should we anticipate Clint Eastwood's J.Edgar?

on one hand: it's Eastwood
on the other hand: it's also Dicaprio and thats the trailer:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XlZXdCdOhLo

Which is positive and which is negative at this point in history

where's Ricky Cruz?

is eastwood or dicaprio the bad one

I hate biopics

also Lenny

i will watch any biopic.

the more ridiculous and filled with "and that's JUST how it happened!" moments, the better.

why couldn't Oliver Stone have directed? why??

okay yeah I would watch a Stone pic about J. Edgar

he's too busy secretly prepping the clinton biopic i've been dreaming of for years now

omg @ the "old" makeup

i wouldn't watch anything from Stone. havent we suffered enough?

not as long as we keep electing new presidents

Dubya was hilarious

looks really dour

i'm really tired of the bleach bypassing on all of clint's pictures, it just feels like a gimmick to me at this point - how about some color, pal!

man YouTube pulled the scene between Bob Hoskins and "My So-Called Life" Puerto Rican gay boi poolside.

if stone was directing this would definitely have included agent tricycle's warning about pearl harbor being summarily ignored by hoover

"yes, mother"

jesus

http://www.nybooks.com/articles/archives/1982/aug/12/the-fbi-and-pearl-harbor/

Couldn't be looking forward to this less.

"i'm really tired of the bleach bypassing on all of clint's pictures Dicaprio, it just feels like a gimmick to me at this point"

haha you love clint eastwood and hate oliver stone? ilx may not be the message board for you pal

i don't know if i "love" eastwood.(sometimes i do, sometimes i dont)
but i surely don't love Dicaprio.

how many 20th-century political figures are left that haven't been biopic'd yet?

wilson?

it's like madeleine albright, pol pot, and a comptroller from iowa.

i dont mind leo, but he's no broderick crawford (or billy crudup)

wish clint would go back to making goofy flicks like blood work (i guess gran torino's the closest we'll get)

how many 20th-century political figures are left that haven't been biopic'd yet?

LBJ, because nobody likes him

blood work

jesus christ are you insane this was fucking awful

also the last time I saw an Eastwood movie

actually an lbj biopic could be pretty great

especially if it starred liam neeson doing a texas accent

what is an example of a great political biopic film?

LBJ bio could be awesome done right! i wonder if anyone has the rights to the caro

blood work was hilarious - he's trying to solve a murder, but first he has to take a nap!

Given that the Milk screenwriter did this one, it's obv gonna be too damn gay.

http://photo.goodreads.com/authors/1235982293p5/1618522.jpg

blood work was hilarious - he's trying to solve a murder, but first he has to take a nap!

lol this is true... maybe I'm just bitter that I paid theater ticket prices to see it for some reason

There was a Woodrow Wilson biopic in 1944, got plenty of Oscar attention. I saw it once, it was stupefyingly dull.

I'm to understand all the gay has been taken out.

i'd watch the hell out of a wilson bio if done by one of those weirdo tea party production outfits

the weirdest thing about this is that the aged-dicaprio just looks sorta like matt damon

he's probably wearing the original kane prosthesis

dicaprio is really bloating

Prosthetic Leo looks more like Jedgar than I'd have suspected.

Anyway, as to evidence on whether JEH and Clyde Tolson's relationship was sexual, we have no smoking johnson.

man no one called it "bloating" when deniro purposefully packed on all those pounds for lamotta or pupkin. they called it ACTING.

smdh @ the way you people underestimate poor leo

When De Niro made his reputation, he did not look like a beautiful teenage girl.

Ruper Pupkin, fat?

missed the pupkin fat scenes

De Niro was awfully cute c. 1970 tho.

Didn't Randy Quaid play LBJ in some movie, or did I hallucinate that?

i think you mean cousin eddie

a James Garfield biopic, er, shot from the point of view of the bullet leaving Guiteau's gun would be sweet.

biopic of guiteau might be good

http://cdn.tonzr.com/?aEJXcVovU7lt94dlcyCzamwtKSBw94Bkb3MhUm8vbS1pb4WnGOKvcE0ibTljU7WteiA3UzZvKSAyUzgwKz9w8zIXKj6y8CACKVPOOz2XKNguanPn

Charles Guiteau (James Franco), John Wilkes Booth (Ryan Gosling), Leon Czolgosz (Seth Rogen)

i want a four-hour oliver stone adaptation of the guns of august

http://img24.imageshack.us/img24/1008/kgrhqvlke2epd5nvbnkwvgj.jpg

Best part is scene in hotel bedroom where he's all "Oh, Bird. I'm ready to get out of this altogether and retire. Tomorrow morning, I'll tell the president I'm off the ticket."

The next morning: NOVEMBER 22, 1963

http://i212.photobucket.com/albums/cc40/RichieGH/Dramatic-Prairie-Dog.gif

whoa

I think they made that one up though.

Lots of good JFK trolling LBJ scenes. LBJ waiting outside Oval Office as RFK walks past and goes 'Sup? and closes the door.

hahaha okay i HAVE to see this

oh shit, y'all. netflix instant watch to the rescue.

randy quaid is good casting!

The one with Michael Gambon as LBJ was dullsville: lots of shots of an agonized LBJ playing with his glasses as he absorbs the news about the death of American boys. However, Donald Sutherland does a masterful reprise of X as Clark Clifford.

Recent reviews

I admit that I did some fast forwarding. i was curious about this movie because I know the "truth" is yet to be known about LBJ. the tag line at the end of the movie does make it clear that during his administration more legislation was passed than of any other president. This legislation was his concept of the Great Society, earmarked by social justice and equality. very admirable. there is another side to this. If the movie sparked your interest read the trilogy of books about LBJ written by Robert Caro.The last volume end just at the stop that this film does. But, it is rumored than Caro, a major historian has written the 4th book... a book that cannot be published in his lifetime because it would jeopardize his own safety... because IT WOULD TELL THE TRUTH about LBJ'S complicity or orchestration of JFK's assasination. Movies inspire.. I hope this one inspires you to read more and make conclusions of your own.

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^^ from netflix user oliver_stone

THE FUTURE BELONGS TO THE YOUNG

DO NOT FORGET YOUR DYING KING

WHAT IS PAST IS PROLOGUE

Movies inspire.. I hope this one inspires you to read more and make conclusions that match mine.

i will watch any biopic.

― strongo hulkington's ghost dad, Monday, September 26, 2011 12:48 PM (1 hour ago) Bookmark

You should follow through on that poll you proposed a while back. Generally I don't like them, but I'm sure there are good ones I still need to see.

hey guys, that Quaid thing is just sum dum TV show

for those unfamiliar w/ the '77 film or who don't check the Larry Cohen thread:

http://altscreen.com/08/30/2011/larry-cohen-the-private-files-of-j-edgar-hoover-1977/

Definitively "solid" Cohen flick.

could not get more than halfway through that trailer, dear lord

same thought re: leo as i have w pitt: who is the person who decided he's a good actor

it's like every crappy hunky hunk from the 90s eventually reaches a point in their still-hunky old age when everyone goes challops and decides they're the next [hollywood leading man from the 30s/40s]

if by "hunky" you mean "his face looks like a hunk of moldy bread" then yeah.

DiCaprio was an extraordinarily fine teen actor. Since, I can take him only in boy-who-never-grew-up roles, the last one being Revolutionary Road.

Pitt's performance in The Tree of Life might be his best, and that's very good.

if by "hunky" you mean "his face looks like a hunk of moldy bread" then yeah.

Seriously. The man has not aged well.

I believe one of the Office Kathys in a KitH sketch pointed out that the cute don't.

"J. Edgar Hoover" also perfectly workable Gorillaz song title.

same thought re: leo as i have w pitt: who is the person who decided he's a good actor

it's like every crappy hunky hunk from the 90s eventually reaches a point in their still-hunky old age when everyone goes challops and decides they're the next [hollywood leading man from the 30s/40s]

― witchho (zachlyon), Monday, September 26, 2011 3:01 PM (1 hour ago) Bookmark

yeah except he's always been pretty well regarded as an actor?

tbh i think he's really good when he's working in his wheelhouse (the departed, catch me if you can), but he too frequently decides to 'stretch' himself in super inappropriate roles... like this. if he ever does scorsese's sinatra biopic, that'll be the worst one yet

I believe one of the Office Kathys in a KitH sketch pointed out that the cute don't.

― incredibly middlebrow (Dr Morbius), Monday, September 26, 2011 4:08 PM (1 minute ago) Bookmark

cf. bud cort

Morbz OTM "the cute as a species don't age well"

I have already cornered Scorsese at parties and shouted at him that Wahlberg as Sinatra is the only way to go

Whenever he tries comedy or takes a role, like Morbs says, which exploits his stunted development (Revolutionary Road) he's quite good.

Pitt's hotter and a better actor now than he ever was.

lol @ me thinking y'all were talking about michael pitt there for a second

Ditto.

Sorry, Pitt was never and will never be as hot as he was in Fight Club.

eric has a thing for aviators, plaid pants, and bowling shirts.

And perpetually visible snake hips.

I prefer hooded snake eyes

http://www.productwiki.com/upload/images/snake_eyes_1985.jpg

rowr

wow -- he's showing us his timber wolf

doolee appointed feduhruhl bureaus

"Swivel-arm battle grip"

Basically, I see it as DiCaprio has gone from being the best thing in pretty bad movies to being the worst thing in some pretty good movies.

Half of Scorsese's '00s output excepted.

tbh i think he's really good when he's working in his wheelhouse (the departed, catch me if you can), but he too frequently decides to 'stretch' himself in super inappropriate roles... like this. if he ever does scorsese's sinatra biopic, that'll be the worst one yet

yeah i agree, and i actually kinda liked him in the aviator cause he was still playing in his comfort zone (just + a lot of handwashing). i think i just define quality actors by the instances where they leave their comfort zones. he and pitt always seem out of place when they're not playing themselves (or the most charming versions of themselves).

Pitt is in Newman's league as an actor but now that he's in his forties I have hope that he'll be relaxed enough to stop fretting about how his looks interfere with public perceptions of his abilities. Tree of Life and Moneyball suggest that he might have it in him to enter that relaxed grace which made Newman's roles in the seventies and eighties his best: Slap Shot, Ft Apache The Bronx, Absence of Malice, The Verdict.

* Pitt is NOT in Newman's league, I mean

or look at Matt Damon. Ten years ago he worried about being regarded as a blank; now that he's older and acquired more heft he's made his blankness work in his favor.

no, he's still just a blank except when he bites into his tongue

anyway, plenty of spoilers in Larry Cohen's pdf memo criticizing a D. L. Black script for J Edgar.

just a theory: Dicaprio brings audience. if Eastwood/whoever wants to do the project he have to cast him (even if he doesnt want to)

Bad flashbacks to Public Enemies.

no, he's still just a blank except when he bites into his tongue

It's not like you to share your fantasies.

hardly; I'm w/ Eric on Tyler Durden there

I prefer them less ripped and more dripped.

Who knew there'd be this gay talk on a J. Edgar Hoover thread.

It's linked above in the article about Cohen's film, but here is his memo about the new for the lazy among you Larry Cohen memo

how many 20th-century political figures are left that haven't been biopic'd yet?

is there a movie about ataturk? read the lord kinross biography of him for a class a few years ago and it pretty much reads like the script for the ultimate 'lawrence of arabia' x 'che' mash-up.

waiting for the dub reggae soundtracked movie: The Harding They Fall

FDR has only been done on TV, in the '70s. (unless you count the play/films Sunrise at Campobello, which are hagiographies about his polio battle)

Jon Voight played FDR.

FDR played FDR (very well too).

John Belushi played FDR (ie, TV doesn't count)

iirc bill murray is playing fdr (forthcoming), though idk if he's actually the focus of the film

http://www.cinemablend.com/new/Production-Begins-On-Bill-Murray-s-FDR-Movie-Hyde-Park-On-Hudson-25956.html

That Cohen memo is interesting, because he's foaming at the mouth with rage over the possibility that Hoover and Tolson were lovers, but then goes on to speculate that Felt was acting on Hoover's orders. That seems like a bigger leap.

He didn't seem to be foaming at the screening of his film a couple months ago, just saying there's no hard evidence that they were lovers. I do think his Watergate theory is kinda bonkers.

Roy Cohn said JEH was asexual, and that's good enough for me.

Yeah, that's what Eastwood seems to be going for, even though DLB's script would ascribe his asexuality as an abnormality that sprang from both the era's mores and his gargoyle mother.

(In other words, I guess I agree with the macho het matinee idol's take more than the gay ally's.)

Never heard of this movie until it was referenced in that Bill Murray article:

http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-v7B8jHKoBd4/TdMbL2MCaKI/AAAAAAAAArQ/OR0avAdI_Tg/s1600/passion-play-2011-bluray-rip.jpg

(Streaming on Netflix, I just noticed.)

That's the one that led to this cavalcade of Mickey Rourke hilarity:

Mickey Rourke fully aware that Passion Play is terrible

Mickey Rourke sorry he admitted his new movie is terrible

On second thought, Mickey Rourke still thinks Passion Play is terrible

A.O. Scott's review.

So the civil rights movement and MLK-bashing/surveillance is barely noted?

And really, Naomi Watts as his secretary. Does she flash any leg?

Knowing nothing about this other than the Times alluding to it somehow being "risky" for Leo, Clint seems the least ideal director for historic biopics. He's just too infamously casual. Like Woody Allen, he gives his cast too much leeway, and prefers to wing it. Biopics are all about the specifics. Or should be.

So the civil rights movement and MLK-bashing/surveillance is barely noted?

In passing, toward the end.

Biopics are all about the specifics. Or should be.

This is why they're usually so deadly boring.

Amy Taubin approves: "one crazy, wise, late masterpiece."

http://artforum.com/film/id=29333

crazy ... late

That was Gran Torino, if anything.

Grand Boreino

It seems a waste to cast Armie Hammer in your movie and not show any scenes of him and Scrunchy Face poolside passing cherries from mouth to mouth.

It is.

Iwo Jima was the last one I liked, tho I skipped Changeling and Hereafter.

AO Scott otm that Hammer looks like Bill Tilden, which wd've been a more intriguing bio-film idea.

Nah, J. Edgar had an interesting life. Just not in the bedroom.

That's the problem, Hoover's life and what he represented doesn't figure to fit well into 2-1/4 hours. Srtill, Taubin makes me think it has a chance with me.

I'll watch it this weekend, along with the Almodovar film.

in britain we are all anticipating mike leigh's j. arthur

"he and pitt always seem out of place when they're not playing themselves (or the most charming versions of themselves)."

this is true. when they aren't playing themselves they always remind me of peter brady as george washington.

Tabuin and Hoberman both like it

n.b. J Edgar discussed after Melancholia

i always had a pretty strong suspicion that judi dench was responsible for a lot of bad shit that went down in the 20th century. now, finally, there is proof.

is oliver stone really making a clinton biopic? i will be there with bells on.

The film should perhaps have been titled “The Fever Dreams of J. Edgar Hoover.” Working from Dustin Lance Black’s brilliant and very complicated script, Eastwood has couched the entire movie in the first person with Hoover as an unreliable, self-aggrandizing, paranoid narrator. Thus the public aspects of Hoover’s life are depicted through the device of a book on the history of the FBI which Hoover is dictating to a series of junior officers. From time to time, Hoover’s version of history is questioned by both allies and enemies, but the most stunning challenge comes at the end of the film when Tolson, Hoover’s loyal second in command and constant personal companion for five decades, throws his boss' lies in his face and in doing so shreds the reality, or rather, the truth of the movie we’ve been watching for two hours. To complicate this first person narrative even further, the sequences of public life segue with increasing fluidity to private memory sequences and back again – all this framed within Hoover’s subjectivity.

After I saw “J. Edgar” a few weeks ago, I wrote that it’s a late, kick-out-the-jams masterpiece. After a second viewing, I feel the same. What Eastwood does to the conventions of realism is wild. There are bits of “Kane” and bits of “Psycho,” but a lot of the movie is reminiscent of an amateur production of Tennessee Williams where the actors are 20 years too young for the roles they are playing, but nevertheless their struggles move you to tears. It’s disconcerting to see the pound of latex on DiCaprio’s face and hear his wooden vocal delivery and wandering regional accent until those artifices become the correlatives of the cover-ups of the character. This is DiCaprio’s best performance as an adult.

whoa, what? where'd you hear about that? xp

JH likes Scrunchy Face:

DiCaprio is really first rate. It's close a career performance. Casting him may have been Eastwood's greatest inspiration

(I loved all the blatant movie references -- not just “Kane” and “Psycho” and Cagney and John Garfield, but “The Matrix.”)

what the

sweet bullet time f/x in this movie i've heard

a lot of the movie is reminiscent of an amateur production of Tennessee Williams where the actors are 20 years too young for the roles they are playing, but nevertheless their struggles move you to tears.

sold!

I think DiCaprio looks reasonably like young Jedgar.

Isn't the sole Matrixy thing that there is an Agent Smith?

It's going to be hard forgetting Billy Crudup as J. Edgard.

J. Edgar either

not if you made the wise move and swore off Michael Mann w/ Collateral

Perplexed, as usual, by the raves for this as I am by the overstated pans some of his others have gotten.

This is as "not good" as Hereafter was "not bad."

crudup was really fun as jeddy, i remember wishing the movie was about him instead

Isn't the sole Matrixy thing that there is an Agent Smith?

There's also (spoiler alert) the whole idea that nothing in real life is real.

"whoa, what? where'd you hear about that?"

i thought i read it on this thread. but might have been a joke.

cuz you know stone would go all vince foster on clinton's butt.

state troopers. crazy mama. walmart.

Margo Martindale as Virginia Clinton.

Meryl Streep as Al Gore.

Kim "Tootie" Fields as Vernon Jordan.

Peter Dinklage as Robert Reich.

Bruce Vilanch as Hillary Clinton

Ernest Borgnine as Admiral Stockdale

Rosie O'Donnell as Susan McDougal

Rhea Perlman as Donna Shalala

"a traveling salesman named William Jefferson Blythe, Jr (played by Paul Reubens) enters a Little Rock, Arkansas whorehouse...)"

(that's the intro)

a Johnclint Waterswood film

Zac Efron as Socks

Rhea Perlman (in drag) as Ruth Bader Ginsburg

Jason Bateman as George Stephanopoulos

man, clinton's step-dad! he's got woody harrelson all over him:

Clinton was born in Yell County, Arkansas to Allen W. (August 26, 1880 – June 14, 1965) and Eula Clinton (née Cornwell) (May 29, 1882 – October 10, 1975).[2] He was of part Cherokee ancestry. Clinton was an owner of the local Buick dealership,[3] "a handsome, hell-raising, twice-divorced man from Hot Springs, Arkansas".[3

Tobey McGuire as Matt Drudge

omg! perfect title alert:

Roger and his family lived at the south end of Hope.

The South End of Hope. an Oliver Stone Film.

jesus i almost feel like writing a screenplay with a title that perfect.

boring thread derail

Danny McBride as Roger Clinton

who's gonna play Vince Foster's ghost?

boring thread derail

See the boring movie that is the thread's main subject and get back to us.

I have a FYC screening in about 3 weeks. Did you ever see the Larry Cohen one?

The Larry Crowne boring movie?

I did. It's pretty good, for a movie that doesn't involve God telling people to.

Critical roundup, very mixed:

http://mubi.com/notebook/posts/clint-eastwoods-j-edgar

Some reasonably enjoyable discussion about Eastwood, "Oscar-Bait", and Manny Farber going on in the comments section of Glenn Kenny's post.

Dunno what's so offensive about the term "Oscar bait" when I use it to define outcomes not intentions (ok sometimes I do that too).

I think it's fair to call some people out on Oscar Bait intentions, i.e. Ron Howard dramas or anything Hilary Swank has starred in since Million Dollar Baby.

It's also an easy go-to term for standard bland Hollywood claptrap that just happens to appeal to "discerning" middle-class folk i.e. The King's Speech

i use mental images of judi dench when i oscarbait

but it is now overused to include meritorious non-mush.

by you?

I think it's fair to call some people out on Oscar Bait intentions, i.e. Ron Howard dramas or anything Hilary Swank has starred in since Million Dollar BabyKarate Kid 4.

fixed

I did. It's pretty good, for a movie that doesn't involve God telling people to.

I lol'd

Says Armond:

Larry Cohen’s 1976 The Private Files of J. Edgar Hoover was a near masterpiece of human insight (Broderick Crawford’s soft, experienced voice beats DiCaprio’s hard, choppy delivery) and had a broad, deep, overview of political change. Cohen genuinely understood how people lived in their time with their feelings. Black’s contrast of human and social needs throughout Hoover’s life attempts something similar but sometimes errs as with Hammer’s smirky, flirty flamboyance—a p.c. ploy that sets-up acceptable vs. unacceptable styles of difference. Too bad Eastwood stages it as grand guignol.

Within about 30 seconds, Hammer uses the phrase "a little camp" and then tearfully throws a brandy snifter to the ground.

who the fuck is armie hammer?

gorgeous heir who played the Winkelvoss twins in The Social Network

A.O. Scott's review.

― lumber up, limbaugh down (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Wednesday, November 9, 2011 9:42 AM (Yesterday) Bookmark

AO Scott otm that Hammer looks like Bill Tilden, which wd've been a more intriguing bio-film idea.

― Dr Morbois de Bologne (Dr Morbius), Wednesday, November 9, 2011 1:07 PM (Yesterday) Bookmark

thats manohla dargis btw

youre right, I realized this subsequently

man, scott isn't even up on mainstream Hollywood scrapple.

"oh it's a biopic" is depressingly submissive, as if there couldn't occasionally be a good one (Kundun, Milk), or that some unusual stuff couldn't be snuck in. Glenn Kenny seems to think this is an example:

There's a very messy dread at the heart of the film that is evoked at some of the most seemingly offhand moments. They reach a crescendo in the crucial mother-and-son confrontation of the film, a scene so utterly fraught and pathetic that it could have been plucked out of a great Fassbinder picture. And also that while my evocation of a stiff solemnity may have evoked for TFB a "reaching for authority," or respectability, the way it played for me on screen was rather different, that is, not so much Richard Attenburough's Gandhi as Carl Theodor Dreyer's Gertrud. That's not an analogy that can stand up to formal analysis, and it's not meant to, I just bring it up relative to the predominant tone I got from the picture. The atmosphere is, I think, very much deliberately kind-of-suffocating, rather than actively elevating. A fancy way of saying, I suppose, that the movie is a bit of a bummer, and all the better for it.

http://somecamerunning.typepad.com/some_came_running/2011/11/whats-that-termite-doing-on-that-white-elephant.html

Almost as depressing as people recycling the termite/white elephant diad when it suits them.

It's meaningful to people who see value in Farber's schematics, which I don't, much. (I LIKE it when the salesman leers at William Holden in Sunset Blvd, it's funny whether it's the effing 'Gimp' or not.)

I saw The Private Files of J. Edgar Hoover at MOMI. Larry Cohen was there. He was a bit apoplectic about this film.

yes, same at Lincoln Center in August.

I like Farber, but the movies and styles he was writing about generally don't exist anymore.

"I like Farber." Sorry, that's actually an understatement. I love Farber.

Also, this:

not so much Richard Attenburough's Gandhi as Carl Theodor Dreyer's Gertrud

is such utter bull.

I like Farber but his white elephant/termite theory is too clever by half.

Not least because Gandhi, for all its stuffiness, is a more entertaining movie than Gertrud.

Not as funny, tho.

Haven't seen Gandhi in 29 years, but git outta town. Unless we're talking Timberlake-level entertainment. xp

I saw Gertrud a few months ago for the first time and was bored to tears – and I love ...Joan of Arc and Day of Wrath.

Day of Wrath is the one of the Dreyer quintet I'm not as high on as everyone else.

Needed more witches being tipped via fulcrum into pyres.

Gandhi?

I could understand saying that about Ordet, but not Gert. xp

but you can't stand Hou either, right?

But Gertrud is, I'll admit, one of the movies I'm glad most people don't particularly like. Makes my kinship with its sexuality (i.e. lack thereof) closer.

(to bring it back to J. Edgar)

i reread farber's review of the third man last night and every sentence was totally wrong except for the one saying there were too many tilted angles, which everybody already knows

but you can't stand Hou either, right?

Naw, I like Hou very much now. That summer I spent time with four or five of his movies.

Later Farber makes a lot more sense to me than early Farber.

I like the two or three insane Bob Hopkins scenes in Nixon; if they're not for you, here's the tedious, beige-ugly 140-minute version. I'm halfway through the Kael book, but I don't believe I'm being unduly influenced by that. I do think--not for the first time--that Eastwood's the very definition of her quote about knowing cab drivers who have film sense and directors who don't. Armie Hammer's old-guy makeup made me think of the grandfather in Texas Chainsaw Massacre, which I'm sure wasn't the intended effect. Was there any particular reason to skip over the McCarthy years? I know that would have made the film even longer, but it does seem like a conspicuous omission.

*oscar baits slowly*

This sequence from Paul Mazursky's Vanity Fair review (news to me) says a lot:

"Eastwood tries to answer all these questions. But in doing so, too often he left me puzzled...I wouldn’t have minded a bit more fun...But the script has (DiCaprio) doing scene after scene in exactly the same manner...That particular scene could have been sexier and funnier. So could the whole movie...Eastwood’s film is all just a bit too earnest...A great score would have made us soar with delight--rather than making us feel as though we’re riding a slow elevator."

And then, the last paragraph: "As critical as this review may sound, I would tell you to see the picture. In these days of silly movies, it’s important to see the adult work. And J. Edgar is an adult film made by serious people."

Which to me translates as: "This bored me to tears, but as a fellow filmmaker, I guess I should offer some dutiful praise for its intentions, and for not being Jack and Jill." Like when a friend once told me that Scorsese's Cape Fear at least wasn't Cop-and-a-Half.

Been reading this thread backwards and it took me a long time to be reminded of what the title was.

Gertrud gets points from me for starring the guy who played the mad scientist doctor who had the diseased liver transplant in The Kingdom.

so is this good? is much of it about his sexuality?

I was really impressed with this. It's a bit slower than it ought to be, and a bit confusing to start with, but damn if they didn't humanize old J Edgar. Not that you feel sorry for him or re-evaluate his actions but just that he gets some humanity, you can see him as a flawed person rather than a distant figure of history.

The prosthetics were distractingly bad though, probably the downfall of the whole thing. It felt like I was watching sketch comedy at times, it was hard to stay in the movie.

I'm a Leo fan for the most part, I felt like this was as good as his Howard Hughes, and some of his emotional breakdowns reminiscent of his early roles.

Clint did a nice job of this.

Oh and I feel like this movie manages to almost pull off what Iron Lady completely failed at.

In re: humanizing J. Edgar:

I would have to say that being bitter, suspicious and reflexively willing to fight dirty in defense of a rigid set of totems you embraced and then never re-examined is, if anything, just as human as a mother's love for her child or the desire to touch the surface next to a "Wet Paint" sign.

As I have said to many a school child, an explanation is not an excuse. imo Hoover's life was explainable, but many of his actions were inexcusable.

otm

When I saw this in a theatre, I found it bland and a majorly wasted opportunity--if anyone's life could have been made into an epic film that took in a lot of 20th-century American history, Hoover's only rival might be Nixon. I thought the movie might get better at home a couple of years later.

For me, it seemed even worse. DiCaprio's accent, the awful makeup, the stuff it glosses over or dodges altogether--I'll again mention the inexplicable omission of McCarthy (I think he gets mentioned in passing once)--meanwhile even stepping lightly around one subject it devotes a lot of time to, Clyde Tolson and Hoover's sexuality. Nor does Hoover's connection to the world we live in today seem to interest Eastwood much.

Boy, I wish this had been made by Oliver Stone in the early '90s.

Yeah, but this still had an even funnier Nixon than Dan Hedaya in Dick.

Don't remember Hedaya that well. I thought the Nixon here was as hard to figure out--as in, what is the intention here? is this supposed to be funny or is it just bad?--as everything else in the film.

I laughed, but I'm still not sure how intentional the comedy was (though given the strained seriousness of the whole thing I'd wager, not at all). For me its a toss-up as to whether this film or the latest X-Men has the worse Nixon.

what about John Cusack playing Lloyd Dobler playing Nixon? in Lee Daniels' The Butler?

Missed that one (on purpose).

No interest in The Butler, but you almost make me want to see the X-Men movie--can't imagine how they work in Nixon.

For someone so openly political, I was completely baffled as to what Eastwood wanted to say about Hoover. If he wasn't trying to say anything, if his only objective was a shaded, complex character, I think he failed badly, or at least cast the wrong actor.