Jose Ferrer made it clear that he regarded his brief performance in Lawrence of Arabia as his best-ever screen work. Quote: “If I was to be judged by any one film performance, it would be my five minutes in Lawrence.” I can’t think of any other non-comedic, cameo-level performance as good as Ferrer’s — can anyone?

Sean Connery‘s cameo as King Richard the Lionheart at the end of Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves wasn’t on Ferrer’s level. Connery was showboating, taking a bow.

Comedically speaking, Tom Cruise‘s Les Grossman in Tropic Thunder and Bill Murray‘s walk-on performance as a pretend zombie in Zombieland are obvious stand-outs. But it’s easy to be amusing in a quickie context.

Earlier today I mentioned the disastrous casting of 27 year-old Ben Platt as a sensitive high-school guy in Dear Evan Hansen — too old. In the comment thread “brenkilco” complained that Robert DeNiro and Joe Pesci seemed too old to be playing their Goodfellas characters when young — not a problem, they passed muster. On the other hand James Stewart as Ransom Stoddard in The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance and as Charles Lindbergh in The Spirit of St. Louis — definitely too old.

Anyway I decided to switch sides and try to recall actors who either (a) seemed too young for their roles or (b) more or less fit them even though they were actually younger that they appeared.

So far I can only come up with two actresses and no actors. 36 year-old Angela Lansbury as the 33-year-old Laurence Harvey‘s mother in The Manchurian Candidate (’62). And 31 year-old Rosemary DeCamp playing 42 year-old James Cagney‘s mom in Yankee Doodle Dandy.

It’s been said that Jessie Royce Landis‘s performance as the mother of Cary Grant‘s Roger Thornhill in North by Northwest doesn’t work because they were born only eight years part (Landis in 1896, Grant in 1904). But it does work. Grant was 54 when NXNW was shot but looked 45 or 46 while the 62 year-old Landis appeared a bit older. So it worked if you imagined that Landis was an under-aged mom (17 years old, say) when Roger came along.

This 104-second passage is, I feel, the greatest ending of a feature-length documentary ever assembled. Particularlv between the 1:00 and 1:25 marks. Neil Young‘s “Keep On Rockin’ In the Free World” never sounded so glorious as it did in this instance. Fahrenheit 9/11 opened in Cannes on 5.17.04 and won the Palme d’Or, opened theatrically on 6.25.04, earned $222.4 million domestic, and George Bush was re-elected.

As we speak Ridley Scott‘s The Last Duel (20th Century Studios, 10.15) has a failing (60%) grade on both Rotten Tomatoes and Metacritic. Plus Hollywood Reporter critic David Rooney has called it “an uneven Middle Ages #MeToo epic.” And Variety‘s Owen Gleiberman has described it as “sort of medieval, anachronistic, and more than a bit concocted.”

From Gleiberman’s 9.10 Variety review: “The plot turns on an act of sexual assault, and in the second segment the movie flirts, however briefly, with treating that act the way that Kurosawa’s Rashomon did: with supreme ambiguity.

“But that would be a dicey thing to do in our era, so the film backs off from any ambiguity. Morally, that leaves it in good standing. But dramatically, it leaves it sort of just sitting there.

“We get de Carrouges’ [i.e., Matt Damon‘s] version of the events. Then we get Le Gris’ [Adam Driver‘s], which is just different enough to tease us. Then we get Marguerite’s [i.e., Jodie Comer], which matches up entirely with de Carougges’. By then you feel the wind going out of the movie’s sails.

“There are entertaining bits throughout. Ben Affleck plays the count as a supercilious, foul-mouthed libertine who likes to bed four women at once, and you feel how much fun the actor is having playing someone this piggish in his arrogance. Jodie Comer makes her mark, holding the screen with a calm fire. And though it’s occasionally hard to distinguish the intentional from the unintentional awkwardness in Damon’s performance, it’s amusing to see him stray so willfully out of his comfort zone.”

When Damon was co-writing and then acting in The Last Duel, he probably wasn’t anticipating that a Variety critic would describe his performance as partly “amusing.”

Gleiberman: “The climactic duel, a re-enactment of the last one ever sanctioned in France, is certainly a slash-to-the-death rouser in that Gladiator-in-chain-mail way.”

Even among those who didn’t care for Pablo Larrain‘s Spencer (like myself) there’s a fairly broad consensus that Kristen Stewart‘s performance as Diana, the tormented Princess of Wales, will probably snag a Best Actress nomination.

And yet a post-TIFF-screening tweet by senior CBC entertainment reporter Eli Glasner avoids praising the film (he merely describes what Spencer is like) and says that Sally Hawkins‘ performance as a royal maid whose big dramatic moment arrives when she quietly announces her sapphic love for Diana…Glasner ignores Stewart’s acting and tweets “Hawkins for the win.” What does that tell you?

Born on 9.24.93, Benjamin Platt was 23 when he played the titular role (a high-school senior, aged 17 or thereabouts) in the Broadway version of Dear Evan Hansen, which opened in December 2016.

But his playing of the same lead role in Stephen Chbosky‘s Dear Evan Hansen, which was shot in late 2020, happened when Platt was turning 27, and by that point he was just too damn adult-looking. And in the wake of last night’s disastrous Toronto Film Festival screening nobody is buying it. Platt and Chbosky have been all but tarred and feathered for this titanic miscalculation of casting.

Nate Jones‘ Vulture review, titled “How Old Does Ben Platt Look in Dear Evan Hansen?“, is a withering dissection and a very pleasurable read.