Reflecting on the news that his epic sci-fi adaptation Dune would premiere simultaneously on HBO Max and in cinemas, director Denis Villeneuve complained that watching the film on your television would be like “driving a speedboat in your bathtub.” Now that I’ve seen the film, I’m inclined to agree. Dune is massive, achieving a sense of scale most blockbusters could only dream of.
The sheer magnitude of Dune is fitting of Frank Herbert’s 1965 long, dense and immensely popular novel,…
This review is going to come across as pretty down on the movie, so first I should just note that Nomadland isn’t bad – it’s just that I’ve seen almost exclusively raves so far, so it feels silly to spend too much time on the positives. It’s certainly a pretty, well-crafted film; Zhao’s direction is strong, but her editing is what makes this movie run so nicely. And McDormand is always absorbing to watch, even if here her presence is…
The very best of all the superhero movies. Could ramble on for hours about *those* two scenes (hospital + train) but noticed this time how stunningly economic Raimi's character work is. The scene that displays this best might, actually, be Peter's dinner with Otto and Rosie - completely unassuming on the surface, but the scripting and performances give crucial emotional context to everything that follows. Love how ugly Maguire and Molina (and Defoe in the previous film) are willing to get here; Raimi gets that these films are best when they're pure emotion.
Unlike a lot of superhero origin stories, where the hero-defining moment is either skimmed over or eventually forgotten, Raimi knows that everything hinges on Peter's first taste of tragedy: the instant satisfaction of revenge (“I missed the part where that’s my problem”) allows Peter to see himself as a badass for once in his loser nerd life... only for that to immediately cause the death of one of the people he cares most about. It's been told hundreds of times…
Bill Nighy: You see, son, all the men in our family have the ability to time travel.
Domhnall Gleeson: What? What about the women??
Bill Nighy: *chuckling softly* oh no son, that would give them narrative agency! Anyway have fun using your powers to get away with being a total arsehole, stalking and manipulating women while you craft yourself a perfect life formed on the basis of exploitation and lies!!
The Letterboxd reverence for this film terrifies me. This should not be talked of as a 'great' film, and is wholly unworthy to be spoken of as a masterpiece of cinema. Words like 'controversial' and 'problematic' don't cut it. To employ the "we can separate art and artist" argument is to willingly ignore the film's pro-Nazi content. To claim it is a film about how awful the Nazis were is plainly disingenuous. To defend it as 'objective' documentary is wrong,…
