Friendo: “So Civil War is woke-infused propaganda masquerading as neutral drama. And the only ones calling it ‘even handed’ are likely woke as fuck. Correct?”

HE: Mostly correct, yes, although it’s not really “woke-infused propaganda,” although it could be so argued in certain respects.

My first major thought upon leaving the theatre last night was that the lying–by–omission on the part of many if not most of the South by Southwest critics is fairly shocking. Some of those bastards flat–out lied through their teeth.

What the final third of Civil War boils down to is an anti-Trump and anti-MAGA jeremiad. The finale of Alex Garland’s dystopian war film really hates with a capital H, and you can’t help but admire it for not softening the tone or diluting the rage. Call it morally ironic if you want…I don’t care.

The ending is so arousing that I almost experienced a boner.

Apart from a curious, less-than-involving focus upon the two leading photo-journalist characters (Kirsten Dunst’s hard-bitten veteran and Cailee Spaeny’s young and emotionally-driven pup), the first two-thirds seem to be mostly even-handed and matter-of-fact in a Battle of Algiers way.

But when the already notorious Jesse Plemons scene (around the 60 or 65-minute mark) arrives, and especially when the big finale happens, it totally becomes a “hooray and goo-rah for the lefty rebels!” thing, and that’s all there is to it.

Okay, you can argue “but it’s full of tragedy and irony and horrible devastation so how can you call it a ‘hooray for the lefties!’ thing?” Yes, it is rife with somber, morally ambiguous irony, but Civil War certainly reveals its true colors at the end.

It also shows a certain significant character to be a weeping, whimpering coward, and I for one think it’s truly wonderful for this.

…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…

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?

Posted on 6.15.18: I was crashing with a married couple, Frank and Karen, in a smallish Boston apartment in the general vicinity of Symphony Hall and Hemenway Street. They had a linebacker-sized friend named Eddie who lived nearby and was also hanging out a lot. Mainly the four of us sat around in the evenings and got high. I distinctly remember not rolling joints as much as tapping the tobacco out of filtered cigarettes and then-filling the cigarette with what I recall was low-grade pot. Moderately potent, lots of stems and seeds.

One night around 10 pm or so we decided we needed a straw for sucking in hash smoke. A tiny chunk of hash placed on the burning embers of a cigarette, etc. No, I don’t remember why we didn’t just use rolled-up dollar bills. Probably because it would’ve been unsanitary.

I recall that it was fairly cold out and that we were probably broke or close to it, and so going to a market and buying a pack of straws was out. So I decided to start knocking on doors and asking Frank and Karen’s neighbors if they had a straw to spare. It wasn’t just the vaguely strange notion of a long-haired guy in jeans and boots with bloodshot eyes looking to bum a straw from strangers, but that it was too late to knock on doors and bum anything from anyone.

Her name is Ada (@ada_akpala)…

I can’t explain why I feel more jolted and jazzed by The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars now than I did 52 years ago. I liked David Bowie’s 1972 landmark album but didn’t adore it — now I’m head over heels, can’t stop listening to it. I was actually more into Lou Reed‘s Transformer back then, although they weren’t exactly concurrent. Ziggy popped in June ’72 — Transformer arrived five months later.

I always thought glam rock and glitter rock were one and the same. They’re certainly synonymous today.