Posted on 6.4.25: There have been several…okay, a few good films about death, and the best of them (like that closing statement at the ass-end of Barry Lyndon) impart a sense of absolute cosmic indifference about what happens or doesn’t happen when the lights go out. But that is almost unheard of.

Most of the good ones impart a sense of tranquility or acceptance about what’s to come**, which is what most of us go to films about death to receive.

They usually do this by selling the idea of structure and continuity. They persuade that despite the universe being run on cold chance and mathematical indifference, each life has a particular task or fulfillment that needs to happen, and that by satisfying this requirement some connection to a grand scheme is revealed.

You can call this a delusional wish-fulfillment scenario (and I won’t argue about that), but certain films have sold this idea in a way that simultaneously gives you the chills but also settles you down and makes you feel okay.

Read more

The legendary, justifiably admired and more or less worshipped Robert Redford has ascended, left the earth, bid farewell. We all knew it was coming, and it’s shocking — certainly upsetting — all the same.

Posted on 8.7.18:

Robert Redford’s greatest accomplishment, hands down, was launching the Sundance Film Festival. He really and truly changed…hell, revolutionized the landscape of American independent film. He upgraded, deepened, emboldened and monetized it beyond all measure.

The best film he ever directed was Ordinary People; Quiz Show and The Milagro Beanfield War were a distant second and third. The worst film he ever directed was The Legend of Bagger Vance, a.k.a. “bag of gas.” But acting is what he’s retiring from, and so an assessment of his best films and performances is in order.

Technique-wise and especially in his hot period, Redford was (and still is) one of the most subtle but effective underperformers in Hollywood history. He never overplayed it. Line by line, scene by scene, his choices were dry and succinct and exactly right — he and Steve McQueen were drinking from the same well back then.

Redford’s safe-deposit-box scene in The Hot Rock (i.e., “Afghanistan bananistan”) is absolutely world class. And the way he says “I can’t, Katie…I can’t” during the The Way We Were finale is brilliant. That scene could have been so purple or icky, but he saves it.

Redford’s acting career can be broken down into three phases — warm-up and ascendancy (’60 to ’67), peak star power (’69 to ’80) and the long, slow 34-year decline in quality (’84 to present).

Mark Harris tweeted last night that “not many actors can claim six decades of work almost entirely on their own terms.” But Redford’s power to dictate those terms lasted only during that 12-year, golden-boy superstar era, or between the immediate aftermath of Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid and Brubaker, his last “’70s film.”

Redford’s best peakers, in this order: Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid (’69), All The President’s Men (’76), Three Days of the Condor (’75), The Candidate (’72), Downhill Racer (’70), The Sting (’73), Jeremiah Johnson (’72), The Hot Rock (’72), The Way We Were (’73), Tell Them Willie Boy is Here (’70), The Electric Horseman (’79) and Brubaker (’80) — a total of 11.

Think of that — over a 12-year period Redford starred in 11 grand-slammers, homers, triples and a couple of ground-rule doubles. That’s pretty amazing.

Mezzo-mezzos & whiffs during peak period: Little Fauss and Big Halsy, The Great Gatsby, The Great Waldo Pepper, A Bridge Too Far (4).

Read more

…is profoundly unattractive if not odious, and so in my eyes this “Girl Patriot” TikTok post is about as ugly as it gets. But the second guy (bald, glasses, weepy)…I’m actually suspecting this might not be real, that it’s an invented theatrical performance. But if it is real, it’s affecting. We all make mistakes. And as Warren Beatty‘s Bugsy Siegel once said, “Everybody needs a fresh start once in a while.”

Radical leftists were fired from their jobs after posting videos celebrating Charlie's death.

You can't help but smile as you watch. pic.twitter.com/NUb2SKN8Kp

— Girl patriot (@Girlpatriot1974) September 15, 2025

HE is arising at 6 am to catch a 7:26 am out of Westport and arrive in Manhattan by 8:46 am, and thereby catch a 9:30 am press screening of PTA’s One Battle After Another at the AMC 34th Street.

Obviously a major cinematic, award-season event, but also — let’s be honest — a possible mano e mano opinion clash with David Ehrlich. Or not! Who knows? We’ll see very soon.

The embargo lifts on Wednesday (tomorrow) at noon eastern.

Okay, so Chloe Zhao‘s Hamnet, having slain in Telluride and now having won the TIFF People’s Choice Award, is the frontrunner to win the 2025 Best Picture Oscar early next year. No argument, no quibbles….it’s a pretty clear=cut scenario.

The other big contenders are Paul Thomas Anderson‘s One Battle After Another, which I’m hoping to see in Manhattan on Tuesday morning (pretty please?), Joachim Trier‘s Sentimental Value (which I loved after catching in in Cannes) and — to hear it from the Ryan Coogler-deserves-this-because he’s-Ryan Coogler identity mob — Sinners. If Hamnet has it in the bag, fine. If PTA comes close to winning, great — excellent for his career, no longer the red-ink guy.

Either way Sinners hasn’t a chance, and thank the Lord God for that fact.

…I’ll be fairly content. Who wouldn’t be? Last night a N.Y. Times podcast contributor called Severance “exahusting”…agreed. The last White Lotus (Thailand) was regarded almost worldwide as profoundly disappointing. And everyone is sick of The Bear winning stuff…enough!

I listened to David Marchese’s N.Y. Times interview with Cameron Crowe (“What Happened to Cameron Crowe? He Has Answers”) last night while i was driving on the 95. Crowe’s responses to the delicately phrased questions struck me as highly articulate, affecting, transporting, enobling….all in all a totally relaxing pleasure to wade into.

Wait…I thought the Anya Taylor Joy and Meryl Streep castings for Crowe’s Joni Mitchell film, which begins shooting next year, were more or less confirmed?

We all know how to pronounced the word “cause” — the cause we believe in, the apparent cause of something that’s happened, the causeway we drive upon, etc.

It’s pronounced “cawz” — everyone agrees with this. But when people say “because”, younger people especially, they say “beCUZZ.”

I first noticed this seven or eight years ago when listening to Kris Tapley, a Millennial, say the word. Me: “The fuck?”

Jo Van Fleet in East of Eden: “Becawz, BECAWZ he wanted to own me and bring me up like some little snot-nosed kid!”

The Beatles were totally cawz when they sang the Abbey Road track “Because”.

I swear to God that JFK never once said “beCUZZ.” He was a cawz guy all the way.

HE stands foursquare with the cawz community and against the cuzz brigade. Who’s with me?

Interview with neighbor of Tyler Robinson and Lance Twiggs saying they acted like a gay couple by holding hands and kissing with Lance visibly transitioning to a trans woman. pic.twitter.com/YgzPiXbbTP

— All is One and One is All (@vrajadev) September 13, 2025

The New York Post’s Josh Christendon and Georgia Worrell are reporting similarly, citing a “law enforcement source.”

1:55 p.m.: This morning the N.Y. Times finally threw in the towel by reporting that Tyler Robinson has “been in a romantic relationship with a partner who was in the process of transitioning from male to female.”

Read more

…and by “panning out” I mean if the N.Y. Times grudgingly admits down the road that Tyler Robinson‘s reportedly transgender partner Lance Twiggs, who’s reportedly been cooperating with the FBI, is in fact a transgender person….if it’s apparently a factual situation…if this is legtimately real-deal, the trans community will never wash this off.

It isn’t at all clear that the Robinson-Twiggs entanglement was romantic or merely a roommate arrangement, but it sure doesn’t look good, general impression-wise, for the trans community as we speak. If these reports really and truly pan out, I mean…if it all comes out in the wash.

Various reports say that 22-year-old Twiggs is a biomale who’s apparently transitioning (or has transitioned) into womanhood. He and Robinson reportedly shared a three-bedroom apartment in the Fossil Hills housing complex in St. George, Utah.

Let no one dispute that Lance Twiggs is a great-sounding name for a young gay guy. Lance Twiggs could have been the name of a Times Square or Union Square hustler out of a 1969 Andy Warhol-Paul Morrissey film. If Twiggs, obviously quite attractive, had been around back then Morrissey would’ve definitely cast him in Lonesome Cowboys.

Trans-favoring Lefty Millennial: “One story says roommate, not partner. Right now this is rightwing bait for mouthbreathers such as yourself, desperate to assign trans people as the menace to society. Fuck off.”

HE: “You’re in denial, bruh. True, it’s mainly the conservative press reporting this story, but you can’t be thinking this is total poppycock. The Daily Mail has apparently done some real reporting.”

Trans-favoring Lefty Millennial: “You’re a bigot. You’re part of the problem.”

HE: “I’ve never vibed any trans people with hate or bigotry. EVER. I’m a turn-the—other-cheek kinda guy. Comme ci comme ca. Don’t judge, go easy. But these reports are social cancer, if true.”

Trans-favoring Lefty Millennial: “You’re full of shit. You’ve been filled with hate since your life blew up.”

HE: “I wasn’t cancelled by transies. I was cancelled by revenge-minded female publicists and certain female journos. I was cancelled by a #MeToo hit squad. Without my having said or done anything actionable.”

Trans-favoring Lefty Millennial: “Blocking this convo. Keep this filth to yourself.”

HE: “The side that shoots someone in the neck is the side full of hate…I think that’s fair to say.”

Read more