Some kind of Jeff Bridges career reel was presumably shown during last weekend’s Critics Choice awards, prior to Bridges accepting his Life Achievement trophy. I didn’t see it, but I’m going to assume that the CC montage didn’t get it right.

Bridges’ most robust career phase was a 13-year stretch between Peter Bogdanovich‘s The Last Picture Show (’71) and Hal Ashby‘s 8 Million Ways To Die (’84). These were the super-quality years — the rest of his career enjoyed an occasional highlight (’98’s The Big Lewbowski, ’09’s Crazy Heart, etc.) but yard by yard and dollars to donuts, the ’70s and early ’80s delivered the most hey-hey.

The Bogdanovich and Ashby aside, the best of Bridges’ 13-year run included John Huston‘s Fat City (’72), Lamont Johnson‘s The Last American Hero (’73), John Frankenheimer‘s The Iceman Cometh (’73), Frank Perry‘s Rancho Deluxe (’75), Bob Rafelson‘s Stay Hungry (’76), Ivan Passer‘s Cutter’s Way (’81) and Taylor Hackford‘s Against All Odds (’84).

If you ask me Hero and Hungry are the most exciting and infectious.

Fuck Starman — I hated Bridges’ stoned alien dumbbell expression.

Fuck Thunderbolt and Lightfoot. Fuck the overpraise, I mean, It’s just a Clint Eastwood caper flick, for Chrissakes. Bridges had a death scene — big deal.

Hated Fearless for the most part. I found Bridges’ performance pointlessly brooding, intensely self-absorbed and non-communicative. Wake the fuck up, will you? You were spared from death & given a second lease and all you can do is live in your zone and stare into the distance?

Before this morning’s Bedford Playhouse screening of Invaders From Mars, I’ll be sharing a few words with the audience about the composer of the eerie musical score — the unsung Mort Glickman, an under-valued, under-the-radar guy if there ever was one.

In Laurent Bouzereau‘s two-hour Making of ‘Jaws’ doc, director Steven Spielberg says that John Williams‘ creepy leviathan score is responsible for half of the film’s effectiveness. Same deal with Invaders From Mars, which is chiefly distinguished by William Cameron Menzies‘ production design but would still amount to very little without Glickman’s input.

Glickman’s Martian choir music injects a profoundly creepy vibe…a sense of hovering otherworldliness…”a bleak acapella that conjures visions of a dying Martian landscape or the wailing of frightened minds in hell,” to quote from a 1986 Cinemascore article by William Rosar.

And poor Glickman, sub-contracted by Raoul Kraushar, didn’t even get screen credit — Kraushar claimed that honor. On top of which Glickman died of a heart attack two months before Invaders From Mars opened in April 1953. He passed on 2.27.53 at age 54.

Posted on 4.2.22: Yeah, I know…Mort who?

It’s been asserted for years by people seemingly in the know that the actual composer of the famously eerie Invaders From Mars score is not Raoul Kraushar, as I’ve stated a few times on HE, but longtime Republic Pictures composer Mort Glickman.

Reporting has it that Kraushar was a Hans Zimmer-like operator and compiler who would hire guys to ghost-write scores, which Kraushar would then take credit for.

I’ve been persuaded that the claims about Glickman may have merit. Okay, that they’re probably legit.

I am therefore apologizing if in fact (as it appears) I have passed along bad intel. Kraushar was apparently not the Invaders From Mars composer, and I apologize for previously failing to report that Glickman, a stocky, bespectacled guy who looked like a 1950s grocery-store clerk and could have played a behind-the-counter colleague of Ernest Borgnine‘s in Marty…Glickman was the maestro!

Three people have made the case — (1) David Schecter, co-producer of Monstrous Movie Music, a “series of re-recordings which feature a wealth of classic music from many of everyone’s favorite science fiction, horror and fantasy films”, (2) Janne Wass in a 2016 article for scifist.wordpress.com, and (3) William H. Rosar, author of a 1986 CinemaScore article titled “The Music for Invaders From Mars.”

Like everyone else I really and truly liked James Garner, not just as a steady, easygoing actor but as the deep-down, no-bullshit person he seemed to actually be. But I rarely paid attention to his TV work (never caught a single Rockford Files episode), and I seriously admired his performances in only seven films — Joshua Logan‘s Sayonara (’57), William Wyler‘s The Children’s Hour (’61), John Sturges‘ The Great Escape (’63), Arthur Hiller and Paddy Chayefsky‘s The Americanization of Emily (’64 — his peak), John Frankenheimer‘s Grand Prix (’66), Martin Ritt‘s Murphy’s Romance (’85) and Clint Eastwood‘s Space Cowboys (’00).

Posted on 3.1.19: Earlier this month I posted two thumbnail assessments of the careers of Tony Curtis and William Holden. They both enjoyed relatively brief hot-streak periods. Holden’s lasted six or seven years, or between Stalag ’17 (’53) and The Horse Soldiers (’59). Curtis’s fortunate-son period ran 11 or 12 years, or between Sweet Smell of Success (’57) and The Boston Strangler (’68).

As noted, Holden kept plugging until his death in ’81, but from The Horse Soldiers on (or over the next 22 years) Holden only made six genuinely good films — The Wild Bunch, Wild Rovers, Breezy, Network, Fedora and S.O.B. Curtis had no luck at all after The Boston Strangler.

Burt Lancaster‘s career was different in that he was always a long player. His commercial hot streak of the late ’40s to mid ’50s (westerns or action-swashbuckler films mixed with two or three dramas) happened between his late 30s and mid 40s, but except for his 1950s peak achievement of From Here To Eternity (i.e., Sgt. Milt Warden) along with The Rose Tattoo and The Rainmaker, he was more into commercial bounties.

Then came a prestige-drama-mixed-with-action period — 12 or so years, 1957 to 1969, between his mid 40s and mid 50s — that turned into Lancaster’s greatest run. Oh, the glories of Sweet Smell of Success, Run Silent, Run Deep, Separate Tables, The Devil’s Disciple, The Unforgiven, Elmer Gantry, The Young Savages, Judgment at Nuremberg, Birdman of Alcatraz, A Child Is Waiting, The Leopard, Seven Days in May, The Train, The Hallelujah Trail, The Professionals, The Swimmer, Castle Keep and The Gypsy Moths.

In the ’70s Lancaster, entering his 60s, downshifted into mostly genre-level, mezzo-mezzo films — seemingly a getting-older, wind-down cycle. The highlights were Robert Aldrich‘s Ulzana’s Raid, Luchino Visconti‘s Conversation Piece and Bernardo Bertolucci‘s 1900.

Then came the ’80s and a resurgence with three great performances in three commendable films — aging wise guy and Lothario Lou Pascal in Louis Malle‘s Atlantic City (‘80), oil tycoon Felix Happer in Local Hero (’82) and the kindly Moonlight Graham in Field of Dreams (’89).

Lancaster was not a great actor, but he was a graceful and commanding alpha-male presence, and he had a great sense of style, and he knew how to sell it. What was his greatest performance? I’m torn between From Here To Eternity, Elmer Gantry, The Swimmer and Atlantic City (“Boy, that was some ocean”).

I’ll always be a fan of Al Pacino‘s big speech at the end of The Devil’s Advocate, but Keanu Reeves makes a re-watch so difficult. He’s stuck with all the clunky lines, of course, but the yelling, the anger and denial and pulling out the gun with that dumb glare on his face….everything he says and does is truly terrible.

This tediously moralistic Taylor Hackford film is 25 years old now, and if you ask me Pacino’s John Milton was at least partly based upon Donald Trump. (The producers rented Trump’s apartment for a scene, I’ve read.) The screenwriters were Jonathan Lemkin and Tony Gilroy, but the maestro behind Pacino’s big soliloquy was Gilroy, or so I’ve always understood.

Ironic or crude as this may sound, the only thing that’s really missing from Maria Schrader‘s ultra-scrupulous She Said is that it doesn’t fake it enough. Or at all.

It doesn’t throw in those extra elements of intrigue and flash and flavor that entertaining films sometimes do. It adheres to the facts so closely (and to its immense credit, I should add) that it’s more of a muted, highly studious docudrama than a film that’s out to grab you or make you chuckle or give you that deep-down satisfied feeling.

Just about every scene in She Said is gripping or absorbing in some modest way, but unlike All The President’s Men, it doesn’t have an abundance of scenes that tickle or surprise or get you high.

And while ATPM had a pair of glamorous movie stars in the two lead roles (Robert Redford, Dustin Hoffman) and otherwise cast several seasoned actors in supporting parts (Jason Robards, Jack Warden, Jane Alexander, Martin Balsam, Lindsay Crouse, Ned Beatty), She Said goes with a cast of respected, first-rate actors (Carey Mulligan, Zoe Kazan in the lead roles) who, Kazan and Mulligan aside, aren’t highly recognizable, much less marquee names.

When you think of the scenes or bits that really work and get your blood rushing in All The President’s Men, the list boils down to 15:

(1) The extreme closeup of typewriter keys loudly slamming into white paper, followed by the shot of President Nixon’s helicopter arriving at the U.S, Capitol;

(2) The Watergate break-in and subsequent arrest;

(3) The amusing court arraignment coonversation between Robert Redford‘s Bob Woodward and Nicolas Coster‘s “Markham”, and particularly Markham telling Woodward “I’m not here”;

(4) Woodward’s oil-and-water relationship with Dustin Hoffman‘s Carl Bernstein, illustrated by this and that bit (such as Bernstein surreptitiously rewriting Woodward’s copy).

(5) Woodward’s three or four parking-garage meetings with Hal Holbrook‘s “Deep Throat”;

(6) Jason Robards‘ Ben Bradlee giving Bernstein a look when Bernstein insists that the White House investigating Teddy Kennedy thing is a “goddam important story,” and later telling Woodstein to “get some” luck;

(7) Bernstein tricking his way into the office of Miami district attorney Martin Dardis (Ned Beatty) and obtaining incriminating info about CREEP Midwest finance chairman Kenneth Dahlberg;

(8) That long scene in which Woodward reaches Dahlberg on the phone (“My neighbor’s wife has just been kidnapped!”) and discovers that Dahlberg passed along a $25K check to CREEP finance chairman Maurice Stans;

It only took me five weeks to finally watch John Patton Ford‘s Emily The Criminal, which is pretty close to being as good as I’ve been told. It’s not crazy-holy-shit good but good-good, and there’s nothing wrong with that. It’s basically a realistic and wholly unpretentious small-time crime film…no muss or fuss and down to business. But it’s only moderately involving at first. It takes a while to get there.

Aubrey Plaza is suitably fierce and guarded in the title role, a debt-ridden 30something in Los Angeles who gets involved with a phony-credit-card ring. At 93 minutes Emily takes a good 45 or 50 to really put the hook in and get moving, but the last 35 to 40 minutes are quite exceptional.

An expert actress who always invites you in and tells you what’s up, Plaza delivers a pro job as Emily. I really loved her moments in which she was angry and alarmed, and especially a “cut the bullshit” job interview scene with Gina Gershon.

Plaza is one of the producers (along with Tyler Davidson and Drew Sykes) but you know who’s also quite arresting and compelling? Theo Rossi, who plays Youcef, Emily’s mentor-in-crime and later her lover. I’d never paid attention to this guy before, but I will from here on. There’s one moment towards the end when Rossi disappointed me, or his character did rather. I won’t get into it but you have to watch your back.

Emily’s arc is what makes the film fascinating — she starts out as an almost listless, half-invested scammer who’s basically an in-and-outer, but the more criminality takes over her life the stronger and tougher she becomes. By the end she’s almost become a version of Neil McAuley or Michael Corleone at the end of The Godfather. The film basically says “theft and criminality is its own buzz, but you have to become a kind of fierce animal to really survive in this realm…you have to convince others that you’re scary when crossed so they’d netter not fuck with you.”

One reason I didn’t get to Emily before last night was that it’s still not streaming. I’m sorry but it didn’t strike me as worth $18 or $20 plus popcorn and whatnot, and it’s not like it’s playing in a lot of theatres.

I was looking yesterday for an enthusiasm trigger as I read several Venice Film Festival reviews of Andrew Dominik‘s Blonde (Netflix, 9.28). Alas, I found myself in a depression pit after hearing from a critic friend that the only encounter between Ana de Armas‘s Marilyn Monroe and Caspar Phillipson‘s John F. Kennedy is a blowjob scene. Just that, nothing more.

I understand that the basic Blonde game is about conveying how much of Monroe’s life was shaped by cruel and callous sexism, but my heart sank when I heard this all the same.

The Mystery of Marilyn Monroe: The Unheard Tapes, a Netflix doc that relies on investigative reporting by Anthony Summers, claims that Monroe’s relationship with JFK dates back to the early ’50s, and repeats the legend that in 1961 and ’62 Monroe was on intimate terms with both Kennedy brothers. Not to mention the May 1962 “Happy Birthday, Mr. President” showstopper in Madison Square Garden plus the after-party encounter at Arthur Schlesinger‘s Manhattan apartment. A whole lot of swirling subcurrents, and all of it reduced to a single act of servitude. That hurts, man.

This strongly suggests that Dominik’s film, closely adhering to the extremely somber slant of Joyce Carol Oates’ 22-year-old same-titled novel, is a series of ugly encounters with cruel, compassion-less men who used and abused Monroe willy nilly.

We’ve all understood for decades that the life of poor Marilyn (aka Norma Jean Baker) was too often defined by bruisings and anguish and emotional starvation at the hands of heartless scumbags, but I was hoping against hope that Blonde might spare us to some extent, perhaps by injecting or even inventing some unusual or unexpected emotional grace notes from time to time. The reviews indicate otherwise.

Of all the Monroe biographers, Donald Spoto is probably the most scrupulous. Consider this excerpt from a Popsugar article, written by by Bret Stephens and posted on 8.29.18:

“Multiple Marilyn historians, including respected biographer Donald Spoto, who wrote the 1993 book ‘Marilyn Monroe: The Biography’, allege that the most plausible time that Marilyn and JFK could have had a sexual encounter was during a party at Bing Crosby‘s home in Palm Springs, CA, on March 24, 1962.

“Marilyn’s masseur and close friend Ralph Roberts told Spoto that he received a call from the actress asking him for massage techniques for muscles of the back, and that he ‘heard a distinctive Boston accent in the background’ before Marilyn handed the phone to President Kennedy.

“Roberts added, ‘Marilyn told me that this night in March was the only time of her ‘affair’ with JFK. A great many people thought, after that weekend, that there was more to it. But Marilyn gave me the impression that it was not a major event for either of them: it happened once, that weekend, and that was that.”

HE insert: What about investigator Paul Otash’s claim that he overheard a sexual encounter between JFK and Monroe at Peter Lawford’s beach home?

Back to Stephens: “It was reportedly that night at Crosby’s home that John asked Marilyn to perform at his upcoming birthday party at Madison Square Garden.

“Despite the fact that JFK’s philandering ways were well known, it’s most likely that his connection with Marilyn was just a dalliance and nothing more than a one-night stand. Was it salacious? Yes. But was it the torrid, persisting affair that we’ve been told it was? All signs point to ‘nah.'”

HE feels that it’s morally and artistically wrong to confine the JFK-MM thing to a single oral episode. Talk about cutting the heart out of things. Talk about harshly dismissive.

…when some Facebook guy asks if readers “like” a long-dead screen legend.

Earth to Facebook guy: Whether or not readers “like” Bette Davis or Errol Flynn or Cary Grant or Wallace Ford or Joanne Dru or Edna May Oliver or John Ireland is, no offense, totally and completely beside the point.

The lore and reputations of these performers were carved into eternal granite a long time ago. Due respect but nobody of any consequence gives a damn if you “like” them in a present-tense context. The question can only be “do you understand their histories within the context of their heydays and do you get what their accomplishments amounted to in the long view?” If you don’t, fine — maybe you’ll tune in down the road. Or maybe you won’t. But 2022 social media “likes”? Go away now.

What sensible, fair-minded person would look you straight in the face and insist that Stanley Kubrick‘s Eyes Wide Shut is the best film of the ’90s? Think about that.

EWS is many things — curious, dreamlike, flat, anti-realistic, visually commanding, mesmerizing in its own weird way. But a film this clenched and constipated and covered in starch cannot sit at the top of anyone’s best of the ’90s list…no! Only a critic who believes in fuck-you eccentricity for its own side would stand by Kubrick’s final film.

And yet this, I regret to report, is what IndieWire‘s David Ehrlich has done.

The EWS celebration is part of “The 100 Best Movies of the ’90s” (8.15), an exhaustive rundown by Ehrlich, Eric Kohn and Kate Erbland — three-fourths of Indiewire‘s virtue-signalling quartet (Anne Thompson being the final member). Their top ten, and in this order: Eyes Wide Shut, Close-Up, Schindler’s List, Beau Travail, Hoop Dreams, Goodfellas, After Life, Titanic, The Long Day Closes and Safe.

But Ehrlich is to be saluted for including Titanic among the top ten. James Cameron‘s epic has been a very unfashionable film to celebrate over last couple of decades. I only put it at #30 on my list, and qualified things by stating that I was primarily enthusiastic about the final hour and especially the last ten minutes. Ehrlich doesn’t pussyfoot around — he praises the whole thing…intimacy, lead performances, extras, VFX and all.

In IndieWire‘s view Pulp Fiction ranks 14th, Malcolm X is 16th, Clueless is 20th, Unforgiven ranks 26th and Fargo (HE’s pick for the decade’s best) is 31st.

Five days ago (8.16) World of Reel‘s Jordan Ruimy posted a limited consensus view (i.e., three viewers) that James Mangold‘s A Complete Unknown, recently research-screened, is allegedly “just okay”, partly due to an opinion that it runs a bit long (two and a half hours).

The law west of the Pecos says that we should never, ever put much stock in research-screening reactions. Still, the Ruimy piece instills a slight feeling of concern. My guess is that Mangold being Mangold, A Complete Unknown may (I say “may”) be leaning toward the usual game plan of a generic biopic, and very much not in the vein of Todd Haynes‘ I’m Not There.

Way back in ’22 I wrote the following:

Remember the aggravated conflict between Steve McQueen and director John Sturges on Le Mans, the ’71 racing flick? It came down to Sturges wanting to tell a story about a race car driver…a story that would deliver some kind of emotional resonance for the audience…and McQueen wanting to make a boundary-pushing anti-movie about the racing experience. He didn’t want to invest in the usual strategies and beats — he wanted to immerse audiences in the reality of what big-time racing is really about…how it sounds and smells and makes the bones vibrate.

I’m wondering if a similar conflict has been animating the development of A Complete Unknown (previously Going Electric) since 2020.

HE to Mangold: Be Steve McQueen, be Steve McQueen, be Steve McQueen.

Somebody (Mangold?) wants to fashion a semi-traditional musical drama set in the early to mid ’60s…a script with a solid three-act structure and the right kind of dialogue from the right characters and so on. Timothee Chalamet as Bob Dylan (this could be the best role he’s ever had) and God-knows-who as Albert Grossman, Pete Seeger and the boys in The Band, etc.

And somebody else is saying “fuck all that…I don’t want a regular-ass popcorn movie that quote-unquote ‘tells the story’ of Bob Dylan’s musical journey between ’63 and ’65…I want a movie that feels and unfolds like ‘Murder Most Foul‘ except delivering a theme about birth rather than death and finality.

But the way to do this is to not try and fashion a traditional-feeling James Mangold film. If you make another Ford vs. Ferrari but with a story focused on Dylan vs. Folkies Who Don’t Like Electric, it’ll be a disaster.

I’m not saying don’t write a good script or don’t use it as a structural diagram or launchpoint, but you can’t make “a Mangold film”…you have to find your way into a different psychology and more of a Hoyte von Hoytema shooting style. Mangolr did quite well with Walk The Line, of course, but this is 2022 and the old Mangold ways have to give way to the new. (Or in this case to the “old”.)

Listen to me, you HE antagonist: The way to make this fucking movie is to just sink into the music, man, and shoot as the story evolves…make it feel like an acted-out Don’t Look Back…use the kind of raw, Dogma-like documentary approach that Lars Von Trier might have gone with if he’d shot Going Electric 15 or 20 years ago…make the kind of film that Luca Guadagnino or David O. Russell or Paul Greengrass might make if they were on a roll…something loose and jam-sessiony and semi-fragmented…find your way through it because you know where it’ll end up at the end so the pressure’s off.

Make a film about Dylan’s folk-to-electric transition that’s as good as Greengrass’s 9/11 movie.

To paraphrase Hal Holbrook‘s “Deep Throat,” just “follow the music.”