John Milius, Ranked

Binge Movies: Rankings and Reviews

EPISODE 195: An American Original! – No apologies, no half-measures, all fire. (ft. Joe Buttice)

Episode Description:
This week, Jason is joined by Joe Buttice (Reel Spoilers) to lock and load a ranking of five films tied to the myth, the man, the cigar-smoking cinema warlord: John Milius. Whether writing frontier survival epics or directing operatic war fantasies, Milius brought a thunderous, unapologetic voice to American film.

Strap in for manifest destiny, surfboard theology, Cimmerian steel, and teenage guerrilla warfare.

Films Ranked:

• Jeremiah Johnson (1972, writer) – The loner as legend in a snow-covered survivalist western.\

• Dillinger (1973) – Milius’s directorial debut, mixing gangster cool with mythic Americana.

• Big Wednesday (1978) – A lyrical, wave-soaked ode to brotherhood and the end of an era.

• Conan the Barbarian (1982) – Barbarism, Nietzsche, and epic vengeance in the Hyborian Age.

• Red Dawn (1984) – Wolverines! Teenage insurgents defend America in a Cold War fever dream.

IN THIS EPISODE:

• Joe defends Red Dawn as both fantasy and prophecy

• Jason meditates on Big Wednesday as the most personal of war films

• The complicated politics, masculine myth-making, and the man behind the bombast