Frank Herbert’s original novel Dune (1965) is a brilliant synthesis of the futurism of science fiction and the archaism of fantasy literature. Denis Villeneuve’s continuing film adaptation Dune: Part Two is now in theaters. It is a bit better than the first part, but has all the same problems, and a few new ones, so I can’t recommend it. Like the first part, it is not terrible, just mediocre: dull to my eyes, grating to my ears, trying to my patience, an insult to my intelligence, and worst of all: just another Hollywood attack on white people. (more…)
Tag: Trevor Lynch
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At the age of 83, Japanese filmmaker Hayao Miyazaki is the greatest creator of animated films since Walt Disney. But Miyazaki is not resting on his laurels. Instead, just last year he released The Boy and the Heron, his 12th feature film. The Boy and the Heron was released in Japan in July of 2023 and worldwide in December, so it is still playing in theaters in some areas.
The Boy and the Heron has many elements of Miyazaki’s other films. It especially reminds me of my favorite, My Neighbor Totoro (1988). (more…)
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John Huston’s The Treasure of the Sierra Madre (1948), starring Humphrey Bogart and Walter Huston, is a classic drama about three white prospectors searching for gold in the wilds of Mexico. Since the movie is older than most of my readers, I feel free to summarize key plot elements, but I will leave plenty of surprises.
The movie begins in Tampico, Mexico in 1925. Treasure was one of the first Hollywood films to be shot on location outside the United States and makes excellent use of local color. Humphrey Bogart plays Fred Dobbs, an American migrant laborer in Mexico. (more…)
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Bradley Cooper is a superb actor and director. I loved his A Star Is Born with Lady Gaga. So when I heard that Cooper was starring in and directing Maestro, a biopic about composer-conductor Leonard Bernstein, I had to see it.
Maestro is a masterful work of acting and directing. Bradley Cooper really brings Leonard Bernstein to life. Carey Mulligan is also superb as Bernstein’s wife Felicia. Indeed, there are no weak performances. The sets and costumes are meticulous. (more…)
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Disney’s six-part miniseries Obi-Wan Kenobi is so bad I was certain it was the work of Jar Jar Abrams. But no, it is the creation of someone named Deborah Chow.
Disney’s first Star Wars series, The Mandalorian, got off to a promising start. But I feared it was running out of ideas when the story kept returning to Tatooine. Another series, The Book of Boba Fett, never left Tatooine, and the Obi-Wan Kenobi miniseries begins and ends there. Tatooine rips off a lot from Arrakis, but sorry, it is not the most important planet in the universe. (more…)
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I was surprised at how much I liked Disney’s live action Star Wars series Andor, so I watched the Mouse’s next Star Wars series, Ahsoka. It was a trudge across vast, dreary plains of pulp, nostalgia, and estrogen-sodden wokeness — punctuated with peaks of genuine magic and drama.
The character of Jedi apprentice Ahsoka Tano, an orange-skinned alien, was created by George Lucas and Dave Filoni and first introduced in the 2008 animated film The Clone Wars, which focused on her relationship with Anakin Skywalker. (more…)
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Ridley Scott’s Napoleon is a bad movie, but not a terrible one. There are legions of nerds complaining about how Scott got this or that historical detail wrong. Honestly, that’s beside the point. Even if Scott didn’t know Saint Helena from Elba, he could still have made a great movie.
Everyone has heard of Napoleon. But what’s so great about Napoleon? Any film about Napoleon needs to answer that question. But in nearly three hours’ screen time, Scott fails to do so. (more…)
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Martin Scorsese, who turns 81 today, is a master of the gangster movie: Goodfellas, Casino, Gangs of New York, The Departed, The Irishman, and now Killers of the Flower Moon. Killers is the true story of a series of murders that took place in the 1920s on the Osage Indian Reservation in Oklahoma.
When oil was discovered under their reservation, the Osage nation became, in effect, the first oil sheikdom. The Osage cashed in their oil revenues for fancy houses, cars, clothes, and bling. Alcoholism, obesity, and diabetes ran rampant. (more…)
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All new Star Wars stories, like the denizens of a vast coral reef, need to inhabit nooks and crannies in the universe and narrative created by George Lucas. But there are better and worse ways to do this.
Disney has produced two kinds of Star Wars products: new and original stories and cynical, safe, nostalgic remakes. Four out of five of Disney’s Star Wars movies fell into the safe and cynical camp. (See my reviews of The Force Awakens, The Last Jedi, The Rise of Skywalker, and Solo.) (more…)
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Part 2 of 2 (Part 1 here)
After the climactic gunfight between Frank and Harmonica, the latter and Cheyenne say goodbye to Jill. But just outside of the McBain property, Cheyenne falters. Harmonica stops and turns with concern. It turns out that Cheyenne was mortally wounded by Morton. Like Jesus, he has a bleeding wound in his side. This comes as some surprise. He must have been putting up a brave front with Jill. But the surprise comes off as a rather contrived plot twist; one of many. (more…)
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Part 1 of 2 (Part 2 here)
I have had a difficult relationship with Sergio Leone’s Once Upon a Time in the West (1968). Parts of this film are so emotionally powerful as to be almost unendurable. Indeed, before I began work on this review, I had seen Once Upon a Time in the West only one time in full, on a rented VHS tape in the 1990s. I knew it was a great film, so I bought the VHS. But I could not bring myself to watch it again. (more…)
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Leftists ruin everything. Nothing, not even children’s toys, is immune from their hateful ideology. A case in point is Greta Gerwig’s Barbie. There are countless women who played with Barbie dolls as children, put them aside when they grew up, and occasionally think nostalgically about them without ever suspecting that they were the targets of Leftist consciousness-raising. But from the very start, Barbie sets them straight.
Barbie begins with a voiceover that sounds like a witch. In the bad old days, little girls only played with baby dolls, which their cunning parents foisted on them to brainwash them into wanting to become mothers. (more…)
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Christopher Nolan is one of my favorite living directors. The Dark Knight Trilogy, Inception, Interstellar, and Dunkirk are all big, eye-catching Hollywood spectacles, but with a difference. They are highly imaginative, deal with serious themes, have compelling dramatic conflicts, and are often quite moving. Nolan is not particularly politically correct, either. Granted, his last film, Tenet — with its ludicrous Affirmative Action Hero — was a major disappointment. But with Oppenheimer, he returns to form.
Oppenheimer has a highly literate script with important ideas and powerful dramatic situations, striking visuals without digital hokum, and superb performances from a vast cast. (more…)