Ripley (2024)

...after so many incarnations, starting with Plein Soleil/Purple Noon (1960), where Alain Delon was Tom Ripley, the Patricia Highsmith absolute spellbinding psycho-sociopath is back ! 

In black and white and extended duration ! Since y-day- 4.4.24- on Netflix  (they bought it from Showtime)!

Steven Zaillian, master screenwriter (from Schindler's List to The Irishman) and art-house director (Searching for Bobby Fisher), social activism ( A Civil  Action), unlucky remake (All the King's Men), great HBO mini-series (The Night Of, in my Top 2016), took the time (it feels and it looks) to write and direct RIPLEY, an ambitios, artsy adaptation of the NOVEL The Talented Mr. Ripley (published in 1955 and followed by 4 sequels!) set in Italy in 1960, in no less than 8 episodes, marked I to VIII (V Lucio, man, loved the pun! and the last shot, that was a genius finesse touch).  Another masterful touch and change from the novel can be found here.  Zaillian is slowly developing his painting on a vast canvas and takes his time to boil into the mind and psyche of Ripley, one of the most fascinating characters in literature and film history !  The novel has been also adapted in a highly successful film that I am not a big fan of (in 1999 by Anthony Minghella, with Matt Damon as Tom Ripley).

An older Ripley has been portrayed by Dennis Hopper in Der Amerikanishe Freund (Wim Wenders, 1977), John Malkovich in Ripley's Game (Liliana Cavani, 2002) and Barry Pepper in Ripley Under Ground (2005, Roger Spotiswoode).

Irishman Andrew Scott who did a brilliant mastermind villain in the BBC Sherlock series, namely Moriarty and recently a grand acting job in All of Us Strangers, kills (metaphorically and practically ;) as the best Tom Ripley 2 date.

And Brit Johnny Flynn (The Outfit) is a brilliant Dickie Greenleaf,  putting on both the spleen and the class. Dakota Fanning is Marge Sherwood, good part for her, but she does not shine. Well, also the      character does not in the story.  Maurizio Lombardi as Inspector Ravini is wonderful, the accent, the manierisms, a cross between Lee Van Cleef and Buster Keaton. We got also lady Margherita Buy, which I saw last in Nani Moretti's Il sol dell'avvenire . Playwright Kenneth Lonergan is Dickie's father, Herbert Greenleaf. And Eliot Sumner as Freddy Miles (Sumner is Sting's non-binary child, I learned a new word with this, (non-binary, ok, got it.)

Robert Elswit's cinematography is an homage to all greatness of black and white cinema. He and Zaillian take the time to shoot a lot of inserts and details, architectural symmetries or mathematical constructed shots. Loved the Caravaggio puns. Elswit is PTA's collaborator, he won an Oscar for There Will Be Blood and worked with Zaillian before in The Night Of. The set design, the locations, lavish production on a "no problemo" budget, period reconstruction, and great Italian casting. Jeff Russo (Fargo) does a great job with the tense music. Also a poignant sound design all over. 

Here's a Vanity Fair article on the cinematography of the project. 

and two more words: Reeves Minot ;) TBC ?

Joker: Folie à Deux (2024)

Joker: Folie à Deux

Trailer out on April 9th. 

great song on it (and it's featured in the film): What the World Needs Now Is Love, the Burt Bacharach & Hal David's 1965 song, here performed by Tom Jones 

Expected Release date: Oct. 4th 2024

My review of the JOKER (2019) here. (in Romanian;)

My thoughts about Joker 2, here. 

The world is a stage.                                                         #JokerMovie

     

Furiosa @ Cannes 77

 #furiosa

Today's announcement from Festival de Cannes !!! Told ya so (here;) at the trailer's debut on Dec. 1st 2023! 

Nine years after Mad Max: Fury Road, the Australian director, screenwriter and producer George Miller’s famous saga’s is back on the Croisette! The highly anticipated Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga will be revealed in the presence of the director and the cast, led by Anya Taylor-Joy, Chris Hemsworth and Tom Burke, on the occasion of an Out of Competition gala screening at the Grand Théâtre Lumière at the Palais des Festivals on Wednesday May 15.

Mad Max (1979), Mad Max II: The Challenge (1981), Mad Max: Beyond Thunderdome (1985), Mad Max: Fury Road (2015), Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga (2024): in 5 episodes and in almost 5 decades, George Miller has created a cathartic myth, even a cathartic mythology. Mad Max is a chronicle of societal and environmental collapse, playing with genre codes to question these themes, initially visionary and now cruelly topical. Originally filmed in the Australian Outback, this revisited “Western on wheels” describes a dystopian world where speed and movement are just as synonymous with life energy as with death as a result of resource depletion, offering the viewer a dose of adrenaline rarely equalled on the big screen.

 

Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga is the latest episode. It returns to the origins of Furiosa, the new saga-heroine who appeared in Mad Max: Fury Road, rewarded with several Oscars. Actress Anya Taylor-Joy plays the young Furiosa, trying to return home, despite numerous hostile armed gangs.

 

“The idea of this prequel has been with me for over a decade,” said George Miller. “I couldn’t be more thrilled to return to the Festival de Cannes – along with Anya, Chris and Tom – to share Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga. There is no better place than La Croisette to experience this film with audiences on the world stage.”

 

George Miller, the singular and unclassifiable filmmaker, passing from post-apocalyptic films to young audiences – Babe (1995), Happy Feet (2006) – was twice a Festival de Cannes Jury member before becoming its President in 2016 for the 69th edition. In 2022, he presented Three Thousand Years of Longing with Tilda Swinton and Idris Elba, Out of Competition.

RIP M. Emmet Walsh

Mr. M. Emmet Walsh has gone away at the grand age of 88. Shy three days of being 89 :(  (born on 22th of March 1935, dead on 19th March 2024)

Character's actor Actor, he was great in all of 'em. 

Blade Runner

especially in Blood Simple, Coen bros. first film 

he was in Raising Arizona too...

I last saw him recently in White Sands (1992), that I've revisited (great soundtrack that got me to Missing Persons...)

a strong unforgottable presence.