Category Archives: Movies

OK, I finally saw the flick, and I was impressed

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Matt Damon did a good job of humanizing Odysseus. Beside him is the unprepossessing Athena.

Wow. That was quite an experience, seeing “The Odyssey” last night. It’s one of the few times I’ve been at a film that the audience applauded at the end. I joined in.

Christopher Nolan really accomplished something here. I was very impressed, and not a bit disappointed — which is unusual for me, with things I’m familiar with when I go in.

I highly recommend it.

I do have one BIG complaint, which is definitely not Nolan’s fault. I went to see the movie in Imax, so it looked great. But the first thing I did when I got there was turn off my hearing aids, and that wasn’t enough to shut out the painful noise. You’d think that would be great for a guy who’s hard of hearing, but it isn’t. Loud sounds produce a tremendous buzzing distortion in my ears. I couldn’t make out dialogue; I could only understand about 20 percent of what was said. (Sometimes it helped to put my fingers in my ears.) I knew the story, so I usually knew what was going on. But I can’t wait to see it again with normal sound — and maybe subtitles.

Another thing that helped me follow and enjoy the flick was that it followed the original about as faithfully as you can in just three hours of running time. There were changes, but they were very inventive and helped move the story forward convincingly. Examples of that:

  • In Homer’s verson, a priest at Ismarus gives Odysseus a supply of sweet, super-powerful wine that a normal human needed to dilute 20 to 1 before drinking. Later, our hero uses the uncut stuff to drug the Cyclops so he and his men can escape. In the movie, there’s no stop at Ismarus, so no wine, and Odysseus just waits until the Cyclops is asleep before blinding him. It works.
  • He doesn’t stop in the land of the lotus-eaters, either. Instead, Calypso feeds lotus flowers to Odysseus to give him amnesia and keep him around for seven years. This works on a couple of levels. First, it sort of exonerates Calypso because she ultimately decides to let the hero go, and even helps him remember who he is and where he wants to go. First step: stop eating the flowers!
  • Secondly, it exonerates Odysseus for leaving his loving wife in the lurch back in Ithaca while he spends every night in the bed of a nymph for seven years. Hey, he forgot! This is not the only thing Nolan does to make Odysseus a more sympathetic figure to a modern audience. Between all the slashing bloodshed and hanging girls who slept with the enemy and selling captive women into slavery, and lots of lying, Homer’s character wasn’t quite the thing for moderns seeking a hero. He had problems. But by skipping and soft-pedalling a lot of that, plus casting Matt Damon in the role, Nolan made Odysseus someone a 2026 audience could cheer for. It was very artfully done, and he didn’t overdo it and make him fake or too vanilla.
  • He also toned down Athena. She keeps showing up, but she’s a very unprepossessing goddess, considering. People tend to think of her as the goddess of wisdom, like her Roman rip-off Minerva. But she’s also the goddess of war — a tall, strong figure who wears a soldier’s helmet. She was into bloodshed, and was always counseling Odysseus — and Telemachus — to man up and swing the sword about. In this, she wore a lovely white robe and imparted Wisdom to our man O during relatively quiet moments (as in the still you see above). I mean I think she did. Since I couldn’t hear dialogue, especially quiet dialogue, I admit she could have been saying, “Get on out there and kick some ass, ya sorry wuss!” But in a quiet, philosophical kind of way.

Anyway, all those changes worked. What were the best parts?

My son was there with his family, and in discussing it with them after, I brought up the scene with Polyphemus, the Cyclops, which I thought was very well done, as I said above.

But after I got home, I remembered the very best part — when Circe turns O’s men into swine. It was astounding, and it was done without CGI, which makes it more amazing. I won’t tell you how she does it, but it’s not your garden-variety, wave-a-wand hocus-pocus. SPOILER: It’s particularly shocking to see after the way Circe appears (and hasn’t identified herself) — not as a foxy enchantress, but like somebody’s mom, utterly terrified to find armed soldiers in her home. She looks like an everyday middle-aged lady throughout the scene, but by the end there’s no doubting her power. Earlier I quoted Jack Aubrey as saying, “… as for that tale of all his foremast-hands being turned into swine… why, he might tell that to the Marines.” He would not have doubted had he seen this.

As for least-favorite part… above, I said I was “not a bit disappointed” by anything, but I’d have been happier if I’d seen some sirens. Oh, Odysseus gets tied to the mast, and acts out the words of my fave Cream song, “How his naked ears were tortured/By the sirens sweetly singing…” But I saw nothing. I was eager to see whether they looked like this or like this. I would have preferred the former, but been happy to see anything.

Oh, about those controversies: I wish I could say Lupita Nyong’o was awesome as Helen, but I can’t. And it’s not just because, her face aside, she’s too skinny for me to think of her as the world’s most beautiful. She just wasn’t as good in the role as she needed to be to shut the complainers up. She wasn’t, say, as good as Sophie Okonedo as Queen Margaret in the recent production of Shakespeare’s Henry VI plays. When I first saw that, I kinda went, “Huh?” (I mean, she was supposed to be from Anjou), but was deeply impressed at what she did with the role. Not so in this latest instance. But it didn’t matter much given that Helen wasn’t as critical to this particular story, once the war was over.

I did have a “Huh?” moment early in this masterpiece early in the story, when I thought, “Why is there a girl dressed as a Greek soldier on that beach?” I finally decided it was supposed to be a very young boy, and I was right. It was supposed to be Sinon, who wasn’t actually a character in The Odyssey, but was added by Virgil in his Latin version. Nolan had added Sinon to set up something involving one of Penelope’s suitors, showing you what a bum that guy was (paying a kid to go to war in his place). Later, I learned Sinon was played by the same person who starred in that charming and witty movie “Juno” quite a few years back, who later became a trans activist. Which explained things, sort of. Maybe Nolan wanted to tick off somebody else out there besides Elon Musk. But what I don’t understand is why Odysseus would have sent this kid Sinon on essentially a suicide mission. Sinon sort of had the same question when O later looked the kid up in the realm of Hades.

As for the other casting choices I had been wondering about… I already said Matt Damon was perfect as the guy who could present O as someone who appealed to a Hollywood audience. He really made the movie work. Anne Hathaway and Tom Holland did fine as Penelope and Telemachus (the loved ones O was forgetting while shacking up with Calypso). And believe it or not, the “Twilight” guy was good as the very worst of the suitors, Antinous. I suppose he’s matured as an actor.

I said above that this was one of a very few films I’ve seen that caused the audience to applaud. There was another thing that has seldom happened in my adulthood: I came out of the theater feeling like I was still in the movie. It took awhile to shake. When I saw (and then reviewed) “Star Wars” in 1977, I was having trouble shaking the feeling that my Chevy Vega was an X-wing, and I was swooping in to finish off the Death Star (which was not the safest illusion to have while zipping East on Walnut Grove in Memphis). I had a similar experience after seeing “Apocalypse Now,” which haunted me the rest of the day.

I had that experience a lot when I was a kid living in Ecuador. My best buddy Tony Wessler and I would go to the Variedades theater near my house, pay the equivalent of two cents to get in, and sit on plain wooden benches to watch Italian (and sometimes French) movies with classical themes — gladiators or Hercules or whatever. The special effects were terrible, and if not for the Spanish subtitles we’d have understood none of the dialogue, but these shows were about the action. Afterwards, walking the six blocks or so home, we’d pass by construction sites littered with pieces of bamboo (they used it for scaffolding), and use them to swordfight constantly, all the way. We were IN the movie.

But since I’ve been grown, movies have to be something really special, do something new and different to give me that feeling. Last night, when I got to my car, I felt it strongly. Before driving away, I texted my wife, who had not come along, to say that after three hours of what I had experienced, I had this feeling it was going to take me another three to get home. She took it as a joke, but I actually felt that way.

I hope ol’ Tony has been to see it. This was everything those cheap flicks we enjoyed so much back in the day wanted to be…

What WOULD Helen have looked like?

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In this depiction from 550 BC, Helen’s white, but everybody else is black. Go figure.

OK, here we go again…

Yesterday, I questioned the casting decisions for the new film I still haven’t seen, but am anxioius to see — “The Odyssey.” But I did so optimistically, thinking it’s likely that Christopher Nolan knew what he was doing, and has more imagination regarding such things than I do.

Then, I listened to the third of four podcasts (yesterday I forgot the one in the video) that “The Rest is History” put out about about “The Odyssey” (both Homer’s and Nolan’s versions). And I found myself groaning when Tom Holland and his guest, classicist Daniel Mendelsohn cited the first of the “controversies” that have cropped up about the film.

And of course, this being the 21st century, it was about Identity Politics.

It seems that the actress who plays Helen of Troy is black. Her name is Lupita Nyong’o. So here we go.

Well, she definitely fulfills the primary job requirement: She’s beautiful. Does that make her the best choice for the role? I’ll get back to that. Meanwhile, the “controversy” seems to have been kicked off most prominently by a guy who, now that he’s the richest guy in the world, seems to have decided to dedicate the next chapter of his life to reinforcing every negative stereotype about white South Africans:

Sheesh. You’ll notice that in my previous post, I didn’t mention who was playing Helen in this film because I didn’t look to see. It didn’t even occur to me that she would be depicted, since this isn’t the Iliad, but the story about what happened to this one guy and his crew after the Trojan War is over. But apparently it includes the part when Odysseus wins the war by coming up with that big wooden horse trick.

I did raise the question of whether Matt Damon was right to play the star, and so did Holland and Mendelsohn, pointing out that Damon is sort of the ultimate whitebread All-American boy type, which the ancient Greeks were not. And one of the guys on the podcast, at some point, asked one of those overused points of the PC universe by asking, Why don’t they question that, huh? Well, I did, but I’m hoping Damon does a good job with it.

From there, they took the discussion in an intellectually respectable direction by discussing the question: How DID Homer picture Helen?

To encapsulate what they said, they made two excellent points: The first was that Homer was careful not to give many details about what she looked like. (Although he did say she was “white-armed,” but I see that as a reference to class rather than pigment. Upper-class ladies stayed out of the sun. Also, her father was a “swan.”) That, of course, left it up to the reader or listener to picture Helen according to whatever standard of beauty was admissable to those audience members.

Secondly, they made the logical point that what Homer and other ancient Greeks were picturing was probably someone who looked like them and their immediate neighbors. It’s extremely unlikely that they pictured in their minds either a blonde such as the one who played Helen in this flick, or a sub-Saharan African like, well, Lupita Nyong’o. (Although technically, she’s from Mexico. Still, her parents were Kenyan.)

Personally, that’s the way I would have gone. I wouldn’t have taken it to extremes — I wouldn’t say, insist upon a Greek woman — but I would have gone for a more or less Mediterranean look. Or at least sought a beautiful woman with dark hair, like Anne Hathaway — who plays Penelope in the film.

I thought the makers of “Troy: The Fall of a City” did a good job when they chose Bella Dayne to be their Helen. But, possibly illustrating the idea that we all have our own notions of beauty, I thought the most attractive actress in the series was Frances O’Connor. She was cast as Hecuba, Paris’ mom. (Still, she’s a lot younger than I am.)

Anyway, what do y’all think? Who would be the perfect Helen? To get you started, I’ll throw out a few names, and link to images. It’s not a Top Five List or anything. I didn’t think that hard about it. I just thought:

  • Who is really, really beautiful, the kind ancient men might have gotten into a huge scrap over? Not only that, but what does she have that’s extra, the X factor, that turns heads?
  • Who looks vaguely Mediterranean, or at least isn’t a blonde or redhead or East Asian or sub-Saharan African or anybody who makes the average viewer go “Huh? I thought she was from Greece!” Although if she has the other qualifications and is at least a brunette, I’ll give her a pass on the olive complexion (yeah, I’m cheating to give Anne Hathaway a chance).
  • Who is a real actress, preferably with the chops to handle the role — not just some hot pop singer or model?
  • She doesn’t have to be the right age for the role NOW. That’s too restrictive because I’m not likely to think of actresses who are that age (which I suppose, given the place and time, would be somewhere between 20 and 30 during the years of the war) at this moment.

Here are my suggestions (not in order):

  • Penelope Cruz. Admittedly, I didn’t think of her on my own, but she came up when I Googled beautiful actresses who looked Mediterranean (just to kind of get me started), and she fit the bill.
  • Rashida Jones. Wait, you say, her father is of African descent! And you’re thinking that because you’re thinking in racial, Identity Politics terms. I’m thinking looks. And in this case, a combination of a man of African descent and the chick from the Mod Squad gives us the right look. And she certainly has the X factor.
  • Rachel Weisz. Dang. I just said “X factor,” and I’m not going to keep repeating myself.
  • Emily Blunt. OK, OK, I know — too Northern European. But there’s something Hellenic there that I think the costume and makeup people could work with.
  • Gal Gadot. I was done with this list, then someone on the telly mentioned her name, and I had to come add her.
  • Marisa Tomei. I’m going to say “X factor” again because she’s got more of it than anyone here. As for unmistakeable Mediterranean (or at least Caribbean) allure, did you ever see “The Perez Family?”
  • Marisa Allasio. Mentioning the other Marisa made me think of this one, whom I admit I’ve never seen act, possibly because she retired and married a count when she was 22 and I was 5. She’s way more Helen than those gorgeous Itallian actresses who came along in the ’60s (sorry, Sophia). OK, she’s blonde, but give her a break; she’s from Turin, not Naples! But she’s way Italian, so dye her hair.

That gives us something to start with. But we’ll need a time machine to get them. That last one retired in 1958.

EDITOR’S NOTE: I actually saw the film last night, but nothing in this post reflects that. I mostly wrote it yesterday, but wasn’t done before I had to head to the theater. I just did some editing and fleshing-out of points this morning before posting it. I’ll make observations later about what I saw.

Tom Holland and Tom Holland both say it’s good

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Of course, one of them — the Tom Holland we know better as Spider-Man — has a vested interest. And the other Tom Holland is an enthusiastic classicist, and co-host of my fave podcast, “The Rest is History.” The latter is particularly a fan of The Odyssey, and had been looking forward to Chistopher Nolan’s new film version for some time. The younger Tom Holland plays Telemachus in the movie.

Still, I appreciate their recommendations, which reminded me to buy a ticket. Not for tonight (opening Fridays are such a mob scene), but for soon. I didn’t really need the video reminder, though, because the elder Tom and his podcast partner Dominic Sandbrook have done no fewer than three episodes on the Homer’s epic this week.

I’m still listening to the first one. And no, The Odyssey isn’t itself a work of history. But it is about a key figure in the defining story that loomed over and fired the imaginations of the ancient Greeks and Romans — the Trojan War. The entire Greek culture is called Hellenism, for the woman whose beauty started that whole 10-year contretemps in the Hellespont area. And as we know, the Romans were too busy conquering people to create their own culture, so they just stole the Greeks’. Remember Romulus and Remus? In one version of their story, they were descended from a Trojan War veteran.

And when I say defining story, I mean the way the Arthurian legends were in England (you know, the Matter of Britain). And the Trojan saga was at least as big as everybody in the Marvel Universe is in America today. They were sort of like all those superheroes (wrap in D.C. as well) combined with George Washington and the Pilgrims who landed at Plymouth Rock. (These days, we do have some tiny awareness of actual history. But history was not a thing before Herodotus invented it.)

And frankly, I’ve always been more interested in the story of Odysseus problems getting home after the Trojan War than in the war itself. Maybe I’d understand the actual war and its motivations better if I could just once see a photo of Helen herself. Lacking that, I’m more into the Sirens and the Cyclops and the lotus-eaters and Calypso than a 10-year siege.

But that’s not the only reason I’m pumped about the movie. I’ve never seen anything in the IMAX format. I’m eager to see how film can produce better resolution than most digital images. More than that, this flick is the first to be shot entirely on IMAX 70 mm film, and to be processed without any digital tricks — things like adjusting color tones were done by filter overlays, old-school. Since I’m sharing videos, take a look at this clip:

Finally, I’m intrigued by Nolan’s casting choices. Some were unexpected, but I hear they worked out well:

  • Matt Damon as Odysseus. I think Damon is great, but I never saw him as a mythical hero on this scale. No, I didn’t think, like Paul Rudd’s character in “The 40-Year-Old Virgin” that he was a “kind of a Streisand” (Will Hunting was a pretty tough kid), but I truly didn’t see him as an action protagonist until “The Bourne Identity.” Yet he was awesome in that. So maybe, despite not being Russell Crowe or Kirk Douglas, he’ll be just as awesome in this.
  • The aforementioned younger Tom Holland as Telemachus. Really? Peter Parker as the young son of Odysseus whose father has been gone so long he doesn’t remember him? Maybe. We’ll see.
  • Anne Hathaway as Penelope? Admittedly, she’s beautiful enough to play Helen herself, but I’ve got to get “The Devil Wears Prada” and “The Princess Diaries” out of my head.
  • Charlize Theron as Calypso? Well, maybe she could be a nymph. Maybe. Even if she is (and I’m going to get myself in trouble, but the thought insists on coming to the fore) 50. But hey — if she had existed, Calypso would probably have been older.
  • Robert Pattinson as Antinous? Isn’t this the teen heartthob from “Twilight?” I don’t picture him as one of Penelope’s thuggish suitors.

But based on what I’ve heard from the Tom Hollands and others, I expect to be surprised by their performances. So I’m very much looking forward…

OK, the BoSox are no longer in the cellar…

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This just happened last night, when the Red Sox beat the White Sox, 8-1.

And it’s been awhile.

So you know what this means, right? Haven’t you ever seen a baseball movie about a hapless but loveable team that goes from worst to first? Think “The Natural.” Think “Major League.”

This is the point in the plot — somewhere near the middle of the season, or a bit past that — when the team makes the turnaround, but the pennant still seems beyond its grasp.

You might run some numbers and say with the number of games left, it’s highly, highly unlikely. But remember, we’re now in the era of playoffs, and it’s possible for a Wild Card team to win it all.

Oh, I should add: This formula also applies to basketball. Think “Hoosiers.”

Happy Birthday, Mel! Now, the rest of you — let’s have this out, right now!

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I really enjoyed the tribute The New York Times posted today, on Mel Brooks’ 100th birthday.

And it was certainly well-deserved. Mel is a genius, and maybe the funniest guy to live anytime in the past, well, century.

I liked that they included this Brooks quote, which I read a bunch of years ago, but enjoyed reading again:

My God, I’d love to smash into the casket of Dostoyevsky, grab that bony hand and scream at the remains, “Well done, you goddam genius.”

It makes me want to do the same with regard to Mel. Trouble is, I can’t dig him up, because he’s still alive. Is he actually shooting for 2,000?

But while we’re on the subject, I want to settle something. The NYT’s piece today makes the same mistake people have been making since 1974. When it says….

In 1974, two of his most beloved hits, “Blazing Saddles” and “Young Frankenstein,” began their climb to the top of the box office.

It shamefully neglects to add: “Of course, ‘Young Frankenstein’ is at least 10 times better than ‘Blazing Saddles.”

They’re always leaving that out. Worse, a lot of people go so far as to say that “Blazing Saddles” was his best, funniest movie — which of course is raving nonsense. It’s embarrassing.

Sure, it was funny, in a “let’s see how tastelessly outrageous we can be” kind of way. I mean, stuff like that can be funny — or rather, could be funny, back in the days when you could get away with it.

And let me defend it from the low opinion of very young people who congratulate themselves that they are part of a society that has grown beyond laughing at scenes such as this:

These enlightened young folks don’t know that in 1974, we lived in a society that had much earlier ceased to laugh at such things, like a decade or two earlier. And Brooks was rebelling against that self-restraint. He was removing certain fetters of decency from comedy — as he had done with “Springtime for Hitler” and as SNL, building on Brooks, would do one year later with this skit.

Now that I’ve stuck up for that freedom of expression, and admitted that it made me laugh, I have to be honest and add that… it’s not really for me. I laugh, but then I’m embarrassed for laughing. Especially if my wife is in the room.

But “Young Frankenstein” gives me guilt-free laughter. And the humor is on a higher plane. Sure, there are laugh lines like this one:

But that’s not only funny, it’s positively genteel compared to half the humor in “Blazing Saddles.” Also, it shows that Mel Brooks is still running the show. And it’s good to be the king. And the king is in on the joke that sex makes us, up to a point, very comical creatures.

Speaking of being in charge — you may say I’m taking away from Mel by preferring YF, because it wasn’t his idea. It came from Gene Wilder, who pitched it to him when they were making BS. But beyond that, it was a collaboration that has Mel Brooks’ fingerprints on every monochromatic frame. If Wilder had tried to make it on his own, or with a different collaborator, it would have flopped.

In the end, it just has a magical, special feel to it — a feel that has a lot to do with the faithful reproduction of presenting the brilliant humor within the context of an early-30s horror flick. It has class, at least in an aesthetic sense, all the way through it, a kind of class that BS not only lacks, but fiercely rejects. And that raises it to a level well above the junior-high humor of the predecessor. Even though a lot of it is the same humor, from the same guy.

Beyond that, it’s just funnier.

Many of you will disagree. This is a fact of life. There are still people going around insisting that “Godfather II” was better than the original. Which is nuts, but — despite our current president’s most determined efforts — it’s still a free country. I defend your right to say such things, despite the fact that you are so clearly and embarrassingly wrong…

You thought Madeline Kahn was funny in ‘Blazing Saddles?’ Fine. But for FUNNY, see her in ‘Young Frankenstein.”

 

 

On the brilliance of Christopher Guest’s voices

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Thinking back to my “Top Five Best Actors” list from last month…

One thing that was wrong with the list — not as wrong as leaving out Gene Hackman, but wrong — is that it fails to acknowledge comic actors.

I thought about that the other night while rewatching “Best in Show,” that descendant of the ultimate mockumentary, “This is Spinal Tap.” This is the one that did for dog shows what, say, “A Mighty Wind” did for folk music. Or “Waiting for Guffman” did for… well, you get the idea.

It struck me again that Christopher Guest, who is in all of those films (and I think directed all of them but Spinal Tap), is a wonder. Let’s just focus on one of the essential skills that distinguish a great actor — accents. (Or perhaps I should say “voices.”)

Among all those mockumentary roles, it’s easiest to remember Guest as Nigel Tufnel in “Spinal Tap.” Listen:

It’s a good accent, although that doesn’t really set him apart. Michael McKean and Harry Shearer are just as good as his bandmates. Americans can take pride in their portrayal of the Three Stooges of rock. We see Brits put on convincing American accents all the time (Daniel Day-Lewis as Lincoln, or about half the “American soldiers” in Easy Company in “Band of Brothers,” or Hugh Laurie as Dr. House, and so forth). It’s nice to see we have some talent over here as well.

(Of course, one might note that Guest had an unfair advantage — his Dad was a British diplomat, and he spent part of his childhood in his father’s country. In fact, he ascended to the House of Lords when his father died. But Nigel Tufnel displayed an accent that was very different from the RP we generally associate with lords.)

But what really got me was his accent — and general characterization — of the man from a small town in North Carolina who brings his bloodhound to the dog show. It’s not just the accent, as perfect as that was (definitely not a cheesy Hollywood imitation of a generic Southern manner of speaking). It was the quality of his voice behind the accent, his facial expressions and other facets that made me like he was a true, unique individual I had met sometime in the past — not a “type.” Listen:

Hear it? There’s finesse in that voice, as well as in the accent, that few actors are able to display.

And it’s much the kind of finesse that Robert Duvall brought to his roles.

I just thought I’d acknowledge that…

Top Five Actresses ever in film history

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Listen for the family whistle… and don’t take drugs!

OK, I hurried up a little too much on the Top Five Actors post — so much that I left off Gene Hackman! — but I confess I’m going to hurry even more on this one, because it’s already been a couple of days…

I limited the men’s list to the last 60 years because I was doing it in the context of thinking about Duvall. I’m going all-time on this one. Well, all-out regarding the history of film (and TV), which is not all that much longer. But I have no means of making an informed judgment of the acting skills of, say, Lillie Langtry. (Although she appeared on film once, in 1913, I never saw “His Neighbor’s Wife.” And even if I saw it, I couldn’t hear her voice — which is kind of key in assessing acting skill.)

Finally, I’m doing my best to make sure this is about acting ability, and not about how attractive these women were or are. Which is not easy to do. Hollywood undermines such a merit-based goal at every step, and has done so since the beginning. It does the same to men — think Clark Gable, Cary Grant, Robert Redford, Brad Pitt. But that’s nothing compared to how the principle (or lack of principle) is applied in the case of women.

Why does this happen? Butts in the seats. The casting directors look for people the slobs out here will pay to look at. American casting directors take it to ridiculous levels. You want to see at least some normal-looking people? Check out British film and TV.

Anyway, I promise you won’t find Marilyn Monroe on the list. But whatever I do, a lot of these women will be more attractive than average.

Back to the subject of actual acting…

Top Five

  1. Frances McDormand — Every time I see her, I think, “Greatest actress,” or at least “Greatest American actress.” My favorite role? The mom in “Almost Famous.” See photo above. But let’s not forget “Fargo.”
  2. Marisa Tomei — Great in everything. Who doesn’t love her in “My Cousin Vinny?” Of course, I think my fave might be her leading role in “The Perez Family.”
  3. Rosalind Russell — I’m sort of breaking my rule here of not basing my judgment on a single movie. I’m putting her here purely for her performance in my favorite comedy, “His Girl Friday.” Anyone who’s as good as good as she was in that is simply that good.
  4. Emma Thompson — Good in everything, of course, but I think my favorite three are the wife who is wronged by that scrub Alan Rickman in “Love Actually;” the lead in “Sense and Sensibility,” as my own 15th-great grandmother in “Henry V.” (Yeah, I’m still that crazy about genealogy.)
  5. Olivia Coleman — I’ve really come to appreciate her over the past decade or so. I could pick almost any of her roles as an example, but I’ll go with an unusual bit of casting. She was cast as the case officer of the title character in Le Carre’s “The Night Manager.” The character in the book was a man. But while there were some bad changes from the book in that show, this one improved the story. Oh, and remember — recently, she was the Queen! (I thought about the other Olivia — de Havilland — but I like this one better.)
  6. Jean Arthur — I’m just always so glad to see her pop up in any of those flicks from the 30s and 40s. If you wonder why, go watch “Mr. Smith Goes to Washington.”

OK, I’m running out of time (gotta go to school today), so I’m going to have to really hurry through the…

Honorable Mentions

  1. Katharine Hepburn — Can you believe I left her out of the Top Five? Hey, I’m a rebel. But I place her here with all respect. Certainly go watch “The African Queen” again. But then be sure to check out “Bringing Up Baby.” Very silly, and nowhere near as good as Rosalind Russell’s masterpiece, but I like an occasional screwball comedy.
  2. Jennifer Ehle — Another based on a single role (she was born to star in “Pride and Prejudice“), although I enjoy her in every role — I just don’t see her enough. And before you gripe about too many Brit actresses, remember that this one was actually born in North Carolina.
  3. Emma Stone — In recent years, she’s become an A-lister who can do anything. But I especially like her first big film role, in “Superbad.” Who can blame Jonah Hill for obsessing about her? (And no, that’s not just a beauty thing; it was the kind of kid she came across as…)
  4. Sigourney Weaver — Sure, I liked her in “Alien” and “Alien 2, (speaking of which, guess who I saw at the comic-con at the Fairgrounds last month — Michael Biehn!)” but her all-time best was “The Year of Living Dangerously.” That was also Mel Gibson’s best, and Linda Hunt’s.
  5. Ingrid Bergman — I could say “It’s not because she was beautiful!,” but who would believe me? Seriously, “Casablana” is No. 3 on my all-time films list, and she was perfect in it. So there.

So there you go. I did that too fast, and I’m sure I left out somebody as great as Gene Hackman on the other list, but I’m sure y’all will let me know. (And no, I don’t mean Meryl Streep. She’s good but didn’t make my list. Nor did Cate Blanchett, but I thought about it.)

A single role earned Jennifer Ehle an Honorable Mention.

The best actor of his generation, or since

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Tom Hagen dealing oh-so-patiently with the blowhard Jack Woltz in “The Godfather.”

Sadly, this is a week for obituaries. In fact, we received word of the passing of both Jesse Jackson and Robert Duvall in the same news cycle. It’s just taken me a few days to get to both of them.

The loss of Duvall is hard to take because he projects (still, in his films) a depth of humanity that is too often missing, or hidden, today. Not just in film and other arts, but in other aspects of modern life — especially politics. Fortunately, we still have those films. Tragically, he won’t be making more of them.

The best way I can sum him up is that as soon as I learned that would play a part in a “coming attraction,” I would think this is going to be good, and start looking forward to it. (Of course, directors and fellow performers had their own good or bad effects on the production, but having Duvall on board gave the picture a running start.)

My favorite Duvall roles are not always the most popular ones. He was celebrated for his role in “Apocalypse Now,” and loads of fans who thought they were unique could come up to him and say that they loved the smell of napalm in the morning. But while his performance in that was bright and gripping and entertaining — he occupied the screen fully in every frame in which he appeared, eclipsing the other actors — that’s not my favorite. It’s too cartoonish, and I found it distracting in a film that, after all, was a modernized retelling of Conrad’s Heart of Darkness. At that stage of his career, Marlon Brando wasn’t nearly the actor Duvall was. But his character was far more meaningful to the story overall, and more in keeping with the tone.

What was his most impressive performance? I might think of something else the minute after I post this, but off the top of my head, it would be Tom Hagen in “The Godfather.” He creates a supremely self-controlled man. If you read the book, you know why Hagen was this way. He had learned it from his foster father Vito Corleone. Always keep your cool. Never issue a threat. Never let your enemy see what you’re feeling or thinking. Project yourself as the very model of reasonableness.

That screenshot at the top of this post is from his best scene — when he goes to Hollywood to ask a cartoonish blowhard of a producer to give a movie role to the Don’s godson Johnny Fontane. See that calm, deferential look on his face. That’s all Jack Woltz — the very model of weak man who thinks he’s something special — would ever see of him, until he woke up with a horse’s head in his bed.

It’s hard to project that quality, even when you’re paid to and you’re not personally feeling what the character would feel. Sure, he was a bad guy, but at least a bad guy with admirable qualities.

I also liked his fading country music star in “Tender Mercies,” a beautiful film about redemption. My favorite scene is this one: A woman comes up to him on the street and asks, “Were you really Mac Sledge?” He sort of half-laughs (as I remember; I haven’t seen it in a while), and admits, “Yes ma’am, I guess I was.”

I was never in my life nearly as famous as his character was supposed to be, but I still experience that sort of thing when people recognize me or my name from my newspaper days. I’m no star, but it happens. It last happened just over a week ago. I still haven’t fully figured out how to handle it, beyond saying thanks, but I like the way he did it. (At least the lady didn’t say, “I love the smell of napalm…”)

Duvall traveled around East Texas with a friend preparing for that role. Finally, the friend asked what they were doing and he explained, “We’re looking for accents.”

Again, though I wasn’t a professional actor, I had enough in common with Duvall to identify. Reports The New York Times:

Across a film career that took flight in the early 1960s, he stood out for an intense studiousness that shaped his every role. Even as a boy, in a Navy family that moved around the country, he had an ear for people’s speech patterns and an eye for their mannerisms. “I hang around a guy’s memories,” he once said. Insights that he gleaned were routinely tucked away in his head for potential future use…

I did the same, growing up. I was never fully a part of the communities in which I lived, but I grew up observing them closely and with interest. I suspect that’s a reason why so many military brats become journalists. As for accents — they are a lifelong source of fascination (and imitation, although I’m not as good at them as when I was young). I’ve been meaning to write one of my too-long-to-get-around-to posts on that subject for years. Maybe I’ll get to it soon.

I look at Duvall on the screen, and I see another guy like that.

I’ll close with a mention in that NYT article of his first film role, which foreshadowed the unique power he would bring to the screen:

That Mr. Duvall could become practically whomever he chose was foreshadowed in his first film, “To Kill a Mockingbird,” a 1962 classic based on Harper Lee’s novel about racial prejudice in a Southern town. He played Boo Radley, the reclusive, hollow-eyed neighbor who fascinates and ultimately rescues the two small children of the defense lawyer Atticus Finch (Gregory Peck).

As Mr. Duvall’s career flourished in the 1970s and ’80s, it surprised many of his fans, on looking back, to discover him in that film. One person apparently not surprised was Harper Lee. When Mr. Duvall landed the part, she sent him a congratulatory telegram. “Hey, Boo,” she wrote. It was, he said later, his only contact with her.

I love that story. That was a very cool thing for “Scout” to have done. And it’s a congratulatory telegram I would certainly frame and put on the wall…

“Boo” Radley at the moment Scout first sees him…

Separated at birth? No, way BEFORE birth…

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As a Superman fan from the Silver Age, I’ve always been kind of frustrated with the casting of some of the key characters in the movies. Especially Superman’s Pal, Jimmy Olsen.

The one on the TV show wasn’t TOO bad, but he could have been better. At least he had the costume right, and the attitude as well.

But the makers of the first movie got it all wrong. He acted the part OK, but he didn’t look right, and worse, FAR worse, they took the world’s most famous cub reporter and turned him into a photographer. Inexcusable. Nothing against photogs, mind you, but that not what Jimmy Olsen WAS!

From then on, things got no better. I can’t even remember the subsequent ones I’ve seen. I guess I’ve blocked them out.

But the long nightmare is over, if Hollywood would reach out NOW to New Zealand. In fact, now might be too late, since I’m seeing this guy on a show filmed in 2016. But check him out, anyway.

I’m talking about Nic Sampson, who played D.C. Sam Breen on the cop show “The Brokenwood Mysteries,” currently available on the PBS app. If he hasn’t aged too much since the third season I’m now watching, he’s perfect. Take a look:

So we’re all set, once we ditch the tie and suit, and put him in a bow-tie and sweater vest. And he can play the part. He’s the junior member of the detective (which the Kiwis pronounce “diTEECtive”) team, and his character has a definite cub-reporter feel about him. The other two main characters are sort of Clark (or a cross between Clark and Perry White) and Lois. (But alas, they don’t really look much like them.)

You doubt me? Then I refer you to the one, true version of Jimmy, that is, the Silver Age version:

Admittedly, according to the text on the cover, that’s not actually Jimmy himself, but his evil double. The real Jimmy is apparently trapped in a plastic box or something. I dunno, but a double’s a double, and Nic Sampson is definitely one of those. (Oops! I just read the cover again, and apparently the double is the one in the box, and the apparent bad guy is the REAL Jimmy. Oh, well, whatever. You get my point.)

It’s like the artist used him as a model for this cover. But that’s impossible, because this cover was published in 1965, and Nic Sampson wasn’t born yet until 1986!

Which is impressive. Maybe his mom read a lot of D.C. comics.

So that’s done and dusted. Anything else I can help you with, Hollywood?

No, it’s not the funniest. It’s No. 7

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Just a very quick note to correct something I ran across on YouTube while looking for something else.

It claimed that Woody Allen’s “Love and Death” is “the funniest film of all time,” which it is not.

It’s Woody Allen’s funniest film, (“Bananas” is second, followed by “Play it Again, Sam”). It’s also, to stretch a point, the funniest comedy ever to lampoon uberserious Russian novels of the 19th century. But that’s all that can be said, except that in the larger category of best comic films of all time, it comes in at a respectable No. 7.

I won’t elaborate. I’ll just copy and paste what I wrote three years back (in a post in which I regretted having failed to put Howard Hawkes’ masterpiece “His Girl Friday” on my overall movie Top Five, although it made my Top Ten), and then we’ll move on:

  1. His Girl Friday — Yay, it’s at the top of the list! And deserves it.
  2. Young Frankenstein — Some would choose “Blazing Saddles.” I would not. Have you seen that one in the last few decades? It doesn’t hold up. This does.
  3. Ferris Bueller’s Day Off — I was looking at the AFI list of the supposed top 100 funniest movies in American cinema, and at No. 79 they had “The Freshman,” from 1925. Which I’ve never seen, but I did see “The Freshman” from 1990, and it was awesome. I mean, come on, Brando playing a guy who just happens to look like the Godfather? Still, it was not star Matthew Broderick’s best. Ferris was. And it didn’t even make this stupid list. Which is lame.
  4. This Is Spinal Tap — You can talk mockumentaries all day, but this is the granddaddy of them all, and the best ever. Because it goes to 11.
  5. Office Space — In a category by itself.
  6. My Man Godfrey — Another screwball comedy, but I think there’s room for this one and Friday both. It’s certainly different enough.
  7. Love and Death — Say what you will about Woody Allen (and there’s a good bit of creepy stuff to say), but I’ll paraphrase the fan from “Stardust Memories:” I really liked his early, funny ones. And the best of all was “Love and Death.” That’s what Tolstoy and Dostoevsky really needed — a few laughs.
  8. The Graduate — Yeah, this one is on my Top Five best ever. But it’s the only one of those to make this list. Yet I’m not sure it should be here. Was it really a comedy exactly? It’s the most category-defying of the truly great films.
  9. Groundhog Day — I had to get a Bill Murray in here, and I chose this one.
  10. The Paper — Initially, I had American Graffiti here. Or maybe Trading Places, which so brilliantly combined two Mark Twain stories, and two of his best. But I decided to end up where I started — with a film about newspapering that I could really identify with. Funny thing is, some serious journalists hated this film for some of the same factors that might cause someone to reject “Friday” — they were afraid it made us scribes look bad. But again, it was brutally dead-on caricature. Sure, we were more serious and principled that this. But I really, really identified with the Michael Keaton character, who at least had this going for him: He wasn’t as bad as Walter Burns, not by a long shot. Not as funny either, though…

I remain comfortable with those choices, although I hate that “Minions” didn’t make the list (I’m always torn on the last movie I pick). Maybe I should do a Top Five Animated Movies list…

Top Five Favorite Robert Redford Movies

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Note that this is not “Top Five Best…”

If it were that, the unquestioned winner would be “All the President’s Men.” I just watched it again recently, on Criterion. Every few years, I go back and watch it again, and every time, I’m more amazed at how much great it is. It’s the verisimilitude. Nobody’s trying to be cute, or sexy, or fun. It’s deadly realistic. The interviews conducted with people who really, really don’t want to be talking to these two reporters — the awkwardness of both the sources and the reporters themselves, polished stars that they were — is astounding. Other people like slick. I’m impressed by real.

But on this sad day, I thought I’d go with fun. What were the Redford flicks I enjoyed the most? Here they are:

  1. The Natural — It’s only my third-fave sports flick, but it’s my favorite baseball movie (with “Major League” a close runner-up, I think), and you can’t say fairer than that.
  2. All The President’s Men — OK, so Roy Hobbs only knocked it down a notch, but that’s because my appreciation grows each time I see it. I gave it a very favorable review in my first job at a newspaper. But I like it even better now. It’s just not, you know, baseball.
  3. Butch Cassidy and The Sundance Kid — When it came out, I loved it so much that I couldn’t imagine these actors doing anything to top it (and “The Sting” didn’t even match it, despite the obvious effort). So good. Of course, it was sort of a neo-Western, with that Burt Bacharach music. Something special.
  4. Three Days of the Condor — Generally, I’m not a huge fan of paranoia movies (“The CIA’s out to get me!”) But this one really worked. Part of that was Max von Sydow as the freelance assassin.
  5. The Candidate — This one’s less-known, but it was great. The story of a candidate who didn’t want to win — and how difficult it is to maintain such insouciance in the all-enveloping atmosphere of a campaign. And it had Peter Boyle in it, as the guy who enticed him into running.

Anyway, I think those are my faves. How about you?

Goodbye to the Kid

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Robert Redford at (almost) 40.

This is the way time passes.

I had a shock glancing at the magazines at a store checkout back when I lived in New Orleans (OK, technically across the river in Algiers) when I was in junior high.

I saw a headline that said something like “PAUL NEWMAN TURNS 40!” I couldn’t believe it. This was 1965, and he had played Billy the Kid in 1958! He had been the young up-and-comer in “The Hustler” in 1961! So how could he be an old man now?

But sure enough, he was almost four years older than my Dad, so that’s getting on up there.

While I was still in high school, he portrayed Butch Cassidy alongside a guy young enough to pass as the Sundance Kid. Appropriately, Robert Redford was almost a dozen years younger. He’d been around for a bit, but playing Sundance was his big break, immediately making him a major star.

Which is interesting, looking back. Think of all the characters he played later in his huge career — Gatsby (which came out the year I got married, which is why I wore a three-piece white linen suit that day), Bob Woodward, Bill McKay (“The Candidate“), Jeremiah Johnson, Condor, Major Julian Cook (“A Bridge Too Far“), and Roy Hobbs.

He was always the straight man. So serious, hardly smiling. Kind of grim. I’m-just-hear-to-do-a-job- ma’am. When he reassures a source that he’s a Republican in “All the President’s Men,” Dustin Hoffman is suprised, but nobody else is — he looks the part. And would you ever call Jeremiah Johnson a fun guy?

By contrast the Kid was the coolest guy in the Hole-In-The-Wall Gang. Everybody was afraid of him, even Harvey. If it had been present-day, he’d have been the one in a leather jacket. He’s the one who got Katharine Ross!

Anyway, I’m sorry he’s gone, and shocked that he was 89. But I’ve noticed that a lot of people around me are getting old. Plenty of them are over 40 now.

It’s sobering.

As a senior in high school, I had this poster on my wall.

So much for the legendary hero of McNairy County

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The Wikipedia page for Adamsville, TN, features this pic of local boy Buford Pusser’s house.

It’s been so long since Buford Pusser was a household name that this didn’t make all that much of a splash, near as I could tell (maybe it was bigger on TV, which I don’t see). Fifty years ago, it would have been as big nationally as Alex Murdaugh’s crimes — maybe bigger.

Certainly bigger. Alex Murdaugh was a prominent small-town Southern lawyer who murdered his wife and son, among a host of less-shocking crimes. Pusser was a rural Southern sheriff who impressively wielded a big stick in fighting rampant crime in his county, to the point that the bad guys ambushed him and murdered his wife, and Hollywood made him a hero — several times, if you count the two sequels and the made-for-TV movie. Apparently, a TV series as well.

Pauline Mullins Pusser

And now, the authorities say Buford himself killed his wife. This at least has made The New York Times take notice. One wonders how Hollywood will react to the news.

Pauline Mullins Pusser was killed in 1967, and her husband died seven years later. There will be no killer to prosecute, but authorities are pursuing an indictment in the cause of “giving dignity and closure to Pauline and her family and ensuring that the truth is not buried with time.” A good call, I’d say. Called for in this case, if not in others.

“Walking Tall” was something of a national hit in 1973. The NYT cites Variety in saying that it “was made for about $500,000 and earned more than $40 million worldwide.” Not one of the top-grossing films of the year, but impressive nevertheless, given the tiny investment. It reminds me in that regard of “Billy Jack” a couple of years earlier.

It’s hard for me to recall accurately how big a hit is was nationally, because I was living at the time in small-town West Tennessee, where it was a sensation. Of course, my small town was nothing like McNairy County. Millington was just a few miles north of Memphis, and was the home of NAS Memphis (now known as Naval Support Activity Mid-South). I lived on the base. I was a sophomore at Memphis State, but I knew some of the high school kids on base, who attended the local public school. And they were absolutely nuts about “Walking Tall.” Kind of the way kids my age had been about “Billy Jack” in 1971.

This one girl who lived around the corner from us on the base was certainly impressed. I didn’t really know her and don’t recall her name, but I did fall into conversation with her one day in front of her house. I say “conversation,” but I think it was mostly her talking about how wonderful the movie was. So I asked her if she’d like to see it again. She said yes, and I took her to the Millington drive-in that night.

You can forget any sordid imaginings that may conjur — the college kid taking the high school girl to a drive-in. It just seemed a natural thing to do since she was so enthusiastic about the film, and the drive-in was where it was showing.

I sat on my side of the car and she sat way over on hers, with her eyes glued on the screen, rapt. I had felt a bit awkward thinking she might be nervous about this older (like two years, I guess) guy she hardly knew taking her to the drive-in, but that didn’t seem to be a problem. I was not in her thoughts. She was just digging Joe Don Baker up there and all the awesome things he was doing. I’m trying to remember whether her lips moved along with the dialog as she saw it, because it certainly seems likely given she was so fascinated and had seen it before.

I don’t remember interacting with her in any way after that night. There didn’t seem any ground for the establishment of even a platonic friendship. She was only interested in one thing, and it did not lie within my universe of interests.

No matter. I met my wife a couple of months later. The night we met we had a long talk about Jack Kerouac and On The Road. This was a good start, and things got better from there. Did I tell y’all about our big 50th-anniversary celebration with our children and grandchildren last year?

I wonder, though, whether that girl has heard this latest news. I hope she’s not too shaken by it.

Above, I sort of wondered idly how Hollywood would react. Of course, if there is ever a new movie, it won’t be in the same vein at all. It won’t inspire folks across the nation to idolize the ex-professional wrestler who becomes sheriff in a corrupt corner of the countryside and lets no one stop him while he addresses crime by whupping bad guys with his big stick. Or to idolize anyone else.

It will instead be painfully sad. I don’t think I want to see that flick, either…

Joe Don Baker as Pusser in ‘Walking Tall.’

All the Way with LBJ

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Here’s another movie that should have been on somebody’s list of the best since the turn of the century. I had forgotten about it, then ran across it on HBO and watched it again last night. I was more impressed this time than the first time.

It’s “All the Way,” starring Bryan Cranston as Lyndon Baines Johnson. It covers his first year as president, from the moment JFK was pronounced dead in the hospital in Dallas to LBJ’s stunning victory over Barry Goldwater.

It was technically amazing. Cranston’s embodiment of Johnson, aided by remarkable makeup, made me feel constantly that I was watching and hearing the original man. If anything, Melissa Leo was even more impressive as Lady Bird, although she didn’t have nearly as much screen time.

Also noteworthy: Bradley Whitford as HHH, Stephen Root as J. Edgar Hoover, and Aisha Hinds as Fannie Lou Hamer. Towering above those was Frank Langella’s deft, nuanced portrayal of Senator Richard Russell. (I was less impressed with the portrayals of MLK and, in a bit part, our own Strom Thurmond. Sadly, I’ve yet to see any actor come close to recreating the power of Dr. King’s presence.)

Beyond the technical stuff, since I was out of the country during that year, I learned a lot watching it. Sure, I knew about (or learned later about) the events that were portrayed — the extraordinary exertions to pass the Civil Rights Act, the destruction of the Democratic Party’s Solid South, the deaths of the three civil rights workers in Mississippi, the Gulf of Tonkin incident, and much more — I hadn’t fully had the sense that they all happened in that year, when Johnson was trying to establish his legitimacy in the office while also winning an election. With hindsight, I’ve tended to think Goldwater was easy to beat. But not from LBJ’s perspective, with all those other things going on.

I enjoyed “Breaking Bad,” but maybe the best thing about it was that it gave Cranston the celebrity to do something like this. It was made in 2016, and it’s amazing to me that it didn’t make more of a splash (as in, the kind that gets you on a “Top 100” list.) Perhaps because it’s wasn’t available to anyone but subscribers.

If you have access to Max, or whatever you call HBO, watch this right away…

100 best of the century? Let’s cut that down to a Top Five

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The New York Times tried to sneak a “best movies list” by me last month, and almost got away with it — until “The Daily” hipped me to it a few days ago on the NYT Audio app.

They billed it rather grandly as “THE 100 BEST MOVIES OF THE 21st CENTURY.”

Seems they’re pushing things a bit, don’t you think? I mean this century just got started, right? This is 2025, not 2100, or even 2099. Don’t ya think Hollywood might slip in one or two good flicks sometime over the next 75 years? I certainly hope so.

But humans are impatient. Anyway, some of us might not be around in 2099 (maybe even you, or that old guy over there). So they just went ahead.

I would not have been tempted to do that. I mean, if this first 25-year period had contained a 1939, or even a 1967 — a year that just put all others to shame — I would have. But while there have been a few good pictures here and there, you have to lower your standards a good bit to come up with a HUNDRED. It hasn’t been what you’d call a creatively inspired period. It’s not just with regard to movies; look at all the sad pop music since about 1993. The recent films are a bit more inspired than that, but not by much.

A top 25 would have been more doable without lowering your aim. I’m stretching the point by going full Nick Hornby — get it down to five! But you’ll see from my Honorable Mentions list that I could easily have settled on 25.

Especially if I’d seen all the pictures.

A big disclaimer: In this quarter-century of COVID, streaming to big HD screens at home, and ridiculous ticket prices, I don’t go to a lot of movies — whereas in the last century, I made a point of seeing everything that might have made such a list. Not anymore. Here are a few that are on this NYT list that I very much wanted to see, and hope to see soon — provided they come to one of my streaming services and I don’t have to pay extra. (Actually, a couple of those have done that, and I started to watch but lost interest for the moment. I’ll probably try again, though.) Here they are:

  • “Parasite” This tops practically any list you see — if compiled by people who saw it, of course. So I need to make the effort.
  • “Get Out” I love Key and Peele, and people went wild over Jordan Peele directorial debut, but I haven’t seen it yet. I haven’t tried hard partly because it seems to kinda fit in a horror-movie slot, and I mostly don’t like those, but there’s more going on than that. Has to be, given who’s involved.
  • “Y tu mamá también“ I’ve wanted to see that, but it has a sort of sexploitation vibe that makes me feel like it’s not quite the thing, especially with that disturbing title. But hey, it’s in Spanish! So that’s good, right? It’s educational — brush up a bit on my vocabulary!
  • “Lost in Translation” Bill Murray! How have I missed it?
  • “Whiplash” The one about the young drummer with the nightmare teacher.

There are others like that. For, instance, I watched a few minutes of both “Everything Everywhere All at Once” and “The Zone of Interest.” I didn’t get far with either. I was tired, late at night, and didn’t have the energy for “Everything.” On the other, I just didn’t feel up to dealing with such moral horror mixed with the banality that so often comes up in dealing with Nazis. I need to try again on both.

OK, here’s my Top Five:

  1. “The Departed” No question here. I go back and forth on whether “Goodfellas” or “Mean Streets” is Scorcese’s best ever, but there’s no question that this one is his best of the new century.
  2. “Almost Famous” Lots of fun, extremely engaging, very polished, and a fantastic evocation of an era. Definitely the best thing Cameron Crowe’s ever done. And the cast! Kate Hudson and Patrick Fugit were the soul of it, but look at the performances of Frances McDormand, Billy Crudup and the intriguing Philip Seymour Hoffman as Lester Bangs! And let’s not forget (I won’t), this was the first time I ever saw Zooey Deschanel…
  3. “The Lives of Others” The best German film I’ve seen this century, even as good at “Downfall” was. All you libertarians on the left and right who think government is such a big, intrusive meanie need to watch this. (Of course, we could get there ourselves, with another year or two of Trump.)
  4. “Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind” So good, and so hard to compare to anything else. What category do you put it in? Well, you don’t.
  5. “Little Miss Sunshine” I’d heard this was good, but was blown away beyond expectation when I saw it. What a cast! Another great job by Alan Arkin, of course, but you can say the same for Toni Collette and Greg Kinnear, plus the little girl at the center of it, pursuing her dream. This was the first time I ever saw Paul Dano, and he made a great impression.

Honorable Mention, in no particular order:

  • “Superbad” Excellent, often too-true, story about high school boys. Don’t watch it with your parents, though.
  • “Moneyball” This was almost in the Top Five, but got squeezed. It’s the best sports movie yet, though. Favorite scene? When Billy’s sitting around with his staff deciding what players to go after, and nobody wants to go for Billy’s plan. They all seemed very real. Also, another great performance by Philip Seymour Hoffman.
  • “No Country for Old Men” Not a favorite, but I was super impressed by Javier Bardem, as perhaps the creepiest killer I’ve ever seen on film.
  • “Borat” I laughed way harder at “The Dictator,” but this was the one that broke new ground. At the same time, a lot of things I didn’t like about it.
  • “Spotlight” Excellent newspaper movie. Who knows whether we’ll ever see another, except as a “period” story.
  • “Gravity” Excellent space movie. Not as great as “Apollo 13” or “The Right Stuff,” but good enough for this century. I like the contrast between the feminism (female astronaut), and the old school ultimate-hero role of her male crewmate.
  • “Gladiator” Love it. Watched it lots of times. Great story, well told. But a bit too far from historical realism.
  • “Michael Clayton” Saw this years ago and was impressed, but don’t remember the details for why.
  • “Minority Report” Great promise as a premise, largely fulfilled.
  • “The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring” I’m not a huge Tolkien fan (he’s good, but perhaps I read this too late in life to become a devotee the way some kids do), but I thought this did a good job with the admittedly rich content.
  • “Melancholia” A real oddball of a film, in tone as well as concept. How would you live if the Earth was about to be wiped out, and you knew exactly when?
  • “O Brother, Where Art Thou?” A lot of creative fun with a great cast and excellent dialogue, ranging from Holly Hunter’s persistent mispronunciation of “bona fide” to the KKK guy saying “They ain’t even old-timey!” Best acting: Stephen Root as the blind radio station manager, who pays the boys to sing into a can.
  • “A Serious Man” I remember being very impressed by this. But it’s been awhile, and I forget the details. Might have to watch it again.
  • “Wall-E” Another brilliant work of animation.
  • “Anchorman: The Legend of Ron Burgundy” I was a bit shocked to see this on the list, but hey, it was funny. I didn’t realize that the first time I saw it, because I hadn’t yet learned to appreciate Will Ferrell. Later, it was hilarious.
  • “Memento” Yeah, the backwards story. I definitely need to see that again, and not just to see “Trinity” from “The Matrix” again. I’m watching a show on Britbox in which Guy Pearce brilliantly portrays Kim Philby, and I want to go back and see all his stuff.
  • “The Hurt Locker” Speaking of Guy Pearce, who throws the audience a major curveball at the beginning… A great depiction of a man addicted to danger that most of us would want to avoid. Best performance? David Morse as the disturbingly enthusiastic colonel. Of course, he’s always great.
  • “Ocean’s 11” Way, way better than the Rat Pack original. Best evocation of cool: George Clooney, fresh out of prison, riding up the escalator in Vegas in his new duds.

Missing. I compiled my lists from the ones the NYT published (the main one from movie people, and a second one from readers). But there were some that did not appear on those lists, and should have. Not that they were all great, but they were better than quite a few that did make the lists. Here are a few that come to mind… oh, dang! I can’t find where I put my notes on that. OK, off the top of my head:

  • “Minions” I don’t care at all for its predecessors in the series, or the sequel. But this origin story may be the funniest, most engaging animated movie I’ve ever seen.
  • “Zero Dark Thirty” How can you have “Hurt Locker” and not this?
  • “High Fidelity” The film based on the novel that got me started on “Top Five” lists! I hated that they moved it from London to Chicago, but it worked, brilliantly! Since our wonderful country is falling apart anyway, maybe Congress should pass a law forbidding anyone from compiling any kind of “best of” list and leaving this out.
  • “Shanghai Noon” The best by Jackie Chan. Owen Wilson, too. If you don’t love it, your “winging it” privileges should be revoked.
  • “Unbreakable” Best superhero movie ever, largely because it never mentions superheroes. The ordinary protagonist just slowly realizes there’s something exceptional about him.
  • “Black Hawk Down” The “Saving Private Ryan” of the new century, which does a good job of relating recent history.
  • “A Knight’s Tale” Just a lot of pure fun. Best bits: When a medieval scene suddenly breaks out with a modern pop song.
  • “The Bourne Identity” A lot of people praise the novel. I’ve read it, and this was way better.
  • “American Splendor” Just to throw in something relatively obscure, and to celebrate Paul Giamatti.
  • “Runaway Jury” Possibly the best of the John Grisham flicks. Alas, one of the last really good performances by John Cusack. (He was OK in “Love and Mercy,” but Paul Dano was better.) Why doesn’t he get better roles?

OK, I’ll stop. I cheated a bit. After typing the first two, I started glancing over lists of movies by year to pad out my list. I only got as far as 2003.

So maybe my whole premise was wrong. Perhaps it is time to do a “Best 100 of the Century” list.

I’ve gotta stop now before I go back and start amending my Top Five list, after being reminded of the missing films. I’ve spent enough time on this.

Well, NOW I’m Happy!…

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I thought I had a terrible dilemma coming up.

I don’t go see many movies in theaters. There was a time when I went to pretty much all of them, back when I was a copyeditor in Tennessee and was the paper’s film critic on the side. I wasn’t paid to do that additional work, but it wasn’t really work to me. Besides, the paper made it more than worthwhile by reimbursing me for the tickets. Not that the tickets cost much then. Fact is, I probably would have done it without the reimbursement. If, in my continuing project of cleaning out the garage, I run across a copy of my 1977 review of “Star Wars,” I’ll show to you. But I’ve promised to show it to my kids first.

Now, when I do go to a movie theater — once a year or so — I feel the need to take out a mortgage, to spread the payments out in easy installments. First, there’s the cost to get in. Of course, I can get the senior discount, but that discount is so inconsequential that the difference between that and full price is no more than the cost of a ticket in my youth. But hey, that’s just inflation over time, right? If you go to the CPI calculator, you’ll see that that the cost is about the same. Bu if you want to experience highway robbery, try to get some popcorn and a drink.

And no, the fancy recliner seats with the gigantic cupholders, arranged stadium-style, aren’t worth all that extra cost. I find myself wondering why, after the trauma of COVID and the ongoing existential threat posed by streaming and gigantic 4K screens at home, theaters didn’t go the other way — rock-bottom prices to sit on wooden benches or something. My buddy Tony and I used to go to a theater like that in Ecuador when we were about 10 to see Italian Hercules movies and “The Three Musketeers” in French (with Spanish subtitles, in case we wanted to follow the dialogue). It cost us 40 centavos to get in, which in those days amounted to about 2 cents American. And we loved it. A Coke — in a bottle — cost another 2 cents.

About now, I should start getting to my point, which is that my son who is an avid collector of Marvel comics and I were planning to see the new Fantastic Four when it comes out this Friday. (Or a few days later. You’re kind of crazy to go on opening night.) Even though we had just been to see the new Superman a couple of weeks back!

But then I found that “Happy Gilmore 2” was coming out on the same day — July 25! So what was I going to do?

OK, a word about “Happy Gilmore.” Of course, the original flick was overwhelmingly silly. But it worked! I’ve got this thing about movies (and books and other things) that work. They might be the stupidest plots acted out by actors I would never go to see under normal circumstances. But if, somehow, everthing clicks, I will watch it again and again. “Happy Gilmore” is a perfect example. “Old School” is another. They sound so stupid that you’re put off just hearing about them. But the actors — and director — take that stupid idea and make it brilliant. At least, that’s the way I reacted to it. I don’t think I’ve ever done a “Top Five Sports Comedies” list yet, but “Happy” would definitely be on it. In fact, it would be competing with “Major League” for the top spot.

And yeah, I know about sequels made 30 years after the original. They’re often sad — like that made-for-TV reunion movie for “The Beverly Hillbillies” in 1981. Buddy Ebsen had forgotten how to be Jed Clampett! But I’m not expecting brilliance — just a little bit of fun nostalgia. And I know for a fact that “Shooter” McGavin will appear!

But shell out money for a third theater visit in a year?

So imagine my joy when I got an email today from Netflix telling me it will be streaming “Happy Gilmore 2” starting Friday! I was already thinking I might wait for it to be streamed for free at home, and now I don’t have to wait! (Oh, and it had better be “free” to subscribers! They’d better not use this occasion to usher in a new class of premium “world premieres” or some such thieving gimmick!)

Well, I’m happy, and looking forward to Happy 2.

I wonder — how much longer will actual movie theaters continue to exist? The business model seems almost entirely unworkable now…

But did the KIDS get the jokes in ‘Unfrosted’?

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Running across that Jeannie Gaffigan column reminded me of a hilarious movie I rewatched part of while on the elliptical this morning.

I’m talking about “Unfrosted,” in which her husband co-starred with Jerry Seinfeld. Both were great, as were the rest of the ensemble cast. So was the film itself, which you might find surprising if you just saw or heard a description of the premise when it came out last year. It’s “Loosely based on the true story of the creation of Pop-Tarts toaster pastries.”

For that reason, I had ignored it on Netflix for some time before giving in and checking it out. But you know, sometimes the things that sound the dumbest when you first hear about them turn out to be the greatest discoveries. (I’m thinking, apparently irrelevantly, of the 1992 alternative-history novel The Guns of the South, which Wikipedia summarizes thusly: “The story deals with a group of time traveling members of the Afrikaner Weerstandsbeweging (AWB) from an imagined 21st-century South Africa, who supply Robert E. Lee‘s Army of Northern Virginia with AK-47s and other advanced technology, medicine and intelligence.” See what I mean? But it’s awesome.)

So I enjoyed every one of those 10 minutes on the elliptical (I’ll walk some more later, I promise!).

But, as I did the time or two that I saw it before, I couldn’t help wondering: Could anyone but a Baby Boomer get it? So much of the comedy comes from lampooning cultural touchstones of the early-to-mid ’60s, or shortly thereafter (such as the “Godfather” references). Some examples:

Milkmen. Actually this is less a thing we all experienced in the ’60s — of all the places I lived growing up as a Navy brat, I think there was only one place where milk was delivered to our doorstep. But it was still an standard cultural reference that everyone still recognized. And we could understand how they might have resisted the milkless Pop-Tart.

The Schwinn Stingray bike. They had to reach to pull this into a comedy about breakfast cereal, but they made it work.

Artificial sweeteners. My most vivid memory regarding this phenomenon comes from 1965. I’ve written about that period when we had just returned from Ecuador and I was happily mainlining television every second of the day, and I just had to have everything touted in a commercial. The Diet Pepsi ads were particularly successful in convincing me the product actually tasted better than regular cola that I begged my Mom to buy a six-pack, and she did, and I’ve regretted it ever since.

The ‘Leave it to Beaver’ lifestyle. I mean Jerry Seinfeld as an executive stepping out of his front door each morning in his suit and tie, after a bowl of Kelloggs, and smugly taking a kiss on the cheek from his lovely wife before setting out with his briefcase to win the Wonder bread for his fam. Sure, my Dad was in the Navy and was often at sea for months at a time, but I was pretty sure that civilians lived just like that. Because, you know, TV doesn’t lie. Except about Diet Pepsi.

Jack Lalanne. Yes, I also faithfully watched his show during that period of addiction, and was convinced I, too, could be that fit. Of course, that didn’t work out much better than the Diet Pepsi.

The Space Program. Most specifically, the satirical restaging of the famous press conference in which the original Seven Mercury Astronauts were unveiled to an admiring, applauding public. Actually, it was a restaging of a previous satirical restaging in “The Right Stuff,” which was a great scene. But Wolfeian overstatement aside, the Right Stuff version wasn’t that far from the original event. And it inspired a warm-but-sad nostalgia for me. It evoked a time when we all knew that if Americans worked together, we could do anything. And none of us were embarrassed about applauding heroes.

So lots of chuckles — some rueful, but all quite warm. For me, and for people my age.

But did kids get it at all? I dunno. That just hit me this morning when I mentioned it to my daughter, but stopped myself and admitted that she might not find it nearly as funny.

Of course, kids do like to laugh at anything that regards Boomers. And they might have had these cultural references crammed down their throats enough to see the jokes. But they can’t possibly appreciate them fully…

‘Abby Someone… I’m almost sure that was the name…”

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Screenshot

I’m having my annual physical next Monday, so yesterday I went in to have blood drawn. You know, the standard “fasting lab.”

The fun thing about having medical tests done these days is that you don’t have to wait to learn the results. You can diagnose yourself, and make bets whether it will turn out you were right when you see the medico. I could have seen them last night, but I forgot to look until I was eating lunch today.

I like the way they inform you if any of the results are just a bit off. Off course, it would seize my attention even more effectively if the “ABNORMAL” were in a red box rather than plain buff, and it flashed, and was accompanied by a loud klaxon sound.

It would cause one to respond, “I say: What’s all this then?” And you might even click and look at the results. In my case, I’d have opened it without the warning sign, because I’m always curious about a couple of the data points. And yes, it turns out I am still low on both sodium and choride (“abnormally” so on the chloride), so I can keep having all the salt I want. In fact, I’d best get right to it.

As for the “ABNORMAL” bits, well, they’re kinda dull when you look at them. Oh, maybe one day one of them will be something bad, but you can’t tell by looking at them. Or I can’t.

Anyway, the point of this post was that it gave me an excuse to share one of my favorite clips from one of my favorite movies.

Enjoy.

Do you like David Lynch’s work? No offense, but why?

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By that “no offense,” I mainly mean, “no disrespect to the recently departed.” But I also mean, “no offense to you if you like his stuff.”

People I know and respect and even love like his work. My daughter is a “Twin Peaks” fan, and she’s smart and creative and I love her with all my heart.

But I just don’t get the appeal. I’ve tried, in these recent days with streaming services going out of their way to offer me Lynch works (that’s Max that you see above), to give him one more chance — you know, outta respect.

But I never get farther in than a few minutes, before I make a firm decision not to spend any more of time I have left in life at the age of 71 on this.

What’s the problem? Take your pick. There’s the acting — if you want to call that “acting.” There’s the direction — which I think consists mostly of telling actors to “be as bad as you can possibly be, like you’re doing a comedy skit about bad acting, only without the humor.” There’s the editing, the weird pacing, the odd lighting, the special efforts made to make sure people think, “something’s not right here.”

Yeah, I get that he’s trying to make us uncomfortable. But isn’t there enough of that in real life? And if he’s trying to comment on all the awkwardness in real life, couldn’t he represent the real awkwardness more recognizably? This is like the diet Pepsi of awkwardness — something of a cola flavoring, but with a terrible artificial aftertaste.

I’ll admit that a lot of my dislike arises from his having shafted a generation of sci-fi fans by getting their hopes up, and presenting them with the worst major motion picture in history, his “Dune.” Yes, I’ve mentioned that before, but I’ll add a new twist: It is so bad that it makes a new “Dune” look great, despite it starring Timothée Chalamet as Paul Atreides. I mean, weirding modules? Where the hell did that come from?

Not to mention those pustules on Baron Harkonnen’s face. Why are we looking at those? Do you really think we wouldn’t get the idea that the Baron is a really gross guy whom you would cross a galaxy to avoid without lingering on those pustules?

Of course, I’ve learned something — or been reminded of something — by those films Max has offered. In watching a bit of “Fire Walk With Me,” and even less of “Blue Velvet,” I realized that’s a trademark move of his — finding something gross to zoom in on, sometimes microscopically, and linger upon, for no particular reason.

(I had never seen “Blue Velvet,” but had always meant to, thinking anything with Isabella Rosselini and Dennis Hopper’s got to be good. Well, no it doesn’t, it turns out. I had probably forgotten that Kyle McLachlan’s in it, too.)

Hey, I can take looking at gross things. I watch a lot of murder mysteries, and sometimes those bodies have had some pretty nasty things done to them, and the camera doesn’t shy away (how could they, after the expense of creating the effect?). I consider “Saving Private Ryan” to be a masterpiece, and the first 20 minutes of that can really test your ability to stomach blood and guts. But there’s a reason for it. This is one film that refuses to shy away from the horrors of war.

Lynch’s grossness seems to be there just because he wants it there, just as Tim Burton wants to see a lot of prison stripes on the screen. (And no, I don’t like him much, either.)

And yet… a lot of folks like it. Or they like something that’s eluding me. In a way, it feels a lot like the way I reacted to Harold Pinter’s “The Homecoming.” I saw it as part of the American Film Theatre series back in the ’70s (my wife and I had season tickets to that, largely because they were really cheap for college students), and thought it one of the most offputtingly pointless things I’d ever seen. I mentioned that to my good friend, the late Dan Henderson, who was very much the aesthete. Dan said, “You just don’t get absurdism.” I allowed as how he was probably right about that, given all I’ve seen and read of the Theater of the Absurd.

Because of that similar feeling, I considered Lynch as an absurdist. No, it’s not that. Pinter is that, but Lynch isn’t quite. And even if it he was, it wouldn’t make me feel better. Tagging a label on somebody doesn’t really ring my bell.

But enough of my rant. Some of you like this stuff, and I want to ask you, why?

Also, how about giving me your list of Top Five Movies (or TV shows) by David Lynch.

Maybe there’ll be something there I will like. After all, I have a faint memory of having mildly enjoyed “Wild at Heart.” But that was a long time ago now, and I can’t be sure…

And the meme goes on…

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The first time I saw this gag was 15 years ago, when I shared it here on the blog. (Sorry, but YouTube has taken down the link to the video, but you’ve probably seen it. Here’s a spoof of the spoof.)

My friend Burl Burlingame had brought it to my attention, so I experience some sadness thinking of it now, but mostly laughs. I think that was the first time I mentioned Burl here — he and I had just recently established contact through our blogs. I hadn’t seen or spoken to him for 38 years at that point.

Anyway, it’s amusing to see that people are still having fun with that epically serious scene from “Downfall.” (It’s a sort of mini-industry itself.) By the way, if you’ve never seen that film, go do so right away. (It’s streaming on Amazon Prime, Tubi and Peacock.) It’s pretty awesome. If you don’t speak German, that’s cool. The subtitles — the real subtitles, I mean — will carry you through. It’s about Hitler’s last days in the bunker, through the perspective of a young woman who had recently become his secretary. But don’t expect any laughs.

Anyway, this one is funny, although not as clever as the Star Trek one. There’s a little too much 8th-grade humor (he seems to say things like “my dick” a lot). Actually, the funniest thing about it — and the thing that drew me to watch it — is the premise: “Trump Learns About Taylor Swift’s Endorsement.”