Jeffrey Wells

…but then it finally turns fierce and riveting in a holy-shit way during the last 40 minutes, and then it ends with a “yes!…oh, yes!” moment that I can’t and won’t describe, but it felt so good my eyes were almost damp with joy.

You can criticize me all you want, but this last scene delivered the kind of emotional satisfaction that I hadn’t experienced since the home-invasion finale in Zero Dark Thirty.

During the first 65% I was saying to myself “this is pretty good dystopian stuff but not as good as Children of Men.” Then it finally got into gear.

Yes, it’s about journalists (Kirsten Dunst, Cailee Spaeny, Wagner Moira, Stephen Henderson) covering a brutal civil war between (a) fatigue-wearing nativist whites with Trumpian, anti-POC mindsets (the fascist, Trump-modelled U.S. President is played by Nick Offerman) and (b) secessionist Western Forces (a California + Texas alliance that’s well-armed and helicoptered and determined to wipe out every last Offerman follower…shoot ‘em down like dogs)…an army that seems to be mostly composed of left-progressive whites, blacks, Asians and Hispanics…

Boil the snow out and we’re basically talking about a blues-vs.-reds Armageddon.

And yes, Civil War is obviously a slaughterhouse metaphor for the extreme left-right polarization that we’ve all been enduring for last 20-plus years but especially since Trump was elected in ‘16.

But don’t let the critics fool you into thinking it’s more about combat journalism than combat (although it’s told from a journalist perspective), and that it takes some kind of centrist, non-committed view of the war between the cultures…fiercely separate tribes despising each other to such a degree that nobody has any humanity left…it’s been burned and blown out of everyone.

And don’t let the critics fool you about which side this film is on. The journalist characters are just devices — if not distractions then certainly window-dressing and not the real subject (at least in my opinion).

Civil War is a blistering war-is-hell saga, yes, but there’s no dodging the fact that director Alex Garland sides with the lefties.

A24 and the critics have pooled forces in order to sell two deceptive descriptions — i.e., that the film is kind of neutral by not taking sides, and that it’s about combat journalism and not the war they’re covering.

And please understand that the second half of the following paragraph, excerpted from a 3.26.24 review by Empire’s John Nugent, is bullshit:

There is dying bravely and honorably (like Ralph Meeker died in Paths of Glory or like Harris Yulin died in Scarface…”fuck you!”) and there is dying like a whimpering dog (like Robert Loggia died in Scarface, two minutes before Yulin). Trust me — Civil War makes a very clear statement about the latter.

And let’s not forget Winston Churchill’s famous statement that “nothing in life is so exhilarating as to be shot at without result.”

I’m catching Alex Garland’s Civil War at a 7 pm all-media screening in NYC this evening. It and Ripley will be topics #1 and #2 during tomorrow’s Misfits podcast.

World of Reel Jordan Ruimy received word earlier today that Francis Coppola’s Megalopolis will be screened at next month’s Cannes Film Festival. The scoop came from Coppola himself, but his quotes were forwarded by an audience member.

Partial solar eclipses (i.e, if you’re not in the direct path) are almost nothing. They’re just shade — like it’s gotten cloudy or a heavy thunderstorm is about to hit. I have my solar eclipse glasses with me all the same.

As I said the other day, who wants to be in Buffalo, Rochester and Pittsburgh? Who even thinks about those towns?

Just officially announced…

Dakota Fanning was a very cute nine-year-old when she played a kidnapping victim in Tony Scott’s Man on Fire (‘04). Now 30, she’s matured into a skilled actress with appealing features — call her mid-range attractive.

As I watched her last night in Ripley (shot in ‘21 when Fanning was 27) I was thinking how some kid actors are just “wow, feel that personality and look at those eyes!” But when they grow up their genetic destiny takes them somewhere else and that knockout quality recedes.

There’s obviously nothing wrong with being a moderately attractive actress with approvable skills, but sometimes getting older doesn’t quite work out in a way that casting agents think it might when the actress is a tyke.

I’m thinking also of the differences between Caroline Kennedy when she lived in the White House vs. the somewhat horsey-faced woman she became as she got into her 30s.

Sometimes it works in the other direction. I was commonly regarded as a dorky-looking, Wayne Newton-ish kid with odd, vaguely Japanese or Keanu Reeves-like features in my early-teen years, but it all turned around when I hit my mid 20s.

I distinctly recall an attractive, sexually active female contemporary telling me when I was 18 or thereabouts that she didn’t think of me as the kind of guy who would have a girlfriend, no offense. She was just being honest in a kind of kidding way.

The casting of 20somethings as college students or even teenagers is common Hollywood practice, but 40ish guys playing characters who look, think and behave like younger, less thoughtful fellows and are therefore less believable — this is less common.

I’m thinking, of course, of the Tom Ripley situation — 47-year-old Andrew Scott playing the titular sociopath in Ripley. The eight-episode series was shot in ‘21 when Scott was 45 or thereabouts. Matt Damon was 28 when he played the same fellow in The Talented Mr. Ripley (‘99). Alain Delon was 24 when he played Ripley in Plein Sud (‘60).

I think Scott’s performance is masterful, but there’s still no hiding the fact that he seems too old to be playing a young opportunistic sociopath who’s more or less floating through life and improvising each new hustle on the fly. We tend to think of 40something guys as being past all that.

Which other older actors else have prominently portrayed characters who should have been played by 20somethings or at least 30somethings?

Robert Redford was 47 when he played the 36-year-old Roy Hobbs in The Natural…he seemed a little too old but Redford’s handsome features and athletic frame made up for that. Redford’s Hobbs is actually less of a stretch than Scott’s Ripley.

Who else?

Deep down Andrew Scott’s Ripley is terrified, of course…waiting for the guillotine to drop. He wears a mostly blank face to protect himself, but who wouldn’t under these circumstances?

Because once Ripley embarks upon his elaborate deception (i.e., pretending to be Dickie Greenleaf) he knows he’ll be unmasked sooner or later.

Because in the world of 1961 photographic capture and proof are a common fact of life, and he knows that Marge Sherwood (Dakota Fanning) has a few snapshots of Dickie Greenleaf (Johnny Flynn) lying around her Atrani cottage.

Plus any fan of detective stories knows that sooner or later Inspector Ravini (Maurizio Lombardi) is going to have a major brainstorm by (a) asking Marge for Dickie snaps and (b) asking Dickie’s father to mail a photo or two, and (c) searching for photos taken of Dickie in college and (d) asking the U.S. passport agency to send a copy of Dickie’s passport photo.

Not to mention the eventual publication of Marge’s Atrani book, which Ripley knows from the get-go is going to be half photos and is sure to include a shot or two of Dickie.

The fact that Ravini doesn’t start hunting around for Dickie photos immediately upon beginning his investigation of Freddy Miles’ death…this is a King Kong-sized plotting problem.

Director Steven Zallian’s solution, of course, is to simply ignore it. He just turns off the 1961 reality light switch and calmly maintains that despite the calendar year photos are an exotic invention that average people doesn’t have access to…despite the fact that 60-odd years ago nearly every inhabitant of western civilization owned a Kodak Instamatic or an 8 mm movie camera (or had parents or rich uncles who did) and that snapshots of everyone and everything were fairly ubiquitous.

I watched episode #8 of Ripley last night, and the final few minutes are an obvious set-up for another eight episodes down the road. They’re certainly not an “ending.”

John Malkovich’s performance as the deliciously perverse Reeves Minot is a blessing.

All my life I’ve wanted to experience a total eclipse black-out…a serious Bing Crosby in A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court moment..,and if I want it badly enough I can have this tomorrow afternoon.

But I’ll have to drive hundreds of miles for hours and hours plus pay for several tanks of gas and at least one motel sleep-over to get to the sweet spot.

Why couldn’t the eclipse show a little more taste in deciding which areas of the country to temporarily darken? Austin and maybe one or two other towns aside, the eclipse will mostly affect nothing towns and bucolic, bumblefuck backwaters, regions that nobody ever seems to visit or even think about, and that’s really a shame. I’m serious.

Imagine if it hit Boston or the Berkshires or NYC…magnificent.

There’s definitely something different about the highly observant, suffer-no-fools Freddy character in Steven Zallian’s Ripley (Netflix, now streaming).

Played by Phillip Seymour Hoffman in Anthony Minghella’s quarter-century-old The Talented Mr. Ripley, Freddy is now a gender-fluid fellow played by musician Eliot Sumner, born a bio–female (the parents are Sting and Trudy Styler) and now a non-binary “they.”

Eight and a half years ago Eliot Paulina Sumner, a musician, came out as gay-with-a-girlfriend in a 12.2.15 Evening Standard article.

The Cate Blanchett-resembling Sumner has everyone’s attention now with a Ripley supporting role as the blunt-spoken Freddy, the suspicious-minded writer friend of Dickie Greenleaf (Johnny Flynn) and Marge Sherwood (Dakota Fanning)…a sharp-witted fellow who’s an arch-antagonist of Andrew Scott’s Ripley.

There were, of course, no uncertain perceptions about Philly’s gender or sexuality in Minghella’s film but there certainly are with Eliot.

Right away you’re thinking there’s something clearly womanish about Freddy…obviously…his voice is thin and reedy and tartly feminine is a Blanchett-sounding way, and his mid ‘60s Beatle-ish hair style is too long for a dude in a JFK-era realm. (The film announces itself as occurring in 1961.) Freddy has in effect been transformed into an exceptional X-factor dyke.

On one hand it’s fascinating that Freddy is portrayed not as a regular brainy dude but as a brainy lesbian strolling around in men’s clothing and wearing 1965 hair that’s half Blanchett-Dylan in I’m Not There and half Paul McCartney.

On the other hand Sumner’s casting violates our basic sense of what constitutes mid 20th Century guy vibes, traits and mannerisms. It therefore throws a monkey wrench into the Ripley engine, and our belief in Zallian’s carefully constructed reality, our faith in this elegant Italian milieu of 60-plus years ago that seems so right in so many hundreds of ways…our trust is slightly shaken.

The Sumner casting is therefore, I feel, intriguing but unfortunate at the same instant. The perversity of what has to be called an act of stunt casting is oddly interesting (jaded Europeans being ahead of the cultural curve), but it’s also an obvious nod and a capitulation to current woke attitudes and sensibilities in the area of gender and sexuality and whatnot.

Sumner’s Freddy absolutely doesn’t fit into 1961 Rome — that’s for sure.

Decider article, 4.3.24: