Death Wish (1974)

Film: Death Wish (1974)

Stars: Charles Bronson, Vincent Gardenia, William Redfield, Hope Lange

Director: Michael Winner

Oscar History: No nominations

Snap Judgment Ranking: 3/5 stars

Each month, as part of our 2026 Saturdays with the Stars series, we are looking at the men & women who created the Boom!-Pow!-Bang! action films that would come to dominate the Blockbuster Era of cinema.  This month, our focus is on Charles Bronson: click here to learn more about Mr. Bronson (and why I picked him), and click here for other Saturdays with the Stars articles.

Charles Bronson's career and star persona would've certainly been different were it not for today's movie.  At the age of 52, most character actors are transitioning out of the limelight or more stunt-heavy spots, and instead becoming the sage for a younger, more famous actor (or playing the father to a younger, more famous actress).  It's rare, though, that you are going to become a true movie star in your 50's, but that's what Bronson did.  At this point, it's worth noting (as we've seen the past few weeks) that Charles Bronson was a relatively decent & successful box office draw, specifically in Europe, but he wasn't as big of a deal in the United States.  Death Wish would change that, though.  The movie, in 1974, would become a cultural phenomenon, making an extraordinary amount of money, and staying in the box office for weeks on-end.  To give you a perspective of how long the legs were for this movie, it became the #1 movie in America on its twentieth week at the box office, and would end the year as the #9 movie of 1974, putting Bronson in the same leading man category as people like Al Pacino, Burt Reynolds, & Charlton Heston.

(Spoilers Ahead) The politics and cultural resonance of Death Wish, though, is controversial, and that involves getting into the plot.  The film is about Paul Kersey (Bronson), who is very in love with his beautiful wife Joanna (Lange), with whom he has one adult daughter.  One day, a group of hooligans (including a very young Jeff Goldblum) break into the Kersey's home, murdering Joanna and raping his daughter.  Paul, a relatively mild-mannered architect, cannot handle that the two women he loves will not receive justice, and so he decides to take the law into his own hands.  He goes out, trains himself with a gun, and then starts to purposefully get mugged in the streets of New York by petty criminals who threaten his life.  He then turns around, and starts to murder them, all technically in self-defense, but clearly with the intention of killing them each time he goes out.  During this time, the city of New York starts to celebrate him, even as Inspector Frank Ochoa (Gardenia) tries to capture Paul, which he does (with the help of a very young Christopher Guest), but has to set him free because Paul, as the "vigilante" has become a folk hero.

The politics of Death Wish are not subtle, and it's worth noting a history lesson here.  The New York of the 1970's was dramatically different than it is today, and that's also true of America at large.  Violent crime rates spiked notably in the 1970's, and that increase would hold until the early 1990's when they would drop precipitously (despite what you may see on Fox News, America is considerably safer now than in the latter-half of the 20th Century).  This would, oddly enough, coincide with when Bronson would be a proper leading man, and might explain the divergence in opinion on Death Wish.  The movie sparked hot debate at the time-virtually every film critic of the era, from Roger Ebert to Vincent Canby to Charles Champlin to Gene Siskel all made a point of arguing that it was kind of reprehensible, essentially arguing that violence is the only way to stop other violence, and that it's not important to understand what is causing this rise in crime-just that we destroy it, even if it means trampling on people's civil liberties & right-to-justice in the process.  Even the author of the novel that inspired the movie, Brian Garfield, would try to distance himself from the picture.

Watching the film, it's hard not to agree with these critics.  Bronson's character is not super complicated, and while he plays him as a bit of a fish-out-of-water, he doesn't have the same everyman appeal that, say, Bruce Willis would have a few years later in Die Hard in a similar motif.  The film's then-aggressive violence is rather tame by modern standards (save for the brutal break-in scene), and Winner's confidence with editing & cinematography (and Bronson's undeniable presence) make it very watchable-it's easy to see why this was a hit, but it's completely fair to say that the film glorifies the violence it indulges in, and offers little in the way of political commentary other than endorsing the behavior of Bronson's Paul.  Hell, even by the end the police officer is supporting this sort of brutality.  On its technical merits, it's a 3-star movie (it's too good for me to go lower), but it also borders into dangerous in its messaging.  It's so sleek and so well-paced that it's clearly condoning this type of violence, and so I think the film's complicated legacy is justified (and it's hard to celebrate it's glorification & countless sequels).  And as we'll talk about next week in our final Saturday with Charles Bronson, it would change the trajectory of the actor's career, definitely for the more lucrative, but also making him a far less daring performer compared to the man who once starred in genuine classics like The Great Escape and Once Upon a Time in the West.

Ranking the Disney Parks

Today is my Baby Brother Luke's birthday, and I thought it would be fun in his honor to talk a little bit about one of his favorite topics: Walt Disney World.  We are both pretty proud Disney Adults, though Luke is far more practiced at it.  Going to the Disney parks with Luke is exactly what you'd want to experience-he knows every trick, knows every ride, and can help point out all of the little intricacies of the parks (and tell you that no, John, that random water spot on the sidewalk is not actually a Hidden Mickey).

Luke & I also have a fondness for lists, so I thought it would be fun to, using the rides at the parks, list out some of my favorite things for posterity on this movie-related topic, something that weirdly we have never really talked about on this blog despite many, many discussions of Disney itself.

Let's start with ranking the parks themselves.  For the uninitiated, there are Disney parks on three different continents, twelve in all (and this isn't counting the water parks): two in California, four in Florida, two in Tokyo, one in Hong Kong, one in Shanghai, and two in Paris.  I have been to all but four of these (the four in Asia-I have never actually been to Asia, possibly the single biggest gap in my world-traveling).  Here's how I would rank them:

1. Disneyland
2. Magic Kingdom
3. Animal Kingdom
4. EPCOT
5. Disneyland Park (Paris)
6. Hollywood Studios
7. Walt Disney Studios Park (now called Disney Adventure World)
8. Disney's California Adventure

Here's a few caveats.  First, I want to clarify the last time I went to some of these.  The California parks were in the Fall of 2022, the Orlando parks was in the Spring of 2025, and the Paris parks was in the Fall of 2025.  That sounds recent, but it does matter.  For example, the Frozen world at Walt Disney Studios Park (which was what it was called when I went there) wasn't there yet-this was a huge update to the parks, adding both an Adventure Way (which will focus on The Lion King and Tangled as part of the rides), and then a huge "World of Frozen" similar to the one in EPCOT.  The really cool thing about these parks (and one of many reasons why I love them) is that they are constantly evolving.  It can be frustrating (you want to have the same experience, and then they tear down Muppetvision), but it also means that it's ephemeral and kind of beautiful, in some ways like watching a movie-you only get the same experience once, even if you go a hundred times.

I will point out because this is a bit US heavy, what I'm looking for in these parks.  My favorite thing about these parks, and why I think they are something that adults have latched onto is their immersive quality.  These places are for children, ultimately...but they are done so well as to attract adults.  You feel like you are walking into the actual world itself.  Disneyland, because it's so large & has so many of my favorite worlds, stays on top, as it has things like the Star Wars or Adventureland worlds to lean in on that feel like you've gone into the movie itself.  I have spent my whole life wanting to walk into the Death Star or ride with Jack Sparrow...getting to do that, even as a proxy, is what I'm happy about doing.

I will note that Paris gets a bit of a bum rap, and having been there I think it's really fun...but it is a slightly different experience than the US parks.  The pin-trading culture, which I enjoy, for example is completely different (there are virtually no pins there), and the foodie scene isn't remotely close to Magic Kingdom, much less EPCOT.  But it's also genuinely lovely, with some unique-to-France experiences like the Dragon beneath the castle & Alice's Labyrinth (where my friend Robin & I genuinely got lost in for lengths of it), and I think more Americans needs to add it to their Europe wishlists (it's also a nice break on a trip).  I always say "assume you'll never go back" when it comes to trips...but I have every intention of returning to it in a few years.

All right, let's get to the rides.  I will put both my favorite ride in each park, and then my Top 20 favorite rides overall:

• Animal Kingdom: Expedition Everest
• Hollywood Studios: Rise of the Resistance
• Magic Kingdom: Pirates of the Caribbean
• EPCOT: Remy's Ratatouille Adventure
• Disneyland: Pirates of the Caribbean
• California Adventure: Radiator Spring Racers
• Disneyland Park: Phantom Manor
• Walt Disney Studios Park: Remy's Ratatouille Adventure

And the Top 20 (this was TOUGH...if a ride is largely the same in different parks I'm counting it together so as not to get repetitive, even if there are slight nuances between some of them): 

1. Pirates of the Caribbean
2. Star Wars: Rise of the Resistance
3. Haunted Mansion/Phantom Manor
4. Expedition Everest
5. Avatar: Flight of Passage
6. Space Mountain
7. Remy's Ratatouille Adventure
8. Peter Pan's Flight
9. Big Thunder Mountain Railroad
10. Tiana's Bayou Adventure
11. Tron Lightcycle Run
12. Tower of Terror
13. Radiator Springs Racers
14. Jungle Cruise
15. Snow White's Enchanted Wish
16. Crush's Coaster
17. Guardians of the Galaxy: Cosmic Rewind
18. It's a Small World
19. Frozen Ever After
20. Buzz Lightyear's Space Ranger Spin

Honestly-this is a weird blend of nostalgia (for the rides I did as a kid) and me admitting that there are some rides that probably are better now.  Comparing something that is dripping in nostalgia, wonder, & an old kind of magic like Pirates of the Caribbean with the technical insanity of Rise of the Resistance is, well, honestly foolish (much like picking Best Picture at the Oscars, so this feels quite appropriate for this blog), but I feel good with this as my list, though there's a half dozen more dark rides I could put in here (I would be genuinely happy if there was an entire park just filled with dark rides of every Disney movie you can think of, and not even one ride that goes more than 3 miles per hour).  Special mention for Muppetvision and Honey, I Shrunk the Audience, both rides that are no longer standing that might've made the cut were they still standing.

And that's where I'm going to leave it-share your favorites from the Disney theme parks below (particularly if you have tips for China or Japan!), and wish my brother a very happy birthday!

The Mechanic (1972)

Film: The Mechanic (1972)

Stars: Charles Bronson, Jan-Michael Vincent, Keenan Wynn, Jill Ireland

Director: Michael Winner

Oscar History: No nominations

Snap Judgment Ranking: 3/5 stars

Each month, as part of our 2026 Saturdays with the Stars series, we are looking at the men & women who created the Boom!-Pow!-Bang! action films that would come to dominate the Blockbuster Era of cinema.  This month, our focus is on Charles Bronson: click here to learn more about Mr. Bronson (and why I picked him), and click here for other Saturdays with the Stars articles.

For the first six months of our seventh season of Saturdays with the Stars, we're going to talk about the prototypical and pioneering stars of the action genre who made it possible for the last six months' stars to dominate during the genre's heyday from the late 1970's through the early 2000's, when action films regularly were the dominant force during the summer blockbuster season.  Charles Bronson was one of the pioneers of that in part because of what he did in the early 1970's: he proved that action blockbusters had built-in insurance policies in the international box office.  Bronson, by 1972-73, despite not having had a success that was as big as, say, what some of his contemporaries like Robert Redford or Ryan O'Neal had had in the domestic box office at that time, was still commanding $1 million a picture, and that was because while his films would not be a huge presence at the domestic box office, they played super well internationally, particularly in Europe.  This would become critically important for this genre in the decades to come, especially as bloated budgets (and bloated salaries) of aging action stars in the 1990's were justified because even a break-even performance in the United States could be translated to huge returns overseas.  Charles Bronson is really the first action star of this nature to discover this phenomenon, and it made him a multimillionaire.

(Spoilers Ahead) Today's film was a pretty standard expectation from Bronson come 1972, and not just because it's another stoic tough guy commanding the screen with a violent attitude.  It was also a film that he made with Michael Winner, who teamed up with United Artists as his most common director collaborator of the era.  The Mechanic shows the artistry that you could find between the two, even if the film itself is not as fascinating artistically as last week's outing with Rider on the Rain (or the more conventionally excellent films that Bronson made in the 1960's).  The film follows Bronson as a contract killer named Arthur Bishop, who has killed a wealthy man named Harry (Wynn), and then inexplicably takes Harry's son (who has no knowledge of his father's death), Steve (Vincent) under his wing and begins to train him as a killer-for-hire.  The two butt heads, but seem to be in sync as Steve's sadistic tendencies fit the killer motif like a glove.

The film is, I'm going to be honest, quite dull.  Much of the middle is repetitive & predictable.  But there's a lot of intrigue in the bookends.  The beginning of the film in a lot of ways feels like a precursor to the David Fincher film The Killer decades later-largely wordless, meticulous character introduction through Bronson's Arthur going through the motions of a murder.  It's fascinating, and also something you don't see much in cinema (maybe why this didn't resonate with American audiences). And the ending is really extraordinary-a twist where a sociopathic Steve (picked for this job in part because he's a sociopath) murders Arthur for little reason other than he wants to...all the while dooming his fate as Arthur's set up a booby trap to kill Steve as well in case he is betrayed.  It's like a sandwich with nothing impressive inside but with great bread, and it honestly made it hard to judge.

The Mechanic would be, though, the last film of this era to really test Bronson as an actor.  Up until this point, Bronson (as I've said) would make a lot of good movies, and when he wasn't, they were at least experimental films.  Next week, we're going to talk about the most important film (or at the least the film was most-associated with) of Bronson's career, and I'm fascinated to see how I respond (I haven't watched it yet), because up until now it's very clear that these films have a true perspective to them (and have made me become a proper fan of Bronson's if I wasn't already), but if you look at the critical reviews of his upcoming films, they crater pretty quickly...just in time for American audiences to absolutely fall in love with Bronson and make him one of the biggest domestic stars (not just international) in the country for a time.  Next week, we will finally get to Death Wish.

Kamala Harris and the History of Primary Frontrunners

Vice President Kamala Harris (D-CA)

I used to have a policy on this blog not to talk about the presidential primaries before the midterms, but on occasion I feel it's okay to break that rule, and that's when we're looking at the primaries from an historical context.  I wanted to discuss, specifically the Democratic primaries.  In my opinion, until someone proves otherwise, JD Vance as the sitting Vice President should be assumed to be the de facto Republican nominee.  While recent vice presidents Dick Cheney & Joe Biden have decided to (largely due to age) forego initial runs as sitting VP's, Vance is only 41-I cannot imagine a world where he declines to go for a promotion, no matter how unpopular Trump may be.

But for the Democrats, it's an entirely different story, though not one without a VP frontrunner.  If you look at aggregate national polling, while figures like Gavin Newsom, Pete Buttigieg, and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez are all doing well, the clear frontrunner at this point is former Vice President (and 2024 losing presidential nominee) Kamala Harris.  Harris in most aggregate gets between 24-27% of the vote, with the next best being Newsom getting between 19-21% of the vote.  This clear frontrunner status had me wondering-in the 21st Century, how often have the two major parties picked the clear national polling frontrunner this far out?  Basically what I'm asking is: based on history...is the race already over?

2000: 2000 is maybe the quintessential polling example where staying in front is the way to win.  Al Gore & George W. Bush, in terms of Gallup polling, never were behind ever.  In Gore's case, this translated into an insane dominance in terms of the primaries (he would win literally every state against Sen. Bill Bradley), while Bush would lose several contests, most famously New Hampshire, in his matchup with John McCain.  But in terms of polling-this race was basically decided well before the midterms, and would lend credence to Harris (and Vance) being the frontrunners.

2004: Bush was the incumbent at this point, so we'll focus exclusively on the Democratic side, and that's where we get a real question mark about Harris's seriousness in running for the nomination.  For much of the 2004 primaries (before the midterms), there were two names that dominated the cycle: Hillary Clinton & Al Gore.  Neither of these two would win the nomination in 2004, but that's mostly because they wouldn't even run for the seat (polling third place was Tom Daschle, who also wouldn't run).  There's still a question mark whether Harris (like Gore) will take one national election loss and admit that this isn't something she'll ever win.  In early 2003, when Gore & Clinton had both declined a run, the frontrunner would become Joe Lieberman...who also didn't win.  In fact, John Kerry wouldn't assume the spot of frontrunner until January 2004, after Howard Dean had spent much of 2003 as the frontrunner.

2008: As a lesson to anyone speaking too confidently about the nominations in 2028, 2008 is the race you should look to to give them a reality check.  The first race in decades to not feature a sitting president or vice president in the race was, by many pundits, already decided headed into the midterms-a subway series contest between NYC Mayor Rudy Giuliani & Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton.  In both cases, this would eventually fall apart, though each party took a different approach in whom they settled upon.  Clinton losing to Barack Obama would become the stuff of legend, an upstart beating Clinton in arguably the only presidential cycle she would've won, the people demanding a big change, while the Republicans would spend months flirting with figures like Mike Huckabee, Mitt Romney, & Fred Thompson after Giuliani failed to catch fire before settling for the second place finisher in 2008, John McCain, a storied figure in the party and the last real attempt the GOP would make to try and find common ground in the middle in a presidential primary (that it failed so spectacularly might be why they haven't done it since).

2012: Obama was the incumbent here, so we'll focus solely on the Republicans, and despite my personal memory saying otherwise, in 2010 the frontrunner was very much the guy who got the job: Mitt Romney.  Romney's lead was shaky throughout the year, with people like Chris Christie, Sarah Palin, & Mike Huckabee all threatening it (part of the reason Romney emerged victorious might be that Huckabee was the only one who actually ran), but with a really middling field, Romney took the nomination after most assumed he would throughout 2010.

2016: For the third time, the early polling leader was Hillary Clinton for the Democrats, and finally she would become the nominee.  Bernie Sanders never felt like a serious threat to Clinton in terms of national polling (for all of the "this primary was fixed" complaints on the left, Sanders never really had a chance nationally against Clinton), and Hillary sailed to the nomination, her biggest competition ending when Joe Biden decided not to run.  The Republicans, on the other hand, obviously had the mother of all upsets when Donald Trump (who wasn't even in hypothetical polling in 2014) came out of nowhere to upset the two frontrunners, Jeb Bush & Mitt Romney (again, Romney wouldn't even run, though he did flirt with it for a while into 2016).

2020: Trump was the president in 2020, so we stick solely to the Democratic side here, and we once again have a frontrunner who stayed that way.  While it feels (in retrospect) like Bernie Sanders got close because he (once again) did well in state results, nationally it was the same as 2016-the frontrunner, Joe Biden, led in virtually every poll unless they included two longshot candidates (Hillary Clinton & Michelle Obama).  Once again, being the frontrunner from the outset helped.

2024: And it would conclude that way in 2024.  Biden was the incumbent, so we stick to just the Republicans, but for many of them Donald Trump was the "incumbent" already and nominating him again was certain this far out.

Conclusion: Looking at this list, there were only four instances (both sides in 2008, and then the Dems in 2004 & the GOP in 2016) where the frontrunner got skipped.  While 2004 is unique (the frontrunners would refuse to run, which may be the case for Harris), the remainder it was because it was a well-known frontrunner whose support was built on sand once someone better came along.  That might be the case for Harris, and I suspect you're going to see her doing some party-building (lots of campaign stops in key states, listening tours, etc) if she wants to run to make sure that she does not fall into the same trap of Giuliani, Clinton, & Jeb Bush-being a frontrunner in name only.

Can Susan Collins Pull a "Never Trump" in Maine?

Sen. Susan Collins (R-ME)

Ten years into his presidency, the "Never Trump" movement feels like a weird thing to discuss.  Ten years ago, headed into the 2016 general election, it was a much bigger deal that Donald Trump was not the choice of many Republicans, and it's worth noting that the list of Republicans who didn't support him publicly was very long.  From refusals to endorse from figures like the Bush Family (both former presidents, as well as Governor Jeb Bush), to then sitting officeholders like Govs. John Kasich, Larry Hogan, & Brian Sandoval, to members of Congress like Rob Portman, Ben Sasse, & Mark Kirk, the Never Trump movement in many ways was a group of people who assumed that Trump was a flash-in-the-pan, someone that they could survive with one loss in 2016 (putting up with Hillary Clinton for four years), and pretend never happened in 2020 when someone more appropriate was the nominee.

But Trump won the 2016 election, and took much of the Never Trump movement with him.  Of the dozens of members of the US House who refused to endorse Trump in 2016, only two (David Valadao & Mike Simpson) are still in office.  Many of these figures either lost future elections (Barbara Comstock, Eric Paulsen, & Mia Love, for example, all went down in general elections during the 2018 blue wave), or were driven out of the party.  People like Portman & Jeff Flake chose to forego running for reelection all-together rather than deal with the fallout.  Some senators survived, mostly in states like Utah & Alaska where (despite being red states) MAGA isn't nearly as powerful as it is in most of the rest of the country, but by-and-large the movement dissipated.  Liz Cheney & Adam Kinzinger in 2024 were pretty much the last prominent Republicans to help a Democratic nominee.  At this point, all of the Never Trump Republicans are relegated to history, are out of office, or are now Democrats.

All except one: Susan Collins.  Collins has never publicly backed Trump in any of his three presidential elections.  Collins publicly said she wrote in Paul Ryan's name in 2016 and Nikki Haley's name in 2024 (it's worth noting that, as far as I can find, Collins never publicly stated whom she voted for, Trump/Biden/otherwise, in 2020).  Collins is also one of the only federal Republicans (possibly the only Republican) to have survived the entire Trump era in a blue state.  Collins had the good luck to not be on the ballot in 2018 (when I think she would've lost), and had the even better luck in 2020 to be able to vote against Amy Coney Barrett, a crucial bipartisan moment for Collins that may have won her the race against House Speaker Sara Gideon that year.  Part of this is skill (Collins is, in my opinion, the most talented cross-party federal politician still in office in the country of either party at this point), but it's worth noting I think Collins would've lost in 2018, and probably loses in 2020 if Ruth Bader Ginsburg hadn't died.

But recent polling in Maine seems to be spelling out something that might help Collins in a way I never would've imagined.  A recent Emerson poll showed that in the Maine Democratic Primary, Graham Platner enjoyed an incredible lead over Janet Mills (55-28%), and had a 7-point lead over Collins in the general.  This is one of many such polls for Platner, who has essentially taken on the distinctive frontrunner status in Maine, a Senate race we've talked about a lot here.  What was interesting to me in this Emerson poll was the favorability ratings across the Democratic Party between Mills & Platner.  Platner's voters generally liked Mills (56-36% favorability rating, a solid position to be in in a tough race).  But Mills voters seem to hate Platner, with only 18% of them having a favorable viewpoint of him and 56% disliking him.

Normally, these numbers are things that people shouldn't worry about, and that I wouldn't normally care about-the Never Trump movement is maybe the best indication of that.  Given a general election matchup that's competitive, the party gets in-line even if they don't love the nominee, and while there were a lot of very prominent Never Trump endorsees in 2016, the GOP largely just voted for their nominee en masse (it's how he won).  In this case, I would normally think that the Mills voters would see Platner winning, complain for a minute, and get in-line.

But there's a problem here-Collins is famous for peeling off disaffected Democratic voters, and Platner is a uniquely tough candidate to swallow if you aren't already backing him (I have said, for the first time in my life, that he's a federal Democrat in a major federal race that I simply could not vote for & would ultimately leave the ballot blank if I lived in Maine).  He has been deeply critical of the kinds of Democrats that don't like him (hence why they don't like him), and most of these Democrats, particularly those over 40, have likely voted for Collins in at least one of her elections.  They are very comfortable with splitting the vote for her (Collins won with both Barack Obama and Joe Biden at the top of the ticket), so it begs the question-can Collins do something Hillary Clinton couldn't?  Can she get the NeverPlatner voters to come to her side?

These Emerson numbers make me think that she can.  Collins is in a position where, if the Republicans are so bad off in November (and with the rise of both oil prices & unemployment, they might get there) she can't win at all; she needs Trump in better shape than he is to have a shot (in some ways, she might mirror Norm Coleman in 2008 where a large swath of Democratic voters didn't back their Senate nominee because they actively disliked him, but it was too blue of a year for that to ultimately make the difference).  But if she does win (and she has never lost a Senate race in nearly 30 years), it will almost certainly be because of this contingent: Democrats who have voted for her before (and also voted for Janet Mills before), but who have shown an outward dislike of the man the Democrats are about to nominate.  If I'm the Collins team, I have to like what I'm seeing in this polling...and am surely prepared to try to do the reverse of what the NeverTrump movement never could.

Democrats Risk Disaster in California

Sheriff Chad Bianco (R-CA)

We have not written a lot of political articles in the past couple of weeks (I have been on vacation, and been enjoying the rest & relaxation that I've been needing after months of pushing myself too hard at my real-life job), and so we're going to have a trio of them in the coming days as I catch up on some of the topics of the past few weeks.  We're going to start with a discussion of the California Governor's race, something that I've been ignoring given that I thought it would sort itself out...but like many Democrats, I feel like we've waited a bit too late, and are now entering catastrophe, even in a blue wave year.

California, due to term limits, will be electing a new governor in 2026 as incumbent Gov. Gavin Newsom will retire (and almost certainly in the process immediately start running for president in early 2027).  Given the state is one of the bluest in the nation, and Donald Trump's approval ratings are in the toilet, it would be a safe assumption to presume that Newsom will be succeeded by a fellow Democrat.  But California has a unique jungle primary system, one that allows an open-party primary where all candidates run, and the top two (without ranked-choice voting taking place) advance to the general election.

This has caused some consternation in the past, in particular in 2012.  That year, in a seat that was drawn to favor the Democrats (it was a mild blue district), the Democrats received collectively 48.5% of the vote, but given there were four Democrats running to the Republicans' two, Pete Aguilar, the Democratic frontrunner, came in third, and both the Republicans advanced in a district that Barack Obama would carry.  Two years later, Aguilar would stage a comeback, being one of only three Democrats to flip a seat in the otherwise red wave slaughter of 2014, and has held the seat ever since.  But it was a cautionary tale for the Democrats-the jungle primary process could easily backfire if too many Democrats ran, even in a blue constituency.

That is what appears to be happening in the governor's race this year.  The Republicans have two major candidates: Riverside County Sheriff Chad Bianco and political commentator Steve Hilton.  Meanwhile the Democrats have over 20 candidates, eight of which (Xavier Becerra, Matt Mahan, Katie Porter, Tom Steyer, Eric Swalwell, Tony Thurmond, Antonio Villaraigosa, & Betty Yee) have all held major office in the past 15 years.  Polling has shown a pretty consistent story-with eight major Democrats in the race, the Top 2 spots have gone very consistently to Bianco & Hilton.  Bianco & Hilton in most cases barely get more than 14-16% of the vote a piece, but with Democrats struggling to hit the 15% marker, if you go solely by polling, the two Republicans are the frontrunners to be the next nominee.

Rep. Katie Porter (D-CA)

It's worth noting that "major" Democrats is a descriptor of their current or recent political positions, and not an indicator of their polling position, because if we're being honest, only three Democrats are "major" candidates in this race.  In recent polling, only Steyer, Swalwell, & Porter have gotten into the double digits, and in 2026, they are the only three candidates that have managed to beat Bianco or Hilton in at least one poll.  Most polling aggregates show Swalwell in the best position, followed by Porter, and then Steyer.  If a Democrat emerges from this race, it will be one of the three of them, and it's worth noting-if any of them is in a normal general election against either Bianco or Hilton, they'd crush and easily become the next governor.

Which is why a recent move to have a debate seemed like a great idea.  All three (plus the Republicans) had qualified, and voters (a consequential quarter of which are undecided) could hear from the candidates, and help a frontrunner emerge depending on who did the best.  But that was cancelled, and for really eye-rolling reasons.  Porter, Steyer & Swalwell (along with Bianco & Hilton) are all white, which is not the case for all five of the remaining major party Democrats.  If this was based off of just picking candidates, it would be a bad look, but these candidates are hardly without resources (Yee, Thurmond, & Becerra have all held statewide office, Villaraigosa & Mahan have been major city mayors).  If they can't connect enough to get at least 10% of the vote in an electorate as diverse as California's the debate committee (who was very forthright in who should be included based on polling) shouldn't be blamed.  That the losing candidates made this about race (when it wasn't-it was very much about who was the most likely to become governor based on polling) feels really stupid & disingenuous.  In the same way that Jasmine Crockett called out people who criticized her campaign as discriminating against a Black woman, this isn't about discrimination-it's about who pollsters have shown can win.  And none of these candidates can win.

And it's not like the powers-that-be didn't want a diverse candidate.  Democrats begged former Vice President Kamala Harris or Senator Alex Padilla to come in and clean up this race, but they refused.  But at this point, without a debate, it's time they come in to clean up regardless (along with Nancy Pelosi, Adam Schiff, & Gavin Newsom).  We are getting darn close to the end of this primary, given how much of California's electorate votes by mail (the primary is June 2nd).  At this point, it's not obvious that any of the also-ran Democrats have enough sense to get out of a race where they are going to get less than 5% of the vote and look like fools.  Republicans seem to be loving this, and so far Donald Trump's team has had the good sense to ensure he won't endorse or point out the scam so that Hilton & Bianco continue to do roughly evenly with voters (though one wonders if the move by the Department of Justice to go after Swalwell might backfire in the way Trump's threats helped Adam Schiff in 2024).  The Democratic powers-that-be need to step in and help the Democrats in this race know who the frontrunner is (even if they have to pick between Porter, Swalwell, or Steyer themselves and make up a frontrunner), because there's an increasingly strong possibility that California is about to have a Republican governor if they don't.

Rider on the Rain (1970)

Film: Rider on the Rain (1970)

Stars: Charles Bronson, Marlene Jobert, Gabriele Tini, Annie Cordy, Corinne Marchand, Jill Ireland

Director: Rene Clament

Oscar History: No nominations, though it did get a Golden Globe Award for Best Foreign Language Film.  France, however, in 1970 chose to submit Hoa-Binh, and wasn't nominated at all.

Snap Judgment Ranking: 3/5 stars

Each month, as part of our 2026 Saturdays with the Stars series, we are looking at the men & women who created the Boom!-Pow!-Bang! action films that would come to dominate the Blockbuster Era of cinema.  This month, our focus is on Charles Bronson: click here to learn more about Mr. Bronson (and why I picked him), and click here for other Saturdays with the Stars articles.

Charles Bronson's career as a movie star was bizarrely-timed.  Similar to actors like, say, Morgan Freeman & Samuel L. Jackson, Bronson spent decades after coming to Hollywood working in a host of small & supporting roles before getting top-billed parts in his 50's.  Like most of these men (and honestly even more so), Bronson did this in notably good movies.  While early roles had him playing occasionally in B-Pictures (like the Vincent Price horror classic House of Wax or the celebrated Roger Corman biopic Machine Gun-Kelly), he appeared in a number of really popular & classic movies in the 1960's, including The Magnificent Seven, The Great Escape, The Sandpiper, & The Dirty Dozen, all of which had him in key supporting roles...but not getting the lead parts that were going to men like Richard Burton & Steve McQueen.  Bronson did, during this time frame, get a part you could arguably say he's the male lead in, Once Upon a Time in the West (he gets fourth-billing in the film, but of the three main men in the movie, he has the most screen-time), a film that was not a success when it was released to American audiences (it was filmed in Italy), but has since been considered by many to be a masterpiece.  I will go on record as saying it is my favorite movie of all-time (full stop), and Bronson is wonderful in it.

(Spoilers Ahead) But that changed in the early 1970's, as Bronson started to regularly to get lead roles, one of the first of which was Rider on the Rain.  Rider on the Rain is about a man named Henry Dobbs (Bronson), whom we don't realize until much later in the picture is not a true blackmailer or a cop, but instead a member of the military.  It's also true that much of Rider on the Rain is not really Bronson's movie-the main character in this (despite billing to the contrary) is Mellie (short for Melancolie, one of several cheeky monikers in this picture), played by French actress Marlene Jobert, who despite not being super well-known to American audiences now, was a regular lead presence in French films of the 1970's (and would go on to win an Honorary Cesar for her troubles in 2007).  Jobert & Bronson have a weird chemistry, one that feels at odds with his famed brevity as an actor (Bronson in virtually all of his roles speaks in short, clipped sentences...if you've never seen him, think something like Clint Eastwood but with slightly more inflection).

Rider on the Rain, though, would not be the prototype for a Charles Bronson picture, and that's a kind of a pity because while the film isn't very good, it is quite odd (and if you know me, you'll know I'll take "weird & not very good" over "boring but fine" any day of the week).  Jobert's Mellie kills a man who rapes her in the opening scene, and for much of the movie is trying to convince everyone around her (including herself) that she didn't do it.  It's a weird juxtaposition because in 1970 (and especially in 2026), the audience is rooting for her, and is fine giving her a pass for dealing out very direct vigilante justice.  She's also played strangely, with Jobert feeling at once a mature woman, one who is lusting after a shockingly jacked (the man's abs are incredible for being nearly 50 and not having modern workout techniques) Bronson, while also playing a "little girl" role in parts.  The film in many ways feels like a sort of New Wave take on Hitchcock, and some of the camerawork mirrors that (as does a twist at the end that I won't spoil even with the spoiler alert-you'll have to see the movie to find out).

The film also starred Jill Ireland in a supporting part.  Ireland is going to show up in one more movie we profile this month, but I'm going to take this moment to talk about her a little bit given that she was so crucial to Bronson's public persona.  Ireland & Bronson met in a rather nefarious way (she was married to David McCallum, Bronson's costar in The Great Escape, and according to legend Bronson told him that he was going to "marry his wife," which of course he would in 1968, and the two would star in 15 films together throughout the course of their career.  Ireland is important to understanding Bronson's public profile in part because she was in so many of his movies (and would even produce some), but also because he was famously shy.  Bronson rarely sat for interviews, so he didn't get the traditional cultivated celebrity-treatment that other stars would get as part of media coverage, but one thing the public knew about was his devotion to his wife.  You watch one of the rare interviews he did in the 1970's (with Dick Cavett) where he was joined by Ireland and you see the devotion, and by all accounts they had a very happy marriage.  We'll talk a little bit about this as we go along, but wanted to give Ireland her due alongside our month of Charles Bronson given she was such an important component in his filmography.