John Wayne‘s anti-Communist proclamations and behind-the-scenes maneuverings in the late 1940s and ’50s and were fairly relentless and strident. To go by some accounts he was a kind of swaggering Rush Limbaugh-like figure within the Hollywood community when it came to ferreting out “reds” and “pinks.” Wayne didn’t approve of Kirk Douglas having brought Dalton Trumbo out of the shadows as a screenwriter with Spartacus, and he resented High Noon. But alongside today’s rightwing nutters he wasn’t that extreme and was by all accounts an entirely decent guy on personal terms. As far as I can discern Wayne was a kind of Barry Goldwater conservative, which was defined as a traditional preservationist position and almost liberal by 21st Century standards. (The real liberal by 2014 standards is Richard Nixon, of course.)

The 50% Rotten Tomatoes rating for Cesar Chavez (3.28, Participant) indicates that director Diego Luna was too impressed by the legend of the renowned labor leader to do anything exceptional or daring. Sight unseen I wrote last October that rote “biopics of revered political underdogs can only tell the tale — modest beginnings, protagonist shows mettle, rise to power, complications from adversaries, big climax, end coda.” The rule of thumb in making a good political saga is to avoid deification by concentrating on a challenging or traumatic episode that revealed or brought forth character. Two noteworthy examples: Stephen Frears‘ The Queen or Dore Schary‘s Sunrise at Campobello. Raoul Peck‘s Lumumba, Gus Van Sant‘s Milk and Oliver Stone‘s Nixon are probably the best political biopics that take the broader “this happened and then that happened” approach.

Trailers for Jon S. Baird‘s Filth have been online for 11 months now. I took notice of the first one in April 2013. Last July I remarked that it’s been “over-trailered.” It opened in England last September and I know I saw it on a flight to Europe not long ago. It will finally appear domestically on VOD on 4.24.14 and then theatrically on 5.30.14. Filth is raw and rancid and not half bad. I’d like to see it in a decent screening room or theatre. Watching a film on a steerage mini-screen doesn’t cut it.

Noah director Darren Aronofsky called just before 4 pm Pacific, and we talked for about 18 minutes. We kicked it around as best we could in a compressed time frame. “For me, ‘different’ is the way to go,” he said early on. Couple that with his interpretation of a “super-powerful myth” and an artistic process that has been going on since Michelangelo painted the Sistine Chapel and you’ve got Noah, a movie that that clearly began with crackling images in Aronofsky’s head. The greatness of it is that you can feel that creative ferment all the way through. As well as a sense of cosmic creepiness that I haven’t felt since Michael Tolkin‘s The Rapture.

Noah director and co-writer Darren Aronofsky.

Aronofsky and Noah star Russell Crowe during filming.

Most Sam Peckinpah fans regard Bring Me The Head of Alfredo Garcia (’74) as one of his best. Below The Wild Bunch, Straw Dogs and Ride The High Country but above all the rest. I haven’t seen it in years but my recollection is that the Warren Oates factor aside (shades, unshaven, piano-playing, laconic attitude), it’s Peckinpah doing his schtick in a relatively rote and uninspired way. That’s not an eternal opinion — just a recollection. The main problem is Peckinpah’s persistent sexism, particularly the way his screenplay (co-written with Gordon Dawson) depicts Isela Vega‘s Elita character as a slut with a heart of gold. That fantasy didn’t travel all that well to begin with and it certainly doesn’t fly today. That scene in which Vega agrees to have it off with Kris Kristofferson in exchange for KK and his biker buddy not killing Oates is just icky and strange. In my book Bring Me The Head of Alfredo Garcia is below The Getaway, Junior Bonner, The Ballad of Cable Hogue and Major Dundee. The limited Bluray is out now.

I’m doing a 20-minute phoner with Noah director Darren Aronofsky a little after 4 pm today. That’s barely enough time to scratch the surface but if any HE readers have a good smart question (i.e., nothing to do with The Fountain) I’ll ask it and mention the name of the questioner. (Or not if you want to be anonymous.) I’ll be posting the interview in a mp3 form later today or tonight. I think it’s fair to ask about the shaved heads — i.e., how Noah managed to give himself a perfect buzz cut in the year 3500 B.C. and whether Aronofsky’s buzz cut was Noah-inspired. Maybe I won’t ask that if better questions come to mind.

Simple question (and please be honest): what in this trailer for Bryan Singer and Simon Kinberg‘s X-Men: Days of Future Past strikes you as surprising or unexpected in any way, shape or form? What does it seem to suggest or promise that could fairly be described as “putting something new or fresh on the table”? I’m not making any judgments — I’m just asking.

I can remember when the word “problem” referred to either (a) a mathematical challenge or (b) some kind of difficult development that could probably be solved with sufficient smarts and patience and whatnot. It was almost synonymous with “issue” and next door to “riddle.” Then it became an aggressive allusion to an argument or annoying behavior — “What’s your problem?” or more precisely “What’s your effing problem?” For the last 20 or 25 years “problem” has lost almost all of its currency in the mathematical realm and has come to mean (a) a major personality deficiency and/or (b) a very dark situation that could involve death or torture or some other form of devastation.

When an old mafia goon was explaining to Robert DeNiro in Goodfellas why Joe Pesci had just been whacked, he began by saying “well, we had this problem.” When Brad Pitt called Michael Fassbender in The Counselor to explain that a cocaine shipment they’ve invested in has been hijacked, he began with “we have a problem” or something close to that. If a character in a film has a “problem,” it doesn’t mean things have taken a turn for the worse as much as he/she might be toast.

Vanity Fair‘s just-appointed film critic is saying with a straight face that Anthony and Joe Russo‘s Captain America: the Winter Soldier (Disney. 4.4) is pleasing enough and decently assembled but should basically be viewed as a warmup to the next Avengers film. I don’t know what to say to Richard Lawson. He’s indicating he was more or less delighted with Joss Whedon‘s The Avengers, which I described 22 months ago as “basically a bludgeoning,” and that he can’t wait for Avengers: Age of Ultron (5.1.15). This is the blindness of geek aficionados (which the George Lucas-resembling Lawson apparently is to some extent). To them bigger, rompy-stompier, more avalanche-like and titanically proportioned CG action films are better than smarter, faster, restrained, character-driven, tighter and more precise ones. I didn’t hate The Avengers but it was mostly a form of punishment — “big, noisy as shit, corporate piss in a gleaming silver bucket.”

Note: I meant to say that Lawson resembles George Lucas as he looked 25 or 30 years ago.

As David Denby noted in a 10.4.12 New Republic piece, the basic strategy of corporate zombie studio execs is to primarily (only?) greenlight films that are not “execution dependent.” Brand-name franchises, movies based on board and video games, remakes, comic-book fantasies but never (or almost never) movies that have to be good to be successful.

In short, the Disney zombies who gave the go-ahead to Captain America: The Winter Soldier (4.4) did so believing it would more than likely turn a handsome profit even if it turned out to be a numbing, eardrum-killing CG suffocation device like The Avengers. Now that it’s clear the new Captain America flick is good enough to win the admiration and allegiance of a comic-book-movie hater like myself, will it make even more money than if it turned out to be shite…or will it make no difference? Do fanboys go to these films no matter how poorly reviewed? Does anyone care if a comic-book movie is a diamond in the rough?

More to the point, will the thinking of zombie execs be affected even slightly by this welcome surprise? I think not. All the evidence indicates it doesn’t matter to them. That’s why I call them zombies. They have no heart, no soul, no feeling for Movie Catholicism — for the legend of movies as not just rides but hugs and sermons and spiritual turn-ons, and movie theatres as churches. They don’t give one infinitesimal fuck if a movie is good or dull or ghastly — they just don’t want it to lose money.

Part one of Lars von Trier‘s Nymphomaniac is playing theatrically and has been VOD-accessible for a while now. Part two is also viewable at home and opens theatrically on 4.4. A fair portion of the HE community has presumably taken the plunge. Reactions would be appreciated. I called the first installment “an intelligent, jaggedly assembled, dispassionate wank [making] faintly satiric philosophical points…an assortment of explicit sex depictions are made to seem quite clinical and occasionally tedious, and vaguely repellent from an emotional/spiritual standpoint.” I described the second installment as “a downward spiral in the fate of Charlotte Gainsbourgh‘s Joe…her narrative goes in a darker and colder direction with less and less oxygen…where Volume One used dry satire to mitigate a somewhat arid and clinical tone, Volume Two is a cinematic equivalent of a ‘cold spot’ in a haunted house.”

I suddenly decided earlier today to attend Cinemacon in Las Vegas. I want to catch Tuesday’s screenings of Neighbors and Draft Day and Wednesday morning’s showing of Million Dollar Arm plus a Chris Nolan-Todd McCarthy q & a that won’t include any footage of Interstellar. But I can’t see dropping $750 bucks on this ($425 for RT Southwest flight from Burbank, $150 for a nearby budget hotel room, $150 or more for cabs, food and incidentals) so I’m going to risk my life by driving there and back in the span of 36 hours. That’ll just cost me gas plus $40 for Motel Eight plus incidentals — maybe $250 all in.