3. Matthew McConaughey As James Agee
While doing research for this article and thinking about the famous critics who deserve to be incarnated onto the silver screen, James Agee creeped into my mind like an apparition demanding attention. During the 1940s, Agee was one of the most influential film critics in the US and the fact that he was part poet, screenwriter, novelist and journalist besides being a critic adds extra layers to his enigmatic personality. While his battles with alcoholism sidetracked his talents for screenwriting, he is credited for the classics The African Queen and Night Of The Hunter. In fact, a lot of the praise for Agee's writing came after his untimely death at the age of 46. Living life against the grain and shrouded in a kind of mysticism, James Agee's short lived career as film critic for The Nation and Time magazines have become the stuff of legend, so Matthew McConaughey needs to step up. Having the time of his career by playing troubled, dark and inspirational figures, Matthew McConaughey would make Agee a great art piece of the McConaissance period. His recent award mania has been a punctuation mark to his resurgence as a serious film actor, and while picking up awards for his role as Ron Woodroof in Dallas Buyers Club he sometimes talked about how he's been choosing roles lately. Looking for quality of writing and identity of character, all that would be needed for this perfect marriage would be a writer worthy of Agee's eminence because McConaughey's recent HBO stint as Rust Cohle has continued to solidify the talent he's been hiding.