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

Being the Ricardos: A Review

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

My Rating: 1.5 out of 5 stars.

My Recommendation: SKIP IT. This is a sub-mediocre, made-for-tv type of movie that is at times, insufferable.

Being the Ricardos, the Aaron Sorkin written and directed bio-pic that attempts to tell the tale of a very tumultuous week in the life of iconic comedienne Lucille Ball and her husband Desi Arnaz Jr., has been making headlines for all the wrong reasons.

The film itself, which made its streaming premiere on Amazon on Tuesday December 21st, is a rather pedestrian affair that suffers from an unsound narrative structure, tonal inconsistencies and a painfully poor script.

Sorkin’s writing style, which can best be describes as ‘walking, talking and exposition’, is an acquired taste, one which I have yet to acquire. I find his dialogue to be insufferable and his storytelling ability flaccid.

Making matters worse is that Sorkin’s quirky writing desperately needs a master craftsman director to make it work, like David Fincher on The Social Network, but Sorkin is a hack behind the camera and thus Being the Ricardos falls flat on its phony face.

The movie feels like a very special episode of a bad sitcom about a good sitcom. Adding to the lack of genuine drama is the fact that every sentient being with half a brain in their heads with a minimal relationship to the history of television knows exactly how the story ends. All of the drama is therefore devoid of any power.

But the reason Being the Ricardos is making headlines is not because it’s a mindless and middling affair. No, the film is getting attention because it’s mired in the most manufactured of controversies.  

Apparently the film committed the most unforgivable of sins by casting Oscar winning actor Javier Bardem as Arnaz opposite Oscar winning actress Nicole Kidman as Lucy. Why is Bardem playing Desi Arnaz a problem? Well, Bardem is a Spaniard and Arnaz a Cuban, which somehow violates some sacred woke law of diversity, inclusion and representation. To quote Colonel Kurtz from Apocalypse Now, “The Horror. The Horror.”

One know-nothing guardian of the grievance culture complained that Bardem was, like his Spanish ancestors, being a “colonizer” by playing the Cuban Arnaz.

“They (the Spanish) came in and erased who we (Latinos) were, and I can’t help but feel the same way when Bardem gets roles meant to share the Latinx experience.”

That bit of hysterical hyperbole overlooks the fact that many Hispanic and Latino families proudly identify not just with their national origins but with their distant Spanish roots out of class-consciousness, and that Desi’s wealthy, upper-class Cuban family most likely did too.

Director Sorkin tried to defend his casting of Bardem, saying, “it’s heartbreaking and a little chilling to see members of the artistic community resegregating ourselves.”

Considering Sorkin’s long-time, mealy-mouthed complicity with Hollywood’s diversity-obsessed woke warriors more interested in ‘representation’ than in artistry or quality, that statement is the equivalent of someone who made it rain outside complaining about the weather.

Another amusing thing about this contrived controversy is that no one is making a stink about Nicole Kidman, an Aussie non-comedienne, playing the most iconic American comedienne of all time, Lucille Ball. OK, Kidman may have technically been born in Hawaii, but to Australian parents only there on student visas. I’ve heard her ‘g’day mate’ accent and I bet she likes cricket, wombats, and ‘Men at Work’ too. She’s not a real American.

No one ever cares when British or Australian actors play Americans, and do so with their tone deaf, nasally attempts at an American accent. For instance, why isn’t there an uproar over Brit Tom Holland playing all-American hero Spider-Man, whose friendly neighborhood is Queens, New York? Are there no actors from Queens available?

These woke fools bitching about Bardem’s Spanish ancestry also rarely care when British actors of color, like Daniel Kaluuya, play African-Americans, like he did in Get Out and Judas and the Black Messiah.

The truth is, American actors of all colors and ethnicities miss out when British, Irish, Canadian and Australian actors play American roles. This injustice must be stopped!

Obviously, I’m joking. When casting, focusing on the specificity of an actor’s national background rather than their talent and skill is irrational and imbecilic and runs completely counter to the art and craft of acting.

As the ever-eloquent Bardem astutely pointed out in a Hollywood Reporter article,

“I’m an actor, and that’s what I do for a living: try to be people that I’m not. What do we do with Marlon Brando playing Vito Corleone? What do we do with Margaret Thatcher played by Meryl Streep? Daniel Day-Lewis playing Lincoln?...if we want to open that can of worms, let’s open it for everyone…we should all start not allowing anybody to play Hamlet unless they were born in Denmark.”

Bardem is a great actor, as evidenced by his Best Actor Oscar nominated performance as, ironically enough, gay Cuban writer Reinaldo Arenas in the Julian Schnabel’s As Night Falls (2000).

His being attacked for his improper ethnic or national background is, unfortunately, something that is becoming common place in Hollywood when it comes to casting Latino roles.

For example, In the Heights shamelessly marketed itself as a celebration of diversity as its Asian director (John Chu), Latino writer (Lin Manuel-Miranda) and mostly Latino cast told the story of a Latino neighborhood in New York City. But the movie came under fire from the woke brigade for its lack of “Afro-Latinx” representation.

Steven Spielberg’s West Side Story was sold as the righting of a historical wrong as, unlike the 1961 original movie, it cast only Latinos in Latino roles. Some still complained though that the lead role, Maria, was played by a woman of Columbian descent instead of a Puerto Rican.

The funny thing about this Being the Ricardos casting controversy is that Javier Bardem and Nicole Kidman, despite not being Cuban or American respectively, and despite the vacuous script and dreadful direction guiding them, are the two best things in this awful movie.

Thankfully, neither actor tries to do an impersonation of their famous character. Instead they attempt to create actual human beings and not caricatures. Unfortunately, Sorkin’s script does not support them in this endeavor, but Kidman and Bardem should at least be recognized for their honest attempt, no matter how far they fall short.

The lessons that needs to be learned from Being the Ricardos and the surrounding casting contrvoersy are that, one - Aaron Sorkin is a truly terrible director. And two, within reason, we just need to let actors actually, you know, act…and we should leave the social justice preening for the college campus and the New York Times. Hollywood, its movies, its audiences, and the art of acting, would be much better served if we did.

 A version of this article was originally published at RT.

©2021

Mother! : A Review

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

My Rating : 2 out of 5 stars

My Recommendation : SKIP IT. Even the most edgy of art house inhabitants will find this film tough to swallow.

Most people don't know this about me, but due to a serious health condition (just like Christian Slater in Untamed Heart, I have a baboon's heart), I am one of those weird people who does not drink caffeine at all, no coffee, no tea, no Coca-Cola, and I almost never drink non-caffienated soda either. This is a shocking revelation, but I promise you it is true. Of the rare times I do indulge in a non-caffienated soda, it is always in the form of root beer and always when I go to the movies. One of the very few pleasures I have in my miserable life is to sit in the dark, watching a movie, drinking a gloriously oversized root beer and eating popcorn. Hell, sometimes I go to the movies just for the a taste of that bubbly brown nectar of the gods that we mortals know as the beer of root.

When I trekked to the theatre to see Mother!, my usual pre-root beer sense of anticipation was heightened because the film is directed by one of my favorite filmmakers, Darren Aronofsky. An Aronofsky film and an ice cold root beer…what could possibly go wrong? Well, two things happened that would portend that Mother! would not be the stellar movie going experience for which I was hoping. The first was that when I bought my ticket I saw that the price had gone up nearly four dollars from what I usually pay. In Los Angeles, movie tickets aren't cheap to begin with, and then to realize that even though I went to the first showing of the day, because that day was not a Monday or Tuesday, I would no longer get the matinee price. So, after being forced to take out a second mortgage in order to cover the costs, I reluctantly shelled out my $16.50 for my movie ticket and then bought my overpriced root beer and popcorn. At this point I was now deeply in debt and the movie hadn't even started yet. I then entered the darkened theatre and began my movie going ritual of shutting off my phone and my mind, and settling in for a film I was excited to see. 

Then, just as the lights dimmed and the opening credits rolled, I took the inaugural sip of my root beer and….God help me…it was FLAT. Now there may be nothing worse in the entire universe than flat root beer…not famine, not pestilence, not war. Nothing!

Now, my conundrum was this, do I get up and make the mile and half death march to the concession stand to make my displeasure known, which will no doubt be followed by a lackadaisical response to my complaint by the ill tempered staff, which will then trigger a disinterested plea on a walkie-talkie to the theatre bureaucracy to change out the floppy bag from which my gallon of flat root beer was birthed. I surmised that breaking through the malaise of employee indifference to solve my flat root beer problem could take at least 15 minutes, and by that time, the entire opening of the movie would be long gone, and God knows they sure as hell weren't going to rewind the reel and let me start my cinema experience over front the beginning. 

My other option was to, Christ-like, be a root beer martyr and just sit there and suffer the brutal indignity of taking tiny sips of the flaccid, syrupy concoction I was served. Being the good Irish-Catholic boy that I am, I made the difficult decision to endure my tonic torture and root beer brutality, and I stayed to watch the film with my gargantuan, de-bubbled companion. I should have known, all the signs were there, but my flat vat of root beer was a very bad omen indeed for Mother!, which turned out to be just as unpleasant to ingest as my 40 oz cup of flat, teeth dissolving and gut-rotting root beer. 

The basics of Mother! are this, it is written and directed by Darren Aronofsky, and the story is a sort of supernatural, psychological thriller-dramedy about a couple living in an isolated farmhouse. The film stars Jennifer Lawrence with Javier Bardem, Ed Harris and Michele Pfeiffer in supporting roles.

I am a great admirer of director Darren Aronofsky, I believe him to be a true visionary and auteur, and one of the great filmmakers of his generation, second only to Paul Thomas Anderson. Aronofsky's breakthrough film, Requiem for a Dream, is a masterpiece, and his movies The Wrestler and Black Swan are truly outstanding pieces of work . Even The Fountain, one of his least critically successful films, is a fascinating and mesmerizing movie that I genuinely adore.

Aronofsky's last film though, was the utterly abysmal Noah, which was so atrocious as to be staggering. As I said though, I am ever the optimist, so I had very high hopes that with Mother!, Aronofsky would shake off the big budget blues that plagued Noah and return to his signature intimate character study approach to filmmaking that he does so well. Sadly, with Mother!, it seems Aronofsky is still grappling with the same thematic and cinematic demons which devoured him on Noah.

Mother! is a difficult film to categorize, some call it a psychological thriller, others a supernatural comedy and some still a religious horror film. I think it is mostly none of the above. If I am putting Mother! in its best light, I would say it is an ambitious, experimental, art house, horror-esque film. It is at times, very remotely reminiscent of Rosemary's Baby and maybe even The Shining, but then again it is absolutely nothing like those film at all. There really is no straight up comparison between Mother! and any other film I can think of, which I suppose can be taken as a compliment towards the movie. 

The trouble with Mother!, is that the first two thirds of the film are so suffocatingly monotonous, repetitious and dull that they swallow up any redeeming qualities the film may conjure in its final act. The final third of the film definitely intrigued me the most as it is Aronofsky at his most experimental and interesting. That said, even though the last act is unique, incredibly ambitious and its apocalyptic vision is certainly relevant in regards to what is resonating in our cultural consciousness at the moment, that doesn't mean it is good. While I admire Aronofsky for his bold approach in that final act, I also recognize that he failed at what he was trying to accomplish. I believe that third act is a noble failure, but it is a failure nonetheless. Unfortunately, the first two thirds of the film are so stultifying as to be cinematically fatal. I understand that the first two acts are supposed to be a sort of slow burn that builds to the chaotic, frenetic and Boschian final act, but because the first two acts are so tedious the film never generates enough interest or artistic momentum to make the final act worthwhile or artistically satisfying. 

The film stars Jennifer Lawrence, who is as captivating and compelling an actress as we have working today, but even with her charisma and luminous beauty, she is unable to save the banal script from itself. As I watched Mother! I marveled at how it is impossible to imagine any other current actress being able to undertake the mammoth role and responsibility Jennifer Lawrence does in this movie. She is on screen the entire film and is in close up relentlessly, and while the camera dances dizzily around her head she never fails to be magnetic. While Mother! is not a good film, and reflects poorly on its director, it is still a monument to the colossal talent and skill of its leading lady, Jennifer Lawrence.

Javier Bardem, Ed Harris and Michele Pfeiffer all struggle with underwritten and rather incongruous roles that are little more than an annoyance to behold. These characters are so irrational, illogical and unbelievable that it is impossible for the viewer to be anything but repulsed by their presence and annoyed they must be endured. All three characters feel like they have wandered in from a very poorly written off-off-off Broadway play.

In terms of theme, Mother! is a film that uses a plethora of religious allegories and metaphors to tell a greater story than just that of a young couple living in a remodeled farmhouse. While the film is set entirely in a rather claustrophobic old house, to call the movie biblical in its ambition, if not its scale, would be entirely accurate. Aronofsky uses this house to play out the struggle of God from Genesis in the Old Testament to Christ's birth and crucifixion in the New Testament and even all the way up to our modern times and beyond. The most intriguing aspect of the film is the thematic exploration of the divine Feminine and its relationship to the divine Masculine. The Anima - Animus relationship is one well worthy of cinematic investigating, and watching the Patriarchal God usurp the Goddess is fascinating in theory, but not in execution. I was deeply enthralled by all of the philosophy, theology and themes on display in the film, but viscerally repelled by the lackluster consummation of those topics. 

Despite the intriguing third act and Jennifer Lawrence's noteworthy performance, I simply cannot, in good conscience, recommend Mother! to anyone. Watching the film felt more like an exercise in cinematic endurance or surviving creative torture than entertainment or artistic experience. I would maybe…just maybe...tell my more adventurous cinephile friends, and those who are ardent fans of Darren Aronofsky, to roll the dice and go see the film just to see if they agree with my assessment of it. But for regular folks, and even those who enjoy the art house, I say skip Mother! in the theatre and everywhere else. 

In conclusion, Mother! is similar to root beer, that delightful beverage that is infused with bubbles and a delicious pile of sugar as large as Scarface's desktop cocaine stash. Like root beer, Mother! has all the right ingredients, a uniquely gifted, visionary director in Darren Aronofsky, and a talented and alluring lead actress in Jennifer Lawrence, but just like my lifeless and insipid root beer at the theatre, Mother! never properly mixes its many desirable ingredients or infuses them with carbonated energy, and thus leaves viewers with a bitter and sour taste in their mouth once they've taken an unfortunate taste. Yuck.

©2017