Rushing to catch an 11 am screening of Mission: Impossible — Rogue Nation. Back on the stick a few hours hence.

Three days ago BBC Culture posted the results of a poll of 62 international film critics who’d been asked to name the 100 Greatest American Films of all time. The BBC’s description of this group (a) doesn’t mention online voices and (b) explains that “some of the critics we invited to participate are film reviewers at newspapers or magazines, others are broadcasters and some write books.” Esteemed, knowledgable fuddy-duds, in other words. Scholastically correct fashionistas and a smattering of old-schoolers who know their stuff but — important trait to keep in mind — are also careful to limit their favorites to films that are currently approved of by the fine and fanciful “they.”

The BBC could have mentioned that this group, not atypically, is basically bending and blowing with the current cultural winds. Hence Gone With The Wind has barely made the cut at #$97 (a satisfying moment for GWTW basher Lou Lumenick) and — this pisses me off — Rio Bravo is listed at #41 but no High Noon at all. And Marnie at #47? Mainly because a small, tightly-knit fraternity of hardcore Marnie dweebs (Richard Brody, Glenn Kenny, Dave Kehr, et. al.) have been beating the drum for years. Last April I voiced strong disgreement with the Marnie cult and yet here it is, sitting on a Greatest American Films list…my spirit wilts. And where’s One-Eyed Jacks? And where’s Shane?

Last night Nightly Show contributor Mike Yard delivered a riff about Donald Trump‘s ’90s gangsta vibe, but like all good jokes it had a ring of truth. Trump fans like his nerve, his brass, his impudence. “He’s ’90s hip-hop all day, Larry…jackin’ beats…the 50 Cent of the Republican Party…gave out a United States Senator’s private cell phone!” But Baby Tupac can’t beat Hillary’s Suge Knight. Which reminds me: Straight Outta Compton screenings are just around the corner although screenings for non-critics (i.e., “interview” press) are happening this week.

Don Cheadle‘s Miles Ahead will close the 53rd New York Film Festival on 10.11.15. I don’t know why this film hasn’t been on my down-low list, but it hasn’t been…sorry. I guess it’s because I get a little cautious when an actor directs for the first time. Maybe because I’m sensing an aura of worship. Cheadle stars as the legendary, ass-kicking, Michael Mann-inspiring jazz trumpeter, and co-wrote the script with Steven Baigelman and the legendary, ass-kicking screenwriting team of Stephen J. Rivele and Christopher Wilkinson. And it’s heartening, by the way, to see Middle of Nowhere‘s Emayatzy Corinealdi back in the swing of things. Also costarring Ewan McGregor (as Dave Brill), Michael Stuhlbarg, Keith Stanfield, Austin Lyon.

I used to struggle with film reviews when I first began in this racket back in the late ’70s. I was so intimidated by the great critics of the day (Sarris, Kael, Simon, Canby, Denby, Corliss, et. al.) and so desperate to sound cool that I could barely make a paragraph work after an hour’s toil, and a whole review would take four or five hours and sometimes a whole day. I couldn’t relax or breathe, kept rewriting myself into a stupor. And then one day the clouds parted. I wrote a review of Ettore Scola‘s A Special Day and for the first time, it just flowed right out. I rewrote and refined, of course, but the initial writing was much less tortured than usual. So I’ve always felt a special kinship with this 1977 film (which was actually released in the States in ’78, if I’m not mistaken). And so I’m definitely going to beg Criterion’s p.r. company for a freebie of the upcoming Bluray (due on 10.13).

A rising politician indulging in sexy escorts is not an expression of his dark side — it’s a symbol of his private side. The only person who needed to be seriously concerned about John F. Kennedy‘s catting around was Jacqueline Bouvier Kennedy, and it’s been abundantly proven that his sexual escapades never once got in the way of his Oval Office duties or decisions. (On the other hand texting photos of your bulging manhood to an extra-marital interest is proof of idiocy and/or self-destructiveness.) And by the way, I love the fact that Ray Winstone is playing a crafty investigative journalist. Hollywood hasn’t let him play anything other than goons and thugs for the last 20-odd years.

I saw Southpaw a week ago Monday, down at L.A. Live on 7.13, and the best part of the whole experience was eating the popcorn when it was still warmish and buttery and salted. Otherwise I just sank into my seat and toughed it out. It’s been a while since I disliked a lead character as much as Jake Gyllenhaal‘s Billy Hope, who’s basically an amalgam of physical and behavioral boxer traits from other movies turned up to 11 — Jake La Motta‘s tenacious, bore-right-in combativeness, Terry Malloy‘s wounded face (enhanced here with the swellings and cuts and the old watery blood eye) plus the emotional wallow of Sylvester Stallone‘s Rocky with an extra-heavy helping of simian sauce (punchy speech, emotionally primitive, no diction to speak of, barely literate).

On top of which Hope, a light heavyweight champ, spends money like a drunken sailor and lives in an ostentatious McMansion that almost made me physically sick. The guy’s an absolute mutt. I was sitting there going “I’m stuck with this knuckle-dragger for the next two hours?”

And you’re telling me that Rachel McAdams‘ Maureen, who relates to Hope because they both had tough Hell’s Kitchen childhoods, is his loyal wife? No way. She’s way too good for him. And then something awful happens and the pillars of Hope’s life start tumbling and crashing and before you know it he’s down and out with nowhere to go but up. If, that is, he can suck it in and learn from his mistakes and listen to advice from his humble but wisely paternal trainer, played by Forest Whitaker in a Clint Eastwood-in-Million Dollar Baby mode, about how to start boxing wisely and not get hit so much and so on. Hey, maybe Billy can go to a community college and learn how to speak like an educated eleven year old!

And then Billy’s ex-manager, played by by 50 Cent, arranges for a big, career-restoring championship fight with the arrogant young buck who…you don’t want to know. I didn’t want to know when I was watching it. I wanted to bolt but I had to stay. Because I’m a pro and I ride it out.

You look into the face of Ryan Reynolds and you say, “I like this guy…I want him to win or at least come out okay…give me a chance and I might even admire him.” You look into the face of Ben Mendelsohn and you say, “This guy sweats too much…he might be winning tonight but he’ll definitely lose tomorrow, and he won’t stop smoking those Marlboros…drop him off at the nearest bus stop.” And yet — I’m being serious here — Mississippi Grind (A24, 9.25) is a really well-made film. I knew that right away when I saw it at Sundance. It’s worth seeing, even with Mendelsohn’s b.o. filling up the room.

42 days ago I asked “what would we lose as a community or a culture if a final, irrevocable pledge was made by producers Michael Wilson and Barbara Broccoli to never make another 007 film again, to just walk away and leave it forever?” My answer was “nothing” but the reader response was “everything! We wants our 007…don’t take him away….noooo!” Listen to me: I am sick to death of this franchise detonating explosions around the world. Spectre filmed in Italy, Austria, Morocco and Mexico, and you can be assured that big bluhdooms, the sound of squealing tires and clink of Martini glasses will be heard in each one of them. I’m numb; the novocaine is spreading. There is so much that could be conjured in the way of danger, thrills and suspense, and all the Bond films know how to do is press “autopilot.”

I’ve noted a few times that Ryan Fleck and Anna Boden‘s Mississippi Grind (A24, 9.25), which I caught at last January’s Sundance Film Festival, is essentially a revisiting of Robert Altman‘s California Split (’74). Okay, not a precise remake but close enough to one. It’s certainly one of the more enjoyable addiction films I’ve ever sat through. It has an assured, nicely textured, low-key ’70s quality, and is easily the best film that Ryan Reynolds, whose performance as a good-natured knockabout (i.e., the Elliot Gould role) is completely centered and confident, has ever starred in. No, that’s not damnation with faint praise. I was even okay with the frequently annoying Ben Mendelsohn, who plays a somewhat glummer version of the George Segal role in the ’74 original. And I enjoyed James Toback‘s snarly cameo as a guy with a hard fist. Will Joe Popcorn decide that Grind is a little too downbeat and meditative? Maybe, but for anyone with a half a brain it definitely intoxicates and charms for much of its running time. Wow…I just realized I can’t remember how it ends.

Eons ago some friends of mine had to deal with a second-rate motorcyle-gang psychopath who went by the name of Wild Bill. It happened in a small apartment that three of us — Chance, Mike and myself — were staying in next to a performance bar called Fat City in Wilmington, Vermont. I was luckily passed out in the bedroom from an overdose of Jack Daniels, but Chance’s descriptions have never left me.

It began with a loud knock on the door and Chance saying “who is it?” and a voice saying “look though the peephole.” (One of those dime-sized holes with a tiny metal latch.) Chance started to put his eye to the door when a switchblade knife blade suddenly jabbed through a couple of times. Chance got angry and opened the door and there was Wild Bill, wearing a chrome-plated Nazi helmet. He muscled his way in and wouldn’t leave.

He was fried and stupid and clearly dangerous, Chance said. Not what you’d call a top-of-the-line biker but a loser type. Bill had a pair of pliers hanging from his belt, and Chance asked him what they were for. “I’m an amateur dentist,” he said.

You could feel the booze and boiling rage, Chance said. Telling Bill to leave or (ha!) trying to force him out would’ve surely resulted in aggravated assault or worse. Chance and Mike decided to humor him.