The MOVIE SNEAK Podcast (2025)

22/09/2025

TONIGHT - THAT TIME VINCENT PRICE AND CHARLES BRONSON SQUARED OFF AS ADVERSARIES IN A JULES VERNE YARN - "MASTER OF THE WORLD" (1961 / dir. - William Witney)

Yeah, some of the special FX by today's standards look a little (let's be kind and say) "dated". But, damn, if it's production and costume design, it's tone, and - most importantly - it's script (by the legendary Richard Matheson of I AM LEGEND, DUEL, THE INCREDIBLE SHRINKING MAN, WHAT DREAMS MAY COME, THE TWILIGHT ZONE and more, and based upon two novels by Jules Verne - ROBUR THE CONQUEROR and MASTER OF THE WORLD) don't combine to still make this a timeless "knock-it-outta-the-park" old-school, "boy's own" adventure of the best sort.

Vincent Price is Verne's brilliant "Captain Nemo"-esque Robur who - with his before-its-time airship, the Albatross, and its multi-national crew - seeks to abolish world war by declaring violent war upon the world's warriors. Charles Bronson is the security head of a U.S. government expeditionary crew sent to examine the strange goings-on within a mountainous crater which it turns out is Robur's base of operations. And when he and the rest of the team find themselves taken prisoner by Robur aboard his flying battleship, Charlie - who admires Price's aim, but despises his means - seeks to both escape and bring down Robur's fiendish plan. Word is that STAR TREK creator Gene Roddenberry took a little bit of inspiration - in the way of a high-tech vessel with a multi-ethnic crew - from this particular Verne yarn. But whether that story's accurate or not, ...

This is still an awesome fave! 👍

CEJ

22/09/2025

BURT DOIN' THAT BURT THANG IN "THE FLAME AND THE ARROW" (1950 / dir. - Jacques Tourneur)

Warner Bros.' attempt to duplicate the swashbuckling charm and sense-of-adventure of its earlier THE ADVENTURES OF ROBIN HOOD with Errol Flynn is - let's be honest - kinda clunky and forced in the first half. But, damn, once we get to the second half, and it's allowed to be its own film and not an imitation of something else, it flies high and mighty, doesn't it?

Sort of an Italian-set / Barbarosa era version of Michael Curtiz's THE ADVENTURES OF ROBIN HOOD, THE FLAME AND THE ARROW, yeah, kinda comes up short when trying to Xerox (and you "under 40-ers" might have to Google that phrase 😄) the earlier Curtiz film. But, WOW!, scripted by (swear to God!) a pre-blacklisted Waldo Salt (later of MIDNIGHT COWBOY and COMING HOME), and directed with a great deal of old-school-Technicolor-visual-splendor by the late/great Jacques Tourneur (CAT PEOPLE, I WALKED WITH A ZOMBIE, NIGHT OF THE DEMON), when it's finally allowed to be its own film in that second half, it comes alive as not only a rousing and derring-do swashbuckler to challenge the best of 'em. But it also becomes a very subtle (and at times *not* so subtle) subtextual "screw you" comment to the rising McCarthy-era sentiments of the day.

Virginia Mayo is "hubba, hubba" sexy / glorious as hell. And Lancaster gets to flex his "former professional athlete" physical prowess muscles as he'd later get to do in films such as THE CRIMSON PIRATE, THE GYPSY MOTHS and THE SWIMMER. In fact, so much so that, at the time of THE FLAME AND THE ARROW's release, Warner Bros. put up a $1 million dollar challenge to anyone who could prove that Burt didn't do his own stunts in the movie, ... a claim which was challenged in a lawsuit wherein the claimant(s) cited proof of work by a famous stuntman whom Warners kept quiet about. At any rate, and all the same, though, ...

Lancaster *does* (quite obviously) do more than a few of his own acrobatic stunts in THE FLAME AND THE ARROW. The Oscar-nominated cinematography of Ernest Haller (GONE WITH THE WIND, MILDRED PIERCE, WHATEVER HAPPENED TO BABY JANE?, LILLIES OF THE FIELD) and Oscar-nominated music score by Max Steiner (KING KONG, CASABLANCA, THE SEARCHERS, GONE WITH THE WIND) also set this one apart as an "all-time-gem" too. ❤

Also cool too that the 2011 DVD (the transfer of which is damn gorgeous, by the way, even on a 4K TV), like the earlier Warner re-releases of THE ADVENTURES OF ROBIN HOOD and THE TREASURE OF THE SIERRA MADRE, is done in a / the "A Night at the Movies" format wherein the disc seeks to replicate an evening out at the movies during the 30s or 40s by also including a Warner short subject film (in this case the comedic "SO YOU'RE GOING TO HAVE AN OPERATION" - 1950) starring George O'Hanlon, and the Warner Bros. animated Looney Tunes short "STRIFE WITH FATHER" (1950) - remember, the one where a couple of well-intentioned sparrows attempt to adopt a big clumsy orphaned, social-misfit of a buzzard? 😆

CEJ

20/09/2025

EARLY A.M., ... AND "ONCE UPON A (actually not that long ago) TIME, HUH?", ... WITH "THE AMERICAN PRESIDENT" (1995 / dir. - Rob Reiner)

Funny how the mind goes into stream-of-consciousness "connective?" mode when certain things are going on in the world. As such, with the passing of Redford a few days ago, his more socio-politically minded films such as THE CANDIDATE, ALL THE PRESIDENT'S MEN, THREE DAYS OF THE CONDOR, INCIDENT AT OGLALA, ... and even the later day more genre-oriented PETE'S DRAGON and CAPTAIN AMERICA: THE WINTER SOLDIER, ... have sprung up for personal rewatches. Similarly, ... and it's no mystery why, ... other films such as George Clooney's GOOD NIGHT, AND GOOD LUCK and Rob Reiner's THE AMERICAN PRESIDENT have popped up on the "Hmmm, I need to pull this one out for another rewatch and philosophical musing too" list.

While "officially" called in most blurbs a "Romantic Comedy" or even "Romantic Comedy / Drama", for me Carl Reiner and Aaron Sorkin's THE AMERICAN PRESIDENT always seemed more accurately a "romantic comedy / drama, ... if John Frankenheimer had ever made one". 😄 I mean, it's got all the same political intelligence and intrigue of F's SEVEN DAYS IN MAY, THE MANCHURIAN CANDIDATE, THE BURNING SEASON, GEORGE WALLACE, and PATH TO WAR, only crossed with a more benign, hopeful and, yeah (duh?) romantic vibe rarely seen in films dealing with such uber-intelligent political subject matter. And this brings something else to the fore - namely, "Why do films have to be so damn pigeon-holed all the time!?". I mean, if I read yet another online review where some critic says, "Such-and-such a film couldn't decide what it wanted to be - a drama or a comedy, or a horror film or social commentary, or a 'this' and a 'that', ... I swear to God, I'm gonna come through the electrical line and do a big time Horace Pinker on one of these dumb-assed moe-foes! 😫🤬 Nah, I've always absolutely loved how THE AMERICAN PRESIDENT not only managed to be genuinely romantic, genuinely funny, and genuinely prescient (it kinda / sorta shares thematic shelf-space with Rod Lurie's 2000 film THE CONTENDER, doesn't it?), but also how the general public embraced / "got" it. So, no, you don't always have to "talk down" to your audience and appeal to what you assume to be its "lowest common 'I.Q?' denominator".

I always felt Sorkin's later uber-successful TV series THE WEST WING was something of a (at least thematic) off-shoot / spin-off of THE AMERICAN PRESIDENT in some regards. And the creators of the later SPIN CITY acknowledged that Michael J. Fox in Reiner / Sorkin's film was a primary inspiration on / for their show. I also remember having had the privilege of hearing Sorkin speak at a screenwriting conference back in the early 2000s, and also reading an interview with director Reiner around the same time, where both mentioned how THE AMERICAN PRESIDENT was written and shot during a more Liberal administration, but released during a much more Conservative one. And as such, they had no idea that at the time they were making a - what would later be considered by some a (for lack of a better term) - "counter-culture" film of the day. Amazingly, I think the same can be said for Frankenheimer's MANCHURIAN CANDIDATE and SEVEN DAYS IN MAY - hence my earlier analogy. And see, some of you thought I was really reaching at the time, didn't you? But no, not at all.

Very deservedly nominated for Academy Awards for its screenplay by Sorkin and its musical score by Marc Shaiman, I have to say THE AMERICAN PRESIDENT's score remains one of my all-time faves from the decade of the 90s, ... and arguably still among my (if I actually ever took the time to compile such a list 😉) "25 Favorite Film Scores of All-time". For / speaking to other film music devotees, it's a truly magnificent musical wonder, is it not? Anyway, with the current political climate, one can only say about the film in general, both, ...

"Remember when?" and "If we fight hard enough, we'll get there again". 🤘

CEJ

18/09/2025

LATER TONIGHT, THE FORT RED BORDER (see SNEAKERS for explanation 😉) / ROBERT REDFORD TRIBUTE-A-THON CONTINUES: DAY 3 - with "THE OLD MAN AND THE GUN" (2018 / dir. - David Lowery) AND "A WALK IN THE WOODS" (2015 / dir. - Ken Kwapis)

What I consider two of Redford's later-day gems. There's nothing about either film which hits you over the head like a sledgehammer, ... and that's exactly *why* I've come to so love both. Well, both films *do* have sledgehammer casts and performances. But they just kind of invite you to pleasantly mosey along with them on their charming-as-hell way. As such, even though they aren't nearly anywhere as cynical, they remind me a lot of films from the 70s. Maybe even nice tonal companion pieces with, say, THE ELECTRIC HORSEMAN, ... and, hell, even (though not anywhere as dark) JEREMIAH JOHNSON to a degree. ❤🎥

CEJ

18/09/2025

TONIGHT - "THE OFFICIAL STORY" (1985 / dir. - Luis Puenzo)

To this day one of the most emotionally shattering films I've ever seen. Mentioned this one the other day when talking about Luis Puenzo's (if I'm not mistaken only English language film) OLD GR**GO starring Jane Fonda, Gregory Peck, and Jimmy Smits - which critics weren't too keen on, but which I've always loved. I think the "displeasure" from most critics was in large part due to the fact THE OFFICIAL STORY was quite simply a really, REALLY hard act to follow.

Winning multi-awards around the world, the 1985 Oscar winner for Best Foreign Language film is historical fiction (in that fictional characters take us through a real event or era) wherein the socially well-to-do mother of a child adopted through "not entirely legal" channels, little by little comes to suspect that her 5 year old daughter was among many of the orphans ripped from their murdered parents during the time of the "desaparecida" ("Forced Disappearances") in Argentina when the "Proceso de Reorganización Nacional" (Argentina's last military dictatorship from the mid 1970s - early 80s) saw outspoken opponents to the junta disappear into the night and were never heard from again. Portrayed by Norma Aleandro (who won that year's Cannes Film Festival Award as Best Actress), Alicia is a school history teacher who, almost middle-age Nancy Drew-like, delves into the past of her adopted child and comes to discover the dark neo-fascist world around her the whole time she self-delusionarily, blithely refused to acknowledge even ever existed. It's a combination political powder-keg of a film and heart-wrenching personal odyssey of a parent who loves their adopted child so much that she wants to know the truth of that child's past, ... even if it's a past that (at least in some way) implicates her because of earlier societal / sociopolitical indifference. WOW!

While growing up on every kind of film as a kid (foreign, independent, animated, studio epics, and more), I was not familiar with THE OFFICIAL STORY until, while working at the now legendary TLA VIDEO in Philly back in the 80s, the young woman I was dating at the time asked this "Knows everything about every film" movie geek if he'd ever seen it. Yeah, Angie, that was you. She also turned me on to Margaret Atwood's novel THE HANDMAID'S TALE back then too, and I tried to turn her on to King's MISERY and Fleming's CASINO ROYALE, but I think with limited success 😄. Anyway, this "Knows everything" geek hadn't seen / wasn't familar with THE OFFICIAL STORY. So, one night I took it home from TLA, watched it with her, ... and was never the same again. At the time of THE OFFICIAL STORY's initial release, Roger Ebert drew comparisons between it and Costa-Govras' "Z" and MISSING, and Gregory Nava's EL NORTE, ... and quite accurately so! Though I think later films such as Marc Forster's THE KITE RUNNER and MACHINE GUN PREACHER are heartbreakingly searing thematic cousins as well.

THE OFFICIAL STORY went through various VHS and DVD releases and re-releases over the years - some pan-and-scan and others (so-called) "widescreen" - but all of them what most now consider substandard transfers. About ten years ago, though, the Cohen Media Group picked up the rights to the more recent 4K restored and remastered version and released it on a new DVD as well as on their own Criterion-like streaming channel. After watching THE OFFICIAL STORY on VHS for the last (Jeez, yeah, I'm THAT old!!! 😱) 40 or so years, after rewatching OLD GR**GO last weekend, I ordered the restored DVD and will be watching that tonight.

Very psyched, ... but also have a roll of paper towels at the ready, because this one brings on the tears, man, big time. No lie!

CEJ

17/09/2025

FORT RED BORDER (see SNEAKERS for explanation 😉) / ROBERT REDFORD TRIBUTE-A-THON: DAY 2 - THE DOCUS, ... AND "ALL THE PRESIDENT'S MEN: REVISITED" (2013 / dir. - Peter Schnall)

Originally broadcast on the Discovery Channel during the 40 Year Anniversary of the breaking of the Watergate Conspiracy, this Robert Redford-produced documentary does the phenomenal three-pronged job of 1) recapping the entire Watergate story - as initially brought to the public eye via the journalism of Washington Post reporters Carl Bernstein and Bob Woodward, 2) chronicling the making of the film version of Woodward and Bernstein's titular book; and, perhaps most importantly 3), projecting the true-life story into the present era to ask / see / discuss how things may have changed politically, journalistically, public-interpretation-wise since, ... or not changed much at all.

Growing up when all this was going on, it was impossible to not watch the breaking news reports, Senate hearings, and more every day on TV - which held as much fascination, suspense, twists and intrigue as any soap opera, Agatha Christie story, or DAY OF THE JACKAL-like political thriller movie. And Schnall's documentary perfectly captures the "lightning-in-a-bottle"-like scent / memory of it all - this done with not only archival footage and archival comments (including the actual Richard Nixon "secret tapes"), but with (at the time) new interviews and commentary from those who lived it: among them Woodward and Bernstein themselves, former Washington Post editor Ben Bradlee, Redford, Dustin Hoffman, former Tennesse Senator Fred Dalton Thompson (one of the interrogators during the Watergate hearings - he'd later go on to act in films such as THE HUNT FOR RED OCTOBER, DIE HARD 2, IN THE LINE OF FIRE, and others), John Dean, Elizabeth Holtzman, and former Nixon deputy assistant Alexander Butterfield. These along with others offering opinion and insight such as Jon Stewart, James Carville, Ben Stein (not only of FERRIS BUELLER'S DAY OFF and WIN BEN STEIN'S MONEY, but also a former speech writer for Richard Nixon and Gerald Ford), Tom Brokaw, Rachel Maddow, Joe Scarborough, and more,... with perhaps the most fascinating conversation being with the daughter of former FBI Special Agent Mark Felt, who was later revealed to be the legendary whistleblower / informant "Deep Throat".

A phenomenal docu, and a lasting tribute to Robert Redford - who produced / shepherded to the screen the now classic 1976 film version of ALL THE PRESIDENT'S MEN as well in the first place. 👍

CEJ

17/09/2025

FORT RED BORDER (see SNEAKERS for explanation 😉) / ROBERT REDFORD TRIBUTE-A-THON: DAY 1 - THE DOCUS, ... AND "ICONOCLASTS: ROBERT REDFORD ON PAUL NEWMAN" (2005 / dir. - Joe Berlinger)

Still heartbroken (genuinely shattered, actually) over the passing of Robert Redford. Now, every time I watched / rewatched one of his later day films such as THE CLEARING, THE OLD MAN AND THE GUN, CAPTAIN AMERICA: THE WINTER SOLDIER, A WALK IN THE WOODS, etc., I'd say to myself, "Oh, man, he's gettin' up there, and when he passes, it's gonna be the end of an era". And when he finally did, ... it absolutely was!!!

Redford wasn't just a great movie star or director, ... he was (more than anything) a decent and admirable human being. He was politically active and concerned about climate change and the plight of the disenfranchised long before it became the (so-called) "woke" norm. He was (for me, at least anyway when I was a kid) the kind of guy you wanted / I wanted to be when one grew up. Over the years I've done "tally / checks" of films I own by various filmmakers and / or actors-actresses. And the top ones - as in how many I have on the shelves - remain those by Harrison Ford, Sean Connery, Samuel L. Jackson, Tom Hanks, and Robert Redford, ... having on those shelves approx. something like 35 of Redford's 50 or so films as actor, and all but two of his as director. If you wanna count his early-day TV appearances in series such as THE TWILIGHT ZONE ("Nothing in the Dark" is one of the best of Rod Serling's series ever, by the way!), there are more. And of course, we have his filmography as producer too of a number of documentaries - for me the apex of which might just be INCIDENT AT OGLALA.

I never met the man, but my best / most personal Redford story might be how when at 11 or so years old, my mom and dad both had to work one night, and I was supposed to babysit my younger brother. But - timed to the new release of the Newman/Redford-starring THE STING in '73 - there was a re-release of BUTCH CASSIDAY AND THE SUNDANCE KID playing at that beloved old Fox Theater in Willingboro, N.J. (which I've mentioned more than once). And I snuck out to see it with my younger brother in tow ... whom I was supposed to be babysitting at home.

Somehow, some way, when mom and dad got home and saw that I wasn't there with my younger brother Ronnie, they knew exactly where I was. And in the middle of watching BUTCH AND SUNDANCE, a theater usher came up to me and said, "Your mother is outside, and she wants to speak to you!" 😲😨 I mean, how could she have known where I was, right? But ultimately, DUH?! At any rate, ...

I was a Redford fan from that day on. And considering how my parents were so politically active in the 60s and 70s, I just became more so when I later learned of Bob's personal socio-political stances. I mean, yeah, his earlier films like THE CANDIDATE, ALL THE PRESIDENT'S MEN and THREE DAYS OF THE CONDOR made these ideas / ideals plainly evident. But his later films too - ones he didn't have to do, I mean, the man didn't need the money or press at the time, but films like PETE'S DRAGON and CAPTAIN AMERICA: THE WINTER SOLDIER - spoke volumes as to his still-after-all-these-years personal core beliefs. All of this, I guess, which is summed up in the ICONOCLASTS episode "Robert Redford on Paul Newman".

For those maybe not aware, ICONOCLASTS was a documentary series sporadically broadcast on the Sundance Channel (the earlier version of the network, anyway, when it wasn't a "reality TV network") between 2005 - 2012. It was a series where a current artist paid tribute to an earlier artist by conducting an interview with said person whose career eventually in some way later informed their own. There were episodes where Dave Chappelle interviewed Maya Angelou, where Samuel L. Jackson interviewed NBA great Bill Russell, Paul Simon interviewed SNL's Lorne Micheals and more, and etc. But my all-time fave was / is when Robert Redford interviewed Paul Newman. It was surely / definitely the funniest episode too, ... as well as maybe the most heartfelt.

Love how these two became the best of friends, ... and continued to play massive (and damn clever) pranks on each other over the many years. THAT, far as I'm concerned, anyway, more than anything else is the indication of the closet of friendships / brotherhoods.

CEJ

15/09/2025

LATER TONIGHT - "HIGH ROAD TO CHINA" (1983 / dir. - Brian G. Hutton)

I absolutely love this film! One of those I've owned on various mediums over the years - in this case the old RCA VideoDisc, then VHS, then finally Blu-ray. No, it's not Hutton's WHERE EAGLES DARE or KELLY'S HEROES. And many dumped on it when it opened two years after RAIDERS OF THE LOST ARK and didn't have its same kind of frenetic firebrand energy. But that was never this film's intent. Produced by the legendary Raymond Chow's Golden Harvest company, it's much more deliberately laid back and old-school elegant in doing it's very well realized THE AFRICAN QUEEN-esque adventure/love story-type thing. This whereas RAIDERS (yeah, one of my favorite films of all-time) pretty much, while inspired by old Republic-like serials, emerges as an action-adventure genre all its own. As such, I've never been into comparing one to the other.

Selleck, ... who was actually Lucas and Spielberg's original choice to play Indy, by the way, until the MAGNUM P.I. producers wouldn't let him out of his contract long enough to do it, ... does the grizzled "Bogie" thing in his own charming way. Similarly, too, Bess Armstrong in the spoiled Katherine Hepburn-esque role. The cinematography, production design and costumes are spectacular. Any film which can also corral Jack Weston, Brian Blessed, and Wilford Brimley into its cast commands my respect and admiration as well. We've got Robert Morely and the heart-stoppingly beautiful Cassandra Gava (CONAN THE BARBARIAN) on board too. And the late great John Barry's music score is a heartstopping thing of beauty in its own right. I never tire of it. And, hey, ...

While I've never heard anything official along these lines, I'll bet money that director Sydney Pollack took inspiration from this film, in regard to its flying sequences and accompanying Barry music, for his Oscar winning OUT OF AFRICA. And, yo, always remember, ...

"The oxen are slow, but the earth is patient". 😉

CEJ

14/09/2025

HEMINGWAY ON M**H AND TEARS, ... AND ONE OF THE BEST FILMS OF 2025! HOLY F**KING SH*T! THAT WAS INTENSE AS HELL!!! 😲😥😱 (*no spoilers*)

After all these years (at one time George Romero was involved in attempting to bring it to the screen, then years later Frank Darabont, and others), Stephen King's THE LONG WALK has finally arrived as a film. AND IT WAS WORTH THE F**KING WAIT! Definitely gets my vote as one of the five to ten all-time best King adaptations - and I'm talkin' company with THE DEAD ZONE, THE SHAWSHANK REDEMPTION, STAND BY ME, DELORES CLAIBORNE, and a few others. King's first completed novel (though not his first one published) was originally published in 1979 under his nom de plume "Richard Bachman", then later collected into that four novel tome beloved by King lovers called THE BACHMAN BOOKS: FOUR EARLY NOVELS BY STEPHEN KING. THE BACHMAN BOOKS also includes RAGE (a terrifying story about a mass shooter in a high school), ROADWORK, and THE RUNNING MAN. And in a twisted kind of way, THE LONG WALK as a novel is very (don't laugh or make that face!) "Hemingway-esque". What I mean is, ...

Long before Jerry Seinfeld and Co. made the phrase "It's a show about nothing" popular, Hemingway's stories were kinda / sorta doing that. Now, with Hemingway (and I guess, when you really think about it, with Seinfeld too 😄), the "nothing happens" part is really only on the surface. I mean, with Papa's THE OLD MAN AND THE SEA, there's mostly just Santiago out alone in pursuit of that ever-elusive huge marlin. But what he's thinking and feeling, and his philosophy of the world in general, ... as well as his place in it, ... is the actual "Yeah, there's a HELLUVA LOT going on here!" story. The same with one of my favorite short stories of all time, Hemingway's THE THREE-DAY BLOW - which is essentially two guys (one of them Hemingway's recurring alter-ego Nick Adams) who are stuck in a cabin as a big nor'easter blows in, and they have nothing to do but drink and talk. So, that's basically the story - two guys in a cabin talking. Y'know, nothing. They start out talking about baseball. But as they get more and more drunk, the topics turn to those of family, father/son relationships, life desires, women, responsibility, fear of not measuring up to society's version of a man, and more. And it's just fascinating as all hell! Kind of cool too that years after reading the story, I'd kind of live a version of it with a good friend with whom I worked at a Philly restaurant. It was during the still legendary "Storm of the Century" of the winter of 1993. His wife and child had gone to (I believe it was) Connecticut to visit her folks when the storm - which blanketed the entire Northeast with up to 30 inches of snow and ice in record time - socked them in. Businesses, schools, and everything else from Philly to Boston and beyond shut down. In fact, I remember walking through Center City Philly one morning - right where City Hall was - and it looked EXACTLY like the opening scenes of Terry Gilliam's 12 MONKEYS, ... EXACTLY!!! Anyway, ...

Me and Tony (my restaurant "brutha from another mother") lived about a block away from each other. So, I picked up some beer, we stashed it in the snow outside his front door so it would chill quickly, had some vodka, some wine, downed a bunch of tortilla chips and salsa, ... and by the time we got to the beer around 3:AM in the morning, the conversation had gone from the hot bartender at the place around the corner from our restaurant, to - just like the guys in the Hemingway story - family, fathers & sons, hopes and dreams, etc., etc. And THAT is why Stephen King / Richard Bachman's THE LONG WALK works as a novel, and THAT is why the film version, directed by CONSTANTINE, I AM LEGEND, and THE HUNGER GAMES Francis Lawrence works soooo f**kingly well too. Y'know, because they're really *not* about nothing. They're really *not* about fifty guys on a marathon walk in a not-too-distant-in-the-future, economically crashed America, doing so in the hope of being the proverbial last man standing who'll score a huge payday, ... and have one life wish granted. No. Yeah, that sounds like a lot more than "nothing" in-and-of-itself", doesn't it? And in the end the narrative *is* a bunch of guys walking and talking while doing so, right? But in the best "Papa" Hemingway, and best Stephen King manner (and King has done this "simple narrative on the surface" / "a helluva lot more going on below that surface, though" thing many times before - with STAND BY ME / THE BODY, MISERY, the short stories JIMMY DOLAN'S CADILLAC, GRAMMA, and many more.

As THE LONG WALK was King's first completed full-length novel, the characters are at times a little clunky - more in the way as to how he wants them to be representative of a cross-section of society: a cross-section of which, at his then very young age, he really didn't have too much of an insight into. The film version, scripted by STRANGE DARLING writer/director JT Mollner, nicely smooths these "bumps" over, assigns a few narrative tasks performed by one character in the book to a different character in the film, and changes the end of the book (for the better, not unlike the changed ending of Darabont's version of King's THE MIST, ... which King himself felt was a better ending), but which *still* remains faithful to the tone and thematics, ... and yeah, a great deal of narrative incidents, ... of / within the original novel.

From a filmic standpoint, THE LONG WALK is certainly one of the best-made movies of 2025 thus far (studio or independent). I mean, tonally-balanced-wise and more, just when things start to become a bit too unbearably tense, Mollner and Lawrence insert awesome bits of character-based humor which gives the audience a chance to breathe. Then just when you're wanting to wish death and disease on certain characters, there are these revealing moments of humanity that damn near brings tears to your eyes and helps you see that even the a**holes here have pasts and shattered parts of their hearts and psyches, ... y'know, kind of like what Hemingway often did, and what - if we really / actually take the time to see - is the case in real life too. At any rate, ...

With a phenomenal ensemble cast (one of the best in years!), incredible direction, some heartbreaking moments, and more, THE LONG WALK has not only instantly become one of my all-time favorite King adaptations. But it's surely for me (and I guarantee you it will end up on many such lists) one of the best films of 2025. And, oh yeah, ...

Good God! Mark Hamill is vile and terrifying as all hell, isn't he? And did you *ever* think you'd say that?, ... well, outside of his voicing the Joker in the animated BATMAN films and TV series. 😉

CEJ

14/09/2025

LATER TONIGHT - "AND STARRING PANCHO VILLA AS HIMSELF" (2003 / dir. - Bruce Beresford)

Mentioned this one as a fave quite a while ago. But it's been a few years since actually pulling it off the shelf for another view. The last few days, though, I've done rewatches of Luis Puenzo's OLD GR**GO (which takes place during the days of Pancho Villa and the Mexican Revolution), and - while not posting about it - Orson Welles' CITIZEN KANE and the phenomenal 1996 AMERICAN EXPERIENCE documentary, THE BATTLE OVER "CITIZEN KANE" - which goes into detail about how legendary publishing magnate William Randolph Hearst (on whom Welles' Charles Foster Kane is based) and Welles essentially went to war over the film being released or not released, ... and how neither emerged from the conflict unscathed. As such, I guess it was an ultimately inevitable stream-of-consciousness thing that brought me back to AND STARRING PANCHO VILLA AS HIMSELF.

Scripted by Larry Gelbart (A FUNNY THING HAPPENED ON THE WAY TO THE FORUM, TOOTSIE, BLAME IT ON RIO, BARBARIANS AT THE GATE) and directed by Bruce Beresford (BREAKER MORANT, TENDER MERCIES, DRIVING MISS DAISY), AND STARRING PANCHO VILLA AS HIMSELF chronicles the amazing true story behind the making of 1914's silent film / pseudo-"biographical drama" THE LIFE OF GENERAL VILLA. At the height of the Revolution, General Villa, strapped for cash in funding the rebellion because of an economic embargo placed upon him in large part by mutli-media baron William Randolph Hearst, made a deal with producer D.W. Griffith (director of THE BIRTH OF A NATION) to have said aforementioned pseudo-doc about him and the uprising filmed on location in Mexico starring the General as himself. And, while absolutely *not* a comedy, ... far from it!, ... AND STARRING PANCHO VILLA AS HIMSELF does, however, emerge as an at times scathingly accurate pointed finger dark satire at mass media in a very Lumet-like NETWORK and Kubrickian DR. STRANGELOVE manner.

The cast is nothing short of sensational - with Antonio Banderas never better as General Villa; FIGHT CLUB and BAND OF BROTHERS' Eion Bailey as "not as naive as he likes people to think he is" filmmaker Frank Thayer; and a murderer's row supporting cast too, consisting of Alan Arkin, Jim Broadbent, Alexa Davalos, Kyle Chandler (as future THE BIG TRAIL, ST. LOUIS BLUES, HIGH SIERRA director Raoul Walsh), along with Michael McKean, Colm Feore, Saul Rubinek, and Pedro Armendariz, Jr. With a budget of $30 million, AND STARRING PANCHO VILLA AS HIMSELF - originally broadcast on HBO in September of 2003 - was at the time the most expensive made for TV film ever. And it shows. Its multi-award nominated costume and production design are big-screen-worthy as all get out. And, while shot in the more (at the time TV-ish) 1:78:1 aspect ratio, the cinematography of Peter James (DRIVING MISS DAISY, BLACK ROBE, THE NEWTON BOYS, DOUBLE JEOPARDY) is gorgeously widescreen cinematic as all hell. Yeah, ...

It's a gem of an underrated film if there ever was one. And, hey, eagle-eyed film geeks will notice more than a few John Ford shout-outs throughout. 👍

CEJ

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