Early this morning a friend sent along his “top ten films of the 1960s” list, and it’s certainly a decent roster for the most part. Okay, better than decent. But he put The Guns of Navarone (’61) in his third-place slot, and that, I replied, is a definite no-go.

The first 45-50 minutes of J. Lee Thompson‘s WWII adventure thriller are terrific (the main title sequence + Dimitri Tiomkin’s score are bull’s-eye), but after the commandos reach the top of the cliff the film becomes rote and lazy and even silly.

How many Germans do they kill? Four or five hundred?

Two scenes are top-notch during the second half — (a) the S.S./gestapo interrogation scene with Anthony Quinn moaning and rolling around all over the floor and (b) the killing of Gia Scala for treachery. But the believability factor is out the window.

The more I watch this film, the more I’ve resented Anthony Quayle‘s “Roy” and his idiotic broken leg. Mission-wise Roy is a total stopper — an albatross around everyone’s neck. I don’t agree with Quinn’s assessment — “One bullet now…better for him, better for us” — but I almost do.

And the older I’ve gotten the more I’ve become sick of David Niven‘s demolition expert, who’s mainly an effete selfish weenie and a huge pain in the ass. Gregory Peck: “And what about the men on Keros?” Niven: “I don’t know the men on Keros but I do know Roy!” God, what an asshole!

A crackpot is a person whose views and philosophy are regarded as way too eccentric or fantastical to be taken seriously. A crankpot, according to Manhattan gadfly and all-around smartass Bill McCuddy, is a fellow who’s regarded as overly influenced by a skeptical sourpuss attitude about life and movies and whatever else — i.e., too Andy Rooney-ish.

Which, of course, is nowhere close to being a fair description of yours truly. For years I have claimed with a certain degree of sincerity to be a 21st Century incarnation of Klaus Kinski’s anti-Bolshevik in Dr. Zhivago — “the only free man on this train.” Okay, perhaps that’s putting it too strongly but it’s a reasonably close assessment, especially considering the general fanaticism out there.

Six years ago Marshall Fine’s Robert Klein Still Can’t Stop His Leg, a fascinating, highly engaging doc about one of the greatest anguished Jewish comics of all time, disappeared into the maw of the Weinstein Co. bankruptcy of 2017.

Lo and behold, Fine’s Robert Klein doc is now available to stream on multiple platforms for the first time ever.

Roughly a year before the Weinstein envelopment, I saw Robert Klein Still Can’t Stop His Leg, and fully concurred with all the then-current praise.

From “Speaking As An Honorary Anguished Jew, I Relate To Smart Docs About Authentic Specimens,” posted on 4.24.16: “Yes, I’ve been friends with Fine for a long time and yes, I’ve admired Klein since I was a kid but this is a fine (sorry) doc that imparts wisdom, feeling, perspective and smarts.”

“It serves as not just a personal look at Klein, but as something larger,” Showbiz 411‘s Roger Friedman wrote on 4.20.16. “It’s a real piece of history. What Fine and Klein have done here is make an excellent companion piece to the very good Joan Rivers doc of a few years ago, A Piece of Work. Since Alan King died rather young and abruptly, and nothing’s been done on Stiller and Meara, there is very little documentary record of the great Jewish comics who launched from the Ed Sullivan Show era.

“The doc is also very funny. Klein is incredibly endearing and corny, while at the same time maintaining an edge. That’s why he made 40 appearances on Letterman. I hope The Weinstein Company can give Still Can’t Stop His Leg a good release in major markets before VOD or Netflix. Like a Robert Klein show, the film is intimate and hilarious.”

In the late ’70s a smart Jewish friend and fellow cineaste told me I had more Jewish guilt than he. That was the beginning of my honorary Jewhood, which thrives to this day.

Like any stable, decent, caring parent, Marcia Gay Harden, 63, recently emphasized her support of her three kids, and particularly their orientation or persuasion or however you want to put it.

Last weekend the Oscar-winning actress, 63, explained during a telethon for “Drag Isn’t Dangerous: A Digital Fundraiser” that (a) her three kids are “all queer” and (b) “they teach me every day.”

This is what I would say if my kids had chosen this path. Compassionate, fair-minded parents have no choice but to embrace their children and show respect for their preferred orientation and/or identities.

Harden: “My eldest child is non-binary, my son is gay [and] my youngest is fluid.”

Harden’s Wiki bio reports that daughter Eulala Grace Scheel (born September 1998) is her eldest, and that twins Hudson Harden Scheel (born a bio-male) and Julitta Dee Scheel (born bio-female) were born on 4.22.04. Harden and the kids’ father, prop master Thaddaeus Scheel, divorced in February 2012.

All queer, in short, and yet Harden seems to be drawing distinctions between non-binary, gay and fluid. I honestly wouldn’t know how to define those distinctions.

In HE’s latest podcast, Jeff and Sasha jump into the latest sticky wicket — i.e., Pauline Kael, Laurence Olivier, Richard Dreyfuss, Othello, etc….an issue that has greatly disturbed Variety‘s Clayton Davis.

Recorded on May 7th…74 minutes.

World of Reel‘s Jordan Ruimy is conducting a critics poll of the preferred greatest films of the 1960s.

It not only broke my heart but caused great physical pain to not include The Hustler, Blow-Up, Rosemary’s Baby, Easy Rider, Breathless, Shoot The Piano Player, L’Eclisse, Cool Hand Luke, To Kill A Mockingbird, The Apartment, Repulsion, Psycho, A Hard Day’s Night, The Train, Butch Cassidy And The Sundance Kid, The Magnificent Seven, Bullitt, The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance, Dead Heat on a Merry-Go-Round, Point Blank, etc.

It’s completely infuriating, but when you have to choose ten you have to be brutal, and it hurts so badly.

HE’s top ten of the ’60s: 1. Dr. Strangelove, 2. Midnight Cowboy, 3. The Manchurian Candidate, 4. L’Avventura, 5. Bonnie and Clyde, 6. 2001: A Space Odyssey, 7. This Sporting Life, 8. The Wild Bunch, 9. The Graduate, 10. Lawrence of Arabia.