I was recently urged by two friends to see Tina Satter’s Reality (HBO, 5.29), an 82-minute transcription drama about the June 2017 interrogation and arrest of Reality Winner, a contractor who bravely leaked classified info about Russian interference in the 2026 Presidential election.

Based solely on FBI transcripts, Reality is about an interaction between Ms. Winner (Sydney Sweeney) and a pair of kindly, soft-spoken FBI agents (Josh Hamilton, Marchant Davis). It’s mildly compelling in the sense that it’s certainly watchable and not boring, but at the the same time I wouldn’t call it earth-shattering. It’s engrossing as far as it goes. The first half-hour is completely banal, but it finally gets going…sort of.

I believed every minute of Reality (naturally) but Sweeney could be playing any 20something woman responding to any interrogation about anything of grave concern. She speaks to the FBI guys in what could be called “limited candid”…truths, half-truths, sidestepping, etc. Sweeney also speaks in a typical half-slurry vocal-fry manner, as many 20something women have been doing for the last 15-plus years. Her performance is perfectly fine but I didn’t believe she was fluent in three languages, as the actual Reality is. She seems too banal so I don’t honestly get the breathless praise.

I emerged from Reality, however, with a profound respect for what Ms. Winner did, which was to funnel classified proof to The Intercept about Russian interference, etc.

A high-profile, middle-aged husband (45) and wife (41) whose issues led to a recent separation (followed by a subsequent rapprochement) are further rocked by the wife’s discovery last March of the husband’s brief affair with a 25-year-old climate activist who bears a strong resemblance to the wife and is certainly the same physical type.

This needn’t be a terrible Shakespearean tragedy. A rupture of trust, obviously, but more of a passing thunderstorm than Krakatoa, East of Java. Younger men (under 50) are dogs and may act upon this if marital discord is an ongoing issue, and especially if the other woman is 20 years younger.

Be honest — hurtful things occasionally happen in some marriages, but the smart play is to lick your wounds and give it another shot. My Mad Men dad indulged in an episode in his mid 40s, and was busted when the girlfriend wrote a note. Thinking of the kids and contemplating her husband’s dog-like instincts, the wise wife will follow the usual script, which is to make their lives an agonizing hell for a few months and then gradually let it go.

An alleged Clint Eastwood quote, according to a famous actor who ran in the same circles: “Show me a hugely attractive, impressively accomplished, stupendously beautiful woman, and I’ll show you a longtime husband or boyfriend who’s tired of fucking her.”

…are still directed by too many white guys. Seven out of ten. Only three of HE’s ten are directed by non-whites — The Pot au Feu‘s Tran Anh Hung, Past Lives‘ Celine Song (both Asian) and The Color Purple‘s Samuel Bazawule (aka “Blitz the Ambassador”).

Which is significant because there’s a large segment of the Academy for whom identity is everything…just saying.

The most likely contenders, in order of likely or already discerned quality:

1. Maestro — dir: Bradley Cooper
2. The Holdovers — dir: Alexander Payne
3. The Pot au Feu — dir: Tran Anh Hung
4. Oppenheimer — dir: Christopher Nolan
5. Napoleon — dir: Ridley Scott
6. Ferarri — dir: Michael Mann
7. The Zone of Interest — dir: Jonathan Glazer
8. Past Lives — dir: Celine Song
9. Killers of the Flower Moon — dir: Martin Scorsese
10. The Color Purple — dir: Samuel Bazawule (aka “Blitz the Ambassador”)

Maybe But I Kinda Doubt it: Barbie — d: Greta Gerwig; Saltburn — d: Emerald Fennell; The Killer, d: David Fincher; Poor Things — Yorgos Lanthimos; Next Goal Wins — d: Taika Waititi; Pain Hustlers — d: David Yates; White Bird — d: Marc Forster; Leave the World Behind — d: Sam Esmail; Dune: Part Two — d: Denis Villeneuve.

A three-minute informercial about Chris Nolan‘s Oppenheimer (Universal, 7.21) and especially about the technical grandeur of 70mm IMAX, addressing the technical immersives and whatnot, and they can’t specifically state which aspect ratio Oppenheimer will be shown in — the preferred 1.43:1 or the less preferred 1.78:1 or 1.90:1?

Hardcore 70mm IMAX has to be projected at 1.43:1…period. 1.43 is taller than fuck, and not that far away from classic “HE boxy” (i.e., 1.37 or 1.33). Trust me — it’s the only way to go.

1.78:1 or 1.90:1, which is how a significant portion of Nolan’s Dunkirk was presented, doesn’t get it.

How much of Dunkirk was presented within 1.43? Wikipage: “The film [used] both IMAX 65 mm and 65 mm large format film stock in Panavision System 65, with more IMAX footage than in any of Nolan’s previous films — an estimated 75%. The sparsity of dialogue made it possible for IMAX cameras, which are notoriously noisy, to be used as the primary format.”

I know that Dunkirk switches back and forth a lot between 1.90 and 1.43, and that my basic reaction was “why wasn’t it an all-IMAX thing?” I don’t want any of that shit when I see Oppenheimer — I want a pure 1.43 experience, start to finish.

The 1.90:1 aspect ratio, of course, is right next to 2:1, which Vittorio Storaro was a big supporter of (he called it Univisium). Fine, but 1.90 is not IMAX — not really.

Casting-wise, blackwashing has been a thing since the woke dambreak of ’16 or ’17. For decades Hollywood adhered to whitewash casting, and now that European paleface culture has been identified and discredited as the root of all social evils, the tables have turned — simple enough.

But I wouldn’t call the latest alleged blackwashing rumpus — i.e., Nico Parker (daughter of Ol Parker and Thandiwe Newton) being cast as Astrid Hofferson in the forthcoming live-action version of How To Train Your Dragon — especially significant.

It’s a deal, okay, but a relatively small one. Not worth anyone getting into a twist.

True, Cressida Crowell‘s original children’s books were set in a Scandinavian Viking world, which for centuries has been a white-ass culture. (Just ask Kirk Douglas.) Ditto the 2010 Dreamworks animated version — white-ass Viking men and women from top to bottom. But the new social rules (including the doctrine of presentism) require that white-culture-based stories be reassessed and updated.

Casting directors understand that it’s politically safer to roll with diverse or multicultural mindsets, even if casting an actress of color as the heroine of a centuries-old Scandinavian saga defies any common understanding of Viking history.

Diminishing the visual presence of whiteness by going multicultural has been happening for six or seven years now (ratification of the Academy’s inclusion standards made it official in 2020). Politically speaking it boils down to this: if you don’t want industry people to give the side-eye, you need to play along.

Plus one other thing: Nico Parker was very good as the daughter of Pedro Pascal‘s Joel in HBO’s The Last Of Us.

Ryan Gosling’s idea, I’m presuming, was that post-Barbie he needed to butch himself up, hence the 19th Century gold prospector beard and the styled but un-styled Sutter’s Mill coif. At the same time he didn’t want to over-smother the Barbie association, hence the unbuttoned, chest-baring black shirt and the pink western duster

Peter Yates The Friends of Eddie Coyle (’73), the Boston crime noir which HE has been praising for many years, will screen at Santa Monica’s Aero theatre on Sunday, June 4th. Pic opened a little less than 50 years ago — 6.26.73.

Director-screenwriter Larry Karaszewski will deliver a few introductory remarks prior to showtime.

My introductory remark is that the jacket art for Dave Grusin’s soundtrack album is misleading. A guy hanging one-handed from a gun barrel obviously alludes to a cliffhanger thriller of some sort. Eddie Coyle is emphatically not that. It’s a sullen, downbeat drama about cops, bad guys, wise guys, unlucky guys and all kinds of betrayal and mistrust.

Based on the George V. Higgins novel, it’s about Eddie Coyle (Robert Mitchum), an aging, bone-weary, lower-level weapons dealer who’s trying to make ends meet. Alas, Coyle is also looking at a long prison stretch for driving a truck with stolen goods. His only way out, he gradually realizes, is to rat out some of his “friends.”

One of the guys he’s selling to is Jimmy Scalise (Alex Rocco), the head of a gang that’s pulling off a series of bank robberies on the North Shore.

Here’s a taste of some of the George V. Higgins dialogue.