72 Comments

Another fine review! If you've guessed right, we seem to be headed for a diverse and interesting slate of Oscar nominees.

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Never mind that – what do the pups have to say?

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The Fortune Cookie

2 marks. and spot on about its weak ending.

Now you got me more eager to see this thing.

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Also, Tootsie was vile.

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? How so?

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Hoffman's character treats everyone who has any meaning in his life as if they are irrelevant, maybe subhuman. The premise of the film, that the destructive acts he performs make for a great hero(ine) of modern America via how he treats everyone is a common (stupid) American thing. Maybe that was the point. But in this case the result is the actual real-life America treated Hoffman and the film as feel-good heroic.

So now that I write this I could see a slim chance that it is Real America® that is to blame for how it elevates Hoffman, his character and the film, rather than blaming Hoffman, Pollack, Gelbart, Schisgal and McGuire. Perhaps the filmmakers really did want to play with jerking around tv audiences in a sly way to illustrate how gullible and broken this place really is...

Anyway, the unadulterated adoration of Tootsie the character, by the tv audiences within the film and the filmgoing public (not to mention reviewers) viewing the film, is genuinely disturbing.

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I agree. But when I say this to others they just tell me I don’t know how to enjoy things.

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Well, the folks with whom I shared this opinion (tho in a much more salacious way) back when the film came out were less verbally critical , but their eyerolls were volumetric.

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Maybe each of us, like Elaine Benes, has our English Patient. I think we've found yours.

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Never liked "Tootsie", and you've just encapsulated why.

Vis-a'-vis "American Fiction", it's ironic it's being released into an America that's being convinced by Rufo et al that they need to erase Black people from the national narrative.

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Should add I truly enjoyed Bill Murray's act (and wished we'd got much more), and Hoffman's performance was for the most part superb, in support of a nasty enterprise.

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"That... is one CRAZY hospital."

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But... but... he learned to be a better man by being a woman! How can you not love that!

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This is why Satire is what closes on Saturday night. What I got out of the movie is that it's all about artifice, acting, the performance of being a "woman", and how much we prefer the act to reality in that and other ways. The inevitable "we've all learned something" ending was inevitable and undercuts my view, but there you are. The mass audience probably was just impressed by Hoffman in drag, like Williams in Mrs. Doubtfire, another "we've all learned something" movie.

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hmm! I thought Michael was supposed to be an asshole from the start -- so deep in his bullshit that he had alienated everyone, which gave him the desperation to pull this outrageous stunt -- and that his growing feelings for Julie were what motivated his sabotage of it. One man's opinion! But I didn't adore him at all.

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I will add that there's something in the idea of a female character taking traditionally male prerogatives creating a sensation, but I don't know whether it's good or bad in the context. Have to think about it.

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Hmmm. The thing for me was that the ending was essentially an illustration of how he'd fucked up the lives of everyone he'd come in contact with, yet the Feel-Good Hit of the Year award by acclamation was draped over the whole enterprise.

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Wasn't it in the Hayes Code that a criminal couldn't profit from their crime, so every crime movie had to end with the malefactor either dead or in jail? I know Wilder played an important role in blowing up the production code, but in this he seems to have wanted to stick by the rules.

As an aside: I've always wondered if the fatalism of American film noir, that a guy just can't win and you're doomed if you even try, isn't itself a product of the Code. You're right, a guy can't win, it's right here in the rules!

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"Wasn't it in the Hayes Code that a criminal couldn't profit from their crime, so every crime movie had to end with the malefactor either dead or in jail?"

Periodic reminder that Will Hays, before being president of the MPAA, was Republican National Committee chair. As such, he foisted upon America the (up-to-then) most corruptly criminal Presidency yet--that of Warren Harding.

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https://www.umsl.edu/~gradyf/theory/1930code.pdf

Knock yourself out (off-screen)

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"The courts of the land should not be presented as unjust."

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Purple Hayes!

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Is this the film version of Percival Everett's "Erasure"? Everett is a genius, and that book is a goddamn masterpiece. Even had a scene set at Crisfields, one of the few joints in DC I really loved. I had no idea the novel was being made into a film. Thanks, Roy! These film reviews are invaluable for a shut-in like me. If Fiction is a hit maybe they can do "A History of the African-American People (Proposed) by Strom Thurmond" next

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So have you seen the movie yet? I just watched it and I'm about a quarter way through the book.

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Saw it this weekend. I liked it. I get why they had to adapt it to focus on Monk’s family dynamics, but I wish they’d kept them in DC. I dug the book more, but I always do. And I liked the last scene in the film when Monk spies Robert Townsend. At least I thought it was him.

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Thanks as always, Roy. This one is on the list. I hope you get around to doing Anatomy of a Fall, I saw that last night and was dazzled.

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Noted.

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I loved it. Any film that can make me laugh-out-loud - several times - is alright in my book. I agree that the story balance between life and "fiction" was a nice turn. It all felt absurdly real.

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"leads us from rooting for the scam to rooting for its demise"

Reminds me of Breaking Bad, where my own emotions followed similar arc. Breaking Bad also made me realize that an author or filmmaker can make me root for ANY criminal, merely by making the criminal the protagonist. I'm easily manipulated that way.

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We all are easily manipulated. It's in our monkey brains' love of stories.

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Well, I hope there are limits, just in case anyone is thinking of coming out with a movie titled Young Hitler.

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Wasn't that Jojo Rabbit?

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Ha! There's another one, called Max. Hitler as a veteran trying to get into art school. I recall being very disappointed, but oddly, not hating it.

I wonder how it holds up, now that I know quite a bit more about societies teetering on the brink of fascism.

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Lesson: Let ALL the veterans into art school and buy ALL their paintings, it's cheaper in the long run.

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"Look Who's Back" is Old Hitler, with a time warp twist. Too late to buy him off.

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I think Max is very underrated. "You're a hard man to like, Hitler."

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"Come on Hitler, I will buy you a glass of lemonade!".

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Don't give Mel Brooks any ideas. Or Adam Sandler for that reason.

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Comedy wouldn't be the worst of it, I can imagine Hollywood taking in another direction, sort of a Hitlerian Twilight Saga, he's dreamy, haunted, misunderstood, played by whatever teen heartthrob has the Benedict Cumberbatch franchise these days.

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See 'Saltburn' for heartthrobbers..

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Yep, always a fresh crop.

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"no matter how far the fraudster pushes his fraud, either the system just swallows harder or fate clears a path."

Take a wild guess who this made me think of. Just livin' permanently rent-free in my head.

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The American football version is "Keep running that play until they stop it."

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One reason (of a semi-infinite number) I gave up on that game...Stunning how boring it is.

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reading this review makes me freshly remember how much i liked this movie - i agree that it makes it a richer movie that the logline plot is a complication in the larger family story, rather than vice versa. definitely one of my favorites this year.

Michael Creighton and Miriam Shor are doing the best amoral PR flack performances of the year, narrowly beating out Michael Cera and Kate Berlant as amoral PR flacks in "Dream Scenario."

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The Oscars don't have a category for "Best performance as an amoral PR flack" because Kellyanne Conway retired the category.

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(The white people are all ridiculous caricatures, but turnabout is fair play.)

Do you think that's intentional?

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Satire usually has some cardboard villains for the hero to react to and overcome. And turnabout is fair play.

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Oh yes.

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Do two White people have a conversation that's not about Black people? I'm callin' this The Rufo Test.

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If you consider a conversation about football about Black people, I guess not.

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Good question.

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Jeffrey Wright is great at playing conflicted multi-personalities - see “Westworld.” This one’s on the list.

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Oh, this one I'll have to look for. Dammit, reminds me I need to watch Putney Swope again.

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I forgot to mention that! It's like a housebroken version.

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Ohhh, I'll see if I can catch this one. I stopped reading this review because I like to go in cold (and read reviews a day post-watch, once I've had a chance to think on my own), but from what I did read, it sounds like it's got a setup similar to Bamboozled. Bamboozled was a mess, but buried in it are 2 or 3 perfect short stories, so happily I'll give this movie a chance to play out the idea.

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JMO, Bamboozled is fairly typical Spike Lee: he tries to make more than one movie at a time, and doesn't know how to end any of them.

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What's so hard about endings? The pig comes out and says, "Tha-tha-tha-that's all folks!" If you don't like that, there's always the Monty Python method, just squash someone under a giant cartoon foot. People overthink these things.

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What was wrong with the ending to Bamboozled?

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I wasn't sure about this one because I disliked Bamboozled so much, couldn't make it through. Roy's first sentence changed my mind and we had date night tonight. Two thumbs up!

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Late reading this one, Roy, but I wonder how many younger -- that is, younger than old-ass me -- viewers will even get the joke of "Stagg R. Leigh." (I sincerely hope they didn't explain it. I'll be seeing this soon.)

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"Nobody Doesn't Like Stagg R. Leigh"

(In almost every Black family someone knows, or *is*, Staggalee.)

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You might notice that even something as brilliant as the original "The Producers" had no better ending than blowing things up—I always thought in connexion with that of Michael O'Donoghue's "How to Write Good" which suggested that if you're in a corner you can't beat 'Suddenly, everyone was run over by a truck.'.

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