Wit Sorely Missed At Bizarro 2021 Oscars

Anthony Hopkins over Chadwick Boseman? Frances McDormand howling like a wolf? Glenn Close dancing to Da Butt?

What the fuck happened to the Oscars this year? In the midst of the ongoing Covid pandemic the show had to go on. But did it have to go on quite like this?

Taking place at the Union Station in Los Angeles, a spacious environment once redressed for Blade Runner and Catch Me If You Can decades earlier, the 93rd annual Academy Awards felt like a more stripped down, subdued and deeply glum Golden Globes. You had to treasure levity when it appeared. And it did not appear nearly enough.

As expected, Nomadland took home Best Picture. What wasn’t expected was that it wasn’t the last award of the evening. It was third to last, the first time this has happened in 50 years. Equally weird was how early Best Director was announced. Out of the 23 competitive Oscars handed out tonight, it was presented 7th. The Chinese-born Chloe Zhao made history as the second woman (after Kathryn Bigelow in 2010) but the first woman of colour to collect the golden naked man in this category.

Wacky Frances McDormand kept it short and odd when she collected her third Best Actress gong for playing the lead which Variety and Vulture correctly called and I completely botched. With the academy spreading out the awards, it was the big winner with a mere three.

While fellow Best Picture nominees Mank, Sound Of Metal and Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom all took home two technical trinkets apiece, Judas And The Black Messiah won Best Original Song for Fight For You, the only worthy nominee with its catchy, understated uptempo soul, and Best Supporting Actor for the appreciative Brit Daniel Kaluuya who appeared to embarrass his sister and confuse his mom with a very funny acknowledgement of how he came to be. He also paid gracious tribute to Fred Hampton Sr., the civil rights icon he immortalizes on film.

Speaking of Soul, it won Best Animated Feature as expected and took home Best Original Score, making Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross two-time winners. They previously won for their terrific techno work on The Social Network. Checking their white privilege, they let first-time winner Jon Batiste, Stephen Colbert’s Black late night musical director, cut an acceptance promo all on his own. Umm, we all know about the 12 notes, dude. Or is it 13?

I don’t know what Glenn Close has to do to win a fucking Oscar but she’s now 0 for 8. The good news is she didn’t lose to Olivia Colman. Charmingly funny Yuh-Jung Youn (Minari) was named Best Supporting Actress which everybody except my family anticipated. The first ever Korean acting winner, she seemed as pleased to finally meet Brad Pitt as she was to be called up onstage. With funny quips about her sons and how she really feels about award competitions (she said she doesn’t believe in them, then zinged, in reference to her fellow nominees, “I’m luckier than you.”), she thankfully brought to life if just for a moment a very quiet room that seemed confused about whether to applaud at all during any of the presentations.

But the biggest stunner of the night would come at the very end.

In the past, the previous year’s Best Actor winner would present the current year’s Best Actress award and vice versa. Not at this bizarro Oscars. Men honoured men and women honoured women, not that that’s such a big deal, honestly.

Following McDormand’s win for Best Actress (looks like Carey Mulligan got punished after all), the final award was for Best Actor. Let’s face it. We were all thinking it. They saved this category for last so they could give the late Chadwick Boseman, who was acknowledged in the quick-paced, Stevie Wonder-soundtracked In Memoriam, a gracious farewell.

But no. When Joaquin Phoenix opened the envelope, he announced Anthony Hopkins (The Father) as the winner for Best Actor. (Variety wisely suggested he could be a spoiler (like me, they picked Boseman to take it) and they were right.) Hopkins was nowhere to be found. He wasn’t even on Zoom. Considering how well Black talent performed this year, what a slap in the face to Boseman. And what a sour note to end a very strange ceremony.

The Father was also named Best Adapted Screenplay, another upset victory over the expected recipient Nomadland. As for Promising Young Woman, it had to settle for Best Original Screenplay, its only reward. The only Best Picture nominee to be completely snubbed was The Trial Of The Chicago 7.

Because all the Best Original Song nominees were performed during the typically asskissy and overlong pre-show, there was far less filler during the actual ceremony, although what was the point of Name That Tune other than to make Black people look stupid on camera? Not sure if Glenn Close really knew that song from Spike Lee’s School Daze (it felt like a scripted moment) but I did appreciate her twerking. And thank God for Harrison Ford reading those humourously brutal notes an unnamed Warner Bros. studio exec gave the classic Blade Runner.

As for Laura Dern’s hideous feather dress, bring back Bjork’s dead, wraparound swan. All is forgiven.

The complete list of winners:

BEST PICTURE – NOMADLAND

BEST DIRECTOR – Chloe Zhao (NOMADLAND)

BEST ACTRESS – Frances McDormand (NOMADLAND)

BEST ACTOR – Anthony Hopkins (THE FATHER)

BEST SUPPORTING ACTRESS – Yuh-Jung Youn (MINARI)

BEST SUPPORTING ACTOR – Daniel Kaluuya (JUDAS AND THE BLACK MESSIAH)

BEST ANIMATED FEATURE – SOUL

BEST INTERNATIONAL FEATURE – ANOTHER ROUND

BEST DOCUMENTARY FEATURE – MY OCTOPUS TEACHER

BEST ORIGINAL SONG – Fight For You (JUDAS AND THE BLACK MESSIAH)

BEST ORIGINAL SCORE – SOUL

BEST ORIGINAL SCREENPLAY – PROMISING YOUNG WOMAN

BEST ADAPTED SCREENPLAY – THE FATHER

BEST VISUAL EFFECTS – TENET

BEST FILM EDITING – SOUND OF METAL

BEST SOUND – SOUND OF METAL

BEST CINEMATOGRAPHY – MANK

BEST PRODUCTION DESIGN – MANK

BEST MAKE-UP & HAIRSTYLING – MA RAINEY’S BLACK BOTTOM

BEST COSTUME DESIGN – MA RAINEY’S BLACK BOTTOM

BEST ANIMATED SHORT – IF ANYTHING HAPPENS I LOVE YOU

BEST LIVE ACTION SHORT – TWO DISTANT STRANGERS

BEST DOCUMENTARY SHORT SUBJECT – COLETTE

Dennis Earl
Hamilton, Ontario, Canada
Monday, April 26, 2021
2:40 a.m.

2021 Oscar Predictions

BEST PICTURE – NOMADLAND

Should we even being having an Oscar ceremony this year? It’s the question many film lovers have asked themselves over the past several months as the air date for the 93th edition kept getting pushed back. Now arriving on April 25th, we have a firm night and time to look forward to golden gongs being handed out to movies most of us haven’t seen, let alone pontificate for even a moment as we all shelter in place.

Back in the early 1990s, when I was an aspiring teenage film critic in high school armed with more enthusiastic pluck than experience and literary skill, I had seen most of the nominated feature films well before the ceremony thanks to frequent and often solitary trips to various multiplexes and, of course, home video. But in recent years, I’ve found myself always playing catch-up, lucky to see even one nominee. In 2021, none of these films are familiar to me.

The nine nominated films for Best Picture this year were lucky to get any kind of theatrical release considering the sheer amount of time cinemas across North America were boarded up and closed due to the plague of Covid. Europe was a bit better in terms of containment which is why some Hollywood studios opted to go wider overseas where it was most likely for certain tent pole titles to recoup some of their exorbitant expenses.

Although some of these nominated entries got a limited cinematic release here during brief reprieves from lockdowns, all of them were mostly available for consumption on streaming services like Netflix, Apple and Amazon. But how many of you took the time to watch even one nominated film? Realizing the inevitable, the academy loosened some of its eligibility rules to reflect this hopefully temporary change in distribution.

Yes, you’re right. I’m stalling with my prediction. So let’s get on with it.

This year’s race for me is really between two films which means Judas & The Black Messiah, Mank, Minari, Sound Of Metal, The Trial Of The Chicago 7 and The Father are all long shots to snag the golden naked man. No need to waste any more time talking about their chances.

That leaves the rape revenge thriller Promising Young Woman and the travelogue drama Nomadland. Both films in fact have their fans and their harsh critics. I’ll reserve my own judgment until I finally watch them. Considering the make-up of the academy (still mostly old white guys), I’d be surprised if Promising Young Woman gets the duke although ironically it has a stronger shot than most of the other titles.

But since the nominations were announced a couple of months ago, Nomadland was already talked about as the front runner. Barring an upset from PYW, the only possible alternative scenario I see (unless somehow upon reflection Aaron Sorkin’s Chicago 7 swoops in for the steal), it’ll be Nomadland picking up the trophy.

BEST DIRECTOR – Chloe Zhao (NOMADLAND)

I’ve said this before but it bares repeating. As Roger Ebert pointed out many times, if you win the Director’s Guild of America award, nine times out of ten you repeat the honour at the Oscars. Chloe Zhao, the director of Nomadland, won the DGA this year. She will win the Academy Award. Case closed.

BEST ACTRESS – Carey Mulligan (PROMISING YOUNG WOMAN)

The usual mix of newbies and academy favourites fill this year’s Best Actress category.

The highly regarded Viola Davis has already won for Fences a few years ago. Some have pegged her for a second on Sunday for playing Ma Rainey but I’m not so convinced. Frances McDormand is so well liked and respected she has two of these golden gongs, one for the overrated Fargo and the other, more recently, for Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri. Could she pull a Daniel Day-Lewis and make it a trio of golden naked men? Maybe but I don’t think so. She really doesn’t need it. She already has a fully honoured legacy.

The pop singer Andra Day won good notices for playing the jazz legend Billie Holiday and could very well snag a trinket. That seems unlikely to me, though. Ditto fellow first-time nominee Vanessa Kirby, a Brit who I’m sure is already happy enough getting high profile gigs in the lucrative Mission: Impossible and Fast & Furious franchises.

No other performance in this category has been as buzzed about as Carey Mulligan’s in Promising Young Woman. And while she didn’t do herself any favours by fundamentally misunderstanding the role of a critic (panning unsexy acting is part of the job description) and publicly whining about a positive review from Variety, a review that had been available online for a year before it suddenly got any criticism from her or anybody else, I don’t think that’s going to hurt her in the long run. Previously nominated for An Education over a decade ago, the Oscar is hers on Sunday.

BEST ACTOR – Chadwick Boseman (MA RAINEY’S BLACK BOTTOM)

Why even bother talking about anybody else in this category? Ok, if we must.

Anthony Hopkins already has his prestigious gong for The Silence Of The Lambs. Gary Oldman snagged his for playing Churchill in Darkest Hour a few years ago. Meanwhile, first-time nominees Steven Yeun (Minari) and Riz Ahmed (Sound Of Metal) have literally zero shot at winning this thing. They’ll have to be satisfied with just being invited to the party.

Long before the nominations were even announced, the late Chadwick Boseman was already seen as the guy to beat here. Tragically felled by cancer at age 43, his career was just starting to flourish in the last few years. He managed to play James Brown, Thurgood Marshall and Black Panther, the latter two parts while quietly suffering with what must’ve been terrible pain and fatigue.

His performance in Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom won plaudits from critics and audiences who managed to see it. Winning the Oscar posthumously will be a way for the industry to acknowledge not just his work in this film but his entire body of work. I’ll be very surprised if his name isn’t called on Sunday.

BEST SUPPORTING ACTRESS – Glenn Close (HILLBILLY ELEGY)

In 2019, perennial bridesmaid Glenn Close was the overwhelming favourite to win Best Actress for her lead performance in The Wife. So, when Olivia Colman’s name was announced as the actual winner, it was a genuine shock, most especially because she won for being in a movie literally called The Favourite.

Two years later, a surprising rematch is shaping up in the Best Supporting Actress category. Colman, who plays Anthony Hopkins’ daughter in The Father, is competing against Close’s unrecognizable redneck mama in Hillbilly Elegy. Is history going to repeat itself?

No. Colman’s not going to win a second gong. As for their competitors, lovely Amanda Seyfried (Mank), a possible dark horse, could come up from behind and slip in undetected, but I don’t think so. First-time nominees Maria Bakalova (Borat 2) and Youn Yuh-Yung (Minari) are unlikely recipients in their own right.

Even though Ron Howard’s Hillbilly Elegy received much critical scorn when it came out last fall, Close’s performance, also curiously nominated for a Razzie, actually impressed many critics. Nominated eight times throughout the last 40 years, surely, this is the year she finally breaks through on Oscar night.

BEST SUPPORTING ACTOR – Daniel Kaluuya (JUDAS AND THE BLACK MESSIAH)

After years of justifiable complaints about the lack of Black talent in the acting categories, 2021 has proven to be an exceptional year. Just look at the diverse nominees for Best Supporting Actor, three of whom aren’t white.

Even better, one of them is going to win and get a major push as a result of that win.

That means Sasha Baron Cohen (Borat 2) and longtime character actor Paul Raci (Sound Of Metal) will remain seated.

But it also means that Leslie Odom Jr. (One Night In Miami) and Lakeith Stanfield (Judas And The Black Messiah) are also unlikely to be called up on stage, if in fact they’ll even be in the audience at all this year.

Much like Best Actor, the Best Supporting Actor favourite emerged upon the announcement of the nominations. Stanfield’s co-star Daniel Kaluuya has been singled out ever since reviewers had a look at his portrayal of the legendary civil rights activist Fred Hampton. With renewed interest in the struggle for Black liberation in the wake of so many needless police shootings in the last decade alone, the release of the acclaimed Judas And The Black Messiah has been timely. A win for Kaluuya will not only be a boost for him. It will mean belated legitimization of a growing global movement Hampton played a major role in creating.

BEST ANIMATED FEATURE – SOUL

BEST SOUND – SOUND OF METAL

BEST VISUAL EFFECTS – TENET

BEST COSTUME DESIGN – MA RAINEY’S BLACK BOTTOM

BEST MAKE-UP & HAIRSTYLING – MA RAINEY’S BLACK BOTTOM

BEST PRODUCTION DESIGN – MANK

BEST ADAPTED SCREENPLAY – NOMADLAND

BEST ORIGINAL SCREENPLAY – PROMISING YOUNG WOMAN

BEST LIVE ACTION SHORT – TWO DISTANT STRANGERS

BEST ANIMATED SHORT – IF ANYTHING HAPPENS I LOVE YOU

BEST DOCUMENTARY SHORT SUBJECT – HUNGER WARD

BEST DOCUMENTARY FEATURE – CRIP CAMP

BEST ORIGINAL SONG – Fight For You (JUDAS AND THE BLACK MESSIAH)

BEST ORIGINAL SCORE – MINARI

BEST CINEMATOGRAPHY – NOMADLAND

BEST FILM EDITING – NOMADLAND

BEST INTERNATIONAL FEATURE – BETTER DAYS

Dennis Earl
Hamilton, Ontario, Canada
Friday, April 23, 2021
6:23 p.m.

Slow Motion Genocide

Bathed in tragedy
Smothered by grief
The progression of death
An unwelcome motif

Swimming through trauma
Drowning in rage
Blood stained streets
Outdoor cage

The cancer of violence
Pervasive and widespread
Poisonous corruption
A tsunami of the dead

Witnessing daily carnage
Surrounded by cold steel
Endless elimination
Too numb to feel

Increasing depravity
More innocence lost
No political solutions
A mounting cost

Collective outrage
Advancing and expanding
Abolition over “reform”
Reasonably demanding

Sweeping through determined
Undeterred by the state
Legions committed
To overturn the hate

Marching for peace
To bridge the divide
All to prevent this
Slow motion genocide

Dennis Earl
Hamilton, Ontario, Canada
Monday, April 19, 2021
1:47 a.m.

I Have Contempt For You

Disrespectful dickhead
Denying an ugly past
Pretending it never happened
This chasm growing fast

Entering without warning
An uninvited pest
Still expecting civility
An infuriating test

Awkwardly cornered
Not willing to reply
Extremely bothered
Cutting the final tie

I have contempt for you
I know who you are
Stubbornly relentless
You’ve pushed it too far

Refusal is an illness
It’s been over for a while
Scrubbing every trace
Because someone’s in denial

Dennis Earl
Hamilton, Ontario, Canada
Sunday, April 17, 2021
4:29 p.m.

The Asshole Returns

Uninvited trespasser
Hopelessly oblivious
Compulsive poster
Forever waiting

Whiplash reactions
Cantankerous demeanour
Instant embarrassment
Not so easily erased

Repeat offender
Unleashed and uncontested
Can’t help sharing
Every stupid thought

Unmatched body of work
Growing by the second
Audience of none
Never to expand

Venomous obsession
Driven to obliterate
Aiming for infamy
Destined for obscurity

Dennis Earl
Hamilton, Ontario, Canada
Wednesday, April 14, 2021
10:20 p.m.

Resentful

Crushed spirit
Pulverized ego
Loathed existence

Tantalizing proposition
Blueprinting terror
Renewed vigor

Meticulous preparation
Patiently psychotic
Restoration of hostility

Born again devil
Numb to suffering
Aroused by horror

One last stand
Instead of wasting away
The cycle begins anew

Dennis Earl
Hamilton, Ontario, Canada
Wednesday, April 14, 2021
10:17 p.m.

Enjoy The Depression

You don’t belong here
You never did
Silence is a message
You refuse to accept
A sudden vanishing
No explanation
An unexpected return
Lots of confusion
Growing annoyance
Broken trust
No respect for boundaries
You scaled every wall
Defying my wishes
To pretend to care
Disappearing for years
Completely unmissed
Suddenly emerging
Waiting for a response
That will never come
Insulting my thoughts
Expecting gratitude
Demanding compliance
Making suggestions
That no one requested
Time to move on
Take a fucking hint
How many more times
Can you be repeatedly ignored?
Feigning concern
Won’t change my mind
You’re blocked for a reason
Stop pretending you’re not
You deny the darkness
I wholeheartedly embrace it
Enjoy the depression
It’s here to stay

Dennis Earl
Hamilton, Ontario, Canada
Wednesday, April 14, 2021
2:08 a.m.

Fatale (2020)

Derrick Tyler is a very stupid man. As tension grows in his marriage, he escapes to Vegas for a bachelor party. That’s his first mistake. His second is letting his business partner Rafe remove his wedding ring so he can frolic and mingle.

His third blunder is encountering Val who he spots dancing around unbothered in the crowd. She makes her way to the bar where he witnesses her shutting down a presumptuous would-be paramour.

Then comes his fourth. As they strike up a conversation, he gives her a fake name. She’s into him a little too much. He blurts out that he’s married but either she can’t hear him because of the loud music or she refuses to accept it.

Either way, it’s onto boo boo number five. They fuck. The morning after, realizing he’s an idiot, he tries to do the walk of shame on the sly. But she awakens. Unable to find his cell phone, she informs him it’s locked in a safe in the hotel room. He won’t be getting the combination without her getting something in return.

They fuck again. She gives up the code. Shouldn’t have brought your phone in the first place. Mistake number six. Oh, and he also lies about where he lives. Blunder number seven.

Feeling completely guilty about straying so easily after just one day away from his wife with a controlling woman he has zero chemistry with, he surprises her with a homemade dinner, an impromptu dance and sweet night-time lovin’. Right in the middle of it, there’s a noise. Derrick, eventually armed with a golf club, checks it out. It’s not a false alarm.

Jumped by some big dude in a ski mask, it’s go time. Despite getting throttled and temporarily deafened when a gun shot just misses his ear drum, he survives with full hearing intact and the assailant flees before the arrival of a shitload of policemen and CSIs.

And here comes error number eight. When asked how it was possible for the intruder to slip in so easily when they have all those surveillance cameras, well, they’ve been “offline for a month” and haven’t been fixed. As for the alarm, they’re always forgetting to turn it on at night. What the fuck?

Then, the detective assigned to the case arrives. This is the moment when Fatale, already a very routine stalker thriller, becomes a very silly one. The detective is Val, the same long-haired dame Derrick still regrets hooking up with. He’s about to regret it even more.

Val is played by Hilary Swank who is the absolute wrong choice for this role. She’s not seductive at all. She’s too butch. And her mere presence in numerous scenes provokes laughter not ominousness. The second we meet her we know something’s off. Derrick is a fucking dummy.

During the trip to Vegas, Derrick (Michael Ely) confides in Rafe (Mike Colter) that he suspects his wife Tracie (the striking Damaris Lewis) is getting busy with somebody else. His instincts are not wrong. Tracie’s a real estate agent who works longer hours than she should.

Derrick and Rafe have built a successful sports agency that has attracted the interest of a major competitor. Rafe wants to merge. Derrick values their independence.

Val has her own problems. Divorced from a controversial politician facing allegations of corruption, despite getting a restraining order against her there she is popping up outside his house more than once. (You’d think he’d have her arrested.) She wants to see her young daughter but her ex, now remarried, is having none of that for a very good reason.

In a flashback, we learn Val is an alcoholic prone to leaving live firearms lying around. Her daughter picks one up and blammo, now she’s handicapped. The incident was the breaking point for the marriage. Val got fired but miraculously rehired by the Los Angeles police department. (How convenient that she lives in the same city as Derrick.)

Now three years sober, you know that’s not gonna last. Indeed, upon learning the truth about Tracie thanks to Val’s relentless spying on her, Derrick starts picking up a bottle and stupidly leaves it behind.

And here comes mistake number nine. Arriving at Val’s crummy abode where the elevator is super creaky and she’s the only one around, she gets him all worked up on two fronts. That leads to their third fuck and a tenth mistake which puts him on the police’s radar again but for all the wrong reasons.

The bad decisions continue once Derrick, a slow-ass motherfucker to begin with, realizes he’s been set up, perhaps from the very start although the movie suggests this has all just been a lucky break for Val. Realizing she now has a way to solve her custody dispute outside a rigged legal system, she ropes her dupe into doing a misdeed on her behalf, using his own stupidity against him.

Derrick claims he has a plan. But he’ll have to make some adjustments because he goes on to make his eleventh mistake.

In the meantime, against Derrick’s vehement pleadings, his gangbanger cousin Tyrin (Tyrin Turner) has a doomed plan of his own. With his ride-or-die Bumpy tagging along, they pay Val a surprise visit. Before they even arrive, you know how this is gonna go. They’re easily snookered. My only question is how did she know where to hide that rifle?

When Val requests a meeting with Derrick by using Tyrin’s phone, the dopey sports agent shows up at one of his wife’s unsold beachfront properties to meet her. Val correctly points out that she is well within her right to defend herself when two strangers are torturing her for answers. Thankfully, for his sake, his aforementioned plan is doable although it probably should’ve been implemented a lot sooner. But he’s a glutton for punishment.

In the midst of the COVID crisis, Fatale managed to sneak in a brief theatrical run late last year after being delayed a number of times. Needless to say, the incoming crowds were small. In a healthier climate, I can’t imagine them being much bigger.

A cross between Unlawful Entry and every thriller about a vengeful psycho out to punish a philandering husband, as predictably derivative it mostly is, it honestly could’ve been much worse.

Michael Ely is no stranger to these kinds of films. He was the heel in The Perfect Guy, after all. And he played the husband targeted by Dennis Quaid in The Intruder. Perhaps it’s time to pick a different genre. He’s a good, likeable actor with obvious charisma but he’s not doing his career any favours here. He does what he can as Derrick but it’s hard to completely sympathize with a rich cat who keeps making preventable self-owns.

Mike Colter’s Rafe generates more heel heat for his snotty interactions with Tyrin and for his double betrayal than anything Hilary Swank does. Watching her slip into her old family’s house to watch her daughter and her husband sleeping is ridiculous. Does no one in this movie have a functioning alarm system?

The twists are often foreseen well in advance, most especially the ending where a certain character is lying bloodied on the ground for a prolonged period of time. You know damn well they’re not dead. How can you possibly move that quickly without detection?

Val relapsing is completely unnecessary and as it turns out not really a big deal after all. She has one big sip of Derrick’s abandoned bottle and that’s it. We never see her passed out or teetering or even slurring her threats. Apparently, she can moderate her drinking but not her murdering.

When we first meet Tyrin, he goes to see his cousin just as he closes a big endorsement deal for one of his star clients. When the gangbanger asks for some money, Derrick doesn’t hesitate handing him some bills. Rafe, who hates Tyrin, wonders why Derrick even bothers associating with him. As we learn from Val’s thorough background check, Derrick was once a gangbanger, too. And Tyrin did him a solid, allowing his older cousin to have the glamourous life he now enjoys.

Say what you will about the sports agent, he is loyal and appreciative. If he only he was smarter.

Dennis Earl
Hamilton, Ontario, Canada
Friday, April 9, 2021
4:26 a.m.

Crash (1997)

I’ve never owned a car.  I don’t even have a license.  I’ve always been a passenger in someone else’s vehicle.  I’ve only ever driven a go-kart once and that was almost 35 years ago.  I’ve always gotten around town by foot or bus.

The characters in David Cronenberg’s Crash cannot possibly imagine living like this.  They’re obsessed with transportation.  It’s a hypnotic condition, a hopeless addiction.  It’s not normal being this mesmerized by something so utilitarian.

I’m reminded of an ad slogan for a car in Crazy People:  “They’re boxy but they’re good.”  With the exception of those old school vans with all that space in the back, we’re talking tight, confining spaces.  It’s one thing to make out with someone in the back seat.  It’s quite another to try to navigate intercourse with them when you have so little room to maneuver, especially if you’re not petite. And no, that’s not based on personal experience.

That’s not a problem for the slender car fetishists in Crash.  Less room is actually better.  Pain is good.  Awkwardness highly recommended.

But it’s not just about sex in vehicles or being in close proximity to them.  It’s not even about the vehicles themselves.  It’s what those vehicles represent:  danger, liberation, forbidden lust, reconnection, realignment.  It’s about human beings who should know better forging with machinery in increasingly dangerous ways to awaken their darkest fantasies.  What I mean is ordinary sex has become boring.  The excitement is missing.  Cars represent that missing excitement. If it ain’t depraved it ain’t worth a fuck.

How they’re able to work ordinary, stressful jobs when this obsession is all consuming in their lives is answered in one quick scene.  James Ballard (James Spader before he got bald and fat) is a film director.  The crew is looking for him to approve a steadicam shot.

But he’s a little preoccupied.  Hiding in the camera room with a hot co-worker who really needs to buy a new pair of jeans, she is most definitely DTF.  Pressed for time, he tries to make it count.  If anything, his real job is starting to get in the way of his unchecked compulsion.

His architect wife Catherine (a fully committed Deborah Kara Unger) is also polyamorous. When we first meet her, she’s in an abandoned airport hangar getting a little too intimate with one of the grounded planes.  A mysterious, unseen man comes up behind her.  Has he whipped it out? It doesn’t seem like it. Regardless, she is not startled, her trance unbroken.  No one disturbs them. They pay no mind to the departing plane heard flying overhead.

The Ballards obviously have an open marriage.  They seek out new partners constantly and then regale each other with the details to spice up their own sexual encounters.  It sounds exhausting.  I find it curious that there isn’t a single scene of either of them eating food.  Their slavish devotion to their most primal urges has become their daily nourishment. It’s no wonder Catherine is always smoking.

So far, their sex lives are adventurous but not entirely disturbing. That dramatically changes after James gets into a horrible car accident. Miraculously surviving a head-on collision, as he stares straight ahead at the beautiful woman (Holly Hunter in another daring performance) staring right back at him in the passenger seat, she does something peculiar. She shows him her nipple. Meanwhile, her husband is dead having just flown through his own windshield.

I have so many unanswered questions about this scene but I’ll limit them to two. Did the woman’s husband deliberately crash into James or was it truly an accident? What are the chances that two symphorophiliacs could meet each other this way?

While resting uncomfortably in the hospital with incredibly brutal injuries (fantastic make-up effects here), the stoic Catherine pays him a visit. She seems jealous of his condition. We learn the man with her in the hangar is her flight instructor. When she talks about lying in a bed right next to her husband following a hypothetical crash it doesn’t sound like she’s kidding. Oddly, we never see her flying. Then again, that would be redundant. She’s already high.

Two more unanswered questions I’d like to pose. When James goes for a walk in the hospital hallway he encounters the woman from the car accident. Why is she not happy to see him? Why does she basically blow him off and not in the way he’d like her to?

I ask this because once he’s released he goes looking for his totaled car. He spots it along with a bunch of other abandoned write-offs and climbs in. Porn, professional and homemade, lying scattered and unnoticed next to his feet. As he discovers the missing windshield here comes the woman, a lot friendlier than before. (Why this abrupt change in attitude?) We learn that she’s a doctor named Helen and she was way more interested in hooking up with colleagues and underlings than her husband who she clearly doesn’t miss. I’m under the impression he had no idea.

James hooks up with her a couple of times in an airport parking garage where one particular voyeur cares what they’re doing. That would be Vaughn (Robert De Niro doppelganger Elias Koteas in his best performance). Is he really a doctor? That’s the impression James gets when they first meet. I mean he’s wearing the white lab coat. But the way Vaughn studiously eyes all his injuries and stares a little too deeply into his confused eyes a little too long, it’s pretty clear he has bad intentions.

Vaughn, with a growing collection of scars, is so obsessed with celebrity car crashes he hosts very illegal renegade outdoor events where a small, enraptured crowd watches his not-so-perfect reenactments with professional stuntmen. His presentation before the big event reminds me of Hugh Hefner’s Playboy Mansion film nights where the legendary publisher would briefly offer a trivia-laden introduction before rolling one of his favourite titles to his younger captives.

Vaughn knows everything about James Dean’s last moments. The date of the accident, what car he was driving, who he crashed into, where he was going, even what his last words were. You see him getting more and more turned on gently molesting the two cars in this program as his stuntmen climb into their respective vehicles. Inevitably, something goes wrong. No one dies but the stuntman driving Dean’s Little Bastard Porsche suffers a bad concussion. It’s not a dealbreaker. He’s way too excited to portray Jayne Mansfield in the next show.

This event has a transformative effect on James and eventually, this new sensation is passed on to Catherine who has no idea how exciting she will find the aggressive Vaughn. The closest thing to a villain in a film filled with unsympathetic characters, Vaughn is essentially the most extreme example.

It is he who comes up with the idea of deliberately crashing into them to heighten their collective arousal. The closest he comes to achieving this is through buddy bumps, you know those light bumper taps from behind meant to send a message without causing any injuries.

It takes a while for James and Catherine to warm to the idea which eventually leads to the ending. Those concluding words James says, repeating what his wife utters way back at the beginning, are emblematic of what’s wrong with these people. They’re continually pushing themselves towards a deeply unsatisfying oblivion. But like all addicts stuck in their downward spirals, the thrill is always in the chase even if the end result does not always provide a full release.

When Crash premiered at the 1996 Cannes Film Festival it caused an eruption of revulsion. And yet, it still managed to win recognition from the divided jury of celebrities who offered a Special Jury Prize in honour of its uncompromising ballsiness that has never been handed to another film since.

The few on the panel who passionately supported it understood what the film’s many critics did not. The film is not pornography. (There’s barely any nudity and the unstimulating sex scenes are quite brief.) It’s not about turning you on although it certainly gave Martin Scorsese a boner. No, it’s about the emptiness of ordinary living, how sexually insufficient it can be for these bored, privileged characters to operate within acceptable societal boundaries. It’s about escaping that depressingly stifling feeling by diving headfirst into the darkness, a scary place that opens up the senses and releases what they believe is their true selves, a merging of sex and moving technology.

There’s a revealing moment when Vaughn takes James out for a ride. The celebrity car crash fanatic tries to explain what has opened up in him, what he hopes to open up in his future lovers. He calls the crash itself a “fertilizing” event rather than a “destructive” one. He’s always looking for like-minded acolytes for his “project”. While we see heartbreak and devastation in those photos he takes and collects, he’s experiencing nirvana, his true purpose in life. He’s so dedicated to his growing addiction even a car tattoo ups the ante for him.

There’s another scene where Vaughn, James and Catherine park near a multi-car accident. As the firemen attempt to rescue the survivors, Vaughn blends in pulling out his camera and taking inappropriate snaps, thrilling to the sight of a dead dog. No one complains, everyone is too busy working or suffering. He even gets Catherine to pose for a couple of shots.

Later on, they all go to a car wash. As they go through, their privacy protected by the giant, rotating brushes, Vaughn makes his move on a game Catherine who looks both terrified and enthralled in the back seat, especially when he chokes her and tightly squeezes her tit. James, the driver, watches intently making mental notes for their own sexual encounter back home. Look at all those love bruises on her body. Notice how she tries to shield her breasts with her arms. She gets off on being damaged.

After the Dean demonstration, we meet Gabrielle (the memorable Rosanna Arquette). She doesn’t say very much. She doesn’t have to. Her damaged body speaks volumes.

A car crash survivor herself (lots of photos in Vaughn’s growing collection but no real explanation for what happened to her), she wears very constricting leg braces that turn her into a hot, walking Frankenstein ready to troll the S&M clubs. (I’m not sure what’s going on with the rest of her unusual outfit.) Inevitably, she hooks up with Helen and one of the Ballards. It’s the encounter with James that stands out, though.

As they cram into the front seat of her brand new, tiny sports car, James struggles to move her legs around, which he can’t bend because of those goddamn braces, so he can get busy. She doesn’t complain about her obvious discomfort. It increases her attraction to him. Madly ripping away her leggings, that injury he buries his face in sure looks like a long-ass vagina. It’s quite the visual, I must say.

I saw what is known as the NC-17 version of Crash when it played in Canada back in October 1996. I was profoundly disturbed by it. I liked it but didn’t love it and yet it’s never really left me. This review is about the slighly shorter R-rated version that played in the United States in June 1997. I never really thought much about this cut until recently when I spotted that same DVD copy of the film I always notice on the shelf in my public library and finally decided to pick it up.

I was a 21-year-old virgin when I saw the first version which greatly explains my icky feelings. (I’ve long struggled with getting comfortable with sex.) I’m thankfully not a virgin now at age 45 but even this American edit still provokes a little uneasiness but not to the extent I felt in my youth. I still like it.

The reason Crash’s American release was delayed was because of Ted Turner who was so revolted by the film he wanted it banned outright. In the end, Fine Line Features, the art house brand of the Warner Bros. family of major studio distributors which Turner was once a part of, put out both cuts more than a year after the furor at Cannes.

Despite the pushback from an asshole who thought colourizing black and white films was a wise decision the film had surprising commercial appeal thanks in no small part to all the buzz and deeply divided reviews it inspired. Deprive people of edgy entertainment only makes them want to seek it out even more.

Adapted from J.G. Ballard’s equally controversial fictional novel by director David Cronenberg, it remains, even in this slightly trimmed version, a provocative albeit flawed treatise on empty, unfulfilled desires and the failed lengths the most determined will go to repeatedly not achieve them. Ballard has said he wrote the book as a cautionary tale, a futuristic warning as society and technology advanced simultaneously. He very clearly had contempt for these people.

I have this theory that the real reason Cronenberg’s Crash was hated by so many had nothing to do with what is depicted on screen, as weird as those scenes truly are. No, what really bothered its critics was that Cronenberg doesn’t really judge these characters at all. Well, except maybe Vaughn who is the only one facing police scrutiny and whose relentless pursuit of extreme pleasure proves costly.

Howard Shore’s awesomely moody, echoey guitar parts, which dominate the score, enhance otherwise quiet scenes of the car fetishists giving in to their worst impulses. Dark and foreboding (especially during the dazzling opening title sequence with those silver, dinged up letters), and also strangely catchy, the music demands you notice it. Like the best Shyamalan films, silence becomes its own character as these men and women often take dramatic pauses during their intense conversations. Is it hesitation that delays the expression of their unspeakable thoughts? Or maybe a slight bit of shame?

Notice how insulated they all are. Outside of work, they only socialize with each other. (James turns down a ride from a crew member because Catherine is picking him up.) They are all bonded by their unquenchable lust for vehicular death and destruction. Watching that German crash test dummy video is almost like a religious experience for them. They don’t understand a fucking thing the narrator says and it doesn’t matter. It’s all about the visual. They worship catastrophe.

After the accident involving James and Helen, they both confess to feeling suddenly overwhelmed by the sight of traffic. He thinks there’s three times as many cars on the road now. She thinks it’s ten. They both mistake trauma for sensory overload. At one point, while driving around later on, James is shocked to find almost no competition for lane space. Is he going through withdrawals now?

It doesn’t help that the Ballards have an apartment balcony with a perfect view of the busy highway below. Catherine goes out there after the encounter with her flight instructor taking in the sights. As she catches up with James and they both realize those orgasms with other people are sometimes quite elusive, it’s go time once more. And yet it’s not nearly enough. It’s never enough.

Casting all the key roles with beautiful people who never raise their voices and have lost themselves through their own sexual corruption, Cronenberg cleverly showcases their zombified personalities by emphasizing their cold selfishness. They don’t crack jokes. They don’t engage in silliness. They don’t live for frivolity. Perpetually stone-faced, minus an occasional mischievious smile, there’s nothing fun about their search for the impossible orgasm.

Rather than personally condemn these irredeemable deviants he allows them complete control of their own narrative. As a result, the film has almost a dreamy quality as it continually shifts from one creepy encounter with one set of shady characters to the next. The police break up the Dean stunt but give the scattering audience plenty of time to walk away. Even they’re not willing to punish them. Gotta love white privilege.

Cronenberg has always been a smart writer specializing in thoughtful dialogue. The characters in Crash, particularly Vaughn, are articulate about their motives to the point where you understand their morbid fascination but don’t share it. Cronenberg isn’t criticizing their questionable lifestyles, but we sure are.

Dennis Earl
Hamilton, Ontario, Canada
Tuesday, April 6, 2021
4:51 a.m.

CORRECTION: Originally, I had written that Crash had premiered at the 1996 Cannes Film Festival and was met with a rough reception. “And yet, it still managed to win recognition from the divided jury of celebrities who offered a made-up Special Jury Prize in honour of its uncompromising ballsiness that has never been handed to another film before or since.” In actuality, the very real Special Jury Prize had in fact been awarded the previous year. I apologize for the mistake and regret the error. This portion has now been lightly edited to correct my mistake.

Dennis Earl
Hamilton, Ontario, Canada
Tuesday, April 6, 2021
6:59 p.m.

Ghosts Of Girlfriends Past

Ghosts Of Girlfriends Past is about a guy and a gal who are deeply in love with each other but they keep fucking up the relationship.  As a result, they go through a series of dumb estrangements. 

The guy is Matthew McConaughey, a sleazy fashion photographer and the gal is Jennifer Garner, a doctor he doesn’t deserve.

When we first meet him, he waltzes into his busy New York studio, checks on one shoot that’s already set up for him and snaps the photo in two seconds.  Then, he encounters a couple of cute models in their lingerie who want to get together with him.  He blows them off.

Then, he breezes through another shoot involving another attractive woman, a young Black pop star.  She’s going to be on the cover of Vanity Fair.  She’s expecting to be photographed fully clothed but McConaughey wants her out of her outfit.

Now in her bra and panties, he suddenly places an apple on her head and has some Olympic archer shoot an arrow through it.  Her panicked expression as the apple gets punctured is the shot. In the real world this wouldn’t even make the cover of Cracked.

The pop star’s a fan but McConaughey insults her music claiming it’s for tone-deaf 12-year-olds.  That doesn’t stop her from getting busy with him in his office while hopelessly defending her work.

The photog is a busy boy, so busy in fact that, while in the middle of this make-out session, three of his paramours get in touch through his computer and to save time he breaks up with all of them simultaneously.  One of them accurately points out he’s a misogynist.

For a brief moment at the start, the old McConaughey charm is on display only to completely disappear once we realize his game.  It takes his voluminous list of exes a lot longer to catch on.

An orphan since he was 7 (his parents died in a car accident), he’s long been given terrible advice by his now diseased uncle Michael Douglas (who resembles George Hamilton in a photo shown on one of the DVD menus) doing another version of his horny old man One Night At McCool’s character.

As Roger Ebert accurately pointed out in his review, Douglas is clearly channelling the recently departed producer Robert Evans, the man who once had the golden touch at Paramount, The Godfather being his biggest triumph.

In flashbacks, we learn that Douglas taught him how to be a pick-up artist.  He offers all the usual lessons:  don’t make eye contact, hit on her disinterested friend to make her more interested, follow a compliment about her mind or the top half of her body with an insult.  No cuddling, no spooning, no spending the night.  No last names, first names optional.  The kid takes all this nonsense to heart.

McConaughey’s less charismatic brother Breckin Meyer is getting married to the beautiful but histrionic Lacey Chabert.  Reminded by his long suffering assistant to drive down to his late uncle’s estate, that could’ve easily doubled for Downton Abbey, he arrives in the middle of the wedding rehearsal.  Overseen by Chabert’s Korean War-obsessed veteran dad Robert Forster who will conduct the actual ceremony, he reconnects with Garner. 

She’s not pleased to see him.  But Amanda Walsh, the adorable former MuchMusic VJ playing one of the horny bridesmaids, certainly is.  Besides Chabert, she’s the only woman in the room he hasn’t banged.

As per usual, McConaughey makes his overtures to whoever wants a quickie.  Walsh is all too game.  But nothing ultimately happens because the photographer, a harsh critic of love and marriage drunk on his own arrogance, is about to enter his own personal Dickensian dystopia.

He encounters his dead uncle, now a helpful spirit, in the bathroom.  Guy’s totally changed his mind about the whole whoring thing, says he’s wasted his life and he suddenly doesn’t want his nephew making the same mistake.

Expecting to encounter Walsh in one of the guest bedrooms he’s staying in, instead a now spooked McConaughey finds the ghost of 16-year-old Emma Stone writhing under the covers complete with bad hair and braces who’s about to take him on an uncomfortable journey.

We get the whole back story on his relationship with Garner, how she was the one who got him into photography when they were kids.  (She gave him his first camera for his birthday.  He still has the first photo he took of her in his wallet.)  We see them at a high school dance where he gets cockblocked during an REO Speedwagon song, a fateful turning point.

Royally pissed off and sad, that’s when Douglas starts corrupting his development.  The next time he sees her he snubs her.  When he spots Stone at a basement party they’re all hanging out at, he makes his move and loses his virginity in an instant.  They never speak again.

McConaughey’s character is such a dick his solution for getting over his broken heart is to become a heartless sex addict, to end things before his women do because those who care less have all the power in a relationship.  Pussy.

As Stone demonstrates, he has left behind his own long trail of broken hearts.  One by one, his past catches up with him.  As they all swarm him at once, he freaks out.  He has a bigger one later on when all those used condoms start falling from the sky.  One of the rare times I’m grateful for a PG rating.

Stone also shows him the time he returned home after securing a solid gig as a second shooter for Herb Ritts which effectively launched his career.  Encountering Garner once more, this time with long hair and way more confidence, he reminds her of her “betrayal” but still wants nookie.  After teasing him about still being with the guy she danced with at the high school dance (he seems to believe it) she ultimately employs that doomed strategy of making him beg for it for a while following regular dates until it’s finally go time. 

All set to do the walk of shame once they finally consummate their relationship (what’s 20 years between friends?) she gives him an ultimatum.  Stay over and we keep seeing each other.  Leave and it’s over.  The bad influence of Douglas is the deciding factor.

Then, the ghost version of his very much alive assistant pops up in his car following a completely preventable screw-up involving the wedding cake.  She shows him what the wedding party actually thinks about him when he’s out of the room.

His brother defends him and the bridesmaids are eager to knock boots, but that’s as kind as they get.  A third ghost, a silent blonde McConaughey can’t help but hit on, shows him his inevitable future if he doesn’t turn babyface.

Chabert has fixed up Garner with another doctor.  They get along well enough to annoy McConaughey who worries about being cockblocked again.  As it turns out, he’s right to be uneasy.

Ghosts Of Girlfriends Past was released in 2009 and marked the thankful end of the real McConaughey’s dismal romcom period.  From The Wedding Planner in 2001 through to How To Lose A Guy In 10 Days (2003), Failure To Launch (2006) and Fool’s Gold (2007) all sandwiched in between, the future Oscar winner was stuck in these dead-end projects for one very big reason.  They were all sizeable commercial hits.  But, yeah, he got to make it with hot babes so I’m not entirely unsympathetic, of course.

Thankfully, in the 2010s, he righted the ship with The Lincoln Lawyer and Interstellar before winning an Oscar mid-way through.

The problem with Ghosts Of Girlfriends Past is that, like his brother Meyer, at least until their own temporary, wholly expected estrangement, the movie still has hope for him whereas I don’t believe he’s in any reasonable position to expect forgiveness let alone become worthy of redemption.  He’s too detestable and I’m not buying his instantaneous personality change.  As Garner points out, one apology is woefully insufficient.

Even in the final sequence, after McConaughey saves the wedding and is on much better terms with Garner, she still has doubts about his sincerity.  I was actually expecting an additional scene where they end up in bed together again and when she awakens she looks over to see he kept his word.  But we only see them dancing in the snow outside which still doesn’t seem all that encouraging.

There aren’t any laughs nor any convincing romances.  But there are lots of scenes of male characters being creepy with women. 

Shortly after encountering Douglas, the fashion photog spots Chabert’s Scientologist MILF Anne Archer at the bar and, for some reason, he thinks groping her tit is a good way to determine if she’s not a ghost herself.  Gasping but remarkably not that offended, they engage in casual sex talk at McConaughey’s behest.  He doesn’t bed her but she’s nonetheless “extremely flattered” to be considered for later disposal.  Sure.

Now relieved to see his nephew has made unconvincing amends with Garner, Douglas starts hitting on the other ghosts.  The silent blonde firmly rebuffs him and the 16-year-old Stone is grossed out.  “We’re ageless ghosts,” is not the winning pick-up line you think it is.  The old fucker hasn’t changed at all. I didn’t care for his transphobia, either.

I don’t know about you but I’m tired of movies about unrepentant polyamorous slimeballs being terrified into becoming monogamous with their lost loves who could do so much better.  It’s such an antiquated, old-fashioned trope that really ought to be retired.  How many screw-ups is a slutty guy afforded before the dim prospect of reconciliation is solidly off the table?  In movies like this, these assholes get a lot of One Last Chances.

McConaughey is one of the most likeable stars in the business but this is his least appealing role.  You don’t want him redeemed.  You want to see his ass kicked repeatedly.  Getting lightly soaked from all his exes tears falling from the sky is quite frankly letting him off easy.  Maybe drowning him in them would’ve gotten the point across more compellingly.

You don’t just hurt hundreds of women over your lifetime like that, get scared out of your socks because of what your bleak future might hold and suddenly cut a couple of promos expecting the world to embrace you again.  It doesn’t work like that.  Look, I’m all for restorative justice but this ain’t it.

As for Garner, she’s a manipulative fool in her own right.  She confesses to her fixed-up wedding date that she has a bad boy weakness and a tendency to turn these immature men into projects, to mold them into more pliable lovers.  (“He’s not as dumb as he looks, folks,” is not something I would want to hear from a girlfriend who wants to control me.) In the flashback romance sequence, McConaughey plays along with her restrictions only until he gets what he wants and then he bolts.  Neither of their romantic strategies really makes them happy.

Proving once and for all she’s a hopeless case herself Garner reveals that every time she sees McConaughey, she’s right back to where they left off.  Those old emotions just won’t die.  And yet there’s a perfectly nice guy staring right back at her. Thankfully, another opportunity arrives right after Garner quietly ditches him. He’s not as dumb as he looks, folks.

Dennis Earl
Hamilton, Ontario, Canada
Tuesday, April 6, 2021
3:54 a.m.