Jason Adams here reporting from the New York Film Festival...
We're all dying. That's the grand rule of everything that we do all we can to distract ourselves from. It might seem like some of us are dying faster than others from the position we're standing in at any precise moment, but time is, as the saying goes, relative. We're all of us on track to stardust, circling the drain of a black hole out here, hair stiff on end.
Leave it to Claire Denis to dream-weave a perverse space opera all about that stuff, then. Who else, really? High Life on its gorgeous scuffed up Rothko painting of a surface has all sorts of distractions from that central mission statement - Horny convicts in outer space! Juliette Binoche's infinite ponytail! Something called a "Fuck Box!" - that a smaller-minded filmmaker would've gotten caught up on...
4. 🔺First Reformed$282k on 29 screens (cum. $425k) REVIEW
5. Life of the Party $5.1 (cum. $39.1)
5. 🔺 How Long Will I Love U $210k on 23 screens *NEW*
These numbers will go up given that this weekend is extra long and there's still Memorial Day monday in which families are free to see movies if they'd like. But the numbers won't go high enough for Disney's taste. Now, $83 million in one weekend is nothing to scoff at but for a film within the Star Wars saga it's surprisingly low. Lots more on multiple films after the jump...
• /Film Jake Gyllenhaal lands the villain gig in the next Spider-Man movie. He'll be playing Mysterio so let's hope they don't go with the comic book costume because enough with hiding gorgeous actor faces behind masks or in this case a whole opaque globe • The New Yorker has a long read profile of the great filmmaker Claire Denis • Deadline Andy Karl has replaced Steve Kazee in the Richard Gere role in the Broadway bound musical adaptation of Pretty Woman
• The Village Voice profiles Betty Gabriel of Get Out and "no no no no no" gif fame • VultureA Quiet Place has racked up a stunning $300 million worldwide • Cartoon BrewBC is becoming an animated feature. What's BC you ask? It's that syndicated comic strip that's been running in newspapers forever about cavemen. • Variety a report on the reshoots of Solo and Ron Howard taking over and shooting 70% of what's now on screen (unfortunately everyone is vague on details! Perhaps someday we'll get a juicy oral history) • The Muse Björk makes her first TV appearance in years and years • Towleroad the major studios get "insuffienct / poor / failing" ratings from GLAAD in its annual report. • Broadway World apparently the 50th anniversary of Hello Dolly (1968) is sparking a six month long celebration in Westchester and Putnam County along the Hudson River where filming took place. Who knew people were this into that Babs film?
RIP • NYT Patricia Morison, Broadway's first Kate in "Kiss Me Kate" and a movie actress in early franchises has died at 103 years of age • The Atlantic Philip Roth, literary giant, has died. Feels like the end of a particular literary era • My New Plaid Pants Gorgeous beefcake Clint Walker, originally envisioned by the studios as a Rock Hudson rival, has died at 90
Exit Video Sarah Paulson does a Drew Barrymore impression. And then runs into Drew Barrymore.
First Reformed A middle aged priest in crisis sits down with a young man suffering from his own disillusionment with the status of our current world. Once the pleasantries are done with and the futility of existence and our doomed world become the topic of conversation, the alarm sirens start going off. It took the audience at the New York Film Festival screening a few moments to realize that the sirens are not part of the movie unfolding, but an actual false fire alarm asking us to vacate the cinema.
That’s how deeply engrossing Paul Schrader’s First Reformed is...
Today is International Women's Day. To honor this day, a look back at a great female directed film that was critically lauded at the time but tends to not get the legacy attention it deserves: Claire Denis' "White Material."
Set in an unnamed former French colony in Africa on the brink of violent civil war, White Material is not new territory for Denis – a French national who grew up in Cameroon, Burinka Faso, Somalia and Senegal – but it does represent a more searing look at the ways in which colonialism has completely uprooted the continent.
Wednesday, October 3, 2018 at 9:31PM 
