WHY NOT ME (by Lindsay Ireland) – Introducing Bradley’s Book Reviews!

Posted on January 4, 2025 by Bradley Crain

I don’t read that often for recreational purposes. When I do read, it’s usually books about my favorite actors, actresses, directors, or movies in general. But every now and then, a book will pique my interest, and I’ll pick it up. Back in the late spring of 2024, my partner on the “This Week in Charles Bronson” podcast, Eric Todd, made me aware of a book called WHY NOT ME, a memoir from Lindsay Ireland, the niece of Jill Ireland and Charles Bronson. Eric had made contact with Lindsay and the two had some preliminary discussion about her appearing on the podcast. Eric told me that she shared stories of her own life, which included her spending summers as a child on the Vermont ranch of her famous aunt and uncle. As a lifelong Bronson fan, it seemed the book could offer some valuable insight into the life of my movie hero. I figured I could spend some time trudging through Lindsay’s personal life if it allowed me to get those valuable nuggets of information on Bronson and Ireland. I went ahead and bought WHY NOT ME and took it with me when my wife, Sierra, and I were on a relaxing weekend in Eureka Springs, Arkansas. I settled in on the balcony of the New Orleans Hotel, which overlooks a section of the beautiful downtown area and started reading. Here’s a quick summary of the book taken directly from Amazon:

“Lindsay Ireland enjoyed an idyllic childhood. She spent her summers in Vermont with her movie-star relatives where she rode horses, played detective with her cousin, and drank ice-cold lemonade. After the summer months, Lindsay returned to her loving family where her biggest worry was getting good grades in school. Then one day Lindsay noticed blood in her stool. Suddenly instead of carefree afternoons swimming in a lake or dressing her Barbie doll, Lindsay spent months in a sterile hospital room receiving intravenous fluids and, eventually, a life-saving ostomy surgery. At age eleven, Lindsay was diagnosed with her first autoimmune disease, and her life was never the same. In this candid memoir, Lindsay evolves from a girl living with an autoimmune disease into a young woman struggling to love a body that has continuously failed her, and, eventually, into a mother and wife who has fought to make herself visible despite her invisible illnesses.”

As alluded to above, I was interested in WHY NOT ME because I wanted to read Lindsay Ireland’s stories about Charles Bronson & Jill Ireland. And I was certainly in awe as Lindsay spoke of her times with her Uncle Charlie, Aunt Jill and her cousins in Vermont. Reading about my movie hero from her perspective was something I appreciated tremendously. But what really blew me away with this book is how connected I became to Lindsay’s personal life events, struggles and triumphs. Lindsay funneled her memories and writings through a lens of “the power of perspective.” It’s through this perspective that Lindsay speaks of how important her family has been to her over the years as she’s faced the fear of serious health issues in both her childhood and again as an adult. She spoke of the importance of making a good match with a therapist, and how that has helped her over the years. She spoke of how important it has been for her to learn to speak of the difficult things in her life, even if they make her uncomfortable. Lindsay’s strength in writing is her ability to share her own insecurities, the ways that she has been able to overcome them, and then make you believe that you can overcome them to! I was able to relate to so many of the things she shared, and I can see how much my own life could have improved if I had done these things earlier.

The one thing that probably stuck with me the most, however, is when Lindsay spoke of how hard it was when she was dealing with some very difficult issues in her life, yet she felt unseen and unheard, even from those people who loved her, wanted the best for her and had good intentions. This is where I decided I need to make the most improvement in my own life. It seems we can get so caught up in our own feelings and concerns that the needs of others, even those we love, can be neglected. Sadly, I know that there are times that I don’t show the concern, empathy or compassion that I should to other people. After finishing WHY NOT ME, I am determined to make sure that the people I love never feel unseen or unheard, especially my wife. I fail at times, mainly because I can be a smartass, and my wife might even roll her eyes or tease me if she reads this, but I truly never want her to feel unseen or unheard again.

If you want to hear more directly from Lindsay, or maybe even hear me or my buddy Eric bare our own souls, I’ve attached our podcast episode again for your viewing / listening pleasure!

Film Review: The Valiant (dir by William K. Howard)

Posted on January 4, 2025 by Lisa Marie Bowman

In the days after World War I, a man (Paul Muni) stumbles out of an apartment building and then walks down to the local police station. He informs the officer on duty that he just shot a man. He refuses to explain why he shot the man and, when asked for his name, he identifies himself as James Dyke. The office notices a poster for “Dyke & Co.” on the wall and realizes that the man made up his name. The man is convicted and sentenced to be executed.

The years pass as the man waits for his execution date. He is a model prisoner, working hard in the garden and writing editorials for the newspapers in which he warns young readers about pursuing a life of crime. The money he makes, he puts into Liberty Bonds. He continues to refuse to tell anyone his first name.

In a small town, an old woman (Edith Yorke) sits in her rocking chair and has visions of all the men who went to war and never returned. When the woman sees a picture of James Dyke in a newspaper, she thinks that he looks like her son, Joe, who long ago went missing. The woman’s daughter, Mary (Marguerite Churhill), realizes that her mother is planning to make the trip to the prison to see him before he is executed. Mary decides to go herself. She tells her fiancé (John Mack Brown) that she could never get married if it turned out her brother was a murderer. Meanwhile, the old woman continues to have visions of soldiers marching to war.

At the prison, James Dyke tells Mary that he has no family and he has no past. But he did serve in World War I and during that time, he met her brother and he saw him die heroically in battle. Dyke tells her to write to the army for the details of her brother’s death but to be aware that they might not even know whether or not he actually served because the war was such a confusing time that “they don’t know what happened to half the men out there.” Dyke and Mary continue to talk as the hour of execution draws near….

An adaptation of a one-act play, The Valiant was released in 1929, at a time when America was still coming to terms with the horror of the Great War and Hollywood was still trying to adjust to the arrival of sound. Though many had assumed that sound films would just be a fad, it turned out that audiences really did like to hear the dialogue as opposed to just reading it. The Valiant is the type of melodrama that was popular during the silent era and the film does feature title cards that appear between scenes. “A city street — where laughter and tragedy rub elbows,” one card reads. Another one announces, “Civilization demands its toll.” At the same time, it is a sound picture. The first five minutes of the film are just the Man walking through the city and listening to the sound of cars honking and people talking. Like many of the early sounds films, it’s obvious that the majority of the cast was not quite sure how they should handle delivering their dialogue. Some people talk too loudly. Some talk too softly. Quite a few deliver their dialogue stiffly and without emotion. Others use way too much emotion.

The only actor who seems to be fully confident in his ability to perform with sound is Paul Muni, making his screen debut in the lead role. Muni gives a strong and empathetic performance, one that makes even the most melodramatic of dialogue feel naturalistic. Muni shows an instinctive knowledge of how to deliver his lines with emotion without going over the top, which was a skill that many of the actors who tried to make the transition to sounds films never learned. Paul Muni was the first great actor of the sound era, as well as one of the first screen actors to use what would eventually become known as the Method. Among the actors who were directly inspired by Muni were John Garfield, Montgomery Clift, and Marlon Brando. Much of modern acting owes a huge debt to the work of Paul Muni.

Seen today, the contrast between Paul Muni’s performance and the film’s staginess can make The Valiant seem like a rather surreal film. While Muni captures the screen and confidently delivers his lines, everyone else seems hesitant and unsure of how to reply. The end result is that, to modern audiences, The Valiant can almost seem like a filmed dream. From the shot of Muni walking down the noisy city street to the sudden appearance of a swing band playing in the prison cafeteria, the film can seem almost Lynchian in its oddness.

The Valiant was a box office success and, according to the notes in the Academy archives, Paul Muni was among the actors considered for the second Best Actor Oscar. (That year, there were no official nominations and only the winners were announced.) The Oscar went to Warner Baxter for In Old Arizona but Muni would go on to have an amazing career.

Music Video of the Day: Harmony Korine by Steven Wilson (2010, dir by Lasse Hoile)

Posted on January 4, 2025 by Lisa Marie Bowman

Director Harmony Korine is 52 years old today. In honor of his birthday, today’s music video of the day is for a song and a music video that was inspired by Korine’s work as a filmmaker. So, watch this and then you can start having that dream again.

Enjoy!

Late Night Retro Television Review: Friday The 13th 2.22 “Wedding Bell Blues”

Posted on January 3, 2025 by Lisa Marie Bowman

Welcome to Late Night Retro Television Reviews, a feature where we review some of our favorite and least favorite shows of the past! On Fridays, I will be reviewing Friday the 13th: The Series, a show which ran in syndication from 1987 to 1990. The entire series can be found on YouTube!

This week, we meet Johnny Ventura!

Episode 2.22 “Wedding Bell Blues”

(Dir by Jorge Montesi, originally aired on May 15th, 1989)

With Ryan and Jack out of town, it falls to Micki to retrieve a cursed pool cue stick. Helping her out, despite all of her attempts to convince him to get lost, is Johnny Ventura (Steve Monarque), a friend of Ryan’s who Ryan hired to help search for the cue stick. Even after Johnny finds out that the item has been cursed by Satan and Micki’s entire life currently revolves around supernatural violence, Johnny wants to not only help out but to also stick around, just because he likes Micki. Micki might want to tell him about all of her previous boyfriends who have all died as a result of getting involved in the search for cursed antiques.

I understand that Johnny is going to eventually replace Ryan on the show, starting with the third season. This episode isn’t particularly subtle about setting Johnny up as a Ryan substitute, though Johnny’s crush on Micki is a bit less cringey than Ryan’s. (Ryan is Micki’s cousin, which is something that the show often seems to overlook.) Johnny is established as being a cocky guy who is willing to break the rules. In other words, he’s just like every other guy who has ever been a lead character on a show like this. One of the stranger things about Johnny is that everyone keeps referring to him as being a “kid,” even though he looks like he’s older than just about everyone else on the show.

As for the cursed pool cue, it belongs to Jennifer (Elizabeth Maclellan), a waitress at a seedy bar. She wants to marry Danny (Louis Ferreira), a self-centered pool player who treats her terribly. Jennifer is convinced that Danny is just worried about winning the upcoming pool tournament so she impales people with the cursed pool cue. Each time Jennifer kills someone, the next game that Danny plays is his best ever. Jennifer is slightly sympathetic because she’s convinced that Danny will marry her right after he wins the tournament and she’s too insecure to see what a cad he is. (She’s also pregnant, though Danny doesn’t know it.) When Jennifer’s sister (played, in a very early role, by Lolita Davidovich) says that Danny is never going to marry her, Jennifer refuses to believe it. When Jennifer discovers that her sister is sleeping with Danny, Jennifer has found her next victim.

It’s really not that interesting of a curse but then again, this episode is more concerned with introducing the character of Johnny Ventura than with anything else. Unfortunately, at least in this episode, Johnny really isn’t that compelling of a character. This was a bit of a disappointing episode but who knows? Maybe Johnny Ventura will grow on me.

Next week, Micki and Ryan go to the ballet! Yay!

Lisa Reviews An Oscar Winner: Unforgiven (dir by Clint Eastwood)

Posted on January 3, 2025 by Lisa Marie Bowman

The 1992 Best Picture winner, Unforgiven, begins as a story of frontier justice.

In Kansas, a young and cocky cowboy who calls himself the Schofield Kid (Jaimz Woolvett) rides up to an isolated hog farm. He’s looking for Will Munny (Clint Eastwood), a notorious outlaw with a reputation for being a ruthless killer. Instead, he just finds a broken down, elderly widower who is trying to raise two young children and who can barely even manage to climb on a horse. Will Munny, the murderer, has become Will Munny the farmer. He gave up his former life when he got married.

The Schofield Kid claims to be an experienced gunfighter who has killed a countless number of men. He explains that a group of sex workers in Wyoming have put a $1,000 bounty on two men, Quick Mike (David Mucci) and his friend, Davey Bunting (Rob Campbell). Quick Mike cut up one of the women when she laughed at how unimpressively endowed he was. While Davey didn’t take part in the crime, he was present when it happened and he didn’t do anything to stop it. The local sheriff, a man named Little Bill Daggett (Gene Hackman), had Davey give the woman’s employer several horses as compensation. The Kid wants Munny to help him collect the bounty.

At first, Munny refuses to help the Kid. But, when he realizes that he’s on the verge of losing his farm, Munny changes his mind. He and his former partner, Ned Logan (Morgan Freeman), join with the Kid and the three of them head to Wyoming. Along the way, they discover that the Kid is severely nearsighted and can hardly handle a pistol.

Meanwhile, in the town of Big Whiskey, Wyoming, Little Bill ruthlessly enforces the peace. He’s a charismatic man who is building a house and bringing what many would consider to be civilization to the Old West. When we first meet Little Bill, he seems like a likable guy. The town trusts him. His deputies worship him. He has a quick smile but he’s willing to stand his ground. But it soon becomes apparent that, underneath that smile and friendly manner, Bill is a tyrant and a petty authoritarian who treats the town as his own personal kingdom. Little Bill has a strict rule. No one outside of law enforcement is allowed to carry a gun in his town. When another bounty hunter, English Bob (Richard Harris), comes to town to kill the two cowboys, Little Bill humiliates him and sends him on his way but not before recruiting Bob’s traveling companion, writer W.W. Beauchamp (Saul Rubinek), to write Bill’s life story. Bill’s not that much different from the outlaws that he claims to disdain. Like them, Bill understands that value of publicity.

Unforgiven starts as a traditional western but it soon becomes something else all together. As the Schofield Kid discovers, there’s a big difference between talking about killing a man and actually doing it. Piece-by-piece, Unforgiven deconstructs the legends of the old west. Gunfights are messy. Gunfighters are not noble. Davey Bunting is the only man in town to feel guilty about what happened but, because he’s included in the bounty, he still dies an agonizing death. Quick Mike is killed not in the town square during a duel but while sitting in an outhouse. Ned and Munny struggle with the prospect of going back to their old ways, with Munny having to return to drinking before he can once again become the fearsome killer that he was in the past. And Little Bill, the man who says that he’s all about taming the west and bringing civilization to a lawless land, turns out to be just as ruthless a killer as the rest. A lot of people are dead by the end of Unforgiven. Some of them were truly bad. Some of them were good. Most of them were in the wrong place at the wrong time. Everyone’s got it coming, to paraphrase Will Munny.

With its violent storyline, deliberate pacing, and its shots of the desolate yet beautiful western landscape, Clint Eastwood’s film feels like a natural continuation of the Spaghetti westerns that he made with Sergio Leone. (Unforgiven is dedicated to both Leone and Don Seigel.) Unforgiven was the first of Eastwood’s directorial efforts to be nominated for Best Picture and also the first to win. It’s brutal meditation on violence and the truth behind the legends of the American frontier. Eastwood gives one of his best and ultimately most frightening performances as Will Munny. Gene Hackman won his second Oscar for playing Little Bill Daggett.

Unforgiven holds up well today. Hackman’s Little Bill Dagget feels like the 19th century version of many of today’s politicians and unelected bureaucrats, authoritarians who claims that their only concern is the greater good but whose main interest is really just increasing their own power. Unforgiven remains one Clint Eastwood’s best films and one of the best westerns ever made. Leone would have been proud.

Retro Television Review: St. Elsewhere 1.6 “Legionnaires: Part One”

Posted on January 3, 2025 by Lisa Marie Bowman

Welcome to Retro Television Reviews, a feature where we review some of our favorite and least favorite shows of the past! On Fridays, I will be reviewing St. Elsewhere, a medical show which ran on NBC from 1982 to 1988. The show can be found on Hulu!

This week, Peter White continues to disappoint everyone.

Episode 1.6 “Legionnaires: Part One”

(Dir by Thomas Carter, originally aired on December 7th, 1982)

Dr. Peter White (Terence Knox) is perhaps the most incompetent doctor at St. Eligius. Over the course of the first few episodes, we have watched as he’s taken advantage of his fellow residents, been rude to patients, misdiagnosed obvious medical conditions, and complained nonstop about how difficult his life is. Dr. White is struggling to balance the punishing schedule of being a resident with also being a husband and the father to a young girl and a newborn. He’s in over his head.

What’s interesting is that, despite all of his problems, he’s not a particularly sympathetic character and I don’t think he’s meant to be. He’s never going to be a good doctor and he doesn’t have the courage to admit it. Instead of finding a career for which he’s suited, he insists on being a doctor and risking the life of anyone unlucky enough to be his patient. What makes Dr. White an especially disturbing character is that there are probably a lot of doctors in the real world who are just like him. They’re overwhelmed and they make stupid mistakes. I get overwhelmed sometimes too, as does everyone. And, like everyone, I occasionally make mistakes. However, my mistakes usually amount to something like missing a cringey typo that causes me to feel embarrassment until I get a chance to fix it. A doctor’s mistake can lead to people dying.

This week, Dr. White attempts to give penicillin to a patient who is allergic. Fortunately, Dr. Westphall is able to stop White from putting his patient into a coma. Dr. White also manages to lose his hospital-issued pager and, when he’s told that it will cost him $300 to get a new one, he freaks out. A chance meeting with a lawyer in the hospital cafeteria leads White to offer to sell out the hospital by recommending the lawyer to anyone willing to sue because they ended up with a doctor like Peter White. White finally raises the money by donating his sperm. The nurse at the sperm bank says that it’s really generous for a doctor to donate. Not this doctor!

While Peter is screwing up his life, Dr. Westphall is dealing with what appears to be an outbreak of Legionnaire’s Disease in one of the wards. Westphall wants to immediately shut down the ward. Dr. Auschlander and board member H.J. Cummings (Christopher Guest — yes, that Christopher Guest) disagree. However, after another young woman dies of what appears to be Legionnaire’s, Westphall orders the ward to be closed and the patients to be relocated.

Meanwhile, Kathy Martin broke up with Fiscus because she felt their fling was turning into a relationship and Dr. Cavanero dealt with a nurse who disliked her. Neither one of those subplots did much for me, though Kathy is emerging as one of my favorite characters on this show. Before breaking up with Fiscus, she goes to a funeral of a stranger just so he won’t be buried without someone there to mourn him. She wears white to the funeral. One doctor comments that she’s never seen Kathy wear white before. Kathy’s a great character and deserves better than just being Fiscus’s girlfriend.

This episode was an improvement over the last episode I watched. According to the title, it’s also only “Part One” so I imagine there will be some fallout over closing that ward next week. We’ll see what happens.

Song of the Day: The Good, The Bad, and the Ugly — Main Theme (composed by Ennio Morricone)

Posted on January 3, 2025 by Lisa Marie Bowman

In honor of Sergio Leone’s birthday, today’s song of the day is the main theme from Leone’s best-known film, The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly.

Ennio Morricone’s score is as much of a character in this film as the ones played by Clint Eastwood, Eli Wallach, and Lee Van Cleef. It perfectly sets the moods, telling us that we’re about to see something that is truly epic. The opening notes, which have so often been parodied but which have never lost their power, truly capture the feel of Sergio Leone’s mythical vision of the old west.

Lifetime Movie Review: The Wrong Life Coach (dir by David DeCoteau)

Posted on January 3, 2025 by Lisa Marie Bowman

In 2024’s The Wrong Life Coach, Morgan Bradley stars as Jordan Roberts, whose popularity as a high school cheerleader did little to prepare her for the pressures of adult life. Her career is going nowhere. Her boss (Vivica A. Fox) does not respect her. Her boyfriend (Hector David, Jr.) is bored with her and their vanilla sex life. Her mother (Tracy Nelson) is living with her and trying to control her life. Jordan needs someone to help her get her life together. She needs a life coach!

(Personally, I’ve never gotten the whole life coach thing but whatever. Apparently, it works for some people.)

A chance meeting with Liz Kimble (Allison McAtee) changes Jordan’s life. Though Jordan doesn’t really remember her, she and Liz went to high school together. And it turns out that Liz is now a life coach! Soon, Liz is encouraging Jordan to take sexy pictures, demand more from her career, and to stand up to her domineering mother!

At first, it all seems perfect. Except …. Liz is not a certified life coach! She’s just repeating a bunch of stuff that she heard from her own life coach, Rhonda (Meredith Thomas). It may sound like the start of a hilarious comedy but it turns out that Liz is a little bit crazy. Liz has never gotten over losing her spot on the cheerleading squad to Jordan and now, she’s determined to get revenge,

In quick order, Jordan loses her job, her relationship with her mother, and nearly her boyfriend as well! Plus, her best friend has gone missing! After Jordan tells Liz to get lost, Liz begins to obsessively stalk Jordan. What Jordan doesn’t know is that Liz has placed hidden cameras all over her house and she’s even hacked into Jordan’s email. Jordan thinks that she’s had a good job interview with Mr. Gordon. (Hey, it’s Eric Roberts!) But remember those lingerie-clad photos that Liz encouraged Jordan to send to her boyfriend? Well, those pictures end up getting sent to Mr. Gordon as well.

“I couldn’t hire you if I wanted to,” Mr. Gordon says. When even Eric Roberts refuses to work with you, you know you’ve asked the wrong person for advice!

“Girl, you listened the wrong life coach.”

She sure did!

I love the Lifetime “Wrong” films. The Wrong Life Coach is a tremendous amount of fun, from Allison McAtee’s over-the-top performance as Liz to the side-eye that Vivica A. Fox gives Jordan every time she makes a mistake. As always, with the “Wrong” films, director David DeCoteau fully embraces the melodrama and creates a film that’s so ludicrous that you can’t help but love it. Any director could make a film about a crazy life coach. But only David DeCoteau has the courage to have that life coach make her diabolical plans while wearing her old high school cheerleader uniform.

Watching this film reminded me of how much I love Lifetime and its demented films. I look forward to reviewing a lot more of them in 2025!

Hopefully, more than a few of them will feature Eric Roberts!

Previous Eric Roberts Films That We Have Reviewed:

Scenes That I Love: The Final Moments of Sergio Leone’s Once Upon A Time In America

Posted on January 3, 2025 by Lisa Marie Bowman

(SPOILERS BELOW)

The final moments of Sergio Leone’s epic 1984 gangster film, Once Upon A Time in America, are filed with questions and mysteries.

Who did Noodles (played by Robert De Niro) see standing outside of Max’s mansion? When the garbage truck pulled up, did the mysterious man get in the truck or was he thrown in by some unseen force?

Why, in 1968, did Noodles see a car from the 1920s, one that was full of people who appeared to be celebrating the end of prohibition? Was the car really there or was it an element of Noodles’s past as a gangster suddenly popping into his mind?

Once Upon A Time In America was Sergio Leone’s final film. It’s one that he spent decades trying to get made and, once it was finally produced, it was butchered and re-edited by a studio hacks who demanded that the film tell its story in a linear style. Leone was reportedly heart-broken by how his film was treated. Some have speculated that his disappointment may have even contributed to the heart attack that eventually killed him. It was only after Leone passed that his version of Once Upon A Time In America became widely available in the U.S. This enigmatic epic continues to spark debate. One thing that can’t be denied is that it’s a brilliant film.

As today is Leone’s birthday, it only seems appropriate to share a scene that I love, the final moments of Once Upon A Time In America.

Film Review: Heaven’s Gate (dir by Michael Cimino)

Posted on January 3, 2025 by Lisa Marie Bowman

First released in 1981 and then re-released in several different versions since then, Heaven’s Gate begins at Harvard University.

The year is 1870 and the graduates of Harvard have got their entire future ahead of them. At the graduation ceremony, Joseph Cotten gives a speech about how, as men of cultivation, they have an obligation to help the uncultivated. Student orator Billy Irvine (John Hurt) then gives a speech in which he jokingly says the exact opposite. Amongst the graduates, Billy’s friend, Jim Averill (Kris Kristofferson), laughs at Billy’s speech. It’s a bit of a strange scene, if just because all of the graduates appear to be teenagers except for Hurt and Kristofferson, who are both clearly in their 30s. The graduates of Harvard sing to their girlfriends and dance under a tree and, for a fleeting moment, all seems to be right with the world.

Twenty years later, all seems to be wrong with the world. Averill is now the rugged and world-weary marshal of Johnson Country, Wyoming. Cattle barons are trying to force immigrant settlers to give up their land. Gunmen, like Nate Champion (Christopher Walken) and Nick Ray (Mickey Rourke), are accepting contracts to execute immigrants who are suspected of stealing cattle. When Averill stands up for the people of Johnson Country, the head of the Wyoming Stock Grower Association, Frank Canton (Sam Waterston), hires a group of mercenaries to ride into Johnson County and execute 125 settlers. Billy Irvine, who now is dissolute alcoholic who works with Canton, warns his old friend Averill. Averill, who has fallen in love with Ella (Isabelle Huppert), the local madam, announces that he will defend the immigrants. Nate, who is also in love with Ella, considers changing sides.

Heaven’s Gate is loosely based on an actual event. I actually have three distant ancestors who traveled to Wyoming to take part in the Johnson County War. All three of them survived, though one of them was shot and killed in an unrelated manner shortly after returning to Ft. Smith, Arkansas. That said, director Michael Cimino is clearly not that interested in the historical reality of the Johnson County War or the issues that it raised. Just as he did with Vietnam in The Deer Hunter, Cimino uses the Johnson County War as a way to signify a loss of national innocence. Averill and Irvine start the film as hopeful “young” men with the future ahead of them. By the end of the film, one is dead and the other is living on a yacht and dealing with what appears to be crippling ennui.

Heaven’s Gate is a bit of an infamous film. Though the film was pretty much a standard western, Cimino still went far over-budget and turned in a first cut that was over six hours long. A four hour version was briefly released in 1980 but withdrawn after a week, due to terrible reviews and audience indifference. A studio-edited version that ran for two hours and 35 minutes got the widest release in 1981. Since then, there have been several other versions released. Cimino’s director’s cut, which was released as a part of the Criterion Collection in 2012, runs for 212-minutes and is considered to now be the “official” version of Heaven’s Gate.

For years, Heaven’s Gate had a terrible reputation. It’s failure at the box office was blamed for bankrupting United Artists. After the excesses of the Heaven’s Gate production, studios were far more reluctant to just give a director a bunch of money and let him run off to make his movie. (They should have learned their lesson with Dennis Hopper and The Last Movie.) Described by studio execs as being self-indulgent and even mentally unstable, Michael Cimino’s career never recovered and the director of The Deer Hunter went from being an Oscar-winner to being an industry pariah. (Some who disliked The Deer Hunter’s perceived jingoistic subtext claimed that Heaven’s Gate proved The Deer Hunter was just an overrated fluke.) However, the reputation of Heaven’s Gate has improved, especially with the release of Cimino’s director’s cut. Many critics have praised Heaven’s Gate for its epic portrayal of the west and, ironically given the controversy over The Deer Hunter, its political subtext. It’s anti-immigrant villains made the film popular amongst the Resistance-leaning film historians during the first Trump term.

So, is Heaven’s Gate a masterpiece or a disaster? To be honest, it’s somewhere in between. Whereas it was once over-criticized, it’s now over-praised. Visually, it’s a beautiful film but those who complained that the film was too slow had a point. As with The Deer Hunter, Cimino takes the time to introduce us to and immerse us in a tight-knit immigrant community. Personally, I like the much-criticized scenes of the fiddler on skates and Averill and Ella dancing in the roller rink. Overall though, as opposed to The Deer Hunter, the members of the film’s victimized community still feel less like individual characters and more like symbols. As for the political subtext, I think that any subtext of that sort is accidental. (I feel the same way about The Deer Hunter, which I like quite a bit more than Heaven’s Gate.) Cimino is more interested in the loss of innocence than whether or not the Johnson County War can be fit into some sort of nonsense Marxist framework.

The main problem with the film is that there is no center to keep everything grounded. Kris Kristofferson had a definite screen presence but, as an actor who was incapable of showing a great deal of emotion, he lacks the gravitas necessary to keep from being swallowed up by Cimino’s epic pretensions. Isabelle Huppert, an otherwise great actress, also feels lost in the role of Ella and Sam Waterston is not necessarily the most-intimidating villain to ever show up in a western. Christopher Walken, as the enigmatic and intriguing Nate Champion, gives the best performance in the film but his character still feels largely wasted.

There are some brilliant visual moments to be found in Heaven’s Gate. I even like the Harvard prologue and the ending on the boat, both of which are not technically necessary to the narrative but still add an extra-dimension to both Averill and Irvine. But, in the end, Heaven’s Gate is big when it should have been small and epic when its should have been intimate. It’s a misfire but not a disaster. Even great directors occasionally have a film that just doesn’t work. Speilberg had his 1941. Scorsese has had a handful. Coppola’s career has been a mess but no one can take his successes away from him. Michael Cimino, who passed away in 2016, deserved another chance.