Last November I bought the Eureka Entertainment/Masters of Cinema Bluray of Howard Hawks‘ Red River (’48). I mostly hated it — at best it looked unexceptional and too much of it was covered in Egyptian mosquito grain. Three days ago I bought Criterion’s Red River Bluray. I naturally expected it to be just as grainy as the Masters of Cinema version…how could it not be? No other video distributor has worn the grain badge more proudly or persistently than Criterion. Their devotion to grain structure (a high-falutin’ term that basically means “presence of digital mosquitoes”) has caused me much anguish over the years. Anyway, I popped in the Criterion Red River and…astonishing. It has next to no bothersome grain, and the images seem deeper, sharper, cleaner. By my sights it’s certainly more handsomely realized than the Masters of Cinema version. The details are delightful, magnificent. I’m genuinely surprised. Hats off to the Criterion team. Oh, and I didn’t like (and will never again watch) the somewhat shorter version which Walter Brennan narrates. I don’t care if Hawks preferred this version. I know what’s best.

In a 6.12 interview with Toronto Star critic Peter Howell, Clint Eastwood admits to being “amused that one of his more recent movies, Gran Torino, has spawned a catch praise that’s almost as popular as Dirty Harry’s ‘Go ahead, make my day!’ line from Sudden Impact. The line is ‘Get off my lawn!,’ barked by Eastwood’s grizzled Korean War vet Walt Kowalski in Gran Torino. “Yeah, I can’t control all that,” Eastwood says. “If it has that kind of impression, then it’s a compliment — a left-handed one, at least.”

About ten years ago a prominent director-actor told me that Eastwood was the source of another famous line — “Show me a beautiful woman and I’ll show you a guy who’s tired of fucking her.” Maybe not the original source but he said he’d heard it from Eastwood (or perhaps had been told Eastwood had said it) back in the ’70s or ’80s. I naturally believed him but now I’m thinking that line has probably been attributed all over the place so who knows?

In the following order, the Best 2014 Films That I’ve Seen Thus Far (regardless of forthcoming or undetermined release dates for those seen at Sundance, Berlin and Cannes) are as follows:

1. Andrey Zvyagintsev‘s Leviathan (hands down the best film I saw in Cannes and an almost certain contender for the 2014 Best Foreign Language Feature Oscar); 2. Steven Knight‘s Locke; 3. Damien Chazelle‘s Whiplash (Sundance); 4. Wes Anderson‘s The Grand Budapest Hotel; 5. Yann Demange‘s ’71 (Berlinale); 6. Paweł Pawlikowski‘s Ida (released in early May, Telluride/Toronto 2013); 7. Damian Szifron‘s Wild Tales (Cannes); 8. Bennett Miller‘s Foxcatcher (Cannes); 9. Doug Liman‘s Edge of Tomorrow; 10. Craig Johnson‘s The Skeleton Twins (Sundance); 11. Anthony and Joe Russo‘s Captain America: The Winter Soldier; 12. Jim Jarmusch‘s Only Lovers Left Alive; 13. Steve James‘ Life Itself; 14. Darren Aronfosky‘s Noah; 15. Richard Linklater‘s Boyhood; (15) Lynn Shelton‘s Laggies; (16) Hany Abu-Assad‘s Omar; (17) Chiemi Karasawa‘s Elaine Stritch: Shoot Me; (18) John Turturro‘s Fading Gigolo; (19) Charlie McDowell‘s The One I Love (Sundance), (20) John Ridley‘s Jimi — All Is By My Side (Toronto 2013/LAFF), (21) Rory Kennedy‘s Last Days In Vietnam, and (22) Chapman and Maclain Way‘s The Battered Bastards of Baseball (Sundance — Netflix in July).

Anecdotal but noteworthy plot wrinkle: The Equalizer works the aisles at Home Depot, or a store that looks an awful lot like one. Which I can roll with. But once you succumb to semi-banal employment situations, how far are you prepared to go? How would it be if The Equalizer worked at a Rite-Aid? What if he was a freelance massage therapist? What if he was a flight attendant? McDonalds? Studly, panther-like, ex-commando Creasy types aren’t supposed to work jobby-type jobs. They’re supposed to be operators who’ve figured out enough angles so they don’t have to punch a clock…right?

On our last day in Venice (Tuesday, 6.3) my son Dylan and I spotted one of those massively grotesque Love Boat tourist ships from a distance of a quarter-mile or so. It was gliding by the south side of the Dorsoduro district on its way out to the Adriatic. These ships are sickening. The people who travel around on them are the same fraidy cats who vacation in Las Vegas or Cancun or in Club Med spots. Pod people who are terrified of coping with any aspect of any environment that isn’t totally Americanized or exuding a plastic corporate vibe.

Here’s the release: “In celebration of the 6.17 Blu-ray and DVD release of
Wes Anderson‘s The Grand Budapest Hotel, on Saturday, 6.14 a version of the illustrious European hotel constructed entirely of Lego bricks wil be unveiled at the Grove. Ryan Ziegelbauer and his team of eight model builders — all die-hard Anderson fans — spent 575 hours building and designing the replica of the exquisite hotel. To construct the model, more than 50,000 certified Lego bricks from collectors and wholesalers were sourced from Lithuania, Poland, Latvia, Germany, Italy and 14 different states in the U.S. The final model will weigh approximately 150 pounds and stand 7 feet tall and 6.5 feet wide. The model will be on display for two days at The Grove — Saturday, 6.14 and Sunday, 6.15 — for fans to enjoy.

I felt profoundly moved and even close to choking up a couple of times while watching Rory Kennedy‘s Last Days in Vietnam yesterday at the Los Angeles Film Festival.

The waging of the Vietnam War by U.S forces was one of the most tragic and devastating miscalculations of the 20th Century, but what happened in Saigon during the last few days and particularly the last few hours of the war on 4.30.75 wasn’t about policy. For some Saigon-based Americans it was simply about taking care of friends and saving as many lives as possible. It was about good people bravely risking the possibility of career suicide by acknowledging a basic duty to stand by their Vietnamese friends and loved ones (even if these natives were on the “wrong” or corrupted side of that conflict) and do the right moral thing.

Last Days in Vietnam director Rory Kennedy during post-screening q & a.

Kennedy’s incisive, well-sculpted (if not entirely comprehensive) 98-minute doc is basically about how a relative handful of Americans stationed in Saigon — among them former Army Captain Stuart Herrington, ex-State Department official Joseph McBride and former Pentagon official Richard Armitage — did the stand-up, compassionate thing in the face of non-decisive orders and guidelines from superiors (particularly U.S. Ambassador to South Vietnam Graham Martin) who wouldn’t face up to the fact that the North Vietnamese had taken most of South Vietnam by mid-April and would inevitably conquer Saigon.

It was obvious as hell to almost anyone with eyes and ears, and yet Martin and other officials, afraid of triggering widespread panic, wouldn’t approve contingency plans for evacuation until it was way, way too late. So the above-named humanitarians and their brethren decided it was “easier to beg for forgiveness than to ask permission” and did what they could — covertly, surreptitiously, any which way — to save as many South Vietnamese as they could.

In this video review piece TheWrap‘s Lucas Shaw calls 22 Jump Street “one of the two best comedies of the summer along with Neighbors.” Whoa, wait…Neighbors was amiable and dopey but a bit tedious after the first hour. I didn’t laugh once…not actually, I mean. It’s cool but in a “no-laugh funny” way, as I’m fond of saying. (And there’s nothing wrong with that — it’s just a certain kind of comedy.) I won’t see 22 Jump Street until this afternoon (I missed two invitational screenings) but…well, I’ll just ask those who’ve already seen it. Without being generous, is it hah-hah funny or no-laugh funny? And I really don’t want to hear about any homoerotic undertones between Jonah Hill and Channing Tatum….please. Just leave it alone.

I don’t know why I’ve been so slow to wake up to Joe Swanberg’s Happy Christmas (Magnolia, 7.26), but it’s obviously not about a “happy” anything. Obviously a layered, behavior-driven, Swanbergian piece about lifestyles, values, addictions, frustrations, etc. Jenny (Anna Kendrick), an irresponsible party animal, moves in with her somewhat older brother (Swanberg), his wife (Melanie Lynskey) and their young kid. Complications ensue. I haven’t seen it but I’ll bet any amount of money that Kendrick sleeps with someone inappropriate and that this in itself shifts tectonic plates. Honestly? My first reaction was to shine Happy Christmas because Lena Dunham costars, and I’m frankly getting a little tired of her schtick. I just need some time away from her. It’s partly that short haircut and partly the constant eating of ice cream on Girls.

I’m down with Paul King‘s Paddington (Weinstein Co., 12.25 stateside) because it’s obviously going for dry and droll and subtle wherever possible, and because the CG feels agreeably detailed and nicely integrated with the live-action footage. For whatever reason the teaser doesn’t point out that Colin Firth is the voice of Paddington Bear, a Peruvian immigrant who comes to London. Costarring Hugh Bonneville, Nicole Kidman, Sally Hawkins, Jim Broadbent, Peter Capaldi and Julie Walter. Paddington will open commercially in England on 11.28.

No more running around for Harrison Ford (a.k.a. “Uncle Festus”) on the set of JJ Abrams‘ Star Wars: Episode VII. The 71 year-old actor broke or fractured his ankle yesterday during filming at London’s Pinewood Studios. A Variety story says the injury happened “when a hydraulic door…fell down and hit him,” whatever that means. In other words some crew guy screwed up bigtime, and now Abrams is going to have to re-arrange the shooting schedule to some extent as Ford’s Han Solo character is reportedly a semi-prominent figure in the plot (or at least not cameo-level). “[Ford] was air-lifted to a local hospital and is receiving care,” a Disney statement reportedly reads. One presumes that Ford/Solo wasn’t scheduled to do a lot of kick-boxing or cartwheels in Episode VII to begin with (he mostly just stood around and piloted the Millenium Falcon in the original Star Wars/Empire Strikes Back/Return of the Jedi) so Abrams will probably be able to shoot what he needs once Ford returns to the set all taped up and on painkillers.

Harrison Ford

Last night I finally caught Bong Joon-ho‘s Snowpiercer — the opener of the 2014 Los Angeles Film Festival. Don’t kid yourself — the geeks have hailed this political-allegory thriller as some kind of visionary masterwork, but it’s not entirely successful or satisfying. Harvey Weinstein‘s concerns about length and commerciality were not unfounded. It says the right things but says them over and over again. It knocks you out conceptually during the first half (maybe for the first 60% or 65%), but during the last 25% to 30% you’re wishing it would just wrap things up already. The social satire stuff is magnificent, but after a while the obsessively violent conflicts and blood stylings wear out their welcome. On one hand Snowpiercer is a riveting, totally-on-target class-warfare flick (the 1% elites and their henchmen exploiting the 99% on a high-speed train hurtling through ice and snow and heading straight to hell) with magnificent sets, delicious production design, wintry CG vistas and noirish atmosphere to burn. On the other hand it turns obsessively violent — not just tediously but fetishistically with character after character getting stabbed, chopped or gutted like livestock. Or shot to death. Like many other Asian directors who are into action wanks and slaughtering for the sake of slaughtering, the gifted Bong Joon-ho is queer for swords, knives, axes and bullets slicing into and/or shattering human bodies. It gets him off, and after a while it becomes a drag to have to sit through a longish high-concept epic by a guy who either can’t control himself or has no interest in trying, especially during the last 25% to 30%. Thumbs up for the concept, A-plus for the first 70 or 80 or 90 minutes, and C-minus for the last 25% or 30%. The nihilistic finale leaves you with absolutely nothing except a shot of a polar bear. Big effing deal — a polar bear is alive and so we all have a chance. Let’s go out and drink some Moet & Chandon to that!

Prior to last night’s screening of Bong Joon-ho’s Snowpiercer at the Los Angeles Film Festival.

Standing outside LA Live on Olympic Blvd. after the conclusion of Bong Joon-ho’s Snowcatcher.