…but if Killers of the Flower Moon had resorted to the same dishonest-but-effective Hollywood tactics that Alan Parker’s Mississippi Burning deployed (depicting Tom White in roughly the same fashion as Gene Hackman’s charismatic FBI tough guy, well-crafted villain performances, sprinklings of historical bullshit, an emotionally satisfying resolution)…

If Team Killers had adopted an old-fashioned Alan Parker-like approach it wouldn’t have been as virtuous, but the popcorn crowd would have enjoyed it more.

I’ll never watch Killers again (twice was enough) but I could watch Mississippi Burning any day of the week.

White’s FBI team weren’t “saviors”, but they sure as hell busted William “King” Hale and Ernest Burkhart.

…in the sense that I would never, ever wear black schlubbo lace-up sneakers to a post-screening q&a. I would never wear those ugly-ass shoes anywhere. Look at Julianne Moore’s off-white, bubble-wrap, super-spiked heels (don’t know designer) and Natalie Portman’s shiny black uptown pumps with those angel wings-or-amulets-or-whatever-they-are stuck to the sides. Grade-A.

“Never in human history has age–driven decline reversed itself” — written last night by HE commenter “Correcting Jeff.”

The reasonable and well-intentioned Joe Biden is obviously age-impaired as we speak, There is only one way his 2nd term (1.20.25 at age 82 to 1.20.29 at age 86) can possibly pan out. Slower, weaker, slurrier, droopier, less dynamic. Joe is not a flinty, scrappy, X-factor elder like Bernie Sanders or 93 year-old Clint Eastwood, who’s currently directing Juror No. 2. I’m very sorry but Biden is clearly not the guy he was in ’09 when he talked to Lesley Stahl on 60 Minutes…he radiates assisted–living diminishment, and like “Correcting Jeff” has just said…

In any kind of sane and rational world no one would even flirt with voting for a lying, flabby gut, criminal-minded, run-at-the-mouth, saliva-spraying, anti-Democratic, sociopathic authoritarian crime boss for U.S. president, for God’s sake.

Alas, there are tens of millions out there (yokel Christians, intelligent sensibles, gun nuts, sane oldies, scowling old-school ex-liberals, free thinkers, iconoclasts, under-educated mouth-breathers, none-too-brights) who are so freaked out by the insane ravings of your under-40 DEI LGBTQ woke TikTok ideologue wackazoids that they’re actually flirting with certain 2024 political scenarios and options that could lead to The Beast taking power and subsequently perverting, crippling, poisoning and suffocating our democracy in order to weaken these raving woke lunatics.

Don’t kid yourselves about the fact that Average Joes and Janes despise the Tyrannical Woke Left Thought & Speech Police…it’s horrifying but it’s happening, God help us.

Not to mention the independent candidacies of RFK, Jr., Jill Stein, Cornel West and possibly Joe Manchin. Admit it — if Dean Phillips and Joe Biden were to magically switch places by the wave of a wizard’s hand, a lot of this chaos and terror would quickly melt away. Because to most of us the future would suddenly seem a lot more tenable and pragmatic, and certainly less ideological or foam-at-the-mouth. I prefer the idea of HE favorite Gavin Newsom stepping into the breach, but Phillips is cool.

…the whore-ish, kiss-ass reactions of the early-bird crowd. I haven’t seen The Color Purple (Warner Bros., 12.25) but if you read between the lines…well, try doing that.

Purple’s Danielle Brooks is a likely Oscar contender and an apparently serious threat to The Holdovers‘ Da’Vine Joy Randolph.

But overall the only reactions you can probably trust are from the hard-nosed veterans, two of whom — Dave Karger and Greg Ellwood — are hilarious in their descriptions.

Ellwood flat-out faults the “script, direction, editing.” When Karger praises the “costumes and the choreography,” you know what he means.

Over the decades I’ve experienced many dozens (hundreds?) of perfect moments that were so rich and serene and soul-settling — moments in which I said to myself “Jesus, this is perfect in every way.”

The dusky light and settled atmospheres, I mean…soothing meditations and moods of unusual quiet …solace and contentment…pause moments.

I’m thinking of the faint scent of sea water and the sound of crying gulls at 5 am in Cannes…the taste of a special moment after a super-heavy rainfall in Paris or during a hike in the Palm Desert outback below cloudy skies or a cappuccino detour in Venice’s Campo Santa Margherita in the late afternoon or standing on the deck of a tourist ferry as it approaches Napoli harbor just before dawn…

That feeling we’ve all tasted from time to time…the usual rock ‘n’ roll and hustle and bustle suddenly beating a temporary retreat as you say to yourself “I’d kinda like to hang onto this for an hour or two, or maybe even a couple of days or a week even…where would be the harm in that?”

These stop-the-world moments are so special when they drop in…”away from the maddening crowd,” as Dean Martin once sang in defiance of Thomas Hardy…like that 1982 moment when Rutger Hauer’s “Roy” went to sleep and the white doves fluttered and flew off…

I distinctly recall feeling this in the early fall of ‘88 when my ex-wife and I began to drive across those ancient brownish-green country landscapes in southwestern Ireland, and I said “man, I could die here” even though I was fairly young (decades away from my first Prague touch-up) and in the full vigor and prime of life with six-month-old Jett sleeping in the backseat.

…but it doesn’t really come together. I wouldn’t call it a bore or a bust, but it is a shortfaller, certainly in terms of what most of us might expect from a director as skilled and seasoned as Ridley Scott, who knows from battle scenes and 18th Century cultures and atmospheres. I’ll always be a huge fan of 1977’s The Duellists (Scott’s debut effort) and I guess I figured…aagghh, stop beating around the bush and spit it out.

Napoleon isn’t an outright failure but it certainly disappoints. It huffs and puffs but never really grabs hold or pays off, and a big part of the problem is that Joaquin Phoenix’s titular performance is too smug and sullen and oddball-glum. We’re looking at a clearly older guy (the nearly 50-year-old Phoenix is looking more than a bit lined and jowly) and he’s mumble-playing a famous fellow in his 30s and 40s, and it’s like “what’s going on here?” He’s playing one of the greatest genius generals in history like a teenager on mescaline, and it just feels off. Marlon Brando’s Napoleon in Desiree (‘54) was much, much better.

All I can tell you is that the general mood on the sidewalk outside the DGA theatre after the film ended was morose and uncertain. I mostly hemmed and hawed. One guy said he was flat-out bored during most of it. A friend suggested that the title of my review should be “sacre blows” but it’s not as bad as all that. It’s more of a scattershot thing. Yes, the battle scenes are definitely decent — the best are the depictions of the battles of Austerlitz and Waterloo. But even these felt a little so-what and “what’s the point again?”.

Text sent to a friend: “I don’t think it works all that well. Spotty. In and out. Moody and muttering Joaquin…’muh-muh-mum-mum-mum’…my general reaction was one of mild intrigue but with gradually diminishing returns, although Scott does give his all to the Battie of Waterloo. Subtitles will help when it starts streaming as I understood maybe a third of Vanessa Kirby’s dialogue, IF THAT. The colors are all drab grays and subdued greens and downish blues. My soul felt drab and gray.”

I didn’t nod out but I wasn’t riveted. Am I allowed to say I was vagueiy bored? No, that’s not fair — I was semi-engaged and stayed with it and kept hoping for more. But my mind was certainly wandering and somewhere around the one-hour mark I said to myself, “Face it, this isn’t doing the thing or drilling down…not really.”

Joaquin is such an oddball space-cadet Napoleon…impassive, “I’m not sure what to do so I’ll just sulk”…residing on his own stoner planet. And he really is too old.