Hold Me Thrill Me Kiss Me Kill Me, Mr. Storrie

Much to many of your no doubt chagrins Heated Rivalry breakout Connor Storrie has been booking roles left right and V-shaped center -- for one I believe he's already filmed his role in Beef and Shiva Baby actress Molly Gordon's upcoming comedy Peaked opposite Gordon and Emma Mackey and Laura Dern and Amy Sedaris and lots of people (it's a comedy about a high school reunion), which sounds right up my alley since every name I just listed off is heaven. But we're not here now for Peaked -- we're here because Deadline is reporting that his next movie might be a thriller called Turpentine from  Compliance director slash The Penguin showrunner Craig Zobel, which already has Melissa McCarthy circling. Those two in a thriller already has me pre-thrilled! The plot, described as "following a deadbeat son who hires friends to rob his own parents to pay off a bookie with disastrous results", sounds pretty Fargo-ish to me, but Zobel makes me think it will be played straighter than the Coens did similar ingredients. But it'll be good to see McCarthy do another serious role -- I wouldn't be angry if this was just The Deep End but with Meliessa McCarthy playing the Tilda role! Although if they wanna go goofier maybe she could play her character like an older version of that roommate from Go! So many possibilities. 

Man Not There, Woman Under Influence

If I was forced at gun-point (or perhaps in this instance umbrella-point is more apt) to list the ten most beautiful movies ever made, Jacques Tati's 1967 masterpiece Playtime would handily be on said list -- I've watched this sucker projected on the wall of the Museum of Modern Art, for goodness's ake. And I don't mean inside one of their movie theaters -- I mean in the actual art part of the museum they had this several minutes of this film projected on a wall right beside paintings for a few years and every time I walked past it I would sit down on the bench provided and re-watch the footage for the gazillionth time. It's about as perfect as such things go and so the news that Criterion is dropping the film onto 4K disc this upcoming February is some happy news indeed. (And obviously the folks at Criterion agree with me on this film's stature since this FOURTH release they've given it, after DVD, blu-ray, and their must-own Tati box-set.)

Indeed I don't usually start these monthly Criterion release announcement posts with one of their now constant 4K upgrades, but Playtime on 4K is obviously a most special ocassion. The rest of February's hardly a slouch though -- take for instance Sidney Lumet's 1976 media master-class Network, which is entering the esteemed Collection for the first time, and also in 4K. That movie turns 50 next year and feels as timely as ever -- and of course I speak of how we all would still have sex with Old William Holden even if we were hot young things like Faye Dunaway was. Obviously! Why -- what did you think I was talking about? 

Next up on February 3rd there's the 1957 Western 3:10 to Yuma, which I must admit I've never seen -- I've seen the remake with Christian Bale but never the original with Glenn Ford. Should I? Tell me your opinion as if you're talking to someone who doesn't have a lot of patience with Westerns in general. Because you are. Nor do I have a lot of patience for John Cassavetes' much-beloved 1974 drama A Woman Under the Influence, which is getting what I believe is its first standalone release after being part of the Cassavetes box-set previously. I tend to agree with Pauline Kael's infamous opinion here -- that Rowlands is just doing Way Too Much in this movie. I understand why actors love the performance, but as a viewer I'm just not into it. (That said I'm sure this is getting this standalone drop because of Rowlands' recent passing and that's nice for her fans.)

February ain't stopping there, though -- you want a box-set of Ernst Lubitsch's musicals, you say? Well you got it! Their reinstated "Eclipse Series" is unloading four of the champagne-synonymous filmmaker's movies starting with The Love Parade in 1929 right through One Hour With You in 1932. I haven't seen a single one of these, but every time I have seen The Love Parade's title anywhere I think of that being the title of Tobey Maguire's book in Wonder Boys. (Is that weird? I'm weird. God I love Wonder Boys. Put Wonder Boys in the Criterion Collection dammit!) After that there's the great Kiyoshi Kurosawa's most recent thriller Cloud, which also happens to be streaming on Criterion Channel right now -- it's about an online reseller becoming unhinged as he tries to score questionable deals, and yes I related to it an awful lot. Which brings us to the last but hardly least February drop -- the Coen Brothers' 2001 black-and-white Noir-riff The Man Who Wasn't There, starring Billy Bob Thornton and Scarlett Johannson among many others. Here's where I admit I don't think I've seen this since it came out? Which is strange indeed because I remember liking it. Huh. Well now's my chance! 

What out of February 2026's releases has you most excited?

Everything You Ever Need To Know About Life...

 ... you can learn from:

Barton Fink (1991)

Barton: Have you read the Bible, Pete?

Pete: Holy Bible?

Barton: Yeah.

Pete: Yeah, I think so. 

Anyway, I've heard about it.

Every time I re-watch Barton Fink I come to love it more and more, until my last re-watch a couple of months ago it cemented it firmly in my top three Coens movies (alongside Fargo and A Serious Man). It's so funny and strange and ultimately terrifying and the relationship between Turturro and John Goodman ranks among the greatest in any Coens movie. Most of all I am always, every time, surprised by it -- it always brings something new out to contemplate. Just a brilliant film. And with that we wish John Turturro a happy 68th birthday today! I am a couple of episodes behind (I just watched the episode pictured below last night) but I did finally start watching the new season of Severance and his character of Irving remains my favorite character on the show by leaps and bounds -- when do we are we gonna get John an Oscar? He's seriously overdue. Let's get on that. What are your favorite Turturros?

Everything You Ever Need To Know About Life...

... you can learn from:

No Country For Old Men (2007)

Ed Tom Bell: I was sheriff of this county when I was twenty-five years old. Hard to believe. My grandfather was a lawman; father too. Me and him was sheriffs at the same time; him up in Plano and me out here. I think he's pretty proud of that. I know I was. Some of the old time sheriffs never even wore a gun. A lotta folks find that hard to believe. Jim Scarborough'd never carried one; that's the younger Jim. Gaston Boykins wouldn't wear one up in Comanche County. I always liked to hear about the oldtimers. Never missed a chance to do so. You can't help but compare yourself against the oldtimers. Can't help but wonder how they would have operated these times. There was this boy I sent to the 'lectric chair at Huntsville Hill here a while back. My arrest and my testimony. He killt a fourteen-year-old girl. Papers said it was a crime of passion but he told me there wasn't any passion to it. Told me that he'd been planning to kill somebody for about as long as he could remember. Said that if they turned him out he'd do it again. Said he knew he was going to hell. "Be there in about fifteen minutes". I don't know what to make of that. I sure don't. The crime you see now, it's hard to even take its measure. It's not that I'm afraid of it. I always knew you had to be willing to die to even do this job. But, I don't want to push my chips forward and go out and meet something I don't understand. A man would have to put his soul at hazard. He'd have to say, "O.K., I'll be part of this world."

A wise movie knows that you give Tommy Lee Jones a monologue to deliver and then you just sit back and listen to Tommy Lee Jones deliver it, and No Country For Old Men is a wise movie, perhaps the wisest, because it does this twice -- at start and at finish. I was torn between which speech to quote honestly -- I do love his retelling of his dreams that closes the film -- but the above one, from the film's opening, just feels a little too meaningful to this moment in time not to highlight it here on the day that Criterion has blessed us with the Oscar-winner on 4K blu. 

Anyway I do remain of the mind that Paul Thomas Anderson's There Will Be Blood is the number one movie of 2007, but this masterpiece from the Coens' is just a trifle behind it in my humble -- and I was a bit shocked when I looked back at my 2007 Top Ten list because NCFOM isn't on it at all! (Funny sidenote: 2007 is the first time I tried posting a Top 10 and other assorted year-end awards and it's amusing, in a semi-mortifying way, to look back at that link to see the state of my still relatively early blogging efforts. Phew. We've come a long way baby.) Then I noticed that I do give a note there why it's not included -- I wanted to see it a second time before deciding where I came down on it. Well I've seen it ten more times by now and baby, it's second. Which one tops for you?

online polls

No Country For Old Criterion

What we have here is another Criterion Announcement Day that 100% snuck up on me -- the months really are just whizzing by at the speed of light, aren't they? So suddenly it is apparently the middle of the month again -- and today Criterion has given us their release slate for this upcoming December. And it's a short list but it's also a wallop of masterpiece after masterpiece. Starting with the 4K drop of the Coen Bros 2007 Best-Picture-winner No Country For Old Men, which has been demanding a damn 4K upgrade for awhile now -- I kept wondering when this would come, and I am happy it's coming via Criterion. I will admit that I am a person who would have voted for Paul Thomas Anderson's There Will be Blood over this movie for Best Picture, but I only sort of liked No Country when it came out. I was wrong to be mixed on it, I have realized over the years. (But I still like TWBB a little more.) Anyway the movie has aged like fine wine is my point, and this is a long overdue addition to the Collection. (PS how in the hell is this movie 17 years old???)

After that we've got two 4K upgrades for movies already in the Collection -- Fellini's 8 1/2 and Wim Wender's Paris, Texas. What can you say about either o0f those? Brilliant, the both. And can you believe I only saw Paris Texas for the first time a couple of years ago? What have I even been doing with my time. Watching shitty horror movies instead of these wonders???? Yeah that sounds about right. Anyway the fourth and final release in December (I told you it is a smaller batch this month) is one I have never heard of before -- the 1987 Hong Kong actioner Eastern Condors starring the legend Sammo Hung. It sounds like a blast and every time I have seen Sammo Hung in something I have found him delightful, so I very much look forward to checking this one out come December. 

Jon Hamm Five Times

Jon Hamm is looking mighty fine for the cover shoot in The Hollywood Reporter this week -- I guess he's gunning for awards attention for his role on Fargo this season? I actually wrote an entire piece at Mashable back in January about how great he was on that, read that here. That dickhead he played really brought out his best work in ages. Indeed the entire theme of this article seems to borrow the center of my piece, which is Jon Hamm should really only play dickheads. It's really where he shines. That said he comes across as perfectly lovely in the chat -- he gives a shout-out to Julio Torres, for goodness' sake. (I also love that it's Emma Stone who told him to keep an eye on Torres -- Stone is proving world-class in sussing out talent early.) Anyway I'm sure you're just here for the photos, so let's do the photos, after the jump...

Dr. Stuhlbarg Reporting For Duty

I don't mean to do a new post for every single cast member that gets announced for Luca Guadaginino's next film -- the filming-this-summer thriller After the Hunt starring Julia Roberts and Andrew Garfield and Ayo Edibiri -- but when it's names like the ones I just mentioned or when it's news on the level of a reunion with his Call Me By Your Name and Bones and All actor Michael Stuhlbarg I think I can be forgiven. As explained previously in my first post about this movie it stars Julia Roberts as a college professor whose own troublesome past starts bubbling up when a colleague gets run outta town for bad behavior -- it's hard not to immediately picture Mr. Stuhlbarg playing said colleague, given how in his wheelhouse college professors are. He's performed two of my favorites of all time now, after all! 

That said I will always love Luca for casting him way way way against type in Bones and All, where he sweeps in for one scene playing a creepy redneck cannibal freakazoid type. What an unsettling pleasure that sequence is!

Chris Evans Cult Leader

The news that Chris Evans was going to co-star in the next movie from Ethan Coen (sans Joel Coen) and Ethan's wife Tricia Cooke, who together made the lesbian crime caper Drive Away Dolls (read my review here), is news that's at least a few weeks old. I already knew about it when I wrote my review of DAD and that was just two weeks ago. We also knew that the movie is called Honey Don't! (a killer title) and that it is the middle chapter in what Ethan & Tricia intend to be a trilogy of lesbian caper type movies, maybe possible all starring Margaret Qualley as she is also in the cast list for Honey Don't!. (As is Aubrey Plaza, who's about to have one hell of a year oif that John Waters rumor actually comes to fruition.) And we also knew that (following in the footsteps of his MCU co-star Chris Hemsworth in Bad Times at El Royale) Chris Evans is set to play a cult leader in the movie, which -- well show me a person who says they wouldn't join a cult that had Chris Evans as its leader and I'll show you a whopper-telling liar-face. 

Aaaaanyway why am I posting about this today? Because yesterday two new little pieces of information appeared via a Chris Evans Fan Account on Twitter -- namely that Evans' character is called "Priest Dean" (a typically hilarious Coen-esque name) and that "the character is described as having multiple sexual partners from within the cult." Which is also not super surprising given, you know, the nature of cults! They're usually almost always just an excuse for the leader to get laid (as is so much in this world). That said -- I think we all need to light our prayer candles this evening that given the extraordinary horny queerness of Drive-Away Dolls that Chris Evans having "multiple sexual partners from within the cult" equals out to "Chris Evans doing some gay shit." The people are owed and demand restitution! So here Ethan Coen, a photo for your film's mood-board:

Drive-Away Pascals

I think it's kind of funny how hard they have played up Pedro Pascal's role in the advertising for Ethan Coen's movie Drive-Away Dolls, which came out this past Friday -- anybody going to watch this movie for Pedro is going to walk away disappointed (at least in that respect), as he's a one-scene (the opening scene) cameo. But then here I am using Pedro's image for my post about the movie so -- am I any better? Yeah no definitely not. I did pick a pair of goofy ass pictures though, as befits this goofy ass movie. Which I liked! It's not super memorable and it's not going to change the world, but it's a perfectly nice little 90 minutes of fun. And so so gay. Click over to Pajiba to read my review if you missed it over the weekend. 

So How About That Fargo Finale?

Here are two photos of Joe Keery to lead us into a post about how the final episode of the fifth season of Fargo aired last night on FX -- I know a lot of people only watch it once it hits Hulu today so I won't say anything spoilery here, don't fret! Don't go sticking your heads under your pillows and diving into any ditches, it's okay I promise. All I am gonna say is that I think the finale was pretty much perfect, cementing this season as the best season of the show as far as I'm concerned. It feels like Noah Hawley came back from being spread thin with Legion and his unsuccessful movie Lucy in the Sky coming and going, and he had something to prove -- we should all be very excited about his Alien series if this is the way he's rolling! (I was extremely excited to hear he's ignoring all of the Prometheus nonsense, for one.) Anyway if you've never watched Fargo the series it's an anthology and you don't need to've seen anything previous to get each season and I recommend giving this fifth season a try. If you missed my piece at Mashable about what a great villain Jon Hamm made, click here to read that -- all of that remains true, but much love has to be given to Juno Temple, Keery here, Jennifer Jason Leigh, and Sam Spruell as well. The final shot of the finale... my god. No spoilers! I promise. I just really loved it all. 

This Marlboro Man Sucks

We are one week away from the finale of the fifth season of Fargo and as I said on Monday -- the show is really rocking it this year. There were things I liked about the fourth season (Ben Whishaw and Jessie Buckley spring to mind) but that season felt scattered, whereas this one is laser-focused and absolutely riveting. And a big part of that is due to itself having a killer villain in Jon Hamm's piece of shit Sheriff Tillman. And so I wrote about just that today for Mashable -- click on over to read that here. It's frankly the best work Hamm's done in quite some time and finally convinced me that the dude should probably only play dicks forever and ever. he's really good at dick y'all!

Good Morning, World

Jon Hamm bares some ham in the premiere episode of Fargo this season apparently -- well not apparently, since we're looking at the proof and the proof is in the puddin' as they say -- and I got the gifs. I have not watched this episode yet even though I am a firm aficianado of the Fargo television series since Day One and I'm pretty excited about this season given its stellar cast -- Jon Hamm! Jennifer Jason Leigh! Juno Temple! Joe Keery! Hey why so many J's? I'm a J too! Maybe I was supposed to be on the show and I missed that email. I get too many emails! Dammit. Anyway yeah it's early, this will our last day blogging until Monday thanks to the turkey holiday, so let's eat up some Hamm this morning! Hit the jump for the gifs...

Get Your Bodies Ready...

... it's Criterion Announcement Day! Per usual I completely lost track of time and didn't realize this monthly holiday has sneaked up on us already -- in my defense this time I have been buried in film fests, but that's hardly kept me from the same thing happening every single month now has it? Anyway a little earlier today Criterion announced their January 2024 release schedule and if that gif above of sheer junkie sexiness didn't let on Danny Boyle's 1996 masterpiece Trainspotting is among them! Hitting both 4K and regular old blu-ray the set is per usual jam-packed with extra special features up to and including...

... glow in the dark packaging! God I love this nerd shit. It brings me such pleasure. (As will seeing that shot of Ewan McGregor getting out of bed naked in glorious 4K.) Next up on the docket -- a boxed-set of Chantal Akerman movies! Titled "Chantal Akerman Masterpieces, 1968–1978" the set includes nine movies, from her 1968 debut Saute ma ville past the astonishing Jeanne Dielman (aka the current Greatest Film Of All Time according to Sight & Sound) up through 1978's The Meetings of Anna. Check out all the info at the link. That set hits the street on January 23rd. 

A week earlier on the 16th they're dropping John Sayles' great 1996 film Lone Star on 4K, which was one of my favorites back in college -- I haven't seen it since then so I've no idea how it holds up, but this new attention here seems to indicate it might. Starring Chris Cooper and Joe Morton and Elizabeth Peña and Kris Kristofferson, Lone Star is about a sheriff (Cooper) investigating the discovery of a skeleton in the desert outside his border town, and I remember it being unlike anything I'd seen at the time -- that said in 1996 I'd seen far fewer movies than I have now. But it stuck, so we'll see. 

Other January releases -- Dee Rees' Mudbound is finally getting a physical release (I feel like they've been promising this one for ages so it's good to finally have a date) while both Satyajit Ray’s The Apu Trilogy and the Coens' Blood Simple are getting upgraded to 4K. Just a cavalcade of masterpieces per usual from the best ones doing it!

Everything You Ever Need To Know About Life...

... you can learn from:

O Brother, Where Art Thou? (2000)

Pete: You miserable little snake!

You stole from my kin!

Ulysses: Who was fixin' to betray us.

Pete: You didn't know that at the time.

Ulysses: So I borrowed it until I did know.

Pete: That don't make no sense!

Ulysses: Pete, it's a fool that looks for logic

in the chambers of the human heart.

Happy 66 to John Turturro today! Him & Chris Walken

on Severance might be my favorite couple on TV right now?

More Like Far-Joe

This news is a couple of days old but I weighed that fact against the chance to share these photos of Joe Keery working out shirtless and you can see what came out on top. Said news: Stranger Things actor and elaborate hairstyle Joe Keery has joined the next season of Fargo! This is the fifth season of the FX series -- the last one (set in the 1950s) starred Chris Rock, Ben Whishaw, and a very funny Jessie Buckley aired in 2020. The new season though will fly forward in time to the year 2019 and is about a kidnapping and a marriage gone wrong which, uhh, sounds a lot like the original movie? It'd be kinda neat for them to do a twist on the movie's plot here this far into the show, honestly. Anyway Joe joins the previously announced Juno Temple, Jon Hamm and Jennifer Jason Leigh -- so many Js!

Criterion'd on the Wind

Happy Criterion Announcement Day! The four titles for next February have just been unleashed and top billing goes as it must to Douglas Sirk's 1956 grand camp melodrama Written on the Wind, one of the most over-the-top and enjoyable flicks where everyone is constantly and totally miserable that you will ever in your life see. It's one of my favorite movies -- I've seen it dozens of times and it never fails to perk me up. Guess I'm upgrading my DVD. This one will be a new 2K restoration, no doubt making those psychotic technicolors pop even poppier -- cannot wait to abuse my retinas upon this one.

ME SEEING THAT @CRITERION IS FIIIIIINALLY UPDATING DOUGLAS SIRK'S WRITTEN ON THE WIND TO BLURAY: pic.twitter.com/hBorFHhu9a

— Jason Adams (@JAMNPP) November 15, 2021

But wait, there be more -- the Coens' classic Miller's Crossing is also getting the 2K upgrade treatment, and this one sounds stuffed with interviews with everybody involved. Then there's Ann Hui's 1982 "Hong Kong New Wave" classic Boat People, which sees a Japanese photojournalist taking in the horrors of Vietnamese refugees escaping due to the war (anybody seen this one?) as well as Leo McCary's 1939 classic weepie Love Affair starring Charles Boyer and Irene Dunne as star-crossed and doomed lovers in New York. I've never seen this version, only McCary's own 1957 remake An Affair to Remember with Cary Grant and Deborah Kerr. I actually don't think I ever saw Warren Beatty's 90s version either? I guess I should do a triple-feature come February!

Happy NYFF, Almost!

Tomorrow marks the Opening Day of this year's New York Film Fest with Denzel Washington and Frances McDormand starring in Joel Coen's adaptation of Macbeth -- that photo above is obviously not from Macbeth but I'm not reviewing Macbeth yet, so let me have this one. I'm seeing it in the morning tomorrow and will be off all day, so I'm just giving you something to look at for now. I'll be reviewing movies for NYFF soon enough over at The Film Experience -- if you want to keep up with what I've been seeing in real time follow me on Letterboxd, or on Twitter of course, where I never shut the hell up. Oh and I previewed the NYFF's Main Slate back in August, if you missed it. I've already seen 3 of my 5 Most Anticipated films, and I was right to be excited about all of them! Do stay tuned...

Big Little Lie

 

Another thing of mine that went up at The Film Experience yesterday too late to link to -- I wrote up the Main Slate of films that the New York Film Festival just announced, along with my Top 5 anticipated pictures. You can read that here. Seen above is of course the great Norwegian actor Anders Danielson Lie, who stars in two films playing NYFF this year -- Bergman Island from Mia Hansen-Løve, and the one I'm more a little more excited about, The Worst Person in the World from Lie's frequent collaborator Joachim Trier. Lie & Trier were responsible previously for the terribly accomplished twosome of Reprise and Oslo August 31st and it's a thrill, seeing them reunite for the first time in awhile after they've gone off and been awesome with other people for a bit.

Timothy Olyphant Nine Times

Are any of you watching Fargo this season? I think I am caught up to the latest episode but I really have no concept of that or not -- I haven't been keeping track or watching the episodes at the right time; I fall off for a couple of weeks and then binge. Remember when watching a show was simple and straightforward? You sat down and watched a show and then you lived your goddamned life? Those were the days. Anyway I only bring that up because I'd love to hear your thoughts on this season, if you're watching, but I'd rather you kept them vague on specifics in case I am behind one or two episodes. But Timothy Olyphant is on the show, that much isn't vague! This shoot here (via) is a couple of years old but I checked and I never posted it so let's after the jump...

5 Off My Head: Wishing Only For Whishaw

Rejoice, gays and those who appreciate great acting, for today is the 40th birthday of our lord and homosexual savior, the great gay hope, Ben Whishaw! Currently seen doing a bang-up Colin Farrell voice on the new season of Fargo -- and soon to be seen doing his third turn as Q opposite Danny Craig in a Bond picture -- I wish the whippet-like laddy the best of days! I adore him. I am also convinced he will be our first openly gay Best Actor Oscar winner (unless Sir Ian manages to sneak one in, deservedly) -- he's been deserving of nominations a few times and one win already, but we're getting to that. Because I'm going to list my faves! I will add there are several projects of Ben's I haven't ever seen -- most prominently I still haven't watched The Hour or his Brideshead Revisited. But of what I have seen, here are...

My 5 Favorite Ben Whishaw Performances

Danny, London Spy

Richard, Lilting

Limping Man, The Lobster

Norman, A Very English Scandal

John Keats, Bright Star

Runners-up: Mary Poppins Returns; Paddington; 

Perfume: The Story of a Murderer; and Q of course

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

What are your favorite Ben Whishaw performances?