The vulnerable-golden-hero mythology in The Natural is like maple syrup, so thick and gloopy it damn nears smothers everything. And I’m saying this as a devoted admirer of Field of Dreams. I want to see the hero prevail as much as the next guy, but not in fantasyland — his/her struggle has to happen in a shifty, scrappy, serious adult world. And I hate it when when grossly sentimental films of this sort push every button they can think of.

When Roy Hobbs (Robert Redford) broke his Wonderboy bat, when the chubby bat boy gave him a newbie, when the camera saw that his abdomen was bleeding, I said to myself “this is bullshit.” When Roy slams the game-winning homer into the ballpark lights and triggers a fireworks show with lightning bolts crackling in the night sky and that triumphant bullshit Randy Newman music filling the soundtrack, I was disgusted. I was saying to myself “my God, I thought Barry Levinson was the Diner guy, but he’s made a whorish, shameless, audience-pandering piece of crap.”

I was astonished by the reactions when I first saw The Natural 39 years ago. I said to friends “you bought into this shit? The modest, all-American innocent good guy…a masculine angel from the heartland…plus the film is a total perversion of the 1952 Bernard Malamud novel.” Ten years later Forrest Gump came along and touched the hearts of this same hokey crowd.

I appreciated The Natural, but the old Paul Douglas baseball comedy, Angels in the Outfield, touched me in a more genuine place.

Keep in mind that while The Natural was popular, it wasn’t a massive hit. It cost $28 million to shoot, and earned a relatively modest $48 million.

The original theatrical version ran 138 minutes. I never saw Levinson’s 144-minute “Director’s Cut.” Did anyone? Was it significantly better?

One thing you’ll never, ever see in an action film is a supporting player (bad or neutral guy) who stands up and is ready to fight or shoot it out with a lead guy, and then — very sensibly! — changes his mind when he realizes that beating or out-drawing the lead guy isn’t in the cards. It happened 52 years ago in Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, but it hasn’t happened since.

If I’m wrong please remind me of another scene that works like this (i.e., “Uhhm, wait, hold on…I can’t win this one.”).

The card player’s name was Donnelly Rhodes, and he died three and a half years ago. He was 40 or so when he shot this scene with Robert Redford, Paul Newman and director George Roy Hill.

Robert Redford, who turns 82 on 8.18, first disclosed his intention to retire from acting on 11.10.16, in an interview with his grandson Dylan. Several publications reported this the next day, although Redford’s publicist, Cindy Berger of PMK*BNC, insisted otherwise, claiming that her client “is certainly not retiring because he has several projects coming down the pike.”

Well, Redford said a day or two ago that he’s really, really hanging up his spurs, and that David Lowery‘s The Old Man and the Gun (Fox Searchlight, 9.28) will be his gentleman swan song.

Redford’s greatest accomplishment, hands down, was launching the Sundance Film Festival. He really and truly changed…hell, revolutionized the landscape of American independent film. He upgraded, deepened, emboldened and monetized it beyond all measure.

The best film he ever directed was Ordinary People; Quiz Show and The Milagro Beanfield War were a distant second and third. The worst film he ever directed was The Legend of Bagger Vance, a.k.a. “bag of gas.” But acting is what he’s retiring from, and so an assessment of his best films and performances is in order.

Date/time: 4.13, 11:30 am. From: Jeffrey Wells, Hollywood Elsewhere. To: Steve Weintraub, Collider. Message: You and the other geeks who posted about Captain America: Civil War a few days ago OVER-PRAISED, dude. Brilliant choreography and structuring, of course. And yes, the Russo brothers’ tone and efficiency is spot-on and hugely “entertaining” in spots. Yes, it’s waaay better than fucking BvS. Yes, it’s very smart and well-ordered. Yes, quite witty and funny at times. But Jesus, it wears you down, man.

The first hour or so is more or less fine (at times wowser) but I began to feel whipped and numb after the Berlin airport brawl, and certainly by the 100-minute mark.

Approaching the Dolby prior to last night’s Captain America: Civili War premiere.

The incessant juggling of bowling pins….the juggling…all those hyper-alert, ready-to-rock superheroes wrestling on the mat…all that juggling and re-juggling, matching this guy against the other guy…the Magnificent Russos! 12 or 14 or whatever pins. Will they drop one? Holy shit…not a single bowling pin dropped! Master jugglers!

Honestly? Eventually you start to not give a shit. Is there more to life than juggling Marvel combatants? No, there isn’t. That’s all there is.

And the slugging…the savage slugging…250 to 275 punches are thrown in this thing at least (whoof! whoompf!), and it just stops mattering after the 70th or 80th hammer-blow. Russo brothers to Wells: Can we throw in another 50 to 75 blows anyway?

The film peaks with the Berlin airport full-team brawl — admittedly a very cool, even masterful sequence — truly an action fan’s delight — but I needed a Red Bull after that. Pic ends fairly well — quietly, ready for the next installment — but the idea of another Marvel all-star duke out seems like real punishment this morning.

Right off the top we’re given hints that Anthony and Joe Russo‘s Captain America: Civil War (Disney, 5.6) might be the least substantial in this Marvel series. (Joe Johnston‘s Captain America: The First Avenger stands the tallest, but the Russo’s Captain America: The Winter Soldier was a super-sharp, near-masterful follow-up.) Like Batman v. Superman: Dawn of Justice (Warner Bros., 3.25), it feels caught in the grip of a weak concept. But many believe that Zack Snyder (i.e., anti-Christ, new Michael Bay) isn’t fit to shine the Russo brothers boots. I support this view completely. Does Dawn of Justice have a line that feels as good as “I can do this all day”?

The Avengers was an unwelcome education when it came to the instincts of Joss Whedon. I called it “funny at times but basically a bludgeoning…corporate CG piss in a gleaming silver bucket.” The destruction-of-midtown-Manhattan finale was almost as hellish as Zack Snyder‘s 50-minute-long Man of Steel finale. My instinct, of course, is to to avoid Avengers: Age of Ultron (Disney, 5.1). I know…okay, strongly suspect it won’t be anywhere near as good as Captain America: The Winter Soldier, but that damn FOMO voice won’t leave me alone. I’d like to duck it altogether but the job unfortunately requires confronting films like this on the slim chance they won’t be soul-deflating. And it will seem necessary to respond to the reviews that Drew McWeeny and Devin Faraci, who live for films like this, will probably write.

The Academy announced today that nine fantasy films about exotic creatures and monsters plus one serious, intensively researched sci-fi film (i.e., Chris Nolan‘s Interstellar) have been short-listed for the Best Visual Effects Oscar. In so doing AMPAS dismissed a pair of super-expensive, high-profile Biblical films, Darren Aronfosky‘s Noah and Ridley Scott‘s Exodus: Gods and Kings, by leaving them off the list. Which means what? The Exodus effects are said to be quite impressive (I’m seeing it tonight) and Noah‘s visual treats were generally acknowledged as novel and in some ways genre-expanding. The nine monster flicks are Captain America: The Winter Soldier, Dawn of the Planet of the Apes, Godzilla, Guardians of the Galaxy, The Hobbit: The Battle of the Five Armies, Maleficent, Night at the Museum: Secret of the Tomb, Transformers: Age of Extinction and X-Men: Days of Future Past.

Obviously Luc Besson‘s Lucy sold a shitload of tickets last weekend, taking down nearly $44 million, which is certainly a kind of feather in the cap of Scarlet Johansson. Her Lucy character, a drug-enhanced superwoman, is the third super-formidable she’s played over the past four years — a woman who beats the shit out of or kills male opponents (or victims) like it’s nothing. The other two characters, of course, are Natasha Romanoff/Black Widow, whom she’s played in Iron Man 2, The Avengers and Captain America: The Winter Soldier, and Laura-the-zoned-out-alien in Under The Skin. If you add Johansson’s mesmerizing voice-performance in Her as Samantha, a kind of ghost in the software with an enormous, constantly evolving intellect, it’s clear she and her agent have forged a new hotshit ScarJo identity — a woman of unearthly powers and confidence whom you don’t want to mess with and perhaps not even talk to unless…you know, you have super-powers that match hers.

But ScarJo is not — repeat, not — an action star. Someone applied that term within the last two or three days and it’s just not selling. She’s been playing some kick-ass, super-powerful women, yes, but without the slightest real-world authority. Whupass Scarlett is an act, a marketing idea — a feminist conceit or some kind of tip-of-the-hat gesture to women who crave power and control over their lives, and that’s fine. But I’m not actually buying it for a second because for one thing she’s just too small to be an action star. I talked to her once at a party (I mentioned I was looking to try a little opium for old time’s sake, and she said it didn’t sound like the impossible dream), and she’s only about 5′ 3″ or thereabouts. No way. She just doesn’t look tough enough.

In the following order, the Best 2014 Films That I’ve Seen Thus Far (regardless of forthcoming or undetermined release dates for those seen at Sundance, Berlin and Cannes) are as follows:

1. Andrey Zvyagintsev‘s Leviathan (hands down the best film I saw in Cannes and an almost certain contender for the 2014 Best Foreign Language Feature Oscar); 2. Steven Knight‘s Locke; 3. Damien Chazelle‘s Whiplash (Sundance); 4. Wes Anderson‘s The Grand Budapest Hotel; 5. Yann Demange‘s ’71 (Berlinale); 6. Paweł Pawlikowski‘s Ida (released in early May, Telluride/Toronto 2013); 7. Damian Szifron‘s Wild Tales (Cannes); 8. Bennett Miller‘s Foxcatcher (Cannes); 9. Doug Liman‘s Edge of Tomorrow; 10. Craig Johnson‘s The Skeleton Twins (Sundance); 11. Anthony and Joe Russo‘s Captain America: The Winter Soldier; 12. Jim Jarmusch‘s Only Lovers Left Alive; 13. Steve James‘ Life Itself; 14. Darren Aronfosky‘s Noah; 15. Richard Linklater‘s Boyhood; (15) Lynn Shelton‘s Laggies; (16) Hany Abu-Assad‘s Omar; (17) Chiemi Karasawa‘s Elaine Stritch: Shoot Me; (18) John Turturro‘s Fading Gigolo; (19) Charlie McDowell‘s The One I Love (Sundance), (20) John Ridley‘s Jimi — All Is By My Side (Toronto 2013/LAFF), (21) Rory Kennedy‘s Last Days In Vietnam, and (22) Chapman and Maclain Way‘s The Battered Bastards of Baseball (Sundance — Netflix in July).

2014 is all but one-third over, and by my yardstick there have been ten commercially-released films thus far that have definitely cut the mustard (Locke, The Grand Budapest Hotel, Ida, Captain America: The Winter Soldier, Noah, Omar, Only Lovers Left Alive, Elaine Stritch: Shoot Me, Tim’s Vermeer, Fading Gigolo). To these you need to add nine film-festival stand-outs — Yann Demange‘s ’71 (which I saw in Berlin) along with eight from the Sundance Film Festival for a grand total of 19 — par for the course for any January-to-April season.

The Sundance picks, once again, are Damien Chazelle‘s Whiplash, (2) Craig Johnson‘s The Skeleton Twins, (3) Steve James‘ Life Itself, (4) Richard Linklater‘s Boyhood, (5) Lynn Shelton‘s Laggies, (6) James D. Cooper‘s Lambert & Stamp, (7) Charlie McDowell‘s The One I Love and (8) Chapman and Maclain Way‘s The Battered Bastards of Baseball.

What other films should I have included? And don’t mention The LEGO Movie. I don’t want to to know about that film, ever. However rich and spiritual it may be, its success has lowered the bar in the Hollywood mainstream industry and made it cool for any puerile kid-distraction concept to be made into a film. It might be cool on its own terms but it has polluted the waters. In my mind it’s a chemical plant dumping toxic substances into the Hudson.