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I would sooner snog Alger Hiss

… than willingly sit through Clint Eastwood’s “J. Edgar.” Is there anything less appealing on screens right now than Leonardo DiCaprio as J. Edgar Hoover? Besides Adam Sandler as a woman, I mean? John Podhoretz’s review is funny. Excerpts: [W]e now know from the makeup work done on its pretty-boy star that when Leonardo DiCaprio […]

… than willingly sit through Clint Eastwood’s “J. Edgar.” Is there anything less appealing on screens right now than Leonardo DiCaprio as J. Edgar Hoover? Besides Adam Sandler as a woman, I mean? John Podhoretz’s review is funny. Excerpts:

[W]e now know from the makeup work done on its pretty-boy star that when Leonardo DiCaprio gets old, he will look exactly like Jon Voight. This comes as troubling news. Do we really need two Jon Voights? Isn’t one Jon Voight enough?

Heck yeah. More:

If you make the mistake of going to see J. Edgar, you will emerge much older by the time the movie finishes, even though only two hours will have passed. Forget all that questionable talk about how those newly tested subatomic particles move so quickly that they violate the rules of time and can order a drink before they walk into the bar. It is Clint Eastwood, Hollywood’s only functioning octogenarian director, and not a subatomic particle, who has figured out a way to breach Einstein’s relativity theory. In the theaters in which his movies play, time literally slows down to the speed of an ant. I was so ancient by the time J. Edgar was done that I went home and watched five reruns of Law and Order.

I felt that way about Eastwood’s Bird, which I deeply wanted to lie, but … zzzzzz. Hoover is, of course, one of the great characters of 20th century America, but it sounds like Eastwood has explained him away by depicting him as a closet case — of which there is, as Podhoretz explains, no evidence at all. That dress thing? Didn’t happen. It’s fun to believe, though, so people believe it. I wonder if Jon Voight looks good in a dress. I wonder if he looks better than Adam Sandler.

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