Yesterday I expressed skepticism about Scott Foundas‘s rave review of Anthony and Joe Russo‘s Captain America: The Winter Soldier. I just feel he’s been a little too generous and obliging with CG fanboy crap. But not this time. Foundas was right on the money. I saw Winter Soldier last night at Disney and I have to give praise where due. This is one sharp, well-written (by Christopher Markus and Stephen McFeely), rock-solid, mega-efficient, super-expensive something or other, and with a certain humanist empathy that seeps through from time to time. It’s going to be a huge hit.

Speaking as a confirmed hater of comic-book movies, I was really and truly okay with this thing. It’s way, way above the level of The Avengers (which I mostly despised) and the second and third Iron Man movies. If you’re going to shell out your hard-earned coin for a comic-book movie, this is the way to go. Smart and swift and clean. The Russo brothers have been working on TV productions and M.I.A. from theatrical features since You and Me Dupree, but now they’re the new champs. And they have another Disney-distributed Captain America film due in May 2016.

I also admired Joe Johnston’s Captain America (2011), and I can shower the same praise upon Winter Soldier — “It speeds right along, cuts to the chase, does it right…it moves, mad-dashes, soars, whooshes, runs, delights and barrel-asses.” The CG is super grade-A (five VFX companies contributed) and the $175 million budget is all on the screen. It’s almost on the level of a James Cameron film…almost. Every line, every scene, every frame exudes shrewd judgment and tip-top craft.

There’s a line spoken by Steven Keats in The Friends of Eddie Coyle (’73): “Life is hard, man, but it’s harder if you’re stupid.” (Here‘s the mp3.) By the same token it’s hard to make a half-decent crime film but it’s really hard to enjoy it if the leads are drop-dead stupid.

I don’t mean characters who could use a few more brain cells or are slow on the pickup. I mean characters who haven’t the common sense that God gave monkeys. This is a problem. I have to find a way to bond or empathize with characters if I’m going to spend a couple of hours with them, or at least make some sense of their motives. I’d like to able to roll with people who aren’t as smart as giraffes or wildbeests, but it’s not in me.

Imagine a couple of wildebeests, a male and a female who are….well, maybe a little impetuous but definitely crazy in love with each other. One afternoon they leave their herd and trot over to a shaded area where a family of lions are taking an afternoon snooze. For whatever dumbfuck reason they start taunting the lions, spitting and kicking and defecating. At first the lions are too bewildered to respond, but they eventually get up and tackle the wildebeests and eat them. Now that‘s a tragedy!

If someone were to make a documentary about this event, the copy line would be “those wildebeests might have done a dumb thing but they were so in love with each other!”

Raymond De Felitta‘s Rob The Mob (Millenium, 3.18 in NY, 3.25 in LA) is a fact-based story about those wildebeests. Crazy, irrepressible animals who lived in Ozone, Queens in 1992. Their names were Thomas and Rosemarie Uva (played by Michael Pitt and Broadway stage enchilada Nina Arianda). They had criminal records, drug issues (at least on Thomas’s part) and hell-bent inclinations, and so they decided to augment their income as bill collectors by knocking off a series of mafia social clubs. Insane behavior. Death wish.

You can’t really trust Variety critic Scott Foundas when it comes to superhero comic-book flicks. He’s a first-rate critic when it comes to real movies but put him in front of a CG-propelled fanboy package and Foundas is suddenly too generous, too obliging, too turn-the-other-cheeky. Have Variety critics been told by their editors to go easy on these films? That there’s no point in trashing Marvel/D.C. product because they’re basically thrill sausage — the movie equivalent of a Magic Mountain ride — so what’s the point? That aside and taken with a grain, Foundas has heartily approved of Anthony and Joe Russo‘s Captain America: The Winter Soldier, which I’ll be seeing tonight.

A January 1961 Twilight Zone episode called “Back There” and Stephen King‘s “11.22.63” asked the same question: if a person could go back in time, could he/she prevent a tragedy from happening or is history immutable no matter what? This is the dream of Matthew Kiernan. What films or franchise would HE readers try to prevent or erase if they could go back in time? Which actor’s or actress’s career would they like to smother in its infancy? I for one would try and stop the making of the Wachowski brothers‘ Speed Racer and the Keanu Reeves remake of The Day The Earth Stood Still,

I’m guessing that Todd Spence‘s Hardy Boys/True Detective mashups (posted yesterday on Break.com) don’t mean much to Millenials or Genxers, even. The Hardy Boys detective novels (written by a series of ghostwriters under the pseudonym “Franklin W. Dixon”) began in the late 1920s. They enjoyed their biggest popularity between the ’30s and the early ’60s, although the series was rebooted in the late ’80s and continues, for those lame enough to want to actually read them, today. The Hardy Boys were old hat in the days of Spin and Marty. They are to today’s YA books as Nelson Eddy and Jeanette McDonald musicals are to Les Miserables or the upcoming Annie. (Hat tip to Buzzfeed.)

(l.) One of several Hardy Boys/True Detective mashup covers, created by Todd Spence and posted yesterday on break.com; (r.) Original Hardy Boys paperback cover art.

Lisa and Louise Burns (a.k.a., the Grady twins from The Shining) attended a a BFI 50th anniversary screening of Stanley Kubrick‘s Dr. Strangelove about six weeks ago in London. They’re in their mid 40s now, but (a) I honestly don’t see much of a resemblance and (b) I can’t match either one with their younger selves. They looked frosty and malevolent as kids and now they look like ladies who lunch in Madrid.

The great cinematographer and noted John Huston collaborator Oswald Morris has passed at age 98. Morris is best known for creating highly idiosyncratic color schemes for Huston’s Moulin Rouge (’52), Moby Dick (’56) and Reflections in a Golden Eye (’67). Rouge featured a rosey watercolor palette that recalled the paintings of Toulouse Lautrec. Moby Dick used a desaturated color-mixed-with-monochrome look (Bosley Crowther called it “strange” and “subdued”) that was inspired by Currier & Ives etchings. Golden Eye was colored with sickly yellow-pinkish hues. Morris also shot Huston’s Beat the Devil (’54) Heaven Knows, Mr. Allison (’57), The Mackintosh Man (’73) and The Man Who Would Be King (’75). He also shot Look Back in Anger (’59), The Entertainer (’60), The Guns of Navarone (’61), Lolita (’62), Of Human Bondage (’64), The Spy Who Came in from the Cold (’65) and Sleuth (’72).

A Bluray of Martin Scorsese‘s The King of Comedy (’83) is out later this month. Why haven’t I re-watched this film during the 31 years since it first opened? Because even though I completely agree with (or would certainly never argue against) the notion that it’s among Scorsese’s best, it’s never been and never will be a pleasant film to watch. It’s great and prescient but at the same irritating and almost ghastly at times. Except for the “you should get cancer, I hope you get cancer!” bit on the streets of midtown Manhattan.

Last fall I finally bought the 2012 British DVD of Ken Russell‘s The Devils (’71), but I never watched it. One of my motives in getting it was that I wanted to see the fabled “rape of Christ” sequence that was cut from the theatrical version. And then last night there it was, a Youtube clip posted by “Berg”, in the comments section under the “Houston Movie Fan Killed Over 300 Dispute” story. It’s one thing to watch this sequence in the context of Russell’s film and another to view it as a stand-alone. In the latter regard it’s the first excerpt from a mainstream big-studio film that I would actually call demonic. I despise Christians but even I understand why they would be appalled by this. I actually agree with the 43 year-old decision to cut it out. I never thought I’d hear myself say such a thing.

In my realm of projected passion, Elizabeth Warren would next year announce her candidacy for President and compete for the nomination with the right-of-center Hillary Clinton. Someone who’s emphatically not in the corporate pocket and who (unlike Obama and almost certainly unlike what Hillary will do if she’s elected in 2016) wants to rally the country into doing something about income inequality has to run, if for no other reason than to move the conversation in that direction. Last December Warren said she’ll serve out her six-year term as Massachusetts Senator but that’s not binding in the least. Warren would be a far healthier choice for President than Hillary.

Deadline‘s Mike Fleming is reporting that the Noah guys — star Russell Crowe, director Darren Aronofsky and Paramount vice-chairman Rob Moore — managed some face-time with Pope Francis today in Rome “after the Vatican extended an olive branch and hosted the trio in the official VIP section of this morning’s Udienza.” The photo below is fine but…I’m presuming that a thumbs-up group shot with the Pope would have looked unseemly. I’m also presuming that the people around His Holiness urged him to maintain a certain distance, perhaps out of concern that Old Testament literalists who might (I say “might“) be displeased with the film will transfer their resentment to him.

(l. to r.) Russell Crowe, Darren Aronofsky, Rob Moore.