…much less seen them?

I’m talking about the decline and fall of western civilization here.

If someone were to ask for a Ten Best of the ’20s, ’30s and early ’40s, off the top of my head I would list…oh, maybe 40 or 50. Generic classics like (1) F.W. Murnau‘s Sunrise, (2) William Wellman‘s The Ox-Bow Incident, (3) Howard Hawks’ Only Angels Have Wings, (4) Buster Keaton‘s The General, (5) Fritz Lang‘s Metropolis, (6) John Huston‘s The Maltese Falcon.

Plus (7) King Kong, (8) The Wizard Of Oz, (9) Bringing Up Baby, (10) Preston Sturges‘ Sullivan’s Travels and (11) The Lady Eve (12) Casablanca, (13) Gunga Din, (14) The Grapes of Wrath, (15) Orson Welles’ Citizen Kane, (16) John Ford‘s The Informer, (17) Abel Gance‘s Napoleon, (18) Abbott & Costello‘s Hold That Ghost, (19) Leo McCarey‘s Duck Soup, (20) Jean Renoir‘s The Rules of the Game, (21) Sergei Eisenstein‘s Battleship Potemkin, (22) Lewis Milestone‘s All Quiet on the Western Front.

Plus (23) James Whale‘s Frankenstein and (24) The Bride of Frankenstein, (25) Leo McCarey’s The Awful Truth, (26) Ernst Lubitsch‘s Trouble in Paradise plus (27) My Man Godfrey, (28) Que Viva Mexico!, (29) The Twentieth Century, (30) The Philadelphia Story, (31) Sherlock, Jr., (32) Tod Browning‘s Freaks, (33) I Am A Fugitive From a Chain Gang, (34) Shadow of a Doubt, (35) The Public Enemy,(36) Michael Curtiz‘s Robin Hood, (37) Hawks‘ Scarface, (38) Curtiz’s Yankee Doodle Dandy, (39) Selznick/Fleming’s Gone With The Wind and (40) Hitchcock’s Rebecca and (41) Lifeboat.

I know, of course, that most under-40s regard films released in the ’80s as rather musty, and you can double or triple that assessment when it comes to films from Hollywood’s “Easy Riders, Raging Bulls” era (from 1967’s Bonnie and Clyde and The Graduate until the end of that cycle when Sorcerer bombed and Star Wars became a massive hit)…and you can certainly forget about films from the late ’40s, ’50s and early ’60s (including Hud). Which leaves films from the ’20s, ’30s and early ’40s totally in the dust.

So as futile as this may sound, I’m asking which of the above 40, if any, fall under the “hazily recalled by Millennials and Zoomers” category…which of these films have made any kind of impression of any kind?

Let me assure everyone that Pope Francis is not, as we speak, in the grip of any kind of quietly humming life force…any kind of buzzing, soothing, gently crackling cosmic consciousness, at least as living life forms (humans, aquatics, animals, insects) know the term.

Pope Francis is not presently on that kind of Dave Bowman flotation ride. He’s not riding anything, in fact. Because he no longer exists, although a certain tingly residue may remain on some level. Maybe a sound or a whisper of some kind. A raindrop hitting the surface of a pond.

Whatever this residue may or may not amount to, it is almost certainly enveloped by or resting upon a kind of perfect, peaceful soft mattress of serenity…something that’s well beyond trustworthy….simultaneously everything and nothing. No worries or uncertainties or concerns of any kind. Flatline chill. Stanley Kubrick has been in this same kind of perfect suspension for…what, 26 years and change? And it may as well be seconds as far as Stanley’s residue is concerned. Or, you know, forget any calibration at all.

A little more than 18 years ago, Vanity Fair photographer Art Streiber and Seth Rogen, 26 going on 48, reenacted the North by Northwest cropduster scene. I remember flipping through the issue and going “what….why?” The gray suit was okay and the biplane looked fine, but the first thing I noticed, of course, was Rogen’s gelatinous gut spilling over his belt. Which reminded anyone out there who knew anything about the 54 year old Cary Grant, who filmed the actual scene up in Wasco in the summer of ’58…if there was one thing Grant was never in the least bit burdened by, it was an overhang. So the joke was what?…look at how galumphy and slothful our movie-star culture has become? Something in this vein?

HE respects bussdownsathiana. She prefaces her Sinners review by acknowledging that a lot of Zoomer social-media fanatics “are going to get mad at me,” etc. But at least she has the stones to lay it down straight, which is more than you can say for most of the over-the-top nutters and suck-ups who are praising Ryan Coogler‘s vampire flick to the heavens…hook, line and sinker.

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THIS RIFF CONTAINS A SPOILER if you live in a deep, dark, wifi-free cave…:

I explained a few days ago that I’d pretty much decided to shine The Last of Us, largely because I’m flat-out repelled by Bella Ramsey’s “Ellie”…feral eyes, frosty “they/them” vibes, bunned hair. “Pretty much” meant there was, at most, a one-in-five chance I might watch it again. But now that Pedro Pascal’s Joel has been shot, golf-clubbed and stabbed to death, we’re stuck with Ellie as the lead character and that, to me, is death. I really hate this show, and if Craig Mazin and Neil Druckmann…okay, I won’t say it. But I’m definitely flushing it. Get outta my life.

Speaking as a skeptical non-Catholic and, of course, a 2025 cinephile, HE’s easiest and most immediate understanding of the inner finaglings and political struggles of Vatican politics stems, of course, from Edward Berger’s Conclave (‘24), which ended with the choosing of a kind of woke Pope, aka the intersex, Mexican-born Cardinal Benitez, who chose to be called Pope Innocente, played by Carlos Diehz.

And yet the 88 year-old Pope Francis, who suddenly passed last night in Rome, was a bit of an anomaly — a compassionate progressive who had reached out to gay Catholics and, in Conclave terms, was staunchly opposed to the strict conservative dogma of Serge Castellito’s Cardinal Tedesco. Nonetheless Francis spoke out against woke fanaticism and cancel culture, and in so doing presented himself as a fair-minded and well-principled fellow.

A Jesuit from Argentina, the kindly Jorge Mario Bergoglio was, it seemed to some of us, a real-life version of Benitez, minus a certain physical characteristic.

I knew Francis was a good egg when Sarah Palin frowned and harrumphed when he was chosen to be Pope in March 2013.

And now, in a manner of speaking, Ralph Fiennes’ Cardinal Lawrence will once again be summoning cardinals to Vatican City to select a new pontiff. Who will be Papa Francesco’s successor? Another Benitez or…who knows?…Stanley Tucci’s Cardinal Bellini, Castellito’s Tedesco, John Lithgow’s Cardinal Tremblay, Lucian Msamati’s Cardinal Adeyemi, or perhaps even Lawrence himself?

If I was running the show, I would urge the choosing of a contemporary Pope Joan.