"Dune: Part 2" (2024), Denis Villeneuve

Villeneuve is the go-to director for the orphaned comic-book nerds escaping the Marvel Titanic ship.  Dune (part 2!) is composed of endless sands mixed with close-ups of angry people and Nolan womps. It's long, it's badly edited and it's boring. There's no interesting esthetics, no cinema to speak of. Even the CGI is tired. The Empire and other sections of "Foundation" had similar themes and did it a lot better.  Part of the fault lies in Herbert's vision of Jihad and Saviours, part on Villeneuve's approach to filmmaking, at best suitable for "Arrival", his moody Doctor Who-ish film episode. The nerds scream for recognition, and this comes in the form of seriousness. American Cinema is in the agonal respiration phase, a somber period where every character must pensively look at the horizon while the bass drowns any thought. Only feeling is allowed, a longing for a past that is not coming back. The magic is gone, colors are muted, the fire is dying ember, just the red dust remains.Villeneuve is the go-to director for the orphaned comic-book nerds escaping the Marvel Titanic ship.  Dune (part 2!) is composed of endless sands mixed with close-ups of angry people and Nolan womps. It's long, it's badly edited and it's boring. There's no interesting esthetics, no cinema to speak of. Even the CGI is tired. The Empire and other sections of "Foundation" had similar themes and did it a lot better.  Part of the fault lies in Herbert's vision of Jihad and Saviours, part on Villeneuve's approach to filmmaking, at best suitable for "Arrival", his moody Doctor Who-ish film episode. The nerds scream for recognition, and this comes in the form of seriousness. American Cinema is in the agonal respiration phase, a somber period where every character must pensively look at the horizon while the bass drowns any thought. Only feeling is allowed, a longing for a past that is not coming back. The magic is gone, colors are muted, the fire is dying ember, just the red dust remains.

"Poor Things" (2023), Yorgos Lanthimos

 A feminist (and misandrist) mishmash of Frankenstein, My Fair Lady and Edward Sissorhands, this excellent outing by the otherwise cold Lanthimos is enchanting but morally dubious. The Paddington esthetic is saddled with unnecessary fish-eye lenses and sudden zooms, but the award-worthy performance by Emma Stone overcomes any directorial dictatorial flourishes. A must see, and clear candidate for the best movie of the year.

Full Time (À plein temps), 2021

Full Time (À plein temps), 2021, Eric Gravel (5/5)

A horror movie: it's about being a proletarian in the middle of a transport strike in Paris. Imagine that. It's suspenseful, nerve-wracking, and very relatable. Andrea Arnold and a young Ken Loach could not have done it better. In real life though, things are even worse, with backstabbing colleagues and petty low management. Highly recommended and as I read elsewhere it should be non-optional viewing for union activists before deciding measures.

https://m.imdb.com/title/tt13269580/

Funny Ha Ha, King Richard, Bodies bodies bodies, Babylon, Air

Funny Ha Ha (2004), 4/5

Low budget, naturalistic dialogue, slice of life, nothing really happens. Mumblecore was an American style of filmmaking portraying the lives of young urban dwellers. The daddy of them all was this movie, a series of fragments in the monotonous daily grind of a girl from Generation X and her friends, barely graduated from college. I don't know how this was received when it premiered, maybe it was thought to be pretentious, maybe slight and useless. However, the river of time and technological change have given this film an unexpected present: perspective. We follow 23 year old Marnie through a series of parties, jobs, conversations with friends and prospective lovers. And there is no smartphone in sight, barely Internet, no distractions other than shooting the shit with the people you know. A boss innocently closes the door of his office to have an interview with the young lady; a girl is obsessed with the guy she has been friends with for a while, but has time to hang out with a guy falling for her; impromptu happenings start with people haphazardly meeting on the street: all impossible feats in the virtual era. Change made this movie invaluable, this was how life was: languid, warm and hopeful.

King Richard (2021), 2/5

Objectivist hagiography of self-made man that invests in multiple (meat) machines until two of them pay off, costs be damned. This Randian "hero" produces two juggernauts through cunning and perseverance. You see, he has a plan. And as shown, the only way Black people in the US have to stop being poor is to pull themselves out by their sport shoes and throw some balls for entertainment. This film thinks that it is a good idea. There's an appropriate famous song by Tones and I about this phenomenon. 

Bodies bodies bodies (2022), 4/5

In theory I should not like this at all. It is a simple genre exercise, a joke, a Reddit tale. However, the Z Gen rich kids' obnoxiousness is hilarious, think about it like "Euphoria" with money and blood. It is a good time at the movies, one character worse than the other. The end is ridiculous and appropriate.

Babylon (2022), 3/5

It feels weird to give only three stars to such an endeavor. Orchestrated chaos containing a barely dressed sensual Margot Robbie implodes at the two hour mark due to unfocused plot and unearned grandiose pretentious. Chazelle could talk about The Hays Code vs. 1920s free-for-all, could talk about the technical aspect of filmmaking, could talk about power, gender and race (ugh). But not about all at the same time, in three hours, without a serious anchor. A wasted opportunity, a simulacra of better movies aided by good actors. Better watch "Singin'..." and "Cinema Paradiso" again. 

Air (2023), 3/5

Corporate hagiography. The new fashion in American cinema seems to be the retelling of business lucky ideas finally succeeding into the famous thing we know from our youth. It is a sub-genre of the sport movie, the underdog that finally wins big. It is difficult to make such a movie about a big billion dollar corp. (back when a billion was a lot of money) so they take an everyman independent thinker that "gets it". This one has some good jokes and too much 1980s memorabilia thrown to the audience at every juncture. "Hey, remember this?" seems to be the mode of operation. It partially works.

Indy 5, To Catch a Killer, Spider-verse 2, Pearl, GotG3, Sick of Myself

Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny (2023), 2/5

Clunky fragmented action as a result of Disney's terrible irreality process (The Volume usually a culprit, as are green screens, CG and choppy edits) shackles lovely ideas about an elderly hero in the last days of wonder. There's a magical movie hidden behind the Disney accountant/marketing-driven look, one that would provoke awe if it was more analogical. It is still a good attempt, and you will not feel that your time is lost, but maybe you will sense some sadness instead.

To Catch a Killer (2023), 3/5

Tension at the beggining is great, also in a second act scene. Problem is that it looses steam in every sense, politically and in the criminal investigation. Script needed to be tighter. Szifron is a good director (that scene with the lasers at the start...) but casting and actors' speeches lacked something, more roughness and reality, the actress is too pretty to be a wounded soul doing police work.

Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse (2023), 2/5

Schizophrenic animation interspersed with boring serious telenovela scenes in the ridiculous Marvel multi-verse framework were nothing really important matters. Just more and more vigilantes in different unoriginal "worlds". Not special compared to Satoshi Kon or Maasaki Yuasa. The music is terrible by the way, the incidental crescendo is especially tiring, and the sound mix has technical problems in a few scenes. I'm not trusting reviews anymore.

Pearl (2023), 4/5

If "X" was an homage to 1970s slashers, "Pearl" is a Hitchcock movie from the 1960s filmed like a Douglas Sirk tearjerker from the 1950s. Technicolor palette, situated in 1918s during the Spanish Flu, fully and delightfully musicalized with a classic orchestra and slowly paced with tension and relentless murder scenes. Not because of gore, it's not that kind of story. It's the continuous and unstoppable descent of Mia Goth's Pearl into the inescapable madness of amorality. A great monologue and the final credits puts Goth in the map of new talents. A solid stylistic movie puts West into the list of directors to follow.

Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3 (2023), 2/5

Easily the worst of Gunn movies, GotG3 is a mess of screaming, muddled ideology and unearned sentiment that dips heavily into sentimentality. Fluffiness turns into boredom as the heroes traverse the forgiving outer space from one psichodelic CGI background to the next. In the end GotG3 wants just to go back to an American suburbia ideal. That's not where the present and the future lies. Avoid.

Sick of Myself (2022), 4/5

Satire about narcissism and victimisation complex which benefits by being situated in the country with the highest standard of living in the world (Norway). Jealousy of success still has an effect in an "egalitarian" capitalist society, so the plot lingers on symbolic capital, not economic. The protagonist starts acting normally and slowly becomes more and more entrenched into her delusion. It is entertaining and you find yourself rooting for her, hoping that one of her fantasies are actually real.

IMdB link

Fair Play, Propriedade, Oppenheimer, Plan 75, Eurotrip

Fair Play (2023), 2/5

Incredibly misandrist movie about bad people working for terrible people while claiming to be successful. Starts well, and then falls apart in an effort to demonize every person with an XY chromosome.

Propriedade (2022), 2/5

Elements from Buñuel's "Viridiana" and countless class warfare films don't manage to coalesce into a definite point of view due to the unnecessary violence of the agrarian lumpen-proletariat. Whatever the movie tried to say in the end the impression caused is the opposite one, strengthening the right wing (fascist) position of "necessary" repression. Tension and escalation are fun, but I realized that the entire script is cowardly designed to avoid any moral responsibility.

Oppenheimer (2023), 2/5

Full of Nolanisms, with overbearing non-stop music, this overlong, pseudo-intelligent, time shifting movie about the Uber-mensch, the Superman that built The Bomb is in fact unfocused and weak. A failed explosion. When the Trinity test provokes a "that's it?" then something is wrong. It feels like a constant trailer for a miniseries, not a film.

Plan 75 (2022), 4/5

 "Civilized" Auschwitz is still a horrible concept. This film presents a near-future scenario where the old can ask the government to kill them as easily as buying a subscription for an internet provider. We follow a few characters surrounding the dystopian concept and we get a tinge of the regret and guilt felt by those employed in this endeavor. It's not for everybody and it's in parts too elegiac, but if the Dardenne and Ken Loach movies are your vibe, prepare for a superb Japanese version of social elderly despair.

Eurotrip (2004), 5/5

I'm a hardened cinephile. I watch Godard films, I search for silent movies, I try to decipher meaning in Bergman dramas. And still.... This thing is a classic. Scotty doesn't know, and critics at the time also didn't. Supremely funny, Eurotrip is a last hurrah for the teen/college road trip, a time without censorship and smartphones, where hard Fs and Rs are uttered, sexy bodies are everywhere and nobody bats an eyelash. Scusi, go watch Eurotrip. Again.

"I'm Thinking of Ending Things" (2019), Charlie Kaufman; "Straight Up" (2019), James Sweeney. Review.

In Kaufman's movie, the elaborate camera movements represent the character's feelings and a subtle mystery, but they fail to elicit an obvious emotional reaction from the viewer. You supposedly need to be smart to "get it". Kaufman doesn't clearly present his thesis and it hurts the film.  It requires two viewings that should not be necessary, unless you make it part of the experience (stitching the same movie back to back). The concept of stream of consciousness is not enjoyable if we don't get to participate in the intricacies of the protagonist and his mental state. Acting is phenomenal, albeit a bit exaggerated. However, men's lives of quiet desperation are accurately represented. Maybe too well.  We don't want to see ourselves in the protagonist, but our unsuccessful encounters with women are often only memorable to us.  Mr. Bernstein remembers in "Citizen Kane" a girl with a white parasol that he saw for a moment decades ago.  The girl doesn't even remember that day.  Obtuse movie, real situation.

In "Straight Up" the opposite is true.  Accessible rapid-fire rom-com, mix of "Gilmore Girls" and Lubitschian cinephilia.  An asexual affected young guy (Todd) decides that he is not indeed gay as everybody else thinks he is.  He rejects the alternative lifestyle that is now part of normality, and the social support that comes with it. His peers insist, he must be gay.  In this view, a man without overwhelming sexual impulses is not a man, regardless of his sexual preference.  He meets a brilliant and extremely beautiful actress that falls for him. Because of his personality. Do I need to explain that the man is also the director and the writer of this film?  He tries to justify the fascination of the Manic Pixie Dream Girl for our intellectually dashing and honest character, but those of us that have lived for a while recognize personal fantasies in art and what they're supposed to achieve. Movie is fun, quick and somewhat interesting, but it is also completely unrealistic. 

Thanks to Kaufman, we describe guys like Todd as a mosquito bite from twenty years ago on a summer night. Uncomfortable when it happened, since long forgotten. 

https://m.imdb.com/title/tt8855960/?ref_=nv_sr_srsg_0