The Player (1992)

  This was the wrong day/month/year to try and watch this movie.  It was supposed to have gone up last Monday but it took me six days to get through it.

Griffin Mill (Tim Robbins) is a Hollywood studio executive currently being harassed by a series of anonymous threatening postcards from, he assumes, a writer he ghosted.  There is also external pressure in the form of studio rumors that Griffin is about to be replaced by a younger, hotter up-and-coming exec (Peter Gallagher).  Griffin decides to confront writer David Kahane (Vincent D'Onofrio) to see if Kahane is behind the postcards but ends up beating him to death in a parking lot.  Now Griffin has to beat a murder rap, scuttle his rival's ambitions, and possibly woo Kahane's bereaved girlfriend (Greta Scacchi).  Just another day in Hollywood.

A smarmy white guy exercising his extreme wealth and privilege to gatekeep while also distancing himself from any rule of law is precisely the wrong energy to bring to this our Cursed Year of 2020.  This is considered a classic self-referential dark comedy and maybe.  Any other year but this one.  My cynicism meter is pegged out from *gestures at everything* reality so I just don't have the capacity to find this film funny right now.  What you SHOULD watch it for is the absolutely jaw-dropping number of cameos.  I can't even list all of them.

Honestly, this is an incredibly well-done film and would make a great Evil Hollywood double feature with Sunset Boulevard but if feels so tone-deaf this year in particular.  It's currently streaming on The Criterion Channel if you're up to it.