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Reviews
Dune (2021)
Operatic
I came out entranced by Hans Zimmer's score which I sat through to the very end of the final credit.
Why start with the music?
Well, this movie has all the pacing of an opera: long on words, long on exposition, just long...but absolutely mesmerizing and otherworldly.
In spite of its monumental scope, it's also a remarkably intimate and minimalist film focused on story and its protagonists at all times. Even the gargantuan special effects are often relegated to the hazy background.
Sound effects never fray above the score. The score is everything.
Where Lynch went full 80's Kitsch, this is Wagner's Ring Cycle, and Villeneuve successfully ushers a universe filled with myths, lore and GOT level political intrigue. The force is strong with this one...
Emily in Paris (2020)
Super-Frenching It.
Sex and the City meets the Devil Wears Prada meets Paris Je t'aime,
Every cliché successfully blends what is utterly annoying about the French and what's irresistibly charming. The subtle culture clashes, like "we work to live and you live to work" are spot on.
Looking forward to Season Deux!
The Comey Rule (2020)
Gleason's Irish accent a HUGE problem.
Night One is simply epic in its narrative.
Night Two is sunk because Gleason's performance of Trump is understated and highly impacted by his Irish accent.
Who cast this???
Wasp Network (2019)
Incomprehensible Story Telling.
1. It takes one full hour into the movie before you get a clue as to it is actually about.
2. Whose story is it? No arc is ever fully developed. Characters pop in and out without establishing their relevance to the plot beyond an anecdote.
3. Main character is a defector, ends up becoming an informant for the FBI, who spies on him and his family anyway because he may actually be a Cuban spy, so by the time the Cuban government reveals (to the FBI) it has infiltrators inside "terrorist" Cuban organizations, the FBI actually knew this all along, but conveniently waits for the right moment to serve the plot and arrest them??? NO.
4. Are we really supposed to feel sympathetic to the Castro Regime and its right to sovereignty ignoring its track record on human right abuses? This is revisionism.
A better script and director could've turned this into an epic family story beyond politics. But it's not that movie. Not at all.
David Bowie: The Last Five Years (2017)
Needs more Bowie in it, but you can't leave everything behind
Conceptually, it works as intended:
Bowie, from the perspective of those who worked with him and loved him. And there is more joy than sadness here.
No fluff, no glorification, just a true to life account of a creative genius' last 5 years, true to himself until the very end.
You will never get a full picture from Bowie. It's up to you to figure out the puzzle, and it's beautiful.