Laurence Harvey has to walk the finest of lines and doesn't take one errant step. Henry Silva nearly steals every scene he's in - he understands his job at an uncanny level. Leslie Parrish is heartbreakingly good, and multidimensional, with very little screen time.

Sinatra is at his best as an actor in it, a real study in efficiency, but Angela Lansbury is as good as you're going to see in a thriller. Maybe the standard setter.

The Manchurian Candidate, with reason, resents the assault of ideas by symbols. Marching bands, placards, oversized portraits, costumes, awards, all crowding out things of actual substance. No wonder the final showdown occurs where it does.

Also, that moment in which Costello must choose what he's going to do about Valérie is more tense and engaging than the killing that precedes it - which is part of the reason why this movie still matters so much.

We're watching Le Samouraï to see cool stuff. It's better to stick to the cool stuff and count on pacing (which director Jean-Pierre Melville commands with ease) and storytelling than to defer to begging the audience to get emotionally invested and slow everything down.

Is this a better movie if we get a scene in which we see Valérie care for an elderly neighbor or sick family member? If a viewer needs a lot of momentum-killing performative morality to be convinced that she should be spared, then the movie's values will eventually be lost on them anyway.

• Either of the 2 fronts Costello will spend the rest of the movie contending with
• The why of Costello's assignment, and barely any time at all on the who.
• convincing us that Valérie absolutely must be spared because she is such a good person (the movie definitely wants us to see her as cool)

It also suggests that Costello's world cannot be held together indefinitely. Something has to give - and does, which is the fulcrum of the story.

Here's what it doesn't bother with:

• Introduces Jef Costello's vibe (grown from Alain Delon's iceman persona)
• Shows us the lengths Costello must go to
• Shows us how careful Costello chooses to be
• Shows us how effective Costello is at his job
• Shows us how quickly that last point doesn't matter
• Shows us Costello's humane side

I dunno, man. Marvels was pretty good, and that should count for something?

“A LOT OF PEOPLE ARE SAYING I SHOULD BE POPE.”

I think this says more about Frasurbane than McKean's work. It was a reaction to the chromium-plated mid-late 1980s. Think about the maximalism of everything in The Bonfire Of the Vanities, Terminator 2, the Lamborghini Countach, capital gains, etc.

Just re-read UXM 235-238 this week. That would make a tremendous third act.

Outback era adaptation. It could be a combination between Sergio Leone, Terrence Malick, and Bertolucci. Maybe the exact project to reverse the decline of the superhero movie.

Claremont’s post-Inferno Outback stuff with Havok, when Havok was out of his depth and drunk, was some of the most powerful writing Claremont ever did.

In the man’s own words:

Fight the good fight.

The things that happen in the space between Raymond Shaw and Jocelyn Jordan, and Bennett Marco and Rosie Cheyney, and eventually Shaw and Marco, even if it doesn't make a ton of sense on first (or even second) watch...these are what make the story's dark revelations land in our souls. #Screenwriting

A thing it does astonishingly well: it nimbly shifts from the unrelenting events necessary for a thriller - enigmatic mind-control triggers, arguments between military officer, murder - to interactions.

The moments that don't drive the plot give Candidate its humanity. #Screenwriting