The most emotionally moving moment in Steven Spielberg‘s The Fabelmans comes when we hear the opening passage from Max Steiner‘s score for John Ford‘s The Searchers. It’s a payoff like no other. I beamed and went “aahh, yes…this hits home, feels right.”

HE acknowledges that Everything Everywhere All At Once may end up with a token Best Picture nomination to placate Zellennials, but the less said about that unpleasant possibility the better. With the unseen Babylon and Avatar: The Way of Water in a limbo position, the best films of the year are as follows…these are the 2022 motion pictures that have earned the serious points except for Water and Babylon, which are likely to score highly before long:

1. The Fabelmans
2. TÁR
3. Top Gun: Maverick
4. Avatar: The Way of Water
5. Babylon
6. Empire of Light
7. She Said
8. Armageddon Time
9. Bardo
10. Close

The early to late ’70s saw the flowering of a revolutionary sexual awakening all over…in showbiz circles, in elite professions, in the major urban areas, in upper middle-class neighborhoods. Hell, everywhere.

And especially for rich, powerful, good-looking actors on the prowl. For them every day was a combination of Plato’s Retreat and I, Claudius. It was madness back then.

Even Average Joes tasted the nectar. From a certain perspective they were lucky to be living and frolicking in one of the most breathtaking nookie eras since the days of Ancient Rome.

In our Salem Witch Trial climate there’s nothing to be gained and everything to be lost by being candid about this. I certainly can’t go there but…

The context of the ‘70s was so dramatically different than the climate of today. We’re living in the midst of #MeToo Puritanism — a very conservative and punitive social movement.

That aside, any adult actor who may or may not have had his way with an under-age teenager…such behavior was selfish and cruel. That was then, but this is now. And criminally is criminality. You don’t mess with jailbait.

So many people today have no understanding of how many people in Hollywood and the pop music world diddled around with jailbait back in the day. They think it was just Warren Beatty and Led Zeppelin. Celebrities, or at least many of them, have little sense of morality when it comes to showing restraint or putting the brakes on. They lead wild lives. But no one seems to understand this. The tabloids present banal addiction and divorce dramas as The Truth. They don’t report on most of what actually goes on.

…or work for the first third or first half, but don’t work as an overall story — an HE riff if I ever devised one!

I recently happened to re-watch Sydney Pollack‘s Random Hearts (’99), a forlorn adult romance that flopped financially and totally tanked in terms of critic and ticket buyer opinions.

It’s about a tentative, uncertain love affair between a D.C. cop (Harrison Ford) and a New Hampshire Congressperson (Kristin Scott Thomas) who meet because their spouses (Susanna Thompson and Peter Coyote, respectively) were having an affair before dying in a plane crash.

Random Hearts doesn’t work because it can’t — you can’t launch a loving, adult, non-obsessive relationship with the shattered spouse of the person your husband or your wife was having an affair with. The thing that Ford and Thomas have (they fall for each other and make love in a woodsy cabin) will always be a weird menage a quatre between two living and two dead people. It’s just not in the cards for things to work out, but Pollack and screenwriter Kurt Luedtke try their best to make it work anyway.

And to a certain extent, they succeed. There are several scenes during the first half that work quite well — they really do. Carefully written, well acted, appropriately steady and somber.

And because of the more or less successful first half Random Hearts doesn’t deserve a 15% Rotten Tomatoes rating — that’s ridiculous!

What other films are at least reasonably good during the first third or first half, only to steadily crack and shatter and fall apart during the second half?

Daniel Kwan and Daniel Scheinert‘s Everything Everywhere All At Once (A24) opened on 3.25.22. It took me nearly six months to finally watch this sucker and get my royal HE hate on — “Frequent Agonies of Everything Everywhere” appeared on 8.6.22. And now, two-thirds of a year after opening, Showbiz 411‘s Roger Friedman has seen it and shat on it.

Quote #1: “Indeed, just by accident, I wound up discussing [Everything Everywhere] with two pretty solid Academy voters. Their response? ‘We turned it off, and there was good stuff there.'”

Quote #2: The visuals are dazzling, but are put together with some form of ADHD. If there’s a story in the alternate universe, I couldn’t figure it out. This is a comic book movie pretending to be something else — maybe Cloud Atlas, but that movie didn’t work either.”

Quote #3: “So how did this adventure in tediousness make $60 million? It is really a big cult film. The comic book stuff is what sold it to a certain audience, which is fine.”

If Everything Everywhere All At Once was a person napping on a couch in a living room, I would take off my shoes, sneak up and suffocate it with a throw pillow.

[Initially posted on 9.24.20] A couple of days ago screenwriter Daniel Waters asked followers to post four or five films that they deeply admire or feel guilty-pleasure pangs for, but which are generally regarded as insufficiently loved.

Five films, in short, that the hoi polloi never seemed to care very much for (or never knew much about or have forgotten) but which you privately swear by.

Five years ago I posted a list of HE’s 160 greatest all-time films , but none apply here because each is loved and respected. We’re talking lone-wolf, off-in-the-corner films. So here are five…make it six picks:

Sandra Nettlebeck‘s Mostly Martha (’01). Probably the greatest sensual foodie + unlikely love affair flick I’ve ever seen. Martina Gedeck and Sergio Castellitto‘s lead performances are perfection. Scott Hicks‘ No Reservations, an American remake costarring Catherine Zeta Jones and Aaron Eckhart, missed the mark.

John Flynn‘s The Outfit (’73). A classic hard-boiled revenge film, lean and blunt and crafted in the tradition of Point Blank. Outside of noir cultists and film bums, few have paid much attention. Robert Duvall, Karen Black, Joe Don Baker, Joanna Cassidy and Robert Ryan.

Bob Rafelson‘s Stay Hungry (’76). Love, character, destiny, Southern culture and body-building. Charming, low-key, funny. Arguably contains the most winning Arnold Schwarzenegger performance ever. Definitely my all-time favorite Jeff Bridges film. Sally Field, R.G. Armstrong, Robert Englund, Helena Kallianiotes.

Frank Perry and Thomas McGuane‘s Rancho Deluxe (’75). Another Jeff Bridges film about destiny and character, this time by way of Montana cattle rustling. Harry Dean Stanton and Richard Bright played Curt and Burt, and of course their names are a running gag. Not a lot of narrative urgency, but that’s also the charm of it.

Lamont Johnson‘s The Last American Hero (’73). One of the best redneck flicks ever. Yes, Bridges again. The story of racecar driver Junior Johnson, called Elroy Jackson in the film. Based on Tom Wolfe‘s Esquire piece titled “The Last American Hero Is Junior Johnson…Yes!”.

Susanne Bier‘s Things We Lost In The Fire (’07). My all-time favorite film about drug addiction, containing my favorite Benicio del Toro performance. Fans were few and far between when it opened in ’07, but I was instantly sold. Alone but hooked,

I half-liked the first John Wick flick, but I hated the two that followed. I might watch John Wick: Chapter 4 (Lionsgate, 3.24.23) because of the locations — Paris, Berlin (including Studio Babelsburg sound stage interiors), osaka and Lawrence of Arabia‘s Wadi Rum.