I used to own a Criterion Bluray of Terrence Malick‘s The Thin Red Line, but I could never make myself watch it a third time. My first exposure was at an early press screening, and a second time on Bluray when it popped in September 2010. But that was it.

I’m always excited when I watch scenes from Malick’s 1998 film on YouTube, but I found it labored and ponderous during my two full-boat viewings. I was exhausted at the end of both.

Last night David Poland tweeted about what a masterpiece it is, and I responded as follows: “Too many leaves, alligators, interior monologues & meditations. Script I read before filming was tight & lean — Malick didn’t shoot it.” It was The Thin Red Line that (a) fixed Malick’s reputation as a nature-revering, tossed-salad filmmaker, and (b) resulted in that famous quip about Malick never having “met a leaf he didn’t like.”

The question is, who if anyone has seen the black-and-white 1964 Allied Artists version with Keir Dullea and Jack Warden?

Three days ago Showbiz 411‘s Roger Friedman wrote that Quentin Tarantino‘s “not Manson” movie “is in jeopardy at Sony and may not get made at all.” Because he’s been “hearing that Sony is having second thoughts because of Tarantino’s double trouble in the press” — the Uma Thurman Kill Bill car crash thing plus saying that Samantha Geimer was down for sex with Roman Polanski in ’77.

Tarantino has apologized for both, but he’s nonetheless been painted as a #MeToo bad guy. Tarantino’s apologies may have saved him, but in most instances the penalty for being so labelled has been instant death.

If I was Sony honcho Tom Rothman I wouldn’t deep-six Tarantino’s movie over offensive statements or stunt-driving missteps, but over the budget. I don’t know where Friedman heard that the Manson flick will cost $200 million, but maybe that’s a production-plus-marketing figure.

Last November The Hollywood Reporter‘s Borys Kit reported that the film, which will roll sometime this summer, would cost in the vicinity of $95 million, which, when you add the usual absurd marketing costs, means it would have to gross $375 million worldwide to break even, according to “one source” Kit spoke to.

Even with Leonardo DiCaprio, Brad Pitt and Margot Robbie costarring, nobody is going to beat down the doors of theatres to see a late ’60s hippy-dippy movie (never forget how Millenials regard the ’80s as ancient history) about desperate actors and a few delusional cultists stabbing some poor rich people to death. I’m not saying QT’s film won’t be buzzy or that it won’t sell a lot of tickets, but I doubt if it will sell enough to justify the cost. Because the milieu is fundamentally perverse and bizarre and dark and twisted.

I “like” everything about the 2015 Thalys terrorist train attack incident, and that includes, in a limited way, Clint Eastwood‘s The 15:17 to Paris, which I paid to see last night at the Grove.

To my surprise the theatre was 95% packed. I guess I wasn’t the only one who wanted to see Spencer Stone, Anthony Sadler and Alek Skarlatos overpower that terrorist asshole and beat the shit out of him, and so I sat through 85 minutes of meandering, faint-pulse exposition to watch that happen.

The 15:17 to Paris (which should have been titled 3:17 to Paris) is obviously (a) not a real movie, (b) weak docudrama tea and (c) weirdly Christian to boot, but I didn’t hate it. I knew it would be shit, and so I was ready for that, and then it turned out to be mildly weightless. Most of it felt like I was sitting in the back seat of an Uber or on a high-speed European train, waiting to reach my destination. Was it horrifically boring? No, but it wasn’t what anyone would call engaging or riveting.

The guy next to me was murmuring slight approval from time to time, but I could tell he was waiting for the movie to kick into gear and actually do something. But it wouldn’t. It refused. I could sense that the guy wasn’t miserable, but he was certainly underwhelmed. The vibe in the theatre #4 was flat while it played, only one guy clapped when it ended, and I overheard two angry complaints out in the lobby.

I didn’t find it painful to sit through — just slightly boring. The bad-behavior childhood stuff…later. The stuff about the rebellious, bull-headed Stone going through Air Force training…didn’t care. I was fascinated once the incident finally happened (I never knew Stone would’ve been shot right through the forehead if Ayoub El Khazzani‘s rifle hadn’t jammed) and I loved the aftermath in Paris when Francois Hollande presented the trio with Legion of Honor medals.

The Christian stuff (i.e., Stone wondering if God has a special plan for him, and Skarlatos’ mom sensing that “something really exciting” is going to happen to him) is bullshit. It’s awesome that Stone, Sadler and Skarlatos did what they did, but I don’t want to hear any Christian propaganda about divine destiny. God has no rooting interest in anything good or bad happening on the planet Earth…none. If you want to believe that God had a plan for Spencer Stone, you also have to accept that he had one for Kevin Cosgrove.

Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu‘s Babel, the final installment in what some called his “trilogy of death” (the first two being Amores perros and 21 Grams), opened on 10.27.06. A morose if brilliantly woven tapestry piece about random fates, Babel earned $34,302,837 domestic and $135,330,182 worldwide. It collected seven Oscar nominations (including Best Picture and Best Director — for a while it looked like a winner) and won the Golden Globe for Best Motion Picture, Drama.

And over the last 11 years, the twitterverse has been reflexively shitting on it. Too grim, “misery porn,” schematically forced, etc. I was a devout Babel worshipper during the ’06 and early ’07 award season, but the negative aftermath has been so persistent over the last 11 years that my admiration has weakened or even lapsed. Against my own critical judgment and history, I’ve come to associate Babel with vibes and feelings that I’d rather not revisit.

What a blessing and a refreshment, then, to watch Fandor’s “Found in Translation, Part 1: Babel & the Global Hollywood Gaze,” the first of a three-part series. What a breath of fresh air to reconsider Babel without the residual Rotten Tomatoes and Metacritic poison to contend with.

The title is the title, although the three-part essay is actually about the south-of-the-border rennaissance that began with the emergence of Inarritu, Alfonso Cuaron and Guillermo del Toro in the late ’90s.