You’ll notice that in this candid from the making of Touch of Evil, Orson Welles (dressed in his Detective Hank Quinlan get-up) is simply looking at and listening to Janet Leigh as costar Charlton Heston looks on. Notice that Welles isn’t sneering, cackling, cracking wise, puffing on his fat cigar or being grotesquely animated in the old Quinlan way — he’s just being decent and considerate and listening to what Leigh has to say. This is what Quinlan never does in Touch Of Evil. He’s always “acting’, always behaving, always “on” and is therefore, I feel, constantly dragging the film down into the swamp of ego and personality that’s at least half about Welles himself.  Every time I contemplate re-watching Touch of Evil, I remember this will involve having to deal with Welles’ pain-in-the-ass performance. Nine times out of ten, I watch something else.

A still from L’Avventura, portrait shots of Ingrid Bergman, Marilyn Monroe and Faye Dunaway, an image of Paul Newman and Joanne Woodward used for advertising art for A New Kind of Love — I’ve been feeling at best placated and at worst underwhelmed by the design of Cannes Film Festival posters over the last few years. But the 2016 poster, an echo from Jean-Luc Godard‘s Contempt (’63), is the first that I’ve really liked and admired in a long while. Question: Why do Cannes posters always harken back to the ’60s or before? The ’60s were a half-century ago — weren’t there any strong iconic images or profound cinematic stirrings that arose out of films from the ’70s, ’80s or ’90s?

In a little more than a week March will have ended and 25% of 2016 will have passed. So let’s assess where we are, highlight-wise. I haven’t much time (our Hanoi airport taxi leaves in 45 minutes) and yes, I usually wait until the one-third mark to post a spitball assessment but here’s a starter list that stood out for me. I haven’t time to re-explain my choices so I’ve included links to original reviews.

I’m assuming that Batman v. Superman: Dawn of Justice, which I won’t be seeing until I return on 3.28, won’t be good enough to rank as one of the first quarter’s best nor bad enough to be called a legendary stinker. Apologies for missing films that might’ve been mentioned had I been more diligent:

Three-Way Tie for Best Film of 2016 So Far: Robert Eggers‘ The Witch, Gavin Hood‘s Eye in the Sky and Bob Nelson‘s The Confirmation.

Best New Unreleased Film I’ve Seen in 2016, Hands Down: Kenneth Lonergan‘s Manchester By The Sea.

Reprehensible: Tim Miller‘s Deadpool.

Over-Praised By Lockstep Critics Determined to Give Jeff Nichols A Pass Because He’s One Of The Good Guys: Jeff Nichols‘ Midnight Special.

Wildly Over-Praised: Dan Trachtenberg‘s 10 Cloverfield Lane.

I Don’t Do/Can’t Do/Won’t Do Family-Friendly Animation: Zootopia.

Tragic Collapse: Terrence Malick‘s Knight of Cups.

Very Good For What It Is, But Calm Down: Roar Uthaug‘s The Wave.

Shortfaller, Not Up To Par: Joel & Ethan Coen‘s Hail, Caesar!.

Efficient, Reasonably Decent, Trump-Approved War Movie: Michael Bay’s 13 Hours.

Sloppy, Sometimes Idiotic, Trump-Mentality, Kill-the-Terrorists Exploitation: Babak Najafi‘s London Has Fallen.

I’m afraid this is one of those times when I won’t be able to bang out the usual quota. It’s 11:05 pm Sunday in Hanoi (9:05 am in Los Angeles), and we’re leaving tomorrow morning on an 8:15 am flight to Dong Hoi, where we’ll be for the better part of two days. That means a 5 am wakeup and I haven’t packed yet. We’ve just returned from a five-course dinner at Ly Club. This morning I captured seven minutes of GoPro footage of a bike ride through the Old Quarter, but I somehow forgot to pack the upload cord that fits into the camera, and the local GoPro dealer doesn’t sell them — brilliant all around. So I shot the below footage during the cab ride back to the Art Trendy hotel. No GoPro footage until I return to Los Angeles. Time to pack and crash.

Ho Chi Minh mausoleum.

I liked and respected the Broadway stage version of All The Way, but it didn’t knock me flat on my back. The trailer for Jay Roach’s HBO adaptation (debuting on 5.21), in which Bryan Cranston again plays Lyndon Johnson during his greatest historical hour, suggests it might be a bit more finessed and therefore a tad more engrossing. Some things work better when they don’t have be broadly performed and more or less shouted from a stage. Costarring Anthony Mackie (Martin Luther King), Melissa Leo (Lady Bird Johnson), Bradley Whitford (Hubert Humphrey), Stephen Root (J. Edgar Hoover), Todd Weeks (Walter Jenkins), Mo McRae (Stokely Carmichael), Spencer Garrett (Walter Reuther) and Frank Langella (Sen. Richard Russell).

In yesterday’s “Don’t Count Chickens” post, I said that Nate Parker‘s The Birth of a Nation “might snag a Best Picture nomination, maybe, but it’ll be no duckwalk.” I was immediately chided by commenters who were certain I meant to say “cakewalk.” No, I didn’t. “Piece of cake”, fine, but what does “cakewalk” even mean? I’ve been using the term “duckwalk” since Al Pacino‘s Tony Montana used it in this scene from Scarface (’83). So that’ll be enough of that, thank you very much.

Yesterday Vulture‘s Mark Harris tweeted that perhaps the best thing that could happen to Terrence Malick would be if some producer or distributor of a vulgar bent were to get tough with him and demand at least a semblance of a well-shaped, thematically developed script and, one could add, adherence to at least some of the basic staples of narrative drama. And then Dave Kehr re-tweeted this. At which point yours truly, way the hell out of the loop in Hanoi, breathed a sigh of satisfaction. Because two noteworthy persons have finally gotten on-board with what I’ve been saying all along, which is that Malick needs another Bert Schneider to slap him around and save him from his worst tendencies. Glenn Kenny pooh-poohed this suggestion when I first brought it up two or three (more?) years ago. Ball’s in his court.

Yesterday was one long bike-riding orgasm through the streets of Hanoi. It was heaven. There’s something rhapsodic about being one of hundreds of scooter riders, bicyclers, car, bus and truck drivers making their way down a major boulevard. There are no bike lanes — you’re just pedaling your way through it all, everyone making it up as they go along, and I’m telling you it’s like you’re part of some glorious, brass-band holiday parade.

The difference here is that Hanoi pedestrians aren’t standing on the curbside and going “wow, look at that!” They’re just shrugging it off, the usual rumble of daily life. But to me (and, I’m sure, to Jett and Cait) it was like being part of a huge skilled orchestra playing a great improvised symphony, and being part of it yesterday was absolutely one of the most delightful experiences of my life.

Otherwise we had two culinary orgasm sit-downs — lunch at Bun Cha Dak Kim where I had the most delicious springs rolls of my life, spicy and greasy and bursting with flavor, and dinner at Pho Thin, where they only serve bowls of Tho — clear stock, boiled beef, rice noodles, herbs, green onions and garlic. They only charge a little less than $2 U.S. a bowl, but it’s one of the greatest bowls of anything you’ve ever eaten in your life.

Jett and Cait (left side of photo) in a park alongside Hoan Kiem, the smaller of two lakes in central Hanoi.

Garlic-flavored pho last night at Pho Thin.

Ear bugs happen. They leave after two or three days, four or five tops. “Monkey Man” slipped into my brain about two weeks ago, and the fact that it wouldn’t quit after about a week bothered me. Then it left…thank you! And then yesterday, as I was bicycling through the crowded, semi-chaotic streets of Hanoi in one of the most blissful moments of my life, “Monkey Man” returned. Obviously because…I don’t know why. I’ve always regarded it as 6.5 or a 7. I think whatever positive feelings I had for it were diminished by Martin Scorsese‘s decision to use it during the classic cocaine frenzy sequence in Goodfellas. Thereafter I associated the song with anxiety and paranoia. But I just can’t stop playing and re-playing those raunchy Keith Richards chords. I might as well face facts. God has put the “Monkey Man” bug back into my head as a way of wrestling me into submission. He/She wants me to man up and admit it’s a great song and that I do in fact really like it. Okay, I’m admitting that. Uncle.

“Nobody familiar with AMPAS’s past admission practices can argue that it ever honored a bar — if one even existed — with any consistency. And equally inevitably, we will probably overmonitor progress, claiming victory or defeat based solely on what happens to, say, this year’s Sundance prizewinner The Birth of a Nation, a version of the Nat Turner story written, produced, and directed by its African-American star Nate Parker that was already being burdened with the label ‘test case’ before the print was even flown back from Utah.” — From the debut of “Hollywood Signs”, Mark Harris‘s new column for Vulture.

HE to Harris: Thematically nourishing as it is, The Birth of a Nation won’t inspire anything close to the euphoria that greeted it two months ago in Park City. It might snag a Best Picture nomination, maybe, but it’ll be no duckwalk.

It’s 6:30 am in Hanoi, and right now I’m listening to a nearby rooster crowing with all his heart, like his life depends on it. Hanoi is the only world-class city I’ve visited that has chickens and roosters walking around like they own the place and occasionally pissing on the sidewalk. Okay, there’s Key West but’s that a balmy tropical deal. To me Hanoi is a kind of heaven, teeming with sounds and scents and echoes of the past and maybe premonitions of the future. I know that sounds cliched but if you can’t appreciate the beauty of this, what good are you?