“It’s all about that question does he know or won’t say? Does he even care to know one way or another? Is he a salesman [so] lost inside his ability to sell that he’s no longer reflected in what he’s saying? He’s a man who does not think clearly about things…[who] has the capacity to say contradictory thing seemingly without even realizing that they’re contradictory.” — The Unknown Known director Errol Morris on former Secretary of State Donald Rumsfeld.

“Perhaps I need to see The Unknown Known: The Life and Times of Donald Rumsfeld once or twice more, but my initial impression was one of muted fascination and at the same time vague disappointment. I feel I know Rumsfeld pretty well from his innumerable interviews and press conferences during the Bush years so I went in wanting to know him a little better. I’m not sure that I got that from Morris’s film, although I was certainly engaged start to finish.

In the immediate wake of Field of Dreams Phil Alden Robinson‘s name was spoken in hushed tones. If you really let Dreams “in” (i.e., allowed it to slip past your crusty exterior) you probably developed a notion that it was more than just a movie. It was like Esalen therapy, a kind of spiritual bath. For baseball fans it was like attending church and hearing the greatest sermon of your life.

And Robinson, who directed and wrote the screenplay (adapted from W.P. Kinsella‘s “Shoeless Joe“), was presumed to be some kind of pastor with a magic touch. Luck, timing, the hallucination stuff, Kevin Costner, chemistry, James Earl Jones, Ray Liotta…who knows why or whether anything like Dreams could ever happen again?

I only know that the ingredients and the servings (i.e., that nighttime shot of a long line of headlights at the finale) were just right.

But then luck seemed to slip Robinson’s grasp. In ’92 he delivered Sneakers, a half-decent caper flick, and then directed Freedom Song, a TV movie about the ’60s civil rights movement (co-written with Stanley Weiser) and was one of the directors of HBO’s Band of Brothers miniseries, and then directed Ben Affleck and Morgan Freeman in The Sum of All Fears…God, what a comedown! The Field of Dreams spirit-soother directing a bullshit Jack Ryan movie about nuclear terrorism…yeesh!

About 30 years ago I read (or remember reading) a quote attributed to Francois Truffaut: “Taste is composed of a thousand distastes.” Did I investigate further? Did I devote hours to learning if the line truly originated with Truffaut or if he was quoting someone else? No. Okay, so I’m lazy. This morning I read a 4.3 Richard Brody column that attributed the quote to poet Paul Valery, who was around before Truffaut. Got it. I’m wise and I know what time it is now. But I’m probably going to continue to attribute the quote to Truffaut. In my mind F.T. is the man — the nouvelle vague guy who made two of my favorite French-language films of all time (i.e., Shoot The Piano Player, The Woman Next Door) and whose name triggers particular cinematic endorphins that I never want to be without. (I once visited his grave in le Cimetiere de Montmartre.) I also prefer the soft but decisive sound of his name compared to Valery’s, which sounds a little bit flowery and wimpish. Sorry but that’s my decision.

Editorial admission: The previous headline of this post was “Decent Guffaw.” After experiencing a spasm of uncertainty around 9:30 pm Pacific, I went through through a process that some might describe as an agonizing reappraisal. At 9:45 pm I decided to replace “Guffaw” with “Chortle.”

Jimmy’s Hall, allegedly the final film from 77 year-old director Ken Loach, is about Irish commie rabble-rouser Jimmy Gralton (Barry Ward). Set in the 1930s, it begins with Gralton returning to Ireland from U.S. (to which he’d emigrated in 1909) and founding the Revolutionary Workers’ Group in Leitrim. Wiki page: “Gralton ran a dance hall in where he arranged free events [and] expounded his political views. There were violent protests against these dances led by Catholic priests, which culminated in a shooting incident. On 2.9.33 Gralton was arrested and then deported to the U.S. on the basis that he was an alien.” Written by Paul Laverty, Jimmy’s Hall costars Brian F. O’Byrne, Jim Norton and Simon Kirby. Opening in the UK on 5.30. A Cannes Film Festival screening seems likely.

“People are reeling from third-tier actors like Kevin Sorbo aligning themselves with religious-themed films, no matter how radical, and now they have a conduit for funding. Sorbo is empowered to become the new Kirk Cameron. A dangerous precedent has been set and the floodgates will open for films that normally wouldn’t see the light of day.” — email just received from a director-writer pal.

Projections that Disney-Marvel’s Captain America: The Winter Soldier will earn as much as $90 million this weekend are not about (a) the renewed strength of the Marvel brand or (b) an indication that the summer season is now beginning in April. Okay, these are part of the picture but the big-hit vibe is mainly due to crackling wildfire awareness that it’s an exceptionally well-crafted, highly satisfying popcorn pic. Because it is.

Don’t listen to the pundits who are trying to spin this off as some kind of trend or marketing-hook story. Some reporters would rather stab themselves in the chest with a pencil than admit that most hits become hits for the simplest of reasons — i.e., because the word is out that they deliver the goods. When a film is really the shit, people can smell it. That’s all that’s going on here. Nothing more.

“The new Captain America flick is good enough to win the admiration and allegiance of a comic-book-movie hater like myself,” I wrote a few days ago. “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.”

David Letterman announced last night that he’ll be riding off into the sunset sometime next year. If he leaves after 2.1.15 Letterman will have been hosting a talk show for 33 years straight (not counting the hiatus between the end of his Late Night with David Letterman NBC show and the 1993 start of CBS’s Late Show with David Letterman). Letterman has obviously enjoyed doing the show. He thinks he’ll be happy not doing it, but if he doesn’t engage himself in some kind of engrossing, satisfying work he’ll wind up feeling empty and antsy and possibly even miserable. Nobody who enjoys doing what they do should ever retire. Truly creative people stop under one circumstance and one circumstance only.

Let history record that in the year 2014 a pair of social-discord films with nearly identical numerical titles — ’71 and 1971 — were screened at major film festivals. Yann Demange‘s ’71, which I saw a few weeks ago at the Berlin Film Festival, is a Belfast-set thriller about a British soldier running and hiding for his life. 1971, showing at this month’s 2014 Tribeca Film Festival, is a doc about a group of protesters who stole hundreds of FBI documents that proved J. Edgar Hoover‘s agency was systematically targeting and harassing New Left activists.

With Mad Men in the air — last night’s premiere, the 4.13 debut of season #7 — now’s a pretty good time to recall a brief encounter with the legendary David Ogilvy, the Godfather of all Mad Men and the poet laureate of ’50s and ’60s smooth-as-silk advertising. It happened in June of ’76 at Chateau Touffou, a medieval French mansion Ogilvy had purchased in 1966. He had once been married to the sister of the mother of my girlfriend at the time, Sophie Black (a descendant of the Cabot family, later to become a fairly renowned poet), and so during our European travels Sophie arranged a drop-by. Ogilvy was about 65 at the time. He was a wise, learned, blue-blood type with a capacity for snooty bon mots (he described his castle as being located “in the South Dakota of France“) but was quite friendly and gentle and polite. We got along pretty well. I told him my father had been a J. Walter Thompson exec back in the ’60s. Chateau Touffou’s garden had the most luscious, apple-sized strawberries I’ve ever seen or tasted in my life. There was also an underground jail (a leftover from the middle ages) with tiny little cells…horrid. Our co-host was Ogilvy’s wife of three years, Herta Lans, as kind and gracious as they come. A delightful interlude. Ogilvy died in July 1999.

So you’re a 17 year-old blonde from Scotland, visiting New York City with your parents. You’re smokin’ and you know it. You’ve had guys grinning and leering at you all your life. It’s been a drag in some respects but this is your cross to bear. But you know that however successful you may be in whatever profession you choose, you’re assured of a comfortable, probably flush and perhaps even a Kardashian lifestyle if you play your cards right. So you run into the 35 year-old James Franco, a.k.a. “Alien.” He’s obviously attracted (like every other guy you’ve met since you were seven years old) and he starts suggesting a meeting and whatnot. You’ve seen Spring Breakers. You know what he wants.

Lucy Clode, resident of Scotland, internationally famed for duplicity and untrustworthiness.

So what do you do? Burn him! Tell your dingleberry-brain friends! Spread the news! Embarass the shit out of him! Make the bastard fuck pay!

I was immersed in traffic late yesterday afternoon when I heard about longtime Entertainment Weekly critic Owen Gleiberman getting the axe. I pulled over and sent him a standard but earnestly felt “so sorry but chin up!” email. Owen is a friend and good fellow with whom I’ve conversed at film festivals and parties for the last couple of decades. A superb, hugely entertaining writer and a major, major Film Catholic. Nobody knows or worships the realm more than he. With his highly attuned awareness levels Owen had to know this was coming, of course. Like a squirrel dealing with the approach of winter, he’s surely been making contingency plans for some time.

It’s old news but the occasion calls for a recap. Cultured, super-brainy film disciples like Owen aren’t respected or valued like they used to be, certainly not by the hoi polloi. For the last several years it’s been less and less about informed, insightful opinions from ivory tower elites and more and more about the social media conversation on Twitter and comment threads and whatnot. Plus I’ve had this idea for a while now that Entertainment Weekly is mainly read by lightweights, or more particularly by the moths who are attracted to celebrity jizz for its own sake with a particular focus on Kardashian Coke bottles who are famous for being famous.