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I can’t find William Goldman‘s second most famous adage about movies, so here goes from memory:

Hollywood makes three kinds of films — (1) the kind that attempt to be really good and succeed (the smallest percentage), (2) the kind that attempt to be very good or at least pretty good, and fail at that, and (3) the kind that aren’t intended to be any good from the get-go — they just shit in the audience’s lap and wind uo making money anyway.

Oppenheimer, The Holdovers, Poor Things, Barbie, Maestro and Guy Ritchie’s The Covenant belong to the first category, Killers of the Flower Moon, Past Lives, Napoleon and May December belong to the second, and Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3 belongs to the third.

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Clint Eastwood will turn 94 on 5.31.24 — roughly seven weeks hence.. It would be great all around if Juror No. 2 premieres in Cannes next month, but we’ll see. Using pink-rose lighting for his selfie was a good idea.

It’s now apparent that Francis Coppola’s Megalopolis won’t land a distribution deal with the deep-pocketed Focus Features or Searchlight teams, who could theoretically pay for a big award-season campaign. He’s either going to cut a deal with Neon or A24 or someone in that realm or (it’s possible) self-distribute. Either way the general industry consensus is that Megalopolis is a loss-leader.

…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.