Change Your Image
freddytrot
Reviews
Dune: Part Two (2024)
they should have stuck with Herbert's story
Failures to adhere to Herbert's subtle effective storyline:
Alia is not born by the time the emperor is defeated. Thus, she doesn't kill Baron H.
Shani does not have the twins nor is she pregnant with them.
The aspect of the hidden, poisoned blade in the fight with Rautha is central to that scene.
Paul does not manage his marriage of convenience to the Emperor's daughter, but drops Shani.
Shani is left to be the woman fighter alone (hopefully not pregnant) which is such a trending trope nowadays. Angry young woman of color, hitting the marketing demographics, ready for the next installment. Very salable, did the studio require those storyline changes ? Please. And PS Alia is a notably more interesting character than Shani, regardless of what color they both are. Make one blue and the other orange in episode 3.
What's missing is the subtlety of Herbert's story: the power of the story is precisely because of the mystical aspects of Jessica, Paul and Alia's characters. Because they take their BG training and background and use it freely outside of the constraints of the sociopolitical order, and thus are more powerful than that order. Paul is not a worldly Mahdi, but becomes a new type of human. Power is subtle, as is Herbert's story. This reduces it to a focus on material power, with brutality being defeated by butchery. Very salable given the tone of the times, but the tone of the times blows, and you had 2.5hrs to put the real story on the screen, which would have been a mind-broadening experience for the masses suffering under the tone of the times. Also, loud does not equal good, certainly as experienced in an enhanced audio theater. Great film is great visual art presenting a great story. Review camera stylo and remake it.
Golda (2023)
well-done historical theater
Delivers her character with aplomb (and snippets of humor despite being set during 1973 Yom Kippur - Jewish women worrying about whether you're eating enough will never lose its charm). The symbolic/surreal sequences, quite similar to those in Oppenheimer, were remarkably effective, and I can see this being an effective technique to deliver the meaning and impact of historical events to an audience that largely wasn't born when the events took place.
Regarding delivering history, my one beef: someone really had to dig up a 747 modified with nonrealistic engines as a prop for a James Bond movie ? Film industry vanity ? Can't show real Boeing products in the film ? Cheaper to use the prop than to find a real one with an innocuous paint scheme ? Or someone who spent too much time gaming, but too young to fly in a real one, concluding "that looks really cool, what are those things on the wings, bombs ?" when they found it with google ?
Moving On (2022)
look beneath the surface
On the surface, another star-vehicle comedy milking Boomers getting old. But there's no treacle and smug self-satisfaction at having made it into Californian affluenza, or having "transited to a new house of life" and fantasizing that you've matured past all that silly youthful Sixties stuff. But: at the next level down, it's an unsloppy depiction of daily life for the demographic bulge of Boomer seniors waiting for the day they have to trade independent for assisted living (if they can afford it). And below that, a surprisingly ambitious piece of film art dealing with some material that is not generationally bounded: women's sexual autonomy, and its being put under threat by the experience of "me too", and the brutal reality of abusive male sexual behavior towards women, induced by substance abuse or not, and its being accepted as "it happens". And the lifelong scars that it leaves. And the incompleteness of the 1960-1970s sexual revolution, especially for men. Not a perfect movie by any means, but gutsy filmmaking by a couple industry masters. Jane and Lily mugged just a little too much some of the time, but they deliver the material it looks like they were intending to deliver. Oh, and with all due respect, they look great. Well done.