According to a 4.22 post by Deadline‘s Melanie Goodfellow, the late Pope Francis didn’t fully understand the famous “pebble scene” in Federico Fellini‘s La Strada (’54), which the pontiff repeatedly called his all-time favorite film.

That or some Deadline person mis-translated a 2013 video in which Francis laid out his impressions.

Goodfellow: “As a child I saw many films by Fellini,” the pope said, “but La Strada always stayed in my heart. The film that begins with tears and ends with tears, begins on the seashore and ends on the seashore, but what stayed with me most was the scene with the madman and the stone in which he gives meaning to the life of the girl.”

Francis was referring to a dialogue scene between Richard Basehart‘s “Il Motto” and Giulietta Masina‘s Gelsomina. While the dialogue is all Basehart’s, he’s not playing a “madman” but a clownish tightrope walker with a big heart — a circus fool — and he’s not talking about a “stone” but a tiny pebble. If thrown hard a stone can break a window, after all, but a pebble can’t.

Basehart: “Everything in this world is useful for something. Here, take this pebble, for example. It has a purpose, but how should I know [what]? If I knew, do you know who I would be? The Almighty, who knows everything: when you are born, when you die. And who can know that? No, I don’t know what this stone is for, but it must be for something. Because, if this is useless, then everything is useless: even the stars. And even you, you are also useful for something, with your artichoke head.”

More Francis: “We too, little pebbles on the ground, in this land of pain, of tragedies, with faith in the Risen Christ, we have a purpose, amid so many calamities. The purpose of looking beyond, the purpose of saying: ‘Look, there is no wall; there is a horizon, there is life, there is joy, and there is the cross with this ambivalence. Look ahead, do not close yourself off. You, little pebble, have a purpose in life, because you are a pebble near that rock, that stone which the wickedness of sin has discarded.”

Goodfellow’s article also notes three other Pope Francis favorites: Gabriel Axel‘s Danish Oscar winner Babette’s Feast (’87), Akira Kurosawa’s Rhapsody in August (’91) and Andrei Tarkovsky’s Andrei Rublëv (’66).

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I’ll watch a Super Bowl game now and then, but am otherwise indifferent to the comings and goings of big-time football (NFL or college). I barely glance in its direction.

And yet even I know who the legendary Bill Bellichick is, and that he’s 73 and part Croatian and that he wears eight Super Bowl rings. And that his foxy girlfriend of two-plus years, Jordon Hudson, is 49 years younger. (Hudson’s previous boyfriend is around 40 years older.)

I say (a) “if they’re happy, fine,” (b) “it’s none of my damn business” and (c) “live and let live”.

But Bellichick’s maroon or burgundy sport jacket is utterly impossible. No one of any taste comes within 100 yards of burgundy or maroon anything.

…much less seen them?

I’m talking about the decline and fall of western civilization here.

If someone were to ask for a Ten Best of the ’20s, ’30s and early ’40s, off the top of my head I would list…oh, maybe 40 or 50. Generic classics like (1) F.W. Murnau‘s Sunrise, (2) William Wellman‘s The Ox-Bow Incident, (3) Howard Hawks’ Only Angels Have Wings, (4) Buster Keaton‘s The General, (5) Fritz Lang‘s Metropolis, (6) John Huston‘s The Maltese Falcon.

Plus (7) King Kong, (8) The Wizard Of Oz, (9) Bringing Up Baby, (10) Preston Sturges‘ Sullivan’s Travels and (11) The Lady Eve (12) Casablanca, (13) Gunga Din, (14) The Grapes of Wrath, (15) Orson Welles’ Citizen Kane, (16) John Ford‘s The Informer, (17) Abel Gance‘s Napoleon, (18) Abbott & Costello‘s Hold That Ghost, (19) Leo McCarey‘s Duck Soup, (20) Jean Renoir‘s The Rules of the Game, (21) Sergei Eisenstein‘s Battleship Potemkin, (22) Lewis Milestone‘s All Quiet on the Western Front.

Plus (23) James Whale‘s Frankenstein and (24) The Bride of Frankenstein, (25) Leo McCarey’s The Awful Truth, (26) Ernst Lubitsch‘s Trouble in Paradise plus (27) My Man Godfrey, (28) Que Viva Mexico!, (29) The Twentieth Century, (30) The Philadelphia Story, (31) Sherlock, Jr., (32) Tod Browning‘s Freaks, (33) I Am A Fugitive From a Chain Gang, (34) Shadow of a Doubt, (35) The Public Enemy,(36) Michael Curtiz‘s Robin Hood, (37) Hawks‘ Scarface, (38) Curtiz’s Yankee Doodle Dandy, (39) Selznick/Fleming’s Gone With The Wind and (40) Hitchcock’s Rebecca and (41) Lifeboat.

I know, of course, that most under-40s regard films released in the ’80s as rather musty, and you can double or triple that assessment when it comes to films from Hollywood’s “Easy Riders, Raging Bulls” era (from 1967’s Bonnie and Clyde and The Graduate until the end of that cycle when Sorcerer bombed and Star Wars became a massive hit)…and you can certainly forget about films from the late ’40s, ’50s and early ’60s (including Hud). Which leaves films from the ’20s, ’30s and early ’40s totally in the dust.

So as futile as this may sound, I’m asking which of the above 40, if any, fall under the “hazily recalled by Millennials and Zoomers” category…which of these films have made any kind of impression of any kind?

Let me assure everyone that Pope Francis is not, as we speak, in the grip of any kind of quietly humming life force…any kind of buzzing, soothing, gently crackling cosmic consciousness, at least as living life forms (humans, aquatics, animals, insects) know the term.

Pope Francis is not presently on that kind of Dave Bowman flotation ride. He’s not riding anything, in fact. Because he no longer exists, although a certain tingly residue may remain on some level. Maybe a sound or a whisper of some kind. A raindrop hitting the surface of a pond.

Whatever this residue may or may not amount to, it is almost certainly enveloped by or resting upon a kind of perfect, peaceful soft mattress of serenity…something that’s well beyond trustworthy….simultaneously everything and nothing. No worries or uncertainties or concerns of any kind. Flatline chill. Stanley Kubrick has been in this same kind of perfect suspension for…what, 26 years and change? And it may as well be seconds as far as Stanley’s residue is concerned. Or, you know, forget any calibration at all.

A little more than 18 years ago, Vanity Fair photographer Art Streiber and Seth Rogen, 26 going on 48, reenacted the North by Northwest cropduster scene. I remember flipping through the issue and going “what….why?” The gray suit was okay and the biplane looked fine, but the first thing I noticed, of course, was Rogen’s gelatinous gut spilling over his belt. Which reminded anyone out there who knew anything about the 54 year old Cary Grant, who filmed the actual scene up in Wasco in the summer of ’58…if there was one thing Grant was never in the least bit burdened by, it was an overhang. So the joke was what?…look at how galumphy and slothful our movie-star culture has become? Something in this vein?

HE respects bussdownsathiana. She prefaces her Sinners review by acknowledging that a lot of Zoomer social-media fanatics “are going to get mad at me,” etc. But at least she has the stones to lay it down straight, which is more than you can say for most of the over-the-top nutters and suck-ups who are praising Ryan Coogler‘s vampire flick to the heavens…hook, line and sinker.

@bussdownsathiana dr. umar would love this though #sinnersmovie #filmtok #movietok #ryancoogler #moviereview ♬ original sound – sathbabii

@tmoneyy456 95% is a huge exaggeration lol Someone please explain it to me. It wasn’t good. Not liking a movie truly isn’t that deep #sinners ♬ original sound – Tmoneyy

THIS RIFF CONTAINS A SPOILER if you live in a deep, dark, wifi-free cave…:

I explained a few days ago that I’d pretty much decided to shine The Last of Us, largely because I’m flat-out repelled by Bella Ramsey’s “Ellie”…feral eyes, frosty “they/them” vibes, bunned hair. “Pretty much” meant there was, at most, a one-in-five chance I might watch it again. But now that Pedro Pascal’s Joel has been shot, golf-clubbed and stabbed to death, we’re stuck with Ellie as the lead character and that, to me, is death. I really hate this show, and if Craig Mazin and Neil Druckmann…okay, I won’t say it. But I’m definitely flushing it. Get outta my life.

Speaking as a skeptical non-Catholic and, of course, a 2025 cinephile, HE’s easiest and most immediate understanding of the inner finaglings and political struggles of Vatican politics stems, of course, from Edward Berger’s Conclave (‘24), which ended with the choosing of a kind of woke Pope, aka the intersex, Mexican-born Cardinal Benitez, who chose to be called Pope Innocente, played by Carlos Diehz.

And yet the 88 year-old Pope Francis, who suddenly passed last night in Rome, was a bit of an anomaly — a compassionate progressive who had reached out to gay Catholics and, in Conclave terms, was staunchly opposed to the strict conservative dogma of Serge Castellito’s Cardinal Tedesco. Nonetheless Francis spoke out against woke fanaticism and cancel culture, and in so doing presented himself as a fair-minded and well-principled fellow.

A Jesuit from Argentina, the kindly Jorge Mario Bergoglio was, it seemed to some of us, a real-life version of Benitez, minus a certain physical characteristic.

I knew Francis was a good egg when Sarah Palin frowned and harrumphed when he was chosen to be Pope in March 2013.

And now, in a manner of speaking, Ralph Fiennes’ Cardinal Lawrence will once again be summoning cardinals to Vatican City to select a new pontiff. Who will be Papa Francesco’s successor? Another Benitez or…who knows?…Stanley Tucci’s Cardinal Bellini, Castellito’s Tedesco, John Lithgow’s Cardinal Tremblay, Lucian Msamati’s Cardinal Adeyemi, or perhaps even Lawrence himself?

If I was running the show, I would urge the choosing of a contemporary Pope Joan.

Did anyone even see Terrence Malick‘s Knight of Cups? Barack Obama was still in the White house when it opened. I reviewed it (“King of Flakes“)during the 2016 Santa Barbara Film Festival.

What I wrote: Last night I sat through Terrence Malick‘s Knight of Cups (Broad Green, 3.4) at Santa Barbara’s Arlington theatre.

I didn’t watch or absorb it — I “sat through” it like I was waiting for an overdue bus. It’s about warm climes and lassitude and a truly profound lack of effort by everyone involved, particularly Malick.

What a tragic journey he’s been on since The Tree of Life. Self-wanking, anal-cavity-residing…the man is so lost it looks like home to him. And it is a kind of home, I gather, that producers Sarah Green and Nicholas Gonda have seemingly created for the guy. Take your time, Terry…take your sweet-ass time.

Once regarded as one of Hollywood’s great auteurist kings (Badlands, Days of Heaven) but more recently renowned for his whispery mood-trip films (a tendency that began with The Thin Red Line) and for indulging in meditative reveries to a point that the reveries become the whole effing movie, Malick, free to operate within his own cloistered realm, lives to “paint” and dither and go all doodly-doo and mystical and digressive when the mood strikes, which is apparently all the time when he’s shooting and cetainly when he’s editing.

40 years ago I was convinced Malick had seen the burning bush and was passing along God’s-eye visions, and now look at him.

Knight of Cups is To The Wonder Goes To Southern California with a lot more dough and a greater variety of hot women. They could re-title it Terrence Malick’s Wide, Wide World of Delectable, Half-Dressed, Model-Thin Fuck Bunnies.

They could also retitle it Terrence Malick’s Beaches…boy, does Christian Bale love going to the beach at magic hour and sloshing barefoot through the tides! This meandering dream-doze movie is all beaches, all deserts, all swanky condos and office towers and absurdly arrogant McMansions. And all half-captured moods and fall-away moments and conversational snippets.

Who am I? Why am I so damn lazy? Can I do anything besides wander around and gaze at stuff? Either Bale is on Percocets or I need to drop a Percocet the next time I watch this.

The most attention-getting thing that happens in Knight of Cups is a semi-serious earthquake (lasts around ten seconds, feels like a 7 or 7.5). The second is a home robbery by a couple of shaved-head Latinos. The third is a nude blonde standing on an outdoor balcony (possibly Bale’s). The rest is spiritual ether and vapor and kicking sand.

If you know Los Angeles you know Malick is hitting all the visually arresting spots within a 100-mile range — the beaches, downtown LA, Venice, Malibu, LAX, Palm Springs, Joshua Tree rock formations, etc. Malick’s Los Angeles is like Woody Allen‘s Manhattan — all affluent eye candy. I’ve wandered around all these places and looked up at the sky and have channelled the same moods and thoughts that Christian Bale‘s Rick seems to be having. I’ve done it over and over. I know this realm up and down.

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