Thrillers about psychotic ex-boyfriends stalking and terrorizing ex-girlfriends are enjoying extra relevance today, largely due to the prevailing #MeToo persuasion that 85% of white cisgender males are essentially toxic and in many cases bad-news oppressors.

The crazy former boyfriend is sometimes portrayed in horror-flick terms, or certainly by Act Three — unhinged, murderous.

Andrew Semans‘ Resurrection seems to have gone this route with Tim Roth as the fiendish ex and Rebecca Hall (who always over-acts) as the former girlfriend. (Speaking of wackjobs from the past, does anyone remember The Gift, in which Hall costarred?)

The first noteworthy psycho-ex-boyfriend movie was Joseph Ruben‘s Sleeping With The Enemy (’91). Mpustachioed Patrick Bergin actually played Julia Roberts‘ lunatic ex-husband. Roberts had to shoot him three times to make sure he was dead.

If you ask me the most realistic and believable woman-protagonist drama that dealt with a must-to-avoid ex-husband was Molly Smith Metzler‘s Maid, the Netflix miniseries that premiered last October.

Crazy ex-girlfriend flicks are, I suspect, not currently permitted. If Adrien Lyne‘s Fatal Attraction (’87) had never been produced 35 years ago, you sure as shit could never make it today. The only way it could get past the woke commissars would be if Glenn Close‘s Alex was the somewhat sympathetic protagonist and Michael Douglas was the bad guy.

I’m very, very sorry that another season of Westworld is about to unfurl. I won’t be watching, of course, but the mere fact of its existence is enough to bum me out.

Respect and salutations for the great Fred Ward, who passed last Sunday (5.8) at 79, but whose death wasn’t announced until today.

Ward’s last performance was as “Eddie Velcoro” in True Detective in 2015, when he was 72. I don’t know why Ward didn’t work over the last few years, but I always loved what he brought.

Ward tried to become a movie star in Remo Williams: The Adventure Begins (’85), but the public wouldn’t bite. He gave a cagey, flavorful performance as the bald-headed Henry Miller in Phil Kaufman‘s Henry & June (’90), but — be honest — nobody wanted to see Ward generate any sexual energy.

Ward just didn’t have that X-factor movie-star schwing — he was more of a quirky, amiable, laid-back oddball type.

My all-time favorite Ward performance was as the yokelish Earl Bassett, the best friend of Kevin Bacon‘s Val McKee, in Tremors (’90).

My second favorite was Sergeant Hoke Moseley in Miami Blues (which Ward also executive produced).

He was also a memorable Gus Grissom in Kaufman’s The Right Stuff, and I loved his cameo-sized performance in Silkwood (’82 — see below video).

Ward lived in Venice (not Italy) for the most part. I ran into him at Gold’s Gym once when he was training for Remo Williams….”yo!”

…reactions from HE regulars would be appreciated. $20 to rent a UHD version for 48 hours; $25 to buy it outright.

4.21.22 HE review excerpt: “Technically and compositionally first-rate, at times amusingly ultra-violent, The Northman delivers the kind of suffocating, soul-draining ordeal that only a major artist could have provided.

“I loved Eggers’ The Witch and The Lighthouse but I pretty much felt nothing this time around.

“Excessive isn’t the word — startling, repetitious, numbing, eye-filling, confounding and yet all of a single harmonious compositional piece. Obviously the work of a serious artist. Handsome, exquisitely composed and about as bereft of humanity as a film in this vein could possibly be.”

I can order a Region 2 Bluray of the fully restored 124-minute version of Andrej Zulawski’s Possession (‘81), which premiered last fall. I’m not, however, seeing a U.S.-friendly Bluray. (Metrograph offers a streaming option.) Which is my fault, of course. I have mixed feelings about re-watching this creepy, West Berlin-set marital breakup flick, but I won’t wimp out. Isabelle Adjani’s demonic femme fatale performance won a Best Actress trophy at the 1981 Cannes Film Festival.

We’re at peace with trans activists on our payroll working somewhere else. Feel free to create your various futures elsewhere. Go with God.

From Mark Harris’s “The Day The Movies Died,” a GQ article posted on 2.10.11:

From yesterday’s HE review, “Maverick Maniacs United”:

If she were to run for the 2024 Democratic nomination, I would vote for Katie Porter in a New York minute. I think. She seems like a smart, straight-shooting liberal without the woke bullshit, but maybe I’m not paying close enough attention. She’s never struck me as the sort of politician who would say “I’m not a biologist” when asked to define what a woman is. I know she’s not the running-for-President type, but she seems frank and sturdy and honorable.

Arguably the greatest action director of Hollywood’s big-studio era, Raoul Walsh (1887-1980) didn’t hit his stride until just after his 50th birthday, or around 1938 or ’39. Walsh’s glory period happened in the 1940s and ’50s.

Here, in my opinion and in this order, are his 18 finest films:

White Heat (’49), High Sierra (’41), They Died with Their Boots On (’41), Objective, Burma! (’45), Gentleman Jim (’42), Pursued (’47), The Thief of Bagdad (’24), The Big Trail (’30), Dark Command (’40), They Drive by Night (’40), The Roaring Twenties (’39), Captain Horatio Hornblower (’51), Along the Great Divide (’51), Battle Cry (55), The Tall Men (’55), Band of Angels (’57) and What Price Glory? (’26).

The jet-fighter combat footage in The Bridges at Toko-Ri won an Oscar. Obviously primitive by even late 20th Century standards and nowhere close to the knockout aerial footage in Top Gun: Maverick.

But the aircraft carrier landing footage has a docu-realism quality, and even the third-act miniature stuff (the bridge-bombing footage, William Holden crash landing in the North Korean countryside) seems strangely acceptable. There’s something plain and palatable about it.

Dazzling as the Maverick footage is, you’re never quite sure which shots are organic (if any) and what’s digital. I know that some (most?) of the cockpit footage is “real”, but I still don’t trust it.

Some YouTube commenters have actually complained about Toko–Ri spoilers…a film that’s nearly 70 years old and they’re complaining that Illeanna Douglas has spoiled the ending! Prima donnas!

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