The lead performance is quite good and there's some lovely cinematography in there, but how do you make a 3+ hour Gandhi movie without offering anything but a very surface-level exploration of the ideas that drove him and the internal conflicts he experienced? Perhaps it's a case of the filmmakers being scared to speculate on what Gandhi was like as a person so they went exclusively off what was available about him at the time. But the whole film is…
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American Gangster 2007
Here's a possible take. Ridley Scott is a great filmmaker who sucks at pacing his movies. That's why his filmography is full of what feels like mid movies with a few incredibly good scenes. That's particularly true of Gladiator and American Gangster. The first and final scenes of those films respectively are Cinema at its finest, but both films meander a ton and neither left much of a lasting impression on me, despite belonging to two genres I absolutely adore.…
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Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness 2022
Most compelling MCU thing in years. Is this the first Marvel movie that gets better with each act?
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The Life and Times of Judge Roy Bean 1972
Men only want one thing and it's a bear they can crack a few cold ones with.
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A Simple Plan 1998
Paul Schrader on Gal Gadot but it's me with Billy Bob Thornton's mesmerisingly unsettling eyes in A Simple Plan
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Starship Troopers 1997
I love the worldbuilding, the weird tone and the commitment to being a fascist propaganda film from the future, but I wish the action kept me invested. Maybe Verhoven would say the mind-numbingness of the violence is the point, but if that's the case I think the movie has no business being this long.
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The Northman 2022
Not to sound like a pretentious asshole, but this feels like the actual movie fanboys are describing when they fawn over an edgy, "vulgar auteurist" take on a blockbuster (not naming any names). I don't know what made a guy who previously only directed two tiny chamber pieces think he can navigate a sprawling epic with complicated set pieces this skillfully, but Eggers made the most thrilling thing I've seen in a cinema in a hot minute while retaining what…
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Dr. No 1962
Odeon is showing all the Connery Bonds (along with the rest I hope) so I may as well have me a rewatch.
I think it's kinda cool that one of the most important franchises in all of cinema began with such an unspectacular entry. It makes it more fun to track the evolution of these movies. I also wonder if part of the series' longevity lies in the fact these films are never really chasing some original flame.
Anyway, Connery's…