and 2005. Jake Kasdan didn’t write any scripts for Lucas but it was his father Lawrence Kasdan (of “Big Chill” fame) that did. And finally, Lucas did not direct “Return of the Jedi”; Richard Marquand did. Yikes, I knew all of these things. Blame it on this morning’s jetlag or blame it on sheer incompetence, whatever the case, big thanks again, Richard.
Why Cannes is Still the Best Film Festival in the World
There will, no doubt, be a lot of heated discussions in regards to the Cannes Film Festival, which officially begins on May 14th. These write-ups will come mostly from American media hounds in the film industry, most of which seem to have a very narrow-minded way of looking at cinema.
Read moreNotes: Cannes 2019 Lineup Includes Malick, Almodovar, Dardennes and Dolan
Yes, 1999 Was Probably the Best Decade at the Movies of the Last 20 Years
Brian Raftery‘s “Best. Movie. Year. Ever: How 1999 Blew Up the Big Screen” is making the rounds at bookstores, it came out two days ago. The film media have been hyping it up, including Vulture, which ran an entire chapter from the book on “Eyes Wide Shut.”
And so, the inevitable question one must ask is this: Are we heavily overhyping 1999?
Being John Malkovich, Election, The Matrix, Fight Club, American Beauty, The Limey, The Sixth Sense, Magnolia, The Straight Story, Eyes Wide Shut, Three Kings, The Insider, The Blair Witch Project, Bringing Out the Dead, Boy’s Don’t Cry, Go, The Iron Giant, Toy Story 2, South Park, Office Space, The Talented Mr. Ripley, American Pie, Bowfinger, Dick, 10 Things I Hate About You, Arlington Road, Man on the Moon, The Dreamlife of Angels, Romance, Payback.
So, no, we are not overhyping 1999. It truly is the bees knees. Best movie year ever? Probably not. But best movie year of the last two decades, no doubt about it. Is there any other year that comes remotely close? Maybe 2007 or 2011.
‘Rafiki' is the first Pro-LGBTQ Movie Made in Kenya [Review]
You will read people raving about the importance of a movie like “Rafiki“ even existing and I can understand and agree with that. This is an openly pro-LGBTQ movie financed in a country that is a vehemently homophobic and, for that, a movie such as this one should no doubt exist. However, the meandering plot and contrived romance at the heart of this film does the film’s outer importance a major disservice.
Read moreSummer Movie Preview: 14 Big-Studio Movies That Could Astonish
As I researched the films that will be splattered on-screen nationwide between late April and August, I found major hope, a real grab-bag of potential big-studio treats. Surprising? Yes, especially considering that I have been critical of the summer movie season the last few years, at least ever since superhero movies changed the way studios greenlit their films. However, this year, there’s actually hope for artistic breakthroughs.
Read moreFinal Cannes 2019 Predictions
The Cannes Film Festival will be unveiling their lineup tomorrow morning (EST). It feels like Christmas eve for us down here at WoR. The boxes of gifts will be unwrapped tomorrow and we will, hopefully, be very excited by what will be selected. I do not expect the likes of Aster, Zhao, Reichardt, Eggers and Schultz making it into official competition but I would love to see these directors appear in the sidebars like Un Certain Regard.
Read moreMilla Jovovich Stands Defiant Against ‘Hellboy’ Critical Beating
The critical and commercial thud that “Hellboy” received from critics and audiences alike isn’t anything new for Milla Jovovich, she’s the queen of duds; Off the top of my head I can think of “Joan of Arc,” “Ultraviolent” and all of those “Resident Evil” movies as prime examples of past, and quite infamous, Jovovich bombs.
Read moreGeorge Lucas Confirms Jar Jar Binks Is His Favorite Star Wars Character, ‘Phantom Menace' One of His Favorite Movies
Jar Jar Binks became the laughingstock of not just many "Star Wars" fans, but the cinematic world as well in the summer of 1999. Binks is considered to be the most hated character in "Star Wars" history. Not even those damn Ewoks can dethrone the Gungan from "The Phantom Menace". In fact, the hatred directed at the character had such a negative effect on its portrayer, actor Ahmed Best, that he contemplated suicide, “I faced a media backlash that really made me feel like my life was over” the actor said in a recently released video interview, adding, “There was just so much hate and anger and venom directed at me, and I took it personally…I put a lot of me into that work, and if you talk to any artist who really cares about their work, you’re talking about them,” Best says.
Read moreTerry Gilliam says PC Killing Comedy: ‘We Can’t Laugh at Anybody Because it Causes Offense’
A new interview with Terry Gilliam [via the WSJ} basically expounds upon something we’ve been tackling here at WoR: Political correctness is killing comedy. I wrote an article last year, "The 2010s: A Decade When Comedy Lost Its Mojo, which laid the ground for a potential comedic doomsday, which we're quite clearly headed at, if the "era of outrage" continues:.
Read moreCannes 2019 Official Poster Pays Tribute To The Late Agnès Varda
The just-released Cannes ’19 poster has the late Agnes Varda shooting her first film, La Pointe Courte, sometime in the summer of ’54. Well done, Cannes.
Actress Bibi Andersson (Persona, The Seventh Seal) has died age 83
Actress Bibi Andersson (Persona, The Seventh Seal) has died at the age of 83. Muse of late director Ingmar Bergman, for close to 4 decades, one cannot fathom the immensity of this loss. She represented a free-spirited hope and innocence that cannot be matched by any of today's actresses.
Read moreGoogle Labels Pro-life Movie ‘Unplanned' As Propaganda, Causing Backlash From the Right
I’m not anti-abortion, I believe a woman has the right to choose. It’s not something that needs to even be debated — However, I respect that the other side’s point of view is indeed based on religious and spiritual beliefs, I wouldn’t call myself an atheist but I do believe there is something out there greater than us that cannot be explained by a mere scripture written some thousands of years ago. And so, a society that follows the morals the bible gives us isn’t all that bad, because it presents us values that have become the go-to rules for a just and sustaining society. With the exception of a few bogus commandments, which I will not get into here, there is a moral and ethical code from the people that follow it that makes them good, earnest and slightly naive individuals — I don’t mind living in a society filled with these kinds of people.
Read moreJJ Abrams consulted with George Lucas to help craft ‘Episode IX'
There were rumors, months ago, that George Lucas had been consulted for Episode 9 to help make it a satisfying conclusion for all fans, including the ones that were turned off by “The Last Jedi,” and there were many of those.
That, my friends, is no longer a rumor. Director JJ Abrams has confirmed [via IGN] that he spoke to Lucas during the creative process and hinting that it was Lucas who came up with the idea to have Palpatine return in “The Rise of Skywalker.” Abrams claims that Lucas was the person who came up with the idea to put Palpatine in The Rise of Skywalker, but given that Abrams brought up Lucas while discussing the fallen Emperor, it may well have been him.
“This movie had a very, very specific challenge, which was to take eight films and give an ending to three trilogies, and so we had to look at, what is the bigger story? We had conversations amongst ourselves, we met with George Lucas before writing the script,” Abrams revealed. “These were things that were in real, not debate, but looking at the vastness of the story and trying to figure out, what is the way to conclude this? But it has to work on its own as a movie, it has to be its own thing, it has to be surprising and funny and you have to understand it.”
‘Star Wars: Episode IX’ Teaser: ‘The Rise Of Skywalker’ Reveals Palpatine Was Behind it All
One of Luke's lines from the trailer - "No one is ever really gone". The screen then cuts to black and we get a tease for Palpatine. And the title is "Rise of Skywalker". Maybe this also means that Luke is "not gone" either …
Read moreCannes 2019: Jay Roach's ‘Fair and Balanced' to Premiere Out of Competition? Iannucci as well?
Cineuropa has always been one of the more reliable European outlets for Cannes rumors. Today they posted their annual preview of the fest, which is set to take place May 14th through May 25th.
Yes, most of the Cineuropa article is comprised of rumors we’ve been reporting for a few weeks now, but there is surprisingly new intel to be found:
Jay Roach's Roger Ailes biopic "Fair and Balanced" is rumored to premiere out-of-competition.
Armando Iannucci's "The Personal History of David Copperfield” also seems to be headed towards an OOC slot.
A major find for American cinema will be director Danielle Lesowitz’ debut, "Port Authority," which is rumored to be part of the Un Certain Regard section of the fest.
Rumor has it that Pablo Larrain’s “Ema” will not make it to Cannes because…wait for it…Netflix is in the midst of finalizing a deal to buy it. Ouch.
I have also been told that the new Cristi Puiu is 199 minutes. Also, Marco Bellocchio’s new movie has major ‘Godfather’ vibes.
23 SOLID BETS for competition:
BACURAU | Kleber Mendonça Filho & Juliano Dornelles
PORTRAIT DE LA JEUNE FILLE EN FEU | Céline Sciamma
PAIN AND GLORY | Pedro Almodóvar
RADEGUND | Terrence Malick
OH MERCY | Arnaud Desplechin
ABOUT ENDLESSNESS | Roy Andersson
AHMED | Jean-Pierre & Luc Dardenne
PARASITE | Bong Joon-ho
THE BEANPOLE | Kantemir Balagov
UNTITLED | Brillante Mendoza
IT MUST BE HEAVEN | Elia Suleiman
FRANKIE | Ira Sachs
THE DEAD DON´T DIE | Jim Jarmusch
MANOR HOUSE | Cristi Puiu
MATTHIAS & MAXIME | Xavier Dolan
FIRE NEXT TIME | Marti Diop
SATURDAY FICTION | Lou Ye
THE TRAITOR | Marco Bellochio
SIBYL | Justine Trite
SORRY WE MISSED YOU | Ken Loach
UNE FILLE FACILE | Rebecca Zlotowski
THE WHISTLERS | Corneliu Porumbuiu
ONCE UPON A TIME IN HOLLYWOOD | Quentin Tarantino
RUMORED POSSIBILITIES:
GLORIA MUNDI | Robert Guédiguian
LA CORDILLÈRE DES SONGES | Patricio Guzmán
THE NEST | Sean Durkin
NOMADLAND | Chloe Zhao
WICKED GAMES | Ulrich Seidl
MIENTRAS DURE LA GUERRA | Alejandro Amenabar
WENDY | Benh Zeitlin
FIRST COW | Kelly Reichardt
THE LIGHTHOUSE| Robert Eggers
WAVES | Trey Edward Shults
COOK, FUCK, KILL | Mira Fornay
GUEST OF HONOR | Atom Egoyan
ETRE VIVANT ET LE SAVOIR | Alain Cavalier
C'EST EXTRA | Guillaume Nicloux
THE THOUSAND MILES | Sylvain Chomet
Woody Allen's Delayed/Suspended ‘Rainy Day In New York' To Be Released in Mexico and Europe Later This Year
The always-insightful Robert Weide has a new Woody Allen defense titled “The Truth About Woody Allen (Part II)“, which was posted on 4.8.19. If you haven’t read Weide’s other knowledgeable, first-hand defenses of Allen I highly recommend them.
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