Dune: Part Two - An Arthouse Blockbuster Rises From the Desert

****THIS IS A SPOILER FREE REVIEW!! THIS REVIEW CONTAINS ZERO SPOILERS!!****

My Rating: 3 out of 5 stars

My Recommendation: SEE IT/SKIP IT. If you’ve read the book, see the movie in a good theatre (emphasis on “good”). If you haven’t read the book, you should read it because it’s very good…and then watch the movie when it hits streaming.

Dune: Part Two, written and directed by Denis Villeneuve based on the classic science fiction book series by Frank Herbert, continues telling the tale of the struggle for the control of the pivotal, resource-rich planet, Arrakis, also known as Dune.

The film, which stars Timothee Chalamet, Zendaya, Rebecca Ferguson, Austin Butler and Florence Pugh, among many others, is the sequel to Dune (2021), a Best Picture nominee and six-time Academy Award winner.

Last Saturday I ventured out to the cineplex to see Dune: Part Two, which no doubt will be ending its theatrical run in the coming weeks having been initially released on March 1st.

I went to the 11:50 am showing because I had a very tight window in which to see the two-hour and forty-five-minute film, and that show was the only one that worked.

I went to a Regal theatre which I’d never been to before…and my experience was…dismaying.

First off, the theatre was a confusing mess that felt like it hadn’t been cleaned or refurbished in forty years.

Secondly, the ticket printer wasn’t working so I had to wait forever to get my actual ticket.

Thirdly, when I went into the screening room, it was 11:45 am – plenty of time before the film started, but unfortunately the film didn’t start at 11:50 am. No, the commercials which were already running pre-show continued at 11:50…and kept going and going and going….until 12:10 pm…and then the film still didn’t start…but the previews did. The actual movie didn’t start until 12:20, a full half hour after the listed start time.

What are we doing people? I get maybe ten minutes of previews and commercials, but thirty minutes?

And to top it all off, Regal, like nearly every cinema in America – and certainly every cinema in fly-over country where I currently reside, has a shitty, poorly maintained digital projector that is too dark, and a screen that is too small, and theatre lights that are never dimmed enough. The end result is it feels like you’re watching a movie underwater, or worse, like watching a movie at a drive-in in broad daylight because corporate theatre companies have no interest in spending money on upgrades to their venues, most notably their god-awful projectors.

So that was the context of my Dune: Part Two movie going experience…and yet, I was still able to enjoy the film to a certain degree despite having to literally imagine in my mind what each gloriously framed shot from Denis Villeneuve and cinematographer Greig Fraser actually looked like as opposed to the muddied mess I was presented at Regal.

As for the film itself, Dune: Part Two picks up exactly where its predecessor finished, and both movies combined tell the story contained in Herbert’s first book titled Dune – which chronicles Paul Atreidis struggle to survive on Dune following an invasion and the murder of his father the king, and then his attempt to avenge his father’s death and conquer the planet. A third film, titled Dune: Messiah, is allegedly being made and is to be based on the book of the same name which is the second book in Herbert’s series.

Dune: Part Two is what I would describe as an arthouse blockbuster. Villeneuve is a highly skilled auteur, and his cinematic capabilities are on full display in this film – the same ones that garnered the first Dune film a bevy of below the line Academy Awards (Cinematography, Sound, Editing Visual Effects, Production Design), but so are his weaknesses.

For example, the fight scenes, action scenes and battle scenes are a mixed bag. Some are spectacularly well-conceived and miraculously executed, while others, particularly the climactic battle and subsequent individual fight, are underwhelming and visually muddled.

Another weakness of the film, and in my opinion its greatest, is the acting of its two leads. Timothee Chalamet is a mystery to me. I don’t think he’s a very good actor, and while he is passable as Paul “Muad’Dib” Atreides in Dune: Part Two, he still isn’t very good. Chalamet is such a wispy, flimsy, charisma-free screen presence that it seems so improbable he be a messianic leader to a warrior tribe as to be ridiculous.

An even bigger problem is Zendaya. I really have no idea how Zendaya became such a massive star, but it sure as hell wasn’t because of her acting talent. Zendaya is actively awful in the role of Chani, Paul’s love interest, to a distracting degree. All she seems able to do is give a dead-eyed pout.

Both Chalamet and Zendaya are incapable of being anything on-screen other than petulant Gen-Z poseurs, and that is a terrible burden for a film which is mostly populated by a cast of rather skilled professionals, set in an imagined science fiction future.

Speaking of disastrous casting decisions, Christopher Walken plays the Emperor Shaddam IV, and is egregiously atrocious. Walken is doing Walken things and it all feels so out of place as to be cringe-worthy.

On the bright-side, there are some very noticeable performances. Austin Butler is fantastic as the ferocious Feyd-Routha, and chews the scenery with a relentless aplomb. I couldn’t help but wonder if Butler should’ve been playing Paul instead of Chalamet, although he might be too old.

Rebecca Ferguson is as solid as they come and she certainly doesn’t disappoint as Lady Jessica, Paul’s mother and a spiritual figure to the Fremen people. Ferguson is such a striking screen presence and magnetic actress it is astonishing she doesn’t work even more than she already does.

Florence Pugh, Josh Brolin, Javier Bardem and Lea Seydoux all give solid supporting performances as well.

When I saw the first Dune film I was about sixty pages into the book Dune, so I knew enough to know what was happening, but not enough to really understand it.

Having now read the first three books of the Dune saga – which is phenomenal by the way, I have a much greater understanding of everything going on in the story, and that is both a blessing and a curse.

It’s a blessing because Villeneuve tells these stories in shorthand, and expects viewers to understand the references being made. Having read the books I know understand those references and it makes the movies much more enjoyable.

On the downside, Villeneuve does make some pretty substantial changes to the story (I won’t say what exactly to avoid spoilers), particularly in Dune: Part Two. I understand why changes like this are made in film adaptations of books, they’re not the same storytelling mediums so this is inevitable, but it is still jarring and makes the whole enterprise feel a bit watered-down. To be frank, the story in the book is much better than the story in the movie…but that is usually the case when it comes to adaptations.

Dune: Part Two has done very well at the box office thus far, generating $574 million on a $190 budget. If this were a Marvel movie it would be considered a disappointment…but it isn’t a Marvel movie…and that’s important.

Villeneuve’s Dune franchise is off to a very steady start and is successfully threading the needle between box office success and artistry. The first film won 6 notable Academy Awards, and this one will be contending for those same awards.

Marvel seems to be a dying entity and no genre/IP is thus far poised to take its place. Dune represents not so much a replacement for Marvel IP, but a replacement for the idea of movies that Marvel has propagated. Instead of making movies expecting a billion-dollar box office, maybe Dune sets the expectations that auteurs can venture into the land of IP and use their artistry and vision to create something new that is both respected as art but also as blockbuster entertainment (with the definition of blockbuster scaled back ) – hence my description of Dune: Part Two as arthouse blockbuster.

If Dune and this type of filmmaking is the future of blockbusters, then sign me up. Villeneuve is a highly-skilled moviemaker, and despite his flaws he never fails to make something visually compelling and dramatically interesting.

Dune: Part Two isn’t for everybody. In fact, I’d say, if you haven’t read the books then you’d probably struggle to understand what is happening a good portion of the time. That said, I’d highly recommend the books as they are fantastic…and then once you’ve read the first book check out Dune and Dune: Part Two.

My recommendation for cinephiles, those who have read the book and those who enjoyed the first film, is to go see Dune: Part Two in a good theatre.

Unfortunately for me, I will have to wait until Dune: Part Two becomes available on streaming where I can watch it in my home, without thirty minutes of commercials and with superior audio-visual equipment, before I can accurately judge and thoroughly comment on its true cinematic value.

 Follow me on Twitter: @MPMActingCo

©2024

Looking California and Feeling Minnesota: Episode 105 - Oppenheimer

On this apocalyptically combustible episode, Barry and I go nuclear in our discussion of Christopher Nolan's new movie Oppenheimer. Topics discussed include a heated debate over the movie, musings on Nolan's career and a ranking of his filmography from top to bottom. 

Looking California and Feeling Minnesota: Episode 105 - Oppenheimer

Thanks for listening!

©2023

Oppenheimer: A Review - Destroyer of Worlds, Creator of Great Cinema

****THIS IS A SPOILER FREE REVIEW!!THIS REVIEW CONTAINS ZERO SPOILERS!!****

My Rating: 4.5 out of 5 stars

My Recommendation: SEE IT. The rarest of the rare in our current culture, an exquisitely crafted movie made for grown-ups. A masterful work that deserves to be seen on the big screen.

Oppenheimer, the new film written and directed by Christopher Nolan which recounts the life of J. Robert Oppenheimer, the man who first made the atomic bomb, is a stunning accomplishment for a variety of reasons.

The first of which is that it is made with a level of technical and cinematic proficiency rarely seen in our current age of mundane, mind-numbing, moviemaking sub-mediocrity.

Secondly, Oppenheimer is remarkable because it’s a mature movie made for adults that features zero fights and car chases that has generated a tremendous amount of interest, and if reports are to be believed, box office.

My screening here in flyover country (I’m currently living on a farm in an undisclosed part of Middle America) at noon on a Saturday was packed with a striking cross section of regular folks, the overwhelming majority of which I can confidently assume do not consider themselves cinephiles or even count themselves among regular movie goers.

As I watched the three-hour film that consists almost entirely of dramatic scenes of people talking unfold before me, I couldn’t help but wonder if these ‘regular’ people around me liked this film as much as I did.

Oppenheimer tells the sprawling story of its protagonist’s struggle with the moral and ethical burdens of his world-altering calling, but compresses it into an intimate drama that, much like how Oppenheimer builds the first atomic bomb, explodes inward first, which then triggers the greater outward conflagration.

Watching Oppenheimer, one cannot help but marvel at a filmmaker bristling with confidence and competence, the former of which is all too common (and unearned) and the latter of which all too rare nowadays. This is an ambitious movie to the point of being audacious, and I cannot think of another living filmmaker who has the unique artistic style and populist storytelling skillset of Christopher Nolan who could even approach pulling it off.

To be clear, I am not some Nolan fanboy. I respect him greatly but have had some mixed feelings about his previous work. For instance, I thought both The Dark Knight and Dunkirk were masterpieces (I think Dunkirk is his greatest film and one of the very best films of the 21st Century), but I thought Interstellar and Tenet were garbage. On the whole I find him to be a sort of new generation Spielberg without the shmaltz and obsession with children. He is the rare auteur nowadays who makes big budget – big box office, popular movies.

Nolan empties his bag of moviemaking tricks on this one as he uses time jumps, different film stocks and aspect ratios, and wonderfully deft editing to create a mainstream movie that often feels like an impressionistic fever dream.

The key to the success of this massive undertaking is Cillian Murphy who plays Oppenheimer – the American Prometheus who gives the ultimate fire to humanity. Like Dr. Frankenstein, he meddles with powers beyond his moral comprehension that ultimately hunt and haunt him for the rest of his life. If Murphy fails even a little bit in the role this movie crumbles under the weight of its own ambition, but he never stumbles, not even a little.

Murphy is able to convey the vivid, rich inner life of his character with a single, hollow-eyed close-up, and Nolan takes full advantage of his talents. Over the course of the film Murphy’s Oppenheimer goes from being a ravenously ambitious student to a callously arrogant expert to a hollowed-out martyr desperate to be punished for his egregious moral sins and all of it feels grounded and genuine and gloriously compelling.

Another very effective performance comes from Robert Downey Jr. as Lewis Strauss, an administrative admirer of Oppenheimer and bureaucratic bully. It was an absolute joy to see Downey back to serious acting after his long and fruitful run as Iron Man. Downey has not lost his chops as his Strauss is a cauldron of conflicting and conniving energy that is captivating to watch.

The other stand out performance comes from Gary Oldman, who has just one scene, but he is phenomenal in it. It’s a testament to Oldman’s prodigious talent that he can be so thoroughly unforgettable in a mere matter of moments in a movie.

The rest of the cast, for the most part, acquit themselves well enough. Matt Damon as a demanding American General Leslie Groves, is fine, as are the cavalcade of actors like Casey Affleck, Kenneth Branagh, Rami Malek and Josh Hartnett who pepper the cast.

Florence Pugh and Emily Blunt are the two main actresses and they do the best they can with roles that feel underwritten and a bit uneven. Pugh is always terrific and brings her dark magnificent energy to bear here. Blunt at first feels out of sorts in her role as Oppenheimer’s wife, but she finds her stride in the last third of the film and nails one critical scene when it matters most.

The only performances I thought were notably underwhelming were Benny Safdie as Edward Teller and Rami Malek as David Hill. Both seem out of place and rather awkward in their roles.

On the bright side, it seems definite that Cillian Murphy will be nominated for Best Actor and will probably be the odds-on favorite to win. Downey Jr. will also likely be nominated for Best Supporting Actor.

The film is beautifully photographed by cinematographer Hoyte van Hoytema, who himself could be staring at a second Oscar nomination (his first was for Nolan’s 2017 film Dunkirk). Hoytema’s framing, close-ups in particular, are exquisite, as is his use of color and contrast.

The soundtrack by Ludwig Goransson is also very effective and well-done. It skillfully but subtly enhances the drama of the film without over-imposing itself and feeling manipulative.

As good as the cinematography and music were, the editing by Jennifer Lame really stands out. The film jumps back and forth in time and yet never loses coherence thanks to Lame’s deft and skillful work.

It is always difficult to discern any sort of political or cultural meaning from Nolan’s films, but they seem much more apparent than usual in Oppenheimer, at least to me. Of course, one must be self-aware enough to know that they may be projecting their own ideological perspective onto a film rather than discovering the director’s intent.

For example, after Nolan’s superhero masterpiece The Dark Knight came out in 2008 there was lots of talk among members of the George W. Bush torture and death-cult that the film was about Bush as Batman being scapegoated for what he has to do to defeat the Joker/Bin Laden, the ultimate terrorist agent of chaos. I never found that argument compelling and always thought it had more to do with the guilty conscience and vacuous ideology of its adherents rather than with Nolan’s intended sub-text.

The same may be true of my reading on Oppenheimer, which seems to me to be a movie that speaks to much of our current era’s issues. For instance, Oppenheimer is persecuted for speaking out against establishment orthodoxy and for holding views deemed to be dangerous. That seems to be very relevant to our current times where wrong-think is a cultural crime as has been well documented here and elsewhere.

Oppenheimer is also a stark reminder of the destructive power and nature of human beings, and how serious that subject is but how we often take it much too lightly.

For example, we have both liberals and conservatives in this country hell bent on escalating the proxy war in Ukraine up to and including to the point of direct conflict with Russia, a nuclear armed state, in order to desperately cling to our self-delusional empire. Oppenheimer eventually came to understand the power he unleashed by building an atomic bomb, but somehow our modern culture has forgotten the earth destroying ability it possesses and feels so comfortable toying with.

And finally, one can’t help but think of Artificial Intelligence while watching Oppenheimer. AI is a great achievement for scientists but like the team at Los Alamos that unleashed the destructive power of the gods onto humans, the unintended and long-term consequences of AI seem to be a moral and ethical minefield for which its creators never seriously prepared or even remotely considered. The impending, and most likely inevitable, dire consequences of artificial intelligence feel all the more chilling when considered in the context of the moral dilemma and outcome of Oppenheimer.

Whether the film is actually about those things or I am just projecting my own fears and ideologies on to it, is ultimately irrelevant, as the film stands on its cinematic artistry alone regardless of its deeper or wider meaning.

The thing that stood out to me the most regarding Oppenheimer was just the fact that it exists and that regular people are interested in seeing it.

For decades the art of cinema has been in steep decline and in recent years the business of movies has followed suit. For the entirety of this century Hollywood has been training audiences to watch nothing but dumbed down bullshit and to instinctively yearn for mindless entertainment. Oppenheimer is counter to that. To be clear, this film isn’t highbrow or arthouse, but it is definitely elevated, adult, populist moviemaking, storytelling and entertainment.

I doubt this will turn the tide of franchise excrement coming from Hollywood, but it is a sliver of hope. In the sea of shit that has been movies over the last four years, original, mature stories from auteurs have been few and far between and even the ones that did come out were among the lesser of the director’s filmography. But with Oppenheimer we have Christopher Nolan, one of the more successful directors in recent Hollywood history, putting out an original, adult-targeted film, and one of his very best films, when all hope seemed lost in the industry for this sort of thing.

Audiences are desperately hungry for quality films that are made for grown-ups…and with Oppenheimer Christopher Nolan has delivered. I, for one, am grateful.

 Follow me on Twitter: @MPMActingCo

©2023

The Wonder: A Review - If You Hate the Irish, You'll Love This Film

****THIS IS A SPOILER FREE REVIEW!!! THIS REVIEW CONTAINS ZERO SPOILERS!!****

My Rating: 2.25 out of 5 stars

My Recommendation: SKIP IT/SEE IT. Some solid performances and beautiful cinematography are tainted by the film’s Hollywood narrative and truly ugly anti-Irish ideology.

The Wonder, directed by Sebastian Lelio and written by Alice Birch and Emma Donoghue based on Donoghue’s novel of the same name, is a new Netflix film that tells the story of an English nurse sent to a rural Irish town in 1862 to investigate the supposed miracle of a young girl who hasn’t eaten in four months.

The nurse, Elizabeth “Lib” Wright (Florence Pugh), must struggle against patriarchal forces, local custom, and deeply-ingrained religious belief to try and find the truth about what exactly is happening to Anna O’Donnell (Kila Lord Kassidy), the allegedly miraculous young girl.

The Wonder has a lot of things going for it in attempting to keep me interested. First of all, the film stars Florence Pugh, an actress of great talent and skill who thus far has never failed to impress me. Even in the recent cinematic disaster that was Don’t Worry Darling, Pugh delivered a worthy performance. No small feat in such a bad movie.

Secondly, my grandfather grew up in an impossibly tiny, rural village in County Mayo in the West of Ireland which was very close to the town of Knock. Knock, for those who don’t know, is a religious shrine and place of pilgrimage because in 1879 apparitions of the Virgin Mary, St. Joseph and St. John the Baptist all appeared to a group of villagers.

The Catholic Church has long since put its stamp of approval on the Knock incident and such notables as Pope John Paul II, Pope Francis, Mother Teresa and arguably the most Holy and most notable Catholic of all, me, have visited the shrine.

The Wonder reminds of the mystery at Knock because of the question of religious validity at the heart of its narrative as well as the rural and somewhat foreboding and forbidding nature of the setting.

All of this is to say that The Wonder had me intrigued simply from its premise, but unfortunately it makes certain choices, some odd, some predictable, some rather vicious and ignorant, that greatly diminishes its value.

For example, the film opens with the shot of a movie soundstage accompanied by a voice-over telling viewers “This is the beginning of a film called The Wonder. The people you are about to meet, the characters, believe in their stories with complete devotion. We are nothing without stories. And so we invite you to believe in this one.”

The camera then turns its attention to a movie set populated by actors, and through voice-over the narrator sets the scene telling us that its 1862 and English nurse Elizabeth Wright is headed to Ireland and the story begins…but not without a small comment that speaks volumes about the film’s ugly ideology – but more on that later.

I found this attempt at an unorthodox artistic opening to be painfully patronizing and distracting as it needlessly creates a hurdle to suspending disbelief while speaking down to its audience. The detached narrator later resurfaces in the film but not enough for it to be profound or to make any sort of narrative or artistic sense.

Once the actual story begins, we are treated to two positive things, firstly, Florence Pugh once again proves her worth as she gives a very solid performance as the lead “Lib”.

The rest of the cast all do solid work as well, with Brian F. O’Byrne, Ciaran Hinds, and Toby Jones doing dutiful work in supporting roles. Kila Lord Cassidy is also good as the young girl in question, Anna.

In addition to the acting, the film is beautifully shot by cinematographer Ari Wegner, who makes the most of the Irish setting and the candlelit era. Wegner scored an Oscar nomination for her work on The Power of the Dog last year and I wouldn’t be surprised if she snags another this year with The Wonder.

The problem though is that the window dressing of Wegner’s crisp and luscious cinematography and Pugh’s pointed performance are overshadowed by the smug, deplorable politics of the film and the pedestrian nature of its narrative, which ultimately spirals into preposterousness and banality.  

I’ll refrain from going too much further into the plot of The Wonder so as to avoid spoilers and conserve the viewing experience for those interested, but I will say that the Hollywood nature of the narrative ultimately fails to live up to the artistry of Pugh and Wegner.

The surface politics of the film are predictably trite with the usual misandry and anti-religious (more accurately anti-Catholic) sentiments of our vacuous era front and center. Pugh’s “Lib”, like every female protagonist nowadays, struggles against the all-powerful patriarchy which infects the entirety of the world with its singular evil. Yawn.

To give an indication of the film’s intellectual vapidity and political crudeness, “Lib” is the female “liberator” – how subtle - trying to free a young woman, Anna, from the grips of backwards Irish-Catholicism and bring her to a progressive utopia. Eye roll.

As formulaic as the ‘patriarchy as villain’ storyline is, the thing that really repulses is the unabashed anti-Irishness of the film.

Now for that small but revealing voice-over comment I referred to earlier. It was made by the narrator at the tail end of the unorthodox opening to the film. The narrator explains that “Lib” is an Englishwoman traveling to Ireland while the potato famine of the previous decade is tapering off, and then we are told with a seemingly straight face that “The Irish hold the English responsible for that devastation.” Ummm…No shit. “The Irish hold the English responsible for that devastation” BECAUSE THE ENGLISH WERE RESPONSIBLE FOR THAT DEVASTATION!

What makes it even worse is that the narrative of the film is such that it doesn’t just minimize The Great Hunger, which killed a million Irish and displaced twice as many, its sub-text is that the famine was the fault of the Irish – to the point of being their choice. I mean, this is a story about a girl who doesn’t eat – and thus may be starving herself for ulterior motives. That’s pretty explicitly saying the Irish are liars responsible for their own starvation – which is obviously historically wholly inaccurate.

Imagine if a film about Jews in Europe in 1948 opened with a voice-over stating that in regards to the Holocaust “Jews hold Nazis responsible for that devastation” and then dramatized how Jews were actually the ones who caused the Holocaust, and the protagonist is a Nazi sent to liberate a Jew from other Jews. Or a film about former slaves in the American South in the wake of the Civil War describing slavery with “blacks hold white southerners responsible for that devastation”, and then dramatized that blacks were actually responsible for slavery and a white Southerner is the intelligent protagonist trying to free a black man from stupid and backward black people.

People in our current culture of outrage would be apoplectic at such an insidious and insipid twisting of history being imposed on those two groups that are officially-approved as victims. But with the Irish no one bats an eye at their attempted extermination first being downplayed and then actually blamed on them.

The Netflix show The Crown is currently getting some heat because Queen Elizabeth II recently died and they aren’t being adequately respectful to her or something, but The Wonder minimizes and Brit-washes the genocide of the Irish, and then blames the Irish for it, and no one says a word. Yes, let’s respect the Queen, symbol of British colonialism that murdered millions not just in Ireland but across the globe, and let’s portray these victims of the British Empire, like the Irish, as the true brutal monsters who brought the horrors upon themselves. Insane.

The Wonder maintains this aggressive anti-Irish attitude throughout, portraying the Irish as a cruel, backwards, barbaric and utterly savage people with Lib being the English voice of reason/saviour.

The film, not surprisingly, does the same with Catholicism. Of course, audiences are so conditioned to hate the Catholic Church in modern film (and culture) that I doubt anyone will care. And to be clear, it’s not like the Catholic Church over the years hasn’t dutifully earned the scorn it receives. It’s just that singling out a specific religion as an abominable institution, while whitewashing the evils of the British Empire, is a bit much and feels ever so slightly hypocritical.

Director Sebastian Lelio, a Chilean, may very well be ignorant of the history of Ireland, the British responsibility for the genocide of The Great Hunger and for centuries of violence and oppression across the globe. But if you’re going to make a movie about Ireland you might want to read up a bit on the place and the people. Lelio’s ignorance is on him. And if it isn’t ignorance, and if he really thinks this way, then that says more about his moral and ethical depravity than it does about the Irish and Catholicism.

The film’s co-writer Emma Donoghue, who authored the book it’s based upon, is an Irish woman. Her take on Ireland, the Great Hunger, and the relationship with the English is stunning for its imbecility. Donoghue’s Irish self-loathing is no doubt fueled by her having grown up a lesbian in Ireland, which at the time was a robust Catholic country. I assume that wasn’t easy, but hating Catholicism for its sins is still no excuse to ignore history and reflexively lick English boots.

It's fascinating to see Lelio and Donoghue’s hierarchy of beliefs play out in real time in their movie. I’ve no doubt both are devout liberals and believe they are profoundly expressing those beliefs with this story. But their blind spot is that they’ve placed anti-Catholicism, and by extension anti-Irishness, higher on their hierarchy than anti-British colonialism, which is both astonishing and revealing. This choice speaks to the current tortured state of the bourgeois, capitalism-addicted liberal mind and its accompanying depraved and trans-actional morals and ethics.

Despite the rancid ideology of the film, The Wonder is bursting with cinematic possibilities, but unfortunately the potential complexity of the premise is scuttled on the rocks of simplicity due to acute artistic vacuity and story-telling conventionality.

To the film’s credit, it did keep me captivated for a good portion of its 103-minute run time, but ultimately left me deeply dramatically and narratively unsatisfied at the end. In addition, it’s aggressive anti-Irishness left me aggravated and agitated.

The Irish have been through a lot through the years, from conquest to occupation to subjugation to discrimination to genocide to civil war to terrorism and all the rest. We’ve survived it all, and goodness knows we’ll survive some rather forgettable anti-Irish movie streaming on Netflix too.

©2022

Don't Worry Darling - A Review: Cinephiles should definitely worry darling!

****THIS IS A SPOILER FREE REVIEW!! THIS REVIEW CONTAINS ZERO SPOILERS!!****

My Rating: 1 out of 5 stars

My Recommendation: SKIP IT. An absolute mess of a movie.

Don’t Worry Darling, the much-hyped and much-discussed sophomore directorial effort from actress Olivia Wilde, premiered with a resounding thud in theatres back on September 23rd and is now available to stream on HBO Max…and I just watched it.

My three-word review of Don’t Worry Darling would simply be, “definitely worry darling”. Unfortunately for you, brevity has never been my strong suit, and therefore neither has wit, so I’ll expound further upon my thoughts.

Don’t Worry Darling was actually deemed an Oscar contender heading into this year because Hollywood had crowned Olivia Wilde as the new “it” girl moviemaker after her first film Booksmart (2019) received positive reviews but underwhelmed at the box office.

I was less enthused about Booksmart and Ms. Wilde’s alleged directing abilities than my brethren in the critical community. It seemed to me that Booksmart, a middling rip-off of Superbad, was, like Lady Bird (2017), vastly overrated because Hollywood and weak-kneed critics wanted to celebrate a female filmmaker even when they made an at-best mediocre movie.

Booksmart and Lady Bird, and their directors Olivia Wilde and Greta Gerwig, were hyped beyond all proportion as a result of Hollywood and the access media being desperate to show allegiance to the #MeToo mania gripping Tinsel Town. Hollywood’s obsession post-2016 election and post-Weinstein scandal has been to hire as many female and minority moviemakers as possible, the overwhelming majority of which have been completely devoid of talent, skill and craftsmanship. If you want to understand why the movie industry and the cinematic arts are suffering so much right now, look no further than this blind addiction to diversity, representation and inclusion over talent, skill and craftsmanship. That’s not the only reason for the recent drought of good films, but it’s certainly a major reason for that shortage.

It was due to this current female filmmaker hype and hysteria that Don’t Worry Darling got labelled as an Oscar contender before anyone even saw it. But then the discussion about the film quickly shifted from the female empowerment of it all to the various “scandals” surrounding the production.

There was the alleged feud between the film’s star Florence Pugh and director Olivia Wilde. There was the rehashing of the firing of Shia LeBouf which included a back and forth about exactly why he was fired, the result of which revealed Olivia Wilde to be a bit of a liar. And then there was the allegation that Ms. Wilde was having an affair with LeBouf’s replacement, cast member and co-star Harry Styles, during filming…while she was married to Ted Lasso…oops, I mean Jason Sudeikis. Oh dear.

That’s a lot of negative press swirling around a movie. The problem though is that those gossipy stories are infinitely more compelling than anything that actually happens in Don’t Worry Darling.

Describing the plot of Don’t Worry Darling is a difficult if not impossible thing to do, not because I want to avoid spoilers but because it’s so ridiculously convoluted and incoherent.

The basic premise, I guess, is that there’s a couple, Alice and Jack, living in what someone suffering from #MeToo induced mania would describe as some sort of banal precursor to the Gilead of The Handmaid’s Tale disguised as a 1950’s supposed utopia in the California desert named Victory. Victory – a less than subtle declaration of victory for the patriarchy, is a company town where all the men work on the mysterious, top secret “Victory Project” for their boss Frank (Chris Pine), who seems more like a cult leader than anything else.

While Jack (Harry Styles), a bargain basement looking James Bond with the fancy car to match, and his fellow employees go off to work every day, their cadre of beautiful housewives stay home and cook, clean and gossip.

Alice, played by the ever-captivating Florence Pugh, is one of these sexy housewives who gossips with the other sexy housewives in between making sumptuous dinners, keeping a tidy house and having Harry Styles perform oral sex on her.

But something seems off. Alice can’t quite put a finger on what it is but she keeps having dreams and flashbacks to…something…that is not of this neat and controlled world she finds herself inhabiting.

As the plodding movie progresses and the plot further unfurls, all of the supposed promise of that premise evaporates into thin air. Eventually there’s absolutely nothing of any note left to hold onto.

The film is a D-level Stepford Wives for the modern generation as it’s obviously trying to make some profound statement about the patriarchy and the inherent evil of men, but to call the film’s gender politics trite would be the most profound of understatements.

To be fair to the film, there are some positives. For example, Florence Pugh is terrific. I remember the first time I see Pugh in a film, it was 2016’s Lady Macbeth, and I instantly recognized what a special actress she was, writing, “Pugh…has stardom written all over her. She is a beautiful woman, but her beauty never overshadows her talent. She is blessed with the skill of being able to convey her character's intentions and vivid inner life with the slightest of glances. Pugh is a charismatic and powerful screen presence who exudes an intelligence and strength that few young actresses possess. I am willing to bet that she has a most stellar career in front of her.”

Pugh is such a dynamic, magnetic and charismatic screen presence in Don’t Worry Darling that she’s able to overcome the albatross of the moronic script and middling moviemaking and avoid embarrassing herself.

Cinematographer Matthew Libatique also does notable work as he gives the film an appealingly crisp visual style and luscious, cinematic flair.

As for everything else…oh boy…its bad.

Screenwriter Katie Silberman needed at least three more drafts of this script as it simply makes absolutely no sense as currently structured.

Wilde also drops the ball consistently as the film’s pacing is relentlessly lethargic yet the plot also moves too fast in the second half to be remotely comprehensible.

Pugh aside, Wilde is incapable of drawing solid performances from her cast, most obviously from herself in a supporting role. Wilde’s acting is just as bad as her directing, as there’s a lot of posing and preening and histrionics but nothing believable.

I remember the first time I ever saw the film’s co-star Harry Styles. I had never heard of, or seen, his boy band One Direction, because, you know, I’m a grown man and not a teenage girl. But then while watching Sesame Street with my young son I saw this group of absurd pretty boys singing some song about the letter “U”. I had no clue who these people were or the tune they were using, but I immediately noticed this one guy who jumped off the screen. Upon further investigation I learned it was Harry Styles. As silly as this sounds, Styles’ Sesame Street performance impressed the hell out of me because it oozed with an effortless charisma and lack of self-consciousness that you just can’t teach. In addition, he seemed to innately understand how to fill a screen, another skill not easy for people to pick up.

I then saw Styles in Christopher Nolan’s magnificent movie Dunkirk, where he played a desperate British soldier trying to survive and escape France as the Germans closed in on Dunkirk. Styles’ role was pretty minimal in the movie, but once again I was impressed by him.

The next time I saw Styles was in a post-credit scene for the truly unwatchable Marvel monstrosity Eternals. I have no idea what Styles was doing in that moronic scene, and frankly, it looked like he had no clue either.

And now Styles, who is currently dating Olivia Wilde to much fanfare, has two movies out. The first is Don’t Worry Darling and the second is My Policeman, a film I intend to see very shortly.

As much as I had high hopes for Styles’ acting career, I see them fading very, very fast as the bloom is definitely off the Harry Styles acting rose. He’s truly, abysmally awful in Don’t Worry Darling. I’m rooting for this guy to be good and goddamn he is just one cringe after another in this movie. There are scenes where his amateur acting status is laid so bare as to be uncomfortable. And his girlfriend/director Olivia Wilde does him no favors as it seems he wasn’t “directed” at all but rather left to his own rather limited devices.

That said, I did find it somewhat amusing seeing pretty boy pop star Harry Styles with glasses, bad skin and greasy hair in one of the movie’s flashback/dream sequences.

The bottom line regarding Don’t Worry Darling is that the various controversies surrounding the film have nothing to do with how bad it is. To be clear, I don’t care who Olivia Wilde is sleeping with, unless of course she wants to sleep with me, something I’d be more than happy to accommodate.

What I want from Olivia Wilde is not juicy gossip but a good movie, something she seems incapable of delivering. On Don’t Worry Darling Wilde’s bloated ambition vastly exceeded her minimal talent, and the end result is a movie that is so poorly put together that it’s actually embarrassing.

My hope for Wilde’s next film, and she’ll definitely get another one, is that she reins in her inflated ego, loses the infatuation with trite cultural politics and instead focuses on the fundamentals of storytelling and the art of cinema. A man can dream.

©2022

Looking California and Feeling Minnesota - Episode 45: Black Widow

On this episode Barry and I head back to the MCU and do battle with Scarlett Johansson's Black Widow. A wide array of topics are discussed including ScarJo's falling star, Florence Pugh's bright future, Marvel's few missteps and The Rock as Humphrey Bogart.

Looking California and Feeling Minnesota - Episode 45: Black Widow

Thanks for listening!

©2021

Black Widow: A Review and Commentary

Estimated Reading Time: 3 minutes 47 seconds

My Rating: 2 out of 5 stars

Popcorn Rating: 2.5 out of 5 stars

My Recommendation: SKIP IT. The movie is a middling Disney money grab chock full of predictable Russophobic caricatures and #MeToo pandering that doesn’t propel the Marvel Cinematic Universe’s storyline forward.

This article contains plot points and minor spoilers for the movie Black Widow.

After a two-year, Covid-induced drought, Marvel is finally back in theatres with the much-anticipated Black Widow.

Black Widow was originally set to kick off Phase Four of the Marvel Cinematic Universe back in May of 2020, but Covid crushed those plans and Marvel fans have had to go to the streaming service Disney Plus to get their Marvel fix in the form of the series WandaVision, Falcon and the Winter Soldier, and Loki.

Black Widow, in case you’ve forgotten, is actually Natasha Romanoff, the former KGB superspy turned Avenger who is portrayed by Scarlet Johansson.

The movie Black Widow, which besides being in theatres is also available to stream on Disney Plus for a hefty fee, is set right after Captain America: Civil War and five years before all the unpleasantness with Thanos in Infinity War and Endgame because, spoiler alert, Black Widow actually dies in Endgame. Consider this movie to be cinematic CPR on Natasha Romanoff.

The fear heading into Black Widow was that it would be the wokest Marvel movie yet. That fear was formed when Ms. Johansson made some pre-release noise about how she was uncomfortable with how her character was “hyper-sexualized” in earlier movies, and also that this film was going to be Marvel’s #MeToo movie.

Adding to that sentiment were tweets from various kiss-ass woke media outlets triumphantly declaring that the film “passed the Bechdel test”, which measures size and substance of female representation in a movie, and “puts men in their place and makes them “squeem”, whatever the hell that means.

It seems an odd marketing strategy to alienate half of your potential audience by having friendly media outlets tell them if they watch your film they’ll “squeem” (which sounds uncomfortably like a cross between ‘squeal’ and ‘cream’) and be put in their place…but what do I know?

After watching the movie, I can report that Black Widow is a middling, rather unremarkable and unnecessary Marvel movie that contains a heavy dose of cultural and political propaganda.

The political propaganda is pretty derivative, just some good old fashioned Cold War Russophobia. Throughout the film Russians are painted as the shallow stereotype of innately ruthless, cold-blooded, heartless killers indifferent to human suffering. In one scene Natasha watches an old Bond film, Moonraker, as a sort of knowing wink from the filmmakers about the throwback Cold War caricatures.

The cultural propaganda doesn’t come in until the final act of the movie, which not surprisingly, is also when the whole venture goes completely off the rails with megadoses of Marvel monotony.

It’s in this third act that Marvel runs the #MeToo flag up the pole and turns the movie into a metaphor for breaking the iron spell of the nefarious patriarchy that brainwashes women and takes away their freedom and choice.

The bad guy, General Dreykov, played by a terribly miscast Ray Winstone who absolutely butchers his Russian accent, is meant to embody both the misogynist patriarchy and the inherent villainy of Russians. Dreykov has stolen little girls and trained them to be killers, and if they weren’t up to snuff, killed them. Dreykov is like a Russian Jeffrey Epstein in that he controls world leaders with his army of women, except he traffics in violence, not sex, and his island is in the sky, not the Caribbean.

In a literal sense, Black Widow must defeat Dreykov so as to free his army of mind-controlled females. In a metaphorical sense, she’s fighting to free all women from the prison of the patriarchy and to exact revenge for the abuse they have suffered at its hands.

I have to say Black Widow’s painfully obvious #MeToo metaphor didn’t make me “squeem” or feel put in my place, although it did make me throw-up a little bit in my mouth. And yawn profusely.

Whether it be the insipid Russophobia or the forced MeToo stuff, the overwhelming sentiment conjured by Black Widow is one of indifference. The movie, especially in the shadow of Infinity War and Endgame, just doesn’t seem to serve any purpose at all.

That isn’t to say there’s nothing redeeming about it. Some of the performances, particularly Florence Pugh and David Harbour, are quite compelling.

Pugh, who plays Black Widow’s sister Yelena, absolutely steals the show. Watching Pugh consistently out shine her more famous scene partner Johansson was glorious to behold. Pugh is a terrific actress, but the magnetism she displays in Black Widow reveals that she’s capable of being a gigantic movie star, much bigger than Scarlett Johansson.

David Harbour, who plays Black Widow’s father, the Russian superhero Red Guardian, is also terrific. Harbour is a dynamic presence and sinks his teeth into the Marvel movie inanity with gusto.

Other performances, most notably from two usually very good actors, Rachel Weisz and the aforementioned Ray Winstone, are uncomfortably sub-par, as is Scarlet Johansson’s bland and rather diffident portrayal.

The bottom line is, if you are a devoted fan of the Marvel formula with its forgettable fights, loud chases and snarky humor, you may enjoy Black Widow even though it is meaningless in relationship to the wider MCU canon. As for me, a fair-weather Marvel fan, I found it to be a rather tepid venture, devoid of any real purpose except to line Mickey Mouse’s coffers.

If you want to avoid the vapid cultural and political propaganda that permeates Black Widow, and keep your hard-earned money from the clutches of the Disney devil, I recommend you skip the movie, you really won’t be missing anything.

 A version of this article was originally published at RT.

©2021

Midsommar: A Review

****THIS IS A SPOILER FREE REVIEW!! THIS REVIEW CONTAINS ZERO SPOILERS!!****

My Rating: 2.75 out of 5 stars

My Recommendation: SKIP IT/SEE IT. A flawed, but creepy and symbolically rich horror movie that is both deeply unsettling and mythologically satisfying. If you love horror movies then go see it in the theatre, but for everyone else watch it on Netflix or cable.

Midsommar, written and directed by Ari Aster, is the story of Dani, a young women in emotional turmoil who accompanies her lukewarm boyfriend on a trip to Harga, an isolated rural commune in Sweden, for a once in every 90 years religious festival. The film stars Florence Pugh as Dani, with supporting turns from Jack Reynor, William Jackson Harper and Will Poulter.

Midsommar describes itself as a “folk horror film”, which is an intriguing twist on the horror formula. In general I am not a fan of horror movies, the ones I do enjoy, like The Shining, Rosemary’s Baby and The Exorcist, are more great movies of horror than they are great horror movies. Those movies deal with the occult and spiritual horror as opposed to just slasher or monster type movies, and that is probably why I appreciate them so much.

Midsommar is director Ari Aster’s second feature film, his first was last year’s Hereditary, another ambitious horror film. I liked Hereditary and even though it was flawed I thought Aster showed a great deal of potential as a filmmaker as he coaxed some terrific performances out of his leads Toni Collette and Alex Wolff and put together some really gripping sequences. Hereditary was also chock full of really rich symbolism and sub-text…so much so that I wrote an entire piece about it.

Hereditary’s biggest flaw was that Aster’s creative eyes were bigger than his directorial stomach…which is my way of saying that Aster is a better writer than a director as he was unable to entirely capture the entirety of his unique vision on film.

Midsommar is a worthy follow up to Hereditary, and is very similar in many ways as the film boasts a stellar female performance at its center and has a wildly creepy and unsettling story at its center. Midsommar is also bursting with insightful symbolism and sub-text that make it a very layered film. Hereditary and Midsommar are also twins in that they explore a dark occult underbelly to the rather benign settings of suburbia and a seemingly gentle Finnish commune respectively.

Sadly though, the similarities don’t end there as Midsommar also suffers from the same ailment that hampered Hereditary, namely that the narrative was too dramatically unwieldy for the director Aster to tame fully.

The very best thing about the film is the performance of Florence Pugh, who won a Breakout Performance of the Year Mickey Award in 2016 for the independent drama Lady MacBeth, and lives up to that promise in Midsommar. Pugh is so spot on in her characterization that it is at times uncomfortable to watch. Pugh’s Dani is deeply and specifically wounded and reeks of desperation, so much so that she relentlessly needs to accommodate others to an embarrassing degree. The camera adores Pugh as she is blessed with an exquisitely perfect face that is both stunningly gorgeous and approachable. Pugh’s magnetism and girl-next-door beauty are used to great affect as it makes Dani’s insecurity and low self-esteem a conflicting yet captivating mess.

Dani’s at best indifferent boyfriend, Christian, is played by Jack Reynor, who sort of looks like a slightly less douchebaggy version of Seth Rogan. Reynor’s Christian is a pitch perfect asshole, and he wisely never goes over the top with his asshole-ishness, but it is certainly a palpable presence. Reynor as an actor is a bit overwhelmed by Pugh though, as he currently seems to lack the charisma and skill to go toe to toe with his very formidable leading lady. That said, to Reynor’s great credit he proves is certainly game for anything and shows he has enough balls (literally and figuratively) to try and tackle a role that ends up being just a bit out of his reach.

Midsommar’s cinematographer, Pawel Pogorzelski, does fantastic work as he captures the pseudo-David Lynchian creepiness beneath the quaint facade of the commune. Pogorzelski uses the midnight sun of Sweden effectively to create a disorienting visual experience that is subtly alarming. There are psychedelic sequences where Pogorzelski shows his talent in not overwhelming the viewer with obviousness but rather makes the delirious experience so seamless as to be unnerving. There are also some deliciously well-done shots using the reflections from a mirror or a television set that I thought were glorious. Pogorzelski worked on Hereditary as well and his style and skill definitely elevate both films.

The thing I liked the most about Midsommar was the symbolism and sub-text. This film, just like Hereditary, is bursting at the seams with political and social commentary that is hiding in plain sight. The commune at the center of the story is an alluring combination of old world folk religion, New Age spirituality, modern day social progressivism and extreme environmentalism. It is easy to imagine that the divergent anti-Trump resistance could come together to form the alleged utopia that is Harga.

The character arc of Dani is that of the modern women who has put her needs second to those around her and has made herself small so that others feel big. As Dani goes through the odyssey of the commune she is forced to choose between the way things are now with her as a pliant caretaker to others, or the way things could be with a women in charge. In this way the film is, much like Hereditary, a commentary on the Trump presidency and the fall of Hillary and the rise of neo-feminism. While those things are potentially over-analyzed subjects in our current political and cultural climate, Aster does a magnificent job of deftly addressing these issues in an unconventional way and subtly layering the film’s inventive perspective throughout the film.

To be clear, I truly did enjoy Midsommar, just as I did Hereditary, but as with Hereditary, Midsommar does go a bit off the rails about two thirds of the way through and the film loses dramatic momentum. I think Aster’s biggest issue, in both films, is that the major beats of the story are not well placed in the narrative arc, and so the film feels a bit off in the final act.

In conclusion, while I think Ari Aster has slightly missed the mark with both Hereditary and Midsommar, I am very glad for his ambition and that he is out there making movies. I think he is a very original voice and his expansive ideas on horror and the nature of evil are remarkably insightful about the world in which we currently reside. I hope Aster keeps exploring the depths of that unique darkness that he shared with viewers in both Hereditary and Midsommar.

While Midsommar is not worth shelling out big bucks to see in a theatre, I do think it is worth seeing on Netflix or cable for “free” for Pugh’s performance alone. The movie is also genuinely creepy and not of the instantly forgettable horror movie formula that has grown so tiresome. Midsommar is definitely a flawed film, but that doesn’t mean it isn’t worthwhile or that the message it sends isn’t right on the money. If, at some point, you have a chance to check it out I think you should…it will unsettle you…and we all need to be unsettled every now and again.

©2019

Lady MacBeth : A Review

****THIS REVIEW CONTAINS ZERO SPOILERS!! THIS IS A SPOILER FREE REVIEW!!!****

My Rating : 2 out of 5 stars

My Recommendation : SKIP IT.

Lady MacBeth, written by Alice Berch and directed by William Oldroyd, is the story of Katherine, a young woman in 1860's rural England, stuck in a stifling marriage and a suffocating culture. The film stars Florence Pugh as Katherine, along with Cosmo Jarvis, Paul Hilton and Naomi Ackie in supporting roles. 

Lady MacBeth has all the trappings of an art house gem, an exquisite period setting and costumes, a breakout performance from a talented young actress and a political sub-text of female empowerment in the face of a controlling patriarchy. Sadly, Lady MacBeth is not the sum of its parts and winds up being little more than a pretender to the art house crown. 

The biggest problem with Lady MacBeth is that it tries to do too much, too fast and goes too far. The reason period pieces like this work is because they set up constraints upon the characters in the form of cultural customs and traditions, and they force the characters to struggle against or break free of them. The cinematic drama is born and bred in that struggle. That is why people loved Downton Abbey for example, or Netflix's recent hit The Crown, those shows put the restraints of tradition upon human emotions and yearnings and we all watched to see the characters resist against them. The problem with Lady MacBeth is that those traditional and cultural obstacles are too easily discarded, ignored and overcome, rendering the struggle against them dramatically impotent and entirely moot. 

The first third of the film is very compelling because those cultural hindrances are front and center and are a cross that seems unbearable for Katherine. Her confinement to her husband's house is palpably stultifying. Director Oldroyd makes the interesting choice to shoot all of the indoor scenes as static shots to effectively enhance the rigid sense of emotional suffocation. Oldroyd also wisely contrasts this static indoor approach with hand held shots when Katherine finally goes outside, indicating her sense of freedom and abandon.

But then the train goes off the rails in the latter two thirds of the film when the narrative unravels as the traditional reins upon Katherine aren't simply loosened, they disappear completely. The film rapidly deteriorates from there when all of the tension and drama those constraints brought with them dissipates entirely. The art house ship is scuttled at that point and a rather predictable and conventional film takes its place.

The one bright spot in the whole endeavor is the discovery of Florence Pugh. Pugh, who is vaguely reminiscent of a young Kate Winslet, has stardom written all over her. She is a beautiful woman, but her beauty never overshadows her talent. She is blessed with the skill of being able to convey her character's intentions and vivid inner life with the slightest of glances. Pugh is a charismatic and powerful screen presence who exudes an intelligence and strength that few young actresses possess. I am willing to bet that she has a most stellar career in front of her.

The rest of the cast are all eclipsed by the supernova that is Ms. Pugh. Cosmo Jarvis plays the love interest but is entirely of no interest. Naomi Ackie is given a rather thankless job of having to portray a character that is so poorly written it is difficult to reconcile. And Paul Hilton's Alexander is so terribly one-dimensional he might as well be twirling his mustache whenever he's on screen.

I was ready to go all in on the ride of Lady MacBeth, but the film made the fatal error of not grounding it's story in a consistent reality, and thus the entire exercise seemed a rather empty and fruitless endeavor that became harder and harder to buy into. I was very disappointed with the film, but on the bright side found solace in Ms. Pugh's sublime performance despite it all. 

My recommendation is to skip Lady MacBeth entirely. Even watching it for free on Netflix or cable would be a waste of time as the film neither reveals nor illuminates anything of worth or substance. It's a shame, for if the filmmaker had screwed their courage to the sticking place, maybe the film could have been elevated to the art house throne. Instead, Lady MacBeth took the easy and cowardly route of the ordinary and won its hard earned exile from artistic relevancy. 

©2017