Happy 2018

.

Get you a man who goes away on fishing trips a lot.

.

Happy Holidays From Armie & Friends

.

Well that's it for MNPP until 2018, folks. Per annual usual we're off the week between Christmas + New Years, taking the time to recuperate what little remains of out addled brains (which in this year's instance translates to "going to see Call Me By Your Name every day at least once"). I hope everyone gets all their Jollies off, and I'll see you back here on January 2nd. If we're not dead, anyway! And if you need something to read while I'm offline here's a few reviews of movies coming out or expanding over the holidays:

My review of Michael Haneke's Happy End HERE

My review of PTA's Phantom Thread HERE

My review of Molly's Game HERE

My review of I, Tonya HERE

My first piece on Call Me By Your Name HERE

My second piece on Call Me By Your Name HERE

All of my many posts on Call Me By Your Name HERE

See you in 2018!!!

.

10 Off My Head: The Remnants of 2017

.

I don't know if you guys have noticed, but the year's almost over! Not that I'm convinced 2018 is going to be any better, at least as far as The Real World is concerned, but I say good riddance to the garbage fire of 2017 all the same. Anyway as far as Entertainment goes I'm doing better than I normally am by this point in having seen the things I want to see - you're not going to be getting any Top 10 lists any time soon from me, let's not go crazy, but as I sort through what I have seen there isn't enough to smother me with anxiety like I normally feel come the holidays. That's a nice feeling for a change!

Most of what I've missed so far are the usual things I miss on first runs - foreign films, documentaries. (You can see a list of everything that I have seen down in the right-hand column, by the way.) But I figured I'd take stock of what I still need to see by making a list for myself, and I'm gonna share it with you! Oh what fun! And then at the end y'all can tell me what you need to see in the comments...

10 Movies of 2017 That I Still Have To See

THE POST (dir. Steven Spielberg) -- This is the big one, obviously. I'm not convinced it will shake up my favorites of the year or anything, but I'm looking forward to it. I very much like this talky old-fashioned adult-drama period of Spielberg's career - if it's anything like Bridge of Spies, which I expected to dislike and ended up adoring, we'll be just fine. Anyway this won't be on this list for much longer since it's out in theaters tomorrow and I might just go first thing in the morning!

THE DEATH OF LOUIS XIV (dir. Albert Serra) -- This came and went in March I guess? All I know is I was made ecstatic by its gorgeous trailer but then it was gone before I even realized it. Very much want to catch up with this.

DAWSON CITY: FROZEN TIME (dir. Bill Morrison) -- People I trust have been bowled over by this documentary that from what I gather sorts through the history a bunch of long-thought-lost Silent Film footage about a small mining town in the Arctic.

EX LIBRIS: NEW YORK CITY LIBRARY (dir. Frederick Wiseman) -- Uhh it's a documentary about a library. So duh. I already have my review's title written: "There Will Be Bookshelves." I'm seeing this next week thanks to MoMA's "The Contenders" series.
.

AFTER THE STORM (dir. Hirokazu Kore-eda) -- I don't know anything about this movie except it stars Hiroshi Abe and I've seen it pop up here and there among people's faves and I have literally had a review copy of the blu-ray sitting beside my bed for about four months. I made a promise to myself I will finally stick it in the blu-ray player over the holidays. Let's see if I stick to that!

FILM STARS DON'T DIE IN LIVERPOOL (dir. Paul McGuigan) -- Annette Bening gave the best female performance on screen last year in 20th Century Women, so there's that. She's on my good side. And then there's Jamie Bell who is always great (and I have been told by people who have seen the film that Jamie's in his underwear in it). I think it's a little weird how the trailer obscures the fact  (like actively covers up) that Gloria Grahame started dating Peter Turner when he was under-age.

YOUR NAME (dir. Makoto Shinkai) -- Japanese animated movie that I keep seeing on Year End Lists and thinking somebody accidentally deleted the "CALL ME BY" part of the title. This is also playing at MoMA soon.

FELICITE (dir. Alain Gomis) -- Another one I don't know much about save I have heard enough people who know things say this thing's worth knowing.

GRADUATION (dir. Cristian Mungiu) -- This played at the New York Film Festival way back in 2016 and I missed it then, only to hear a bunch of people rave about it, and now here fourteen months later I'm hearing about it again since it was technically a 2017 release.
.

DOWNSIZING (dir. Alexander Payne) -- Given how much foot Matt Damon's crammed in his mouth over the past few months and given the fact that I have come to actively dislike Alexander Payne's movies (after loving him so much at the start of his career) I'm kind of dreading this one. The trailers are obnoxious. But whispers of it being much weirder than it's letting on are giving me a little hope. This also opens this weekend, so thank goodness for MoviePass.

---------------------------------------------

So what movies are y'all trying to catch up on?

.

You're a Strange One, Alex Pettyfer

.

I've been waiting on word of The Strange Ones ever since I heard interesting things about it but then missed it screening at BAM CinemaFest in Brooklyn last year - Alex Pettyfer and James Freedson-Jackson play a pair of young men (one much younger than the other) with a murky relationship (I don't think they're actually meant to be brothers) who are on some kind of road-trip that goes terribly horribly wrong.

It seems best to know little more than that - really all you need to know is that John Waters called it one of his favorite movies of 2017. Anyway we now have word - the film is opening here in NYC at The Quad on January 5th. And here's the trailer...

.

.

Chris Evans Two Times

.

These aren't new photos but I'm not entirely sure I've posted them before? Anyway even if I have Chris is always worth a second third fourth fifth and seventeenth glance. One hundred and thirty-hour days until the next Avengers movie is out!

.

Everything You Ever Need To Know About Life...

... you can learn from:

Stanley & Iris (1990)

IriIris: Why do they call it a good cry? All it does is make
you look like hell. And what's missing is still missing.

A happy 80 to the legend Jane Fonda!

I've never actually seen this movie. Have you?

.

Funny Games & Happy Endings For Everybody

.

How funny is a dead hamster? (Okay technically it's drugged, not dead, but the effect's the same.) The hamster comes in the first five minutes and you'll know by then. Where you land on that question might just tell you how you'll fall on Michael Haneke's Happy End, the terrifying Austrian auteur's new wacky LOL-laced comedy of upper-crusted-over ill manners. 

Is anybody else calling it that? A comedy, I mean? I watched Happy End in a room full of critics and nobody around me laughed -- meantime I was dying inside. "Inside" being the choice term - I held my laughs in, lest I be judged terribly. It was, after all, a dead hamster I was laughing at. Not to mention a suicidal old man. And it's all played... well even calling it "straight-faced" does a disservice to "straight" - if you zoom in on a straight line, magnify it to oblivion, it ceases being a line and it starts being a series of dots, dots within dots. Infinitesimal. This is like that, for comedy.

To call this the Comedy Mask Cousin to Haneke's former film Amour, all tragedy, an unbroken close-up of a rigid death mask, seems right to me. Feels to me like the director of our sternest cinematic lectures is letting off some steam. It would be wading into spoilers probably to get into how explicitly Haneke ties this movie to the former, but I consider them siblings. One's the refined lady of the house, and one's the embarrassing black sheep, honking noses and getting blasted at the funeral. 

Even the title is a funny game of its own - you approach a Michael Haneke Movie called Happy End with a hefty dose of side-eye, expecting him to be more miserable than ever. And then he wheels the expected misery out in front of you, only to then goose it like a deranged pervert. He hasn't done anything this funny since the dead dog fell out of the trunk in Funny Games. 

On its own Happy End might probably be Minor Haneke - I get the complaint that it reads like a Greatest Hits Compilation of themes that he's wrung through many times before. It feels somewhat incomplete on its own. But as a Squirt Down The Pants of his own self-seriousness, as a comic parasite attached to the backs of those earlier movies, Happy End is essential viewing. But will anybody else be laughing? I guess it depends on that dead hamster, ha ha.

.

The Greatest Wicked Beach Bum Star

.

If you head on over to The Film Experience this morning I'm taking brief stock of the state of Zac Efron's career, at least horizon-wise (not horizontally-wise though, unfortunately) -- after The Greatest Showman this weekend his next two films are possibly risky stuff for the former Disney star. Do we think that Mr. High School Musical can he transition into his Big Boy Pants? 

.

Mater Suspiriorum

.

While we "patiently" await the release of Luca Guadagnino's remake of Suspiria sometime in 2018 the 4K restoration of Dario Argento's original uncut technicolor masterpiece has been making its rounds - it played way back in August here in New York and shot out across the country from there and in a couple of weeks it's returning to New York, but upstate. There's a screening on January 12th in Huntington (along with Inferno!) and that fabulous retro-like poster seen above was created just for it. There's another poster version too - you can buy them both, as posters or on t-shirts, at this site here. (And thanks to BD for the heads-up.) If you're in NYC the film is returning here first though - it's playing three midnight shows at the IFC Center right before Xmas. Oh and PS: if anybody wants to buy me the extreeeemly fancy limited edition blu-ray that's coming out on Christmas Day (it costs 90 dollars!) I sure wouldn't say no.

Five Frames From ?

.

What movie is this?

.

Good Morning, World

.

Fun Fact: Did you know that Tom Payne, the actor who portrays The Walking Dead's "Gay Jesus," also played the naked twink that Frances McDormand finds in Amy Adams' bed in Miss Pettrigew Lives for a Day? I don't think you've really lived until you've been the naked twink that Frances McDormand has found in Amy Adams' bed, so major props to him for that. 

(I wonder if he and Lee Pace were... friendly... on that set?) Anyway it is Mr. Payne's 35th birthday today - I am guessing he's still alive on The Walking Dead because I haven't heard otherwise - I stopped watching the show this year but you always manage to hear what characters they've murdered whether you want to or not. You can see a couple more posts on him right here.

Take Your Breathe Away

.

Did anybody actually see Breathe? Did Breathe even come out? Breathe is the movie with Andy struck down by polio opposite Claire Foy - IMDb says it came out in October but it didn't seem to make much of an impression, I guess. It is hitting blu-ray right after the holidays though, so stay tuned, polio fun straight ahead. 

online survey

(I ask this question knowing fully well that the only correct answer to "What actor sexed themselves up in a mirror the best?" is and always will be Alain Delon in Purple Noon.) Anyway I guess Andy won't be getting an acting nomination this year, but he kinda owes the world one after that Hacksaw Ridge absurdity last year, so take it in stride, dude. And in return we'll post some pictures of him after the jump to make sure he feels a little love...

Quote of the Day

.

"I generally like the concept of just consuming alcohol
whenever it's there, so I don't know, we'll cross that bridge
when we get there. TBD ... To Be Drunk." 

-- Armie Hammer on his plans for the night 

of the Golden Globes. You and me both, buddy.

.

Aidan Turner Ten Times

.

Look who's gone and grown a big beautiful beard! It's Poldark and Being Human and Hobbit actor Aidan Turner, who posed for these photographs in something called Article Magazine (via, thanks Mac) and gosh it makes him look all kinds of brawny man. Which i guess is good since the next project he has lined up according to IMDb is something called The Man Who Killed Hitler and then The Bigfoot... that's a lot of over-sized killing! One needs to be a brawny man for such things. (And that's without even mentioning that Aidan's co-star is the brawniest man around Mr. Sam Elliott.) Hit the jump for nine more stylishly brawny pictures...

Everything You Ever Need To Know About Life...

... you can learn from:

Theodora Goes Wild (1936)

Theodora: I have this to say to the modern young girls - Be free, express yourselves! Take your life in your own hands and mold it. The world will try to rob you of your freedom, but fight for it! It's all you have to live for! That's all for the modern girl.

The great Irene Dunne was born on this day in 1898.

.

The Moment I Fell For... Timothée Chalamet

.

Every successive time that I see Call Me By Your Name the first tear seems to fall earlier and earlier in the narrative, but I finally seem to have settled on this shot at the 34 minute mark in the movie as my Initial Tear Incident - it's the Patient Zero of Blubbering. Why this moment? What is this moment? This is the morning after the big dance scene that we've all seen and giffed - Elio rides along with his Dad and Oliver to the ruins on Lake Garda where a statue's being brought up from the water.

.

Not for nothing here's a pic of me at the Grotte di Catullo in Sirmione which is where an important scene of CALL ME BY YOUR NAME happens pic.twitter.com/X5GEbTFDrK

— Jason Adams (@JAMNPP) October 9, 2017

.
Yes I have been right there where the boys are walking; that probably has a little bit of something to do with why this moment gets me - I feel myself enveloped in its world, its embrace, by then. And if you haven't noticed I like that feeling.

But it's more than that. I think you can pinpoint Elio finally understanding his feelings towards Oliver during that dance scene and this here shot represents his first opportunity to look at Oliver without anybody looking at him while he looks - as I wrote extensively at The Film Experience the tangled web of who's watching who in CMBYN is a huge part of its narrative thrust. Well here Elio's free to look upon the boy he likes for the first time knowing that he likes him and that little smile Chalamet steals...

... oh my goodness. 

And sure enough as soon as Elio swings around to join his father and Oliver he puts his defensive sunglasses back on, lest his playful eyes give up the game.

But we've seen. 

We know you, Elio!

.

When The Dealing's Done

.

I hate gambling. Can't stand it. Don't get the slightest bit of enjoyment from purposefully stressing out about money, of all things. I've been stressing out about money my entire life - if I want to waste my money I'm going to waste it on things that matter, like movie tickets and copious jars of Nutella. Point being, movies about gambling are usually incomprehensible science-fiction to me - the players on-screen might as well be speaking in Klingon for all I understand of their motivations. 

Thankfully Molly's Game isn't really a gambling movie. Molly (Jessica Chastain, rat-a-tat-tatting herself toothless) has a gambler's heart, I suppose, but she's gets her highs off Doing Things Well, Better Than Anybody Else, which is a tightrope I can feel my feet onto. She gets into the poker world by random luck (although "luck" is clearly a spotty word in these circumstances) and then through sheer force of feminine ingenuity sticks one dangerously pointy heel on top of the mountain, staking her claim.

And it is decidedly feminine, that ingenuity -- writer-director Aaron Sorkin loads the first half of the film with the engrossing spectacle of seeing Molly monetize (or in a way weaponize) the big dopey Male Id - women have been dealing with men's needy pamper-me bullshit for millennia but nobody turned low-cut dresses and dude-bro fist-bump champagne room regalia into a cash-printing mega-machine quite like Molly Bloom did. And that's a wonder to watch in their hands. It has the same getting-stuff-done titillation factor as a movie about sausage-making - the joy is in the process of putting it together.

Of course Molly's got to fall off her mountain, but even with Idris Elba there wearing well-tailored suits to keep the lawyer bits and banter moving I felt like all of these scenes strained to sustain my interest - listening to one person knock Sorkin dialogue out of the park is one thing, but I start to get a headache when everybody's monologuing at one another. And Molly becomes irritatingly passive in the last act - let's watch all the men come in and clean up her mess, I guess?

Still this Game sings for long stretches. Chastain radiates nuclear level star-power as she struts around the card tables - how any of these guys kept their focus on their hands I'll never understand. I guess that's her sleight, for the sharks and us viewers - stare at me, she says, and everybody wins.
.

Five Frames From ?

.

What movie is this?

.