is a blog about design, technology and culture written by Khoi Vinh, and has been more or less continuously published since December 2000 in New York City. Khoi is currently Principal Designer at Adobe. Previously, Khoi was co-founder and CEO of Mixel (acquired in 2013), Design Director of The New York Times Online, and co-founder of the design studio Behavior, LLC. He is the author of “How They Got There: Interviews with Digital Designers About Their Careers”and “Ordering Disorder: Grid Principles for Web Design,” and was named one of Fast Company’s “fifty most influential designers in America.” Khoi lives in Crown Heights, Brooklyn with his wife and three children.
After three home runs I expected “Anora,” Sean Baker’s newest movie, to leave the ballpark, especially after it won the Palme d’Or at Cannes. But it’s just a triple. I don’t know why baseball seems like such an apt metaphor for Baker’s oeuvre—this movie literally has nothing to do with America’s pastime. (Also, the Yankees lost the World Series in pretty humiliating fashion this year, so maybe I’m just coping with that.) Still, it’s hard to think of another 21st century director who has delivered so consistently over the past decade, and so I guess in a way Baker seems like an incredibly gifted athlete. Anyway!
“Anora” is oddly a ton of fun despite its thoroughly disheartening subject matter, mostly due to star Mikey Madison’s riveting, sympathetic portrait of an erotic dancer who gets involved with the son of a Russian oligarch, only to be pulled back from the edge of a life-changing union with brutal suddenness. Of course there’s a lot of enjoyment to be had thanks to Baker’s generous, humanistic storytelling instincts, especially in the way he allows Madison’s Anora and a motley crew of handlers to scramble all over south Brooklyn on a haphazard manhunt. This manic chase is driven more by the characters’ inner compasses than by plot contrivances that demand them to be in certain places at certain points in the story, as lesser movies would dictate.
This organic quality is key to Baker’s stories, but it falters here more than it has in the past, first in a subplot intended to humanize a would-be thug in Anora’s orbit that signals its intentions too loudly, too obviously and too early. More glaring is a third act appearance by the aforementioned oligarch and his wife, who seem to be annexed from another kind of movie entirely; they’re almost utterly devoid of the naturalism and humanity that Baker consistently bestows on virtually all of his characters. In truth the third act feels surprisingly lethargic as a result, but nevertheless Baker and Madison deliver a stunner—a home run, if you will—of an ending. It’s a virtually wordless scene that communicates untold volumes of emotional depth with shocking efficiency. I felt sincerely moved by it.
Roundup
Here’s the full list of all twelve movies that I saw in October. This is the latest in my monthly round-ups of what I watch. You can also see everything I logged in September, in August, in July, in June, in May, in April, in March, in February, in January, and summaries of everything I watched in 2023, 2022, 2021, 2020, 2019, 2018, 2017, and 2016. Also, you can always keep up with what I’m watching by following me on Letterboxd. In fact you can click the titles below to see the capsule reviews I’ve written there for just about all of these films.
“Reality Bites” (1994) ★½ Rewatched. I like almost everyone involved in this movie, but I hated this when it was released and I still hate it now.
“City Lights” (1931) ★★★★½ A long series of beautiful gags from Charlie Chaplin and then a final scene of such wonderful, exquisite tenderness and human understanding that feels as emotionally impactful as almost anything the cinema has ever produced.
“Mr. Klein” (1976) ★★★★ Alain Delon gets caught up in a Vichy-era case of mistaken identity that gets more and more terrifying with each scene. A disturbingly effective reminder of how fascism has no sympathies, and also a really, really depressing movie to watch this election season.
“Roxanne” (1987) ★★★½ Rewatched. Steve Martin is still radiant in this adaptation of the Cyrano De Bergerac story that feels more idyllic than ever, mostly because it exists entirely before the Internet.
“Repo Man” (1984) ★★★ This cult classic starring Emilio Estevez as a punk turned repossession agent is all verve and attitude, like a downtown art performance in the Reagan 80s. Still effective despite a scattered script.
“Red Rocket” (2021) ★★★★ Director Sean Baker’s follow up to “The Florida Project” is even more vibrant and alive in a way that most movies can’t even dream of being. Its story is genuine and hilarious and then, before you realize it, mortifying.
“Modern Times” (1936) ★★★★ Rewatched. Charlie Chaplin makes a delightful romp out of a distressingly bleak worldview.
“Anora” (2024) ★★★½ Also a ton of fun despite thoroughly disheartening subject matter.
“Red Rooms” (2023) ★★★½ A Quebecois serial killer thriller à la “Zodiac,” but updated with dark web vibes and technophilic verisimilitude. Gripping and disturbing.
“Saltburn” (2023) ★ An overly long, poorly calculated class drama from Emerald Fennel. Its biggest goof is assuming that audiences can find professional weirdo Barry Keoghan to be sympathetic.
“Christmas in July” (1940) ★★★ A pretty cute Preston Sturges fairy tale handicapped by two unremarkable leads. Genial but sleight compared to the director’s other works.
“Woman of the Hour” (2023) ★★½ Anna Kendrick’s directorial debut truly understands how women experience physical threat, but that core is surrounded by a shambles of plot threads and context setting.
Demi Moore is fantastic in director Coralie Fargeat’s “The Substance”—I guess? The actor has received tons of accolades for her unflinching turn in this satirical take on women aging in the entertainment industry. It’s a brave performance but it’s hard to really appreciate it, frequently obscured as it is by Fargeat’s bellicose direction, which loudly announces and belabors every thematic point it makes.
The first half, which works as a contemporary twist on “The Picture of Dorian Gray,” is a highly stylized, music video-like immersion in absurdity. The arch lens of Terry Gilliam’s “Brazil” comes to mind, except Fargeat’s manner is insanely didactic and really, really boring.
The second half becomes an extended indulgence in body horror, and not being a fan of that subgenre I feel unqualified to judge it. So the only comment I can really offer here is that it goes on for a long, long time, as if the director is determined to rub the audience’s faces in the grotesquerie of our collective ideals of female beauty. Does it go on too long? Probably. But again, if there’s a legit intellectual argument to be made for the value of just grossing the hell out of people, I’m not the one to make it. For what it’s worth, the vulgarity of Fargeat’s movie is far more interesting than the stylish set up that precedes it. I just wouldn’t want to watch any of this again.
Roundup
Here’s the full list of all twenty-one movies that I saw in September. This is the latest in my monthly round-ups of the movies I watch. You can also see everything I logged in August, in July, in June, in May, in April, in March, in February, in January, and summaries of everything I watched in 2023, 2022, 2021, 2020, 2019, 2018, 2017, and 2016. Also, you can always keep up with what I’m watching by following me on Letterboxd—where I’m also writing tons of capsule reviews.
“Drive” (2011) ★★★½ Rewatched. This is the last time Nicholas Winding Refn’s directorial voice was completely convincing.
“The Lady Eve” (1941) ★★★★★ Rewatched. No matter how many times I see this Preston Sturges masterpiece, every plot twist, every character beat, every sideways glance from this incredible cast of one-of-a-kind mugs and dames is a complete surprise.
“Dave” (1993) ★★★★ Rewatched. A normal guy accidentally becomes POTUS. Made in the 90s but as fanciful, corny, open hearted—and wonderful—as something from Hollywood’s golden age.
“La Chimera” (2023) ★★★★ Rewatched. Spent a lot of this viewing admiring the craft, the changes in aspect ratio and film stock, and the expert layering of visual motifs and thematic hints throughout.
“The Nest” (2020) ★★½ Jude Law and Carrie Coon in a glossy melodrama about how aspirations to wealth tear a family apart. It neither goes anywhere surprising nor unearths anything revealing about greed, ambition or its 1980s setting.
“Prometheus” (2012) ★½ Rewatched. I remembered this “Alien” prequel was dumb and it’s still dumb (like, really dumb!) but I had forgotten how slick the production design is. As dumb as it is, it looks just as great.
“Rebel Ridge” (2024) ★★★★ Director Jeremy Saulnier, of “Blue Ruin” and “Green Room,” gives us his take on a Jack Reacher tale. An uncommonly judicious revelation of an action movie.
“Lady Bird” (2017) ★★★½ Rewatched. There’s enough that this movie gets right that it can be easy to overlook how much of it is pretty rote and underdeveloped. That’s less true on a second watch, I found.
“The Palm Beach Story” (1942) ★★★ I watched this in an effort to recapture some of that spark from “The Lady Eve,” and it feels like director Preston Sturges was trying to do the same.
“The Devil (Probably)”” (1977) ★★★ First of all, terrific title for this deep dive into nihilism by Robert Bresson. The movie itself is occasionally fascinating but often looks and feels like dramatic posing in the style of fashion magazine ads.
“They All Laughed” (1981) ★★½ Director Peter Bogdanovich tries his hand at a madcap romantic comedy where everyone is in love with everyone else. Frustrating.
“The Substance” (2024) ★★½ This satire of the fight against aging makes for a dynamite theater experience, mostly when it turns into an ecstatic indulgence in body horror. But overall it’s not a great movie.
“Easy Street” (1917) ★★★½ An early Charlie Chaplin short that dives into poverty and policing, but hilarious.
“The Adventurer” (1917) ★★★ Charlie Chaplin combines two set pieces in one and goes from convict to country club.
“Polite Society” (2023) ★★ A UK-set, South Asian take on a “Crazy Rich Asians”-style cultural romp, a “Scott Pilgrim”-style action comedy, and a “Get Out”-style horror satire. It really has no idea what it’s doing most of the time.
“Rebel Ridge” (2024) ★★★★ Rewatched. Lost a bit of its electricity on second viewing but the tapestry of its story is even richer.
“Witness for the Prosecution” (1957) ★★★½ Very entertaining if a bit hokey courtroom drama from the pen of Agatha Christie. The real pleasure is Charles Laughton’s performance: haughty, extravagant, delightful.
“And Then There Were None” (1945) ★★★½ An early adaptation of Agatha Christie’s best story that runs just ninety-six minutes but still somehow feels more satisfying than most contemporary movies manage with runtimes of two-plus hours.
“The Verdict” (1982) ★★★★½ Rewatched. A finely calibrated courtroom drama written by David Mamet, directed by Sidney Lumet and starring a rundown Paul Newman in one of his best roles, with a phenomenal closing monologue.
“The Battle of Algiers” (1966) ★★★★ Searing, indelible portrait of the horrors of a revolution.
“Blade Runner 2049” (2017) ★★★★ Rewatched. The more I watch this, the more I realize how much better it is than the original—by just about every measure. Except for having a terrible Jared Leto performance.
It’s true that as humans we retell the same stories endlessly, but the Walt Disney Corporation has transformed this instinct into serpent that eats its own tail. When the studio reenacts their animated versions of folk tales with live actors, retread epics from a long time ago in a galaxy far, far away, or build interconnected cinematic universes out of decades-old comic book arcs, the “new” movies that result are not made in the grand storytelling tradition of yore, where timeless themes are reimagined for new audiences, with new ideas. Rather, Disney is selling us the same thing we bought before—or more specifically the memory of those things, just repackaged and reassembled.
So when some moviegoers—cranks like me—complain about the sameness of these stories that Disney produces, it’s worth pointing out that these are decidedly not genuine attempts to tell new stories that accidentally turned out to be heavily reminscent of their forbears. It’s probably not even accurate to think of them as films, but rather as new enterprises very purposefully stood up for the specific intent of reminding us how great those previous experiences were. “Remember this?” each movies asks. “Wasn’t it great? Here it is again.” It’s as if, instead of sending us on a new holiday abroad, they’re showing us a carousel of vacation slides from great trips we took many years ago. The only “new” thing here is the sale of another movie ticket.
That is exactly the impulse that drives director Fédé Alvarez’s “Alien: Romulus,” which I saw in theaters last month. Though Disney didn’t produce the original movies in this franchise, they now own 20th Century Fox and so for the first new installment under their watch it was almost inevitable that it would hew to this formula.
Alvarez works diligently to bring back all of the “Alien” greatest hits, including the grim, working class vibe from original director Ridley Scott, the artillery and pyrotechnics from original sequel director James Cameron, plenty of the biomorphic gore and weirdly sexual fluids from original alien designer H.R. Giger, and more. There are a few new things here but not very many: we get a younger, sexier but not particularly memorable cast; an appalling use of very bad CG to resuscitate a past franchise performer; and one zero-gravity scene that does something genuinely new with xenomorph bile.
Still, replaying old hits interspersed with a few new riffs can’t overcome at least one fundamental truth of going back to the same well too many times. Which is to say that, at the point where there are so many sequels in a franchise that many people literally have no idea whether a new entry counts as the sixth or the tenth or whatever, the potential to wow an audience, to really surprise them, is pretty low. For “Alien: Romulus,” this means that as the audience has by now seen the alien so many times, has become so familiar with its beats and tricks, that it’s just not very scary anymore. The xenomorphs that appear in this movie are grotesque and frightening, but they don’t feel new or viscerally dangerous anymore, largely because Alvarez is more focused on recreating the letter of his original templates than he is able to capture their spirit. All of the requisite hallmarks of what made “Alien” so distinctive are here, to be sure, and they’re all presented with adequate competency and in the expected order. But aside from a handful of jump scares, the characters on the screen seem to find the monster much scarier than I did. It’s hard to make a good horror movie when you don’t nail the horror.
Roundup
Here’s the full list of all twenty-two movies that I saw in August. This is the latest in my monthly round-ups of the movies I watch. You can also see everything I logged in July, in June, in May, in April, in March, in February, in January, and summaries of everything I watched in 2023, 2022, 2021, 2020, 2019, 2018, 2017, and 2016. Also, you can always keep up with what I’m watching by following me on Letterboxd—where I’m also writing tons of capsule reviews.
“Army of Shadows” (1969) ★★★½ (contains spoilers) Saw a restoration of this Jean-Pierre Melville classic about the French resistance in World War II. It’s frequently brilliant, but at 145 minutes, frankly gets a little boring.
“Baby Driver” (2017) ★★½ Rewatched. Edgar Wright’s rock’n’noir riff isn’t bad, but it is airless and very, very obvious.
“Dìdi (弟弟)” (2024) ★★½ First-time director Sam Wang’s coming-of-age story about a Chinese-American pre-teen in early 2000s, suburban California has a great lead actor in Izaac Wang. But he’s dragged down by a supporting cast of paper-thin characters and a pretty sappy final act.
“The Underneath” (1995) ★★★★ Rewatched. An early Soderbergh that’s largely been forgotten (in fact it’s only available as a DVD extra on the reissue of “King of the Hill,” another early film from the director). Its noir stylings are practically anachronistic (it is a remake of the classic “Criss Cross” after all) but I really dug it.
“Eileen” (2023) ★ More neo-noir, this time served up with a huge helping of melodrama, and starring Anne Hathaway and Thomasin Mackenzie. Unremarkable until a ridiculous third act that no one—not the leads, nor the director—knows how to navigate.
“Perfect Days” (2023) ★★★½ Widely praised Wim Wenders meditation on the contentment found late in life by a lonely cleaner of public restrooms in Tokyo. Beautiful but surprisingly plot-ty.
“Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga” (2024) ★★★★ Rewatched. This viewing, I was blown away by the ambition and delivery of Chris Hemsworth’s performance.
“Alien: Romulus” (2024) ★★½ Re-heated leftovers from a franchise that’s gone on way too long.
“Purple Noon” (1960) ★★★★ In honor of the passing of star Alain Delon, I watched his early, breakout performance in an adaptation of Patricia Highsmith’s “The Talented Mr. Ripley.” Delon is on fire in this movie, but director René Clement also delivers a ravishing production.
“La Chimera” (2023) ★★★★ An exquisite, richly textured storytelling feat from director Alice Rohrwacher, that takes its time revealing itself, in the best possible way. A real delight.
“GoldenEye” (1995) ★★ Pierce Brosnan’s first outing as 007 is exactly what the producers ordered, no more and no less.
“The Godfather” (1972) ★★★★★ Rewatched. Showed this to my daughter, who at the thirty-minute mark asked, “Is there a plot or is this just a bunch of Godfather stuff?” Immensely satisfying to share this with someone who’s never seen it before
“Midnight Run” (1988) ★★★★ Rewatched. Every time I rewatch this sparkling, hilarious, briskly paced, impeccably constructed road movie I feel like I need to watch it even more.
“Love Lies Bleeding” (2024) ★½ For a movie that purports to show us rare truths, everything about this ersatz 80s neo-noir feels really fake.
“Dead Poets Society” (1989) ★★½ Rewatched. Robin Williams’s careful, tender [[] is what makes this movie rise above its treacly, prestige-fare pretentions.
“Manhattan Murder Mystery” (1993) ★★★★ Rewatched. A barrel-of-monkeys murder mystery that’s also a lovely time capsule of early 90s New York City, without the tourist traps and postcard landmarks.
After a pretty rough start to the summer movie season, “Deadpool & Wolverine” rode into theaters to save the box office—and exhaust the heck out of me.
It was exhausting trying to figure out why I wasn’t laughing while the rest of the theater was cackling like mad. “Am I the asshole?,” as they say. It was exhausting to try to reconcile the glaring irony of this limp satire: the reality that acknowledging the hollowness of the super-hero genre while indulging in every single cliché of the genre isn’t clever or subversive at all. It’s just self-defeating.
The continued success of Deadpool as a product is a symptom of something really, terribly wrong with our culture. It’s a sign that we all think that if as consumers we “self own” with some meagre level of irony it somehow negates the fact that corporate culture has supplanted real art. That’s not just capitalism but capitulation—it’s worse! Objectively, demonstrably worse! It’s like we’re all trapped in a horrible shopping mall and someone offers to show us how to escape, but the escape route is really just a soulless shopping spree in that same godforsaken shopping mall.
It’s disheartening to the extreme, but I couldn’t figure out whether it was better or worse that Hugh Jackman, bless him, was honestly trying to deliver a real, honest-to-goodness, thespian performance. He wasn’t just cashing a paycheck (here I’m looking askance at Wesley Snipes) or trying to skate by on his flagrantly limited range (and here at Mr. Ryan Reynolds). No, Jackman was taking the whole thing rather seriously and legitimately working his butt off to deliver bona fide pathos. I felt so sorry for him. All he’s got to show for this miserable medicine show is tons and tons of money.
I also asked myself, “Wait a minute. Is this any worse than a Mad Magazine spoof?” I came to the conclusion that yes, it is worse, because you can read a Mad Magazine spoof in about five or ten minutes. This movie actually runs thirty-eight hours and seventeen minutes, if you measure it by the years off of your life that it takes.
Roundup
Here’s the full list of all twenty-two movies that I saw in July. This is the latest in my monthly round-ups of the movies I watch. You can also see everything I logged in June, in May, in April, in March, in February, in January, and summaries of everything I watched in 2023, 2022, 2021, 2020, 2019, 2018, 2017, and 2016. Also, you can always keep up with what I’m watching by following me on Letterboxd—where I’m also writing tons of capsule reviews.
“Blue Steel” (1990) ★★ It’s hard to take the idiotic script for this policier by director Kathryn Bigelow very seriously, but ultimately one has to respect how seriously Bigelow herself takes it.
“Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga” (2024) ★★★★ Rewatched. While my family went to see “Inside Out 2,” I took a moral stand and went to see this a third time instead.
“Seconds” (1966) ★★★½ The third in director John Frankeheimer’s so-called “paranoia trilogy” asks how a middle-aged white guy might live his life if he could start it all over again. First half convulses with energy like a downed power line. Second half loses its way. But the whole thing was shot beautifully by cinematographer James Wong Howe.
“Tomboy” (2011) ★★★ A young girl moves to a new city and decides to present herself as a boy. The amazing director Céline Sciamma makes this very disquieting drama feel like a harrowing thriller.
“The Karate Kid” (2010) ½ I convinced my kids to watch this and we all regretted it.
“The Asphalt Jungle” (1950) ★★★★★ Rewatched. One of the urtexts of film noir. Saw it projected in a theater for the first time. Brilliant.
“Throw Down” (2004) ★★ A beautifully shot, ornately digressive and ultimately confounding Hong Kong action movie that’s also a tribute to friendship, the works of Akira Kurosawa, judo, and, uh, Gillette razors.
“Targets” (1968) ★★★ Peter Bogdanovich’s debut movie is horrifying tale of mass murder and an aging Hollywood star. Clearly influential for Quentin Tarantino, though it’s not nearly as memorable.
“The Driver” (1978) ★★★★ A stripped down thriller with some of the best stunt driving I’ve ever seen and the heart of a meditative drama from Bresson.
“The Three Musketeers” (1993) ★★ Very, very nineties, but if you’re willing to excuse that, and turn off your brain, it’s kind of fun.
“Crime Story” (1993) ★★ Jackie Chan tries his hand at a gritty, serious police drama, but it feels like he’s stifled and held back, until it feels like he’s yearning to be in a Jackie Chan movie instead.
“Twisters” (2024) ★★½ I never intended to see this but sometimes you just go see a “Twister” sequel whether you like it or not.
“The Big Chill” (1983) ★★★★ People seem to hate this movie but it’s got a great script and great performances and it’s about human beings. Can we have more like this?
“Missing” (1982) ★★★★½ A stunning, stunning political thriller that turns into a wrenching personal drama, from notoriously thoughtful lefty director Costa-Gravas. Recommended.
“Bonjour Tristesse” (1958) ★ A pretty dimwitted, preachy melodrama that’s a low point for director Otto Preminger. But its greatest offense is a really, really bad poster from Saul Bass.
“King of the Hill” (1993) ★★★ An early drama from Steven Soderbergh about a young boy left to fend for himself in a Missouri hotel room in the Depression. Shows plenty of promise, but the director can’t quite tip it over into a true classic.
“The Trip Across Paris” (1956) ★★★ Two strangers haul four suitcases full of black market pork across occupied Paris in 1942, starring Jean Gabin. Genial if a bit moralistic.
“The First Slam Dunk” (2022) ★★★½ I did not know that a high school basketball game could be animated as beautifully and with as much emotional resonance as it is in this Japanese anime.
“Sorcerer” (1977) ★★★★½ Rewatched. Director William Friedkin does so many things right, makes so many impeccable choices, pulls off so many artistic triumphs, it’s almost unbelievable that this masterpiece exists.
“The Beast” (2023) ★★★ A truly bizarre, often adventurous, mostly but not entirely successful hybrid of costume drama, horror, future shock and Lynch-ian weirdness from director Bertrand Bonello.
You might’ve missed writer-director Francis Galluppi’s debut feature “The Last Stop in Yuma County” when it rolled out direct-to-video not long ago and without a ton of fanfare. Even if you had heard about it you might not have paid much attention anyway, unless you’re particularly attuned to new instances of noir-ish, Coen Brothers-esque indie fare. But seeing how this kind of thing is squarely in my wheelhouse, when I heard that it was a better-than-average example of a noir-ish, Coen Broethers-esque indie film, I rented it straightaway. And it’s really good! Given its lack of recognizable stars, obviously limited budget and not particularly original premise—a group of strangers converge on a diner and encounter a pair of criminals and some really bad luck—it’s far better than it has any right to be. If you’re at all sympathetic to the admittedly old-fashioned notion that “a good time at the movies” can be had from watching a bunch of normal people pitted against their worst instincts—without a happy ending—this might be one for you.
On the other hand, if gentle-hearted affirmation of the value of platonic friendship is more your thing, you might be more interested in Pablo Berger’s animated adaptation of “Robot Dreams,” originally a graphic novel by artist and writer Sara Varon. The virtually dialogue-free film is a Spanish-French co-production, but it’s also one of the most poetic odes to pre-9/11 New York City that you’re likely to see. The story, which revolves around a friendship between an anthropomorphic dog and a robot, takes place in Manhattan in the 1980s, and the level of faithful urban details it reproduces from that era is extraordinary. The drama itself is similarly loving; it renders its characters and their caring friendship with tremendous sympathy and affection without resorting to the maudlin tactics common to less inspired animated movies. Had the movie run about fifteen or so minutes shorter, it could’ve been a masterpiece, but as it is, it’s still well worth a watch.
Roundup
Here’s the full list of all eighteen movies that I saw in June. This is the latest in my monthly round-ups of the movies I watch. You can also see everything I logged in May, in April, in March, in February, in January, and summaries of everything I watched in 2023, 2022, 2021, 2020, 2019, 2018, 2017, and 2016. Also, you can always keep up with what I’m watching by following me on Letterboxd—where I’m also writing tons of capsule reviews.
“The Last Stop in Yuma County” (2023) ★★★½ A handful of strangers stuck at a diner encounter some terrible luck in this debut from director Francis Galluppi that far exceeds expectations.
“The Hudsucker Proxy” (1994) ★★★★ Rewatched. Completely on point send-up of late 1930s screwball comedies, even if it oddly sets its action two decades too late.
“Topkapi” (1964) ★½ Extremely zany 1960s heist movie that is so listless and meandering it’s hard to believe it’s from Jules Dassin, director of the magnificent “Rififi.”
“Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga” (2024) ★★★★ Rewatched. On second viewing, this is an even richer movie and more clearly its own artistic statement rather than just a sequel to a masterpiece.
“Mothra vs. Godzilla” (1964) ★ So bizarre in so many ways that you’re almost beguiled by its randomness, but it’s just not that fun.
“Hit Man” (2023) ★½ A perfectly fine premise from a revered director somehow gets reduced to a steaming pile of mediocrity.
“Heathers” (1989) ★★★ Rewatched. Its surreal, daydream-like vibe is still a very effective grounding for a very dark tale of high school angst and morality.
“Mad Max” (1979) ★★★½ Rewatched. I previously underestimated this movie. The filmmaking and craft here are all raw but visionary.
“Water Lilies” (2007) ★★★★ This debut from “Portrait of a Lady on Fire” director Céline Sciamma shows she was on point from the very start, and one of the best directors working.
“Mad Max 2” (1981) ★★★★ Rewatched. Still stunned by the leap of faith that director George Miller took to get from the very first “Mad Max” movie, which was by comparison just a sketch, to this bracingly crafted, fully realized vision. Incredible work.
“Robot Dreams” (2023) ★★★ This delightful, hand-drawn adaptation of a graphic novel is a rare expression of genuine belief in the value and difficulty of platonic friendship, and an ode to the lost New York City of the pre-9/11 years too. Almost a masterpiece.
“All of Us Strangers” (2023) ★★★ A gay man meets a new lover and revisits his parents at the same time in this beautifully made but thickly precious weepie. The ending is a bit of a head scratcher but the real achievement here is Andrew Scott’s performance.
“Mad Max: Fury Road” (2015) ★★★★★ (contains spoilers) Rewatched. This is my eighth time watching this! And yet it was a very different experience revisiting it after “Furiosa.”
“A Little Romance” (1979) ★★½ Two young kids in late 1970s Paris fall in love and run off together in a proto-“Moonrise Kingdom” from director George Roy Hill. More charming than it is actually good, though.
“Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome” (1985) ★★½ Rewatched. The other Mad Max movies get better with each viewing but I’m sad to say this one gets worse.
“Hearts Beat Loud” (2018) ★★½ Could’ve been called “A Very Brooklyn Christmas,” even though it doesn’t take place at Christmas—it’s just so peak-boro. But it’s also kind of winning, with two lovely lead performances by Nick Offerman and Kiersey Clemons as a father and daughter who start a band together.
“Dead Men Don't Wear Plaid” (1982) ★½ A valentine to black and white noir from the 1940s that gets flattened out by all the technical contortions it goes through to pay homage to those films.
“Zola” (2020) ★★★★ Terrific, blast-of-energy filmmaking enlivens a crazy Twitter-thread about two exotic dancers on a road trip. I really dug this.
The takeaway from the May box office was that it was a disaster. Receipts were down by almost a third compared to the three years leading up to the pandemic, a frightening statistic for anyone worried about the future of movie theaters.
I’m pretty cynical about this stuff and my natural instinct would be to declare that “The general public just isn’t interested in quality movies.” The reality though was more nuanced than that. Yes, a number of less-than-good movies seemed to have performed decently, e.g. “IF” and “The Garfield Movie,” neither of which I’ve seen but, really, who really needs to actually see these? “Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes” also did well, and while I actually liked this one, I’m not sure its success is owed to its provocatively ambiguous ideas about humanity as much as to the fact that it has apes on horseback kicking ass.
It’s also true that some well-reviewed films missed the mark, like “The Fall Guy” and “Challengers.” I did see both of those and while I thought they had their merits, neither of them was an outright home run. Personally I would have liked to see them do better business, but the fact that they didn’t earn gobs of money does make a certain amount of sense.
The one that really disheartened me was the frankly terrible box office for George Miller’s “Furiosa.” In hindsight this newest entry in the four decade-long series was always going to be a tough sell, as it’s a prequel to Miller’s “Fury Road” made without that film’s two leads. It’s also an extremely difficult task to follow such an iconic movie; against all expectations, “Fury Road” became one of the most beloved and well-regarded masterworks of the 21st Century. You can’t make a follow-up with the same characters and in the same universe without inviting direct comparisons.
Despite all of that, “Furiosa” is much more than just a weak echo in its franchise chamber. It crackles with an energy and life that’s rare in movies of any era. The explosive stunt work and practical effects alone, always a hallmark of this franchise, both reach new heights, and the movie explores its post-apocalyptic landscape with greater depth and nuance than we’ve seen before. There were many moments watching “Furiosa” when I just shook my head in amazement at the sheer audacity and invention on display. Miller, at a sprightly seventy-nine years old, is still bursting with wild, unprecedented ideas that he somehow turns into cinematic reality at a rate that most filmmakers less than half his age couldn’t dream of.
This prequel is not, however, perfect—nor is it even as nearly perfect as its predecessor was. You can find many detailed arguments online about how it falls short in its protagonist’s motivations, in its use of computer graphics, in its inability to resolve the cul-de-sac nature of the prequel form, and more. I find some of these criticisms valid and others not so much, but for me none of them dilute the worth of this film. It’s still a towering achievement that thrilled me to my bones. So long as he’s making films at this level, so long as he’s aiming as high as he is, I regard it as a privilege to be here for whatever Miller puts on the screen. Put another way, even the paintings that Picasso made after “Guernica” are still Picassos.
Roundup
Here’s the full list of all twenty-two movies that I watched in May. This is the latest in my monthly round-ups of movies I’ve been watching. You can also see everything I watched in April, in March, in February, in January, and summaries of everything I watched in 2023, 2022, 2021, 2020, 2019, 2018, 2017, and 2016. Also, you can always keep up with what I’m watching by following me on Letterboxd—where I’m also writing tons of capsule reviews.
“Godzilla” (1954) ★★½ It’s easy to see how this original, the one that started a decades-long franchise, was startling and novel, and in the detailed miniature work that the rubber-suited Godzilla stomps all over it does retain some of that fascination, but as a narrative it’s pretty humdrum.
“Brief Encounter” (1945) ★★★★ Rewatched. Showed this incandescently romantic, post-War fairy tale to the family. Half of them adored it, the other half said it was boring but good. So, a win, I guess?
“Knife in the Water” (1962) ★★★ This early directorial effort from Roman Polanski, in which three basically unlikable people go for a boat ride together for no discernible reason, is really well made but also kind of dumb.
“Mikey and Nicky” (1976) ★★★ John Cassavetes and Peter Falk in a brutal character study of two friends on the fringes of the mob, directed by the legendary Elaine May. Beautifully shot, but it’s a showcase for some uneven acting more than a triumph of screenwriting.
“The Rainmaker” (1997) ★★ Someone told me this movie was good. I don’t think that personn really understands what it means to say a Francis Ford Coppola movie is “good.” This is not a “good” Francis Ford Coppola movie.
“Challengers” (2024) ★★½ I don’t like director Luca Guadagnino’s movies but the first half of this was great. And then it’s just really not great at all, and in the end I hated it.
“The Fall Guy” (2024) ★★★ This incredibly okay movie should’ve found a bigger audience, but then what do I know?
“The Breaking Ice” (2023) ★★★ Three listless twenty-somethings wander an unsympathetic town in northern China looking for cheap thrills, personal connection and free flowing liquor. Except for its setting, near the border with North Korea, this is stuff we’ve seen before many times, which isn’t to say it’s bad, really.
“Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes” (2024) ★★★½ This latest installment in the long-running series traffics in an unexpected amount of ambiguity that may or may not be intentional. Either way, I enjoyed it way more than I expected, which is usually the case with this franchise that often under-promises and over-delivers.
“12 Angry Men” (1957) ★★★★½ Showed it to the family and they agreed: it’s a feat that director Sidney Lumet packs so much goodness into a one-room drama that runs only ninety-five minutes long. A true masterpiece.
“Suzume” (2022) ★★★ This anime fantasy about a young girl led into a wondrous other world by a dreamy boy is all clichés, but gorgeously, intricately rendered, just as you would expect from the guy who directed the amazing “Wolf Children.”
“A Matter of Life and Death” (1946) ★★★½ A whimsical take on the afterlife and how orderly, polite and very English it is, by the legendary duo of Emeric Pressburger and Michael Powell. Worth it mainly for the immense scale of the fanciful sets—jaw dropping.
“Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga” (2024) ★★★★ This will forever live in the shadow of its predecessor, which is fair but also unfair. It’s imperfect, but it’s also a stunning work on its own.
“Escape from the Planet of the Apes” (1971) ★ If the idea of a movie about futuristic apes time traveling back to 1971 sounds dumb to you—really dumb—then you know what you need to know about this third installment in the original pentalogy.
“Conquest of the Planet of the Apes” (1972) ★★★ I almost skipped this because of how bad its immediate predecessor was, but it’s an entirely different animal, no pun intended. Dark, hellishly modern and cynical, this is among the best of the whole franchise.
“The Sting” (1973) ★★★★½ Rewatched. Every detail sparkles with a halcyon glow, like an old 78 rpm record buzzing with warm crackles and pops. A marvelous entertainment.
“Mambar Pierrette” (2023) ★★★½ A cinéma vérité style narrative about a single mother in Cameroon who struggles against a string of unfortunate events to equip her kids with what they need for the back-to-school season. It’s beautiful and heartbreaking, but also suspiciously borders on misery porn.
“Go” (1999) ★★ Rewatched. Once this struck me as amusing. Now this post-“Pulp Fiction,” nonlinear, hipster comedy from the nineties feels hollow.
“Tori and Lokita” (2022) ★★★ Another cavalcade of bad news from the Dardennes Brothers, masters of these sympathetic portraits of those left behind by contemporary social systems. This is powerful, but I really have to wonder whether it’s feeding a jaundiced Western stereotype.
“Ferris Bueller's Day Off” (1986) ★★★★ Rewatched. Structured so ingeniously and elegantly, it feels like comic music.
“The Souvenir: Part II” (2021) ★★★★ Joanna Hogg’s follow up to her 2020 masterpiece “The Souvenir” is a sequel that no one expected or even asked for, but it’s a triumph. We get all of the naturalistic stylization of the original, plus a shockingly deft foray into a fantastical blurring of the line between fiction and filmmaking.
Like a lot of people, once I saw the trailer for Alex Garland’s “Civil War,” a dystopian thriller set in a near future America where factions of oddly aligned formerly-united states turn the country into a battleground, I just dreaded it. It seemed oddly insensitive to the current political climate where known insurrectionists are running for office openly and shamelessly. The scenes shown in the previews suggested that Garland was using the prospect of Americans being actively, militarily at one another’s throats as a provocative backdrop for some kind of artistic statement—it’s hard to tell what kind of statement from just a trailer, but whatever it might be, it seemed potentially exploitative if not inflammatory. I found myself asking whether we really needed a movie like this at this time?
When I saw it in theaters last month I realized that in the same way that this review I’m writing is not really a complete, coherent review, Alex Garland’s latest movie is not a complete, coherent movie. To be fair, “Civil War” is a far better movie than this is a review; it’s bracingly paced, full of furious tension, and it features on its soundtrack two tunes from legendary psych-rock pioneers Suicide. But it’s also not much of an artistic statement. It is, as I suspected, exploitative, but it’s also so sleight in its willingness to make any kind of artistic statement, much less a political one, that it feels less inflammatory than it does dismissible.
The first two-thirds are basically an echo of the script Garland wrote for the now-classic zombie movie he wrote two decades ago, “28 Days Later,” but set in a civil war. In fact, watching this new film it’s sometimes difficult to remember that it’s not a zombie movie at all, so familiar are all of us now to scenes of abandoned, war-scarred American landscapes as settings for stories of the undead.
The only thing that really reminds us that this is a different kind of movie altogether is the exposition that sets up, in the scantest of detail, the forces at play in this war. That, and all the energy spent explaining what Journalism is and how Journalists practice it. The experience of those reporting on the war, particularly those who photograph it, is what Garland is primarily interested in here and not the war itself. As such, he spins a quest narrative that allows the three journalists at the center of his script to make Garland’s points about the importance of their work—with surprisingly clunky, exposition-laden dialogue. I’ve watched plenty of movies that have done far worse jobs using their characters as mouthpieces for their ideas, but for a filmmaker as controlled and precise as Garland, this seemed unexpectedly creaky.
The last third of the movie is much, much better, but then the climatic battle that comprises it is mostly just an extremely well executed action set piece that takes place in Washington, DC. Garland does manage to let his characters shine in the last act more than in the first two, but overall he does little to explore who they are or what makes them complex beyond their single, defining character traits: jaded angst (Kirstin Dunst), macho thrill-seeking (Wagner Moura), sage wisdom (Stephen McKinley Henderson, superb as always) and naked ambition (Cailee Spaeny). These performers all do the best they can but they’re trapped within their thinly written roles.
In fact, the meager character development joins a list of Things that Garland Is Conspicuously Not Interested in Examining. Other items include the relevance of an imagined civil war to the real world circa 2024, and the impact of such a conflict on civilians. This unwillingness to draw parallels between his fictional world and the red and blue state divide in contemporary America has been widely debated of course, and many have found fault with Garland for this. As artistically evasive as this creative decision is, it doesn’t even bother me all that much, to be honest. What does really grate on me is that Garland seems to have shockingly limited interest in what he professes to be examining: the actual journalism itself.
The movie is focused almost exclusively on the vicarious thrill of shadowing combatants in wartime, but it flagrantly tunes out aspects of that practice like, for example, the ethics of embedding with armed forces, the process of turning observation and photographic images into actual stories, the role of those stories in the way war unfolds, and the impact of those stories on the world at large—and we’re not even mentioning the existential question of whether journalism as a trade is even viable anmore. That’s a really extensive list of things that Garland excuses himself from addressing, and the film is noticeably poorer for it. Ultimately, “Civil War” turns out not to be as inflammatory as I expected; because of all the things it shies away from, it ends up being mostly forgettable.
Three Indies
I had considerably more fun watching a handful of small-scale indie films that I would heartily recommend to anyone who’s looking for low-stakes productions that actually manage to put forward distinctive artistic statements. “Late Night with the Devil” is an imperfect but boldly unique horror film that’s set, of course, in the world of 1970s late night talk shows. “Molli and Max in the Future” is a “When Harry Met Sally”-style, off-the-wall and very endearing romantic comedy set in outer space. And “Hundreds of Beavers” is…it’s just insane and it’s hard to believe it exists, or that anyone really had the wherewithal to make it, especially on a tiny budget. I watched it twice! You should watch it at least once.
Roundup
Here’s the full list of all nineteen movies (twenty, if you count my second viewing of “Hundreds of Beavers”) that I watched in April. This is the latest in my monthly round-ups of movies I’ve been watching. You can also see everything I watched in March, in February, in January, and summaries of everything I watched in 2023, 2022, 2021, 2020, 2019, 2018, 2017, and 2016. Also, you can always keep up with what I’m watching by following me on Letterboxd—where I’m also writing tons of capsule reviews.
“The Hunt for Red October” (1990) ★★★★ Rewatched. Read the book in high school and thought it was garbage but the movie at least is an unimpeachable example of plot construction and breathless pace.
“The Girl Who Leapt Through Time” (2006) ★★★ Lovely time loop-themed film from Mamoru Hosoda, director of “Wolf Children,” who brings a wonderful mix of clarity and abstraction to his remarkably precise anime style.
“La Haine” (1995) ★★★★ Brutal, raw, frequently dreamlike banlieu tale set the morning after a ghetto riot on the outskirts of Paris. Clearly indebted to Lee’s “Do the Right Thing” but also fully its own expression.
“Rolling Thunder” (1977) ★★★ Tarantino is a huge fan of this grindhouse pic that’s really a haunting character study. Fascinating in its balance of those two sensibilities, but otherwise it’s not much more than perfectly okay.
“Die Hard 2” (1990) ★½ Rewatched. Schlocky and slack in all the ways that its predecessor was brainy and taut, this is a movie that thinks acknowledging its own absurd, craven existence earns it some kind of pass on being a patently absurd, craven cash grab.
“Die Hard: With a Vengeance” (1995) ★★½ John McTiernan, the director of the original “Die Hard,” comes back to show everyone how it’s done. It actually works really, surprisingly well for a good stretch—until it doesn’t.
“After Life” (1998) ★★★½ Like the title says, this is a supposition of what happens after you die, by Hirokazu Kore-eda, a master of humanist storytelling. Its fantastical premise is executed with extraordinarily simple, even rudimentary staging, which is amazing for a long time. Then it kind of drops the ball with a too convenient, late inning reveal that lets down what came before it.
“Late Night with the Devil” (2023) ★★★½ A brash B-movie that tries to recreate the feeling of late night television, circa 1977, in the form of a supernatural horror thriller. Not fully successful, but a lot of fun.
“The Thomas Crown Affair” (1999) ★★★½ Rewatched. A brisk romp, never boring for a moment, and reasonably clever about the heist antics at the center of its corny romance.
“Molli and Max in the Future” (2023) ★★★½ Another ballsy indie film that does a lot with its tiny budget and an extra-large helping of hilarious ideas.
“Birth” (2004) ★★★ I had no idea this 20-year old Jonathan Glazer psychodrama was so high concept. For a while it’s convincingly gripping and Glazer really ratchets up the tension. But by the end it can’t escape how goofy it is.
“Spirited Away” (2001) ★★ Rewatched. This movie feels completely empty to me.
“Now You See Me” (2013) ★★ Rewatched. This movie is unabashedly dumb, makes no sense and even undercuts the craftsmanship of real world magicians. But I somehow don’t hate it.
“Blue Beetle” (2023) ★★ This movie was always going to be bland. But director Angel Manuel Soto nevertheless managed to smuggle in a true Latinx sensibility into what is really no worse (or better) than any number of post-“Iron Man” derivatives. That counts as progress too, I guess.
“Kiss the Blood Off My Hands” (1948) ★★★★ Black-as-night film noir set in a foggy, damp, post-blitz London that feels like a time warp back to the Victorian area. Starring a radiant Joan Fontaine as a kind of anti-femme fatale, and Burt Lancaster at his brutal best.
“All Night Long” (1962) ★★★★ Rewatched. Saw this strange, jazz-inflected riff on “Othello” starring Patrick McGoohan when I was a teenager and it really stuck with me. I was happy to find that it still holds up.
“Hundreds of Beavers” (2022) ★★★½ This microbudget, live-action mashup of silent film-era comedies and Looney Tunes is just off-the charts on the scale of “Why would anyone make this?!” but it’s amazing nevertheless. Not perfect but highly, highly recommended.
“Hundreds of Beavers” (2022) ★★★½ Rewatched. I thought it was so amazing that I had to show it to my family, and they agreed.
“Deadpool” (2016) ★ Rewatched with my kid, who couldn’t stop laughing, which taught me that this movie just isn’t for me and that’s okay. It’s also okay for me to hate it.
“Civil War” (2024) ★★★ Director Alex Garland’s provocative, well-made imagining of what most Americans fear (or hope for) isn’t the artistic statement that Garland seems to think it is. This is mostly because he seems to excuse himself from really addressing a series of issues and ideas that his exploitative script continually bring up.
Sometimes the best movie experiences are the ones that you go into with few expectations, or maybe even with a bit of reluctance. On a cold, incredibly rainy night in March, the kind of evening where staying warm and dry sounds even better than going to see a movie, my wife and I somehow roused ourselves to trek all the way from Brooklyn to the Upper West Side of Manhattan to see a screening of “The Temple Woods Gang.” This 2022 noir from Franco-Algerian director Rabah Ameur-Zaïmeche was being shown as part of a festival of recent French movies at Film at Lincoln Center, and we went at the suggestion of some friends, not really knowing anything about it.
Ameur-Zaïmeche’s film is a sobering story of a misfit band of losers from a Parisian housing project who conspire to rob what turns out to be an incredibly dangerous victim, and the backlash that ensues. It’s told with bracing, efficient skill, with little to no exposition in the dialogue, and barebones audio—there’s no score to speak of. If you eat up this kind of raw, minimalist filmmaking, and I do, then this is for you. At the same time, it’s also humanist and contemplative; the director takes long detours from the plot to linger on quiet moments like an aria at a funeral, a racehorse and jockey rounding the track, an antagonist dancing along with a club deejay, and more—these add a real poetry to the violent proceedings. Superb stuff and totally worth the cold temperatures and downpour.
On a different night when I did stay home, my family and I watched Mamoru Hosoda’s 2012 anime film “Wolf Children.” I’d seen it before and remembered liking it, though it was only on this second watch that I realized what a masterpiece this fantastical story about a young mother raising two werewolves is. For context I’ll offer a hot take on anime: most of it bores me, even the work of Studio Ghibli. Maybe especially the work of Studio Ghibli, which I find to be visually spectacular but thematically tiresome and egregiously incompetent when it comes to character development. Yes, I said it! Anyway, Hosoda’s work, for me, inverts Ghibli’s formula of huge spectacle and thinly drawn characters; what “Wolf Children” offers instead is eloquently dimensional protagonists set against a backdrop of quotidian imagery that’s drawn with such precise, loving care that it becomes fantastical in a way you never knew the world around us could be. That’s the kind of animation magic that resonates for me, even if there’s not a cat-bus in sight.
Roundup
Here’s the full list of all sixteen movies I watched in March. This is the latest in my monthly round-ups of movies I’ve been watching. You can also see everything I watched in February, in January, and summaries of everything I watched in 2023, 2022, 2021, 2020, 2019, 2018, 2017, and 2016. Also, you can always keep up with what I’m watching by following me on Letterboxd—where I’m also writing tons of capsule reviews.
“Dune: Part Two” (2024) ★★★★½ First of three times seeing it in a month.
“Friedkin Uncut” (2018) ★★ Despite lots of original interview footage of its subject, this documentary about the life and career of William Friedkin, one of the greatest directors of modern cinema, is not as interesting as the man or his work.
“Night Falls on Manhattan” (1996) ★★★★ An underappreciated gem from Sidney Lumet about how a debacle of a police manhunt reverberates through pre-Giuliani New York.
“Mad Max: Fury Road” (2015) ★★★★★ Rewatched. This movie is nine years old already and it’s still a miracle, but its scant CG effects are just starting to show their age.
“The Temple Woods Gang” (2022) ★★★★ Steadfastly minimal yet also ardently humanist story of small time criminals in a Parisian banlieue who get in over their heads.
“Dune: Part Two” (2024) ★★★★½ Rewatched. Second viewing confirmed it for me: this is an honest-to-goodness masterpiece, not just for its spectacle but for the way it peoples its fantastical landscape landscape with authentic, dimensional human characters.
“Beverly Hills Ninja” (1997) ★½ Director Dennis Dugan must’ve had to work extra hard to deliver this film with so much incompetence that it manages to blot out all of Chris Farley’s comic radiance.
“Ready Player One” (2018) ★★ A gigantic misfire from Steven Spielberg that’s so bad it really made me wonder how the director got so far off track.
“Amanda” (2022) ★★★½ This is a genial, American-style indie movie—except that this time the conspicuously quirky, child-like adult at its center is, unexpectedly, a young woman living in the bourgeois Italian countryside.
“Mishima: A Life in Four Chapters” (1985) ★★★★ A beautiful, abstractly constructed biopic of Japanese writer Yukio Mishima from the master of stories about disturbed men with a code, Paul Schrader.
“Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny” (2023) ★ For the rest of their lives, everyone involved in this will have to live with that fact that they were involved with this.
“Dune: Part Two” (2024) ★★★★½ Rewatched. Even on the third viewing, this gets better and better.
“Dune” (2021) ★★★★ Rewatched. Revisited this with my daughter as she got ready to see the sequel.
“Wolf Children” (2012) ★★★★ Rewatched. A sparkling, soulful fantasy about coping with otherness that surprised me the first time and that I felt even more profoundly on this second viewing. It also confirmed for me that I actually can enjoy anime—it usually bores me to tears—or at least I can when it’s as thoughtful about character development as this one is.
“Mirai” (2018) ★★★½ From the same director: an anime “Where the Wild Things Are” for the 21st Century. Loaded with gorgeously precise, quotidian imagery that comes alive and enters the realm of the fantastical through sheer storytelling, underpinned by deep reserves of empathy for the inner lives of young children.
As the title suggests, Denis Villeneuve’s “Dune: Part Two” is really the climactic second half of the original book. So it benefits from comprising all of the biggest, most dramatic set pieces that naturally fall into the second half of most novels. It’s scaled up and larger than “Part One”; its action is more sweeping and it gives you the satisfaction of (more or less) resolving the actual storyline that ended on a cliffhanger in its predecessor.
If you show up at the theater—an IMAX theater, ideally—expecting to see operatic space intrigue, enormous spacecraft, towering explosions and people riding the backs of building-sized sand worms, you get all of this, in spades. Villeneuve is among the most gifted directors working today, and everything he delivers here is in the ninety-ninth percentile of the smartest and more impactful blockbuster filmmaking of the past several decades.
But the movie that the director fashions from author Frank Herbert’s original, already ornate architecture is also much deeper and more complex than both its predecessor and, surprisingly, the source material. Villeneuve makes a series of key choices that decouple his movie from the book, finding ingenious ways to both simplify the many, many ideas packed into Herbert’s prose while also fleshing others out with his uncommon ingenuity and insight.
Primarily, he confronts more directly and much less sentimentally than one would expect the question of the white savior trope at the heart of the narrative. His movie does more than just pay lip service to the subtextual quandary of whether we, with our buckets of popcorn and giant-sized sodas, should really be rooting for Timothée Chalamet’s Paul Atreides, a western-coded white male who ostensibly rescues a third world-coded population?
The script that Villeneuve cowrote with Jon Spaihts tweaks the book’s twists and turns to offer a more honest truth about the devil’s bargain that the protagonist strikes in order to achieve victory. One of its key methods is to refactor Zendaya’s Chani, elevating the character from a fundamentally inert “girlfriend” role into a much more crucial element of the story. In this conception, Chani becomes a unique kind of audience surrogate. Not in the common sense of that role, where a naïve or uninitiated character allows a movie’s script to basically explain the rules of the world to them and, by extension, to those of us watching. Rather, Chani is a beacon for 21st century filmgoers’ skepticism of not just that white savior trope, but also of the kind of cult of personality that fuels the rise of Chalamet’s character. Chani is objective, protesting and vocal as events unfold with ominous undertones, and Zendaya, to my surprise, delivers a rivetingly convincing performance. With every line reading, every penetrating stare or glance, she communicates a richly conflicted interiority that propels the counterstory forward. It’s a remarkable performance that I didn’t appreciate for its full artfulness and effectiveness until my second viewing. Yes, I saw it a second time, and it won’t be the last time.
It’s worth pointing out how significant it is that such complicated performances and ideas are at the heart of what’s shaping up to be a sizable box office hit. In his weekly box office analysis newsletter FranchisRE, David A. Gross comments on the recent string of disappointing super-hero releases in the context of the success of “Dune: Part Two”:
With a few exceptions (Star Wars, Avatar), superheroes surpassed science fiction in popularity during their dominant run. In their heyday, superheroes would have scoffed at vulnerable human characters like these. Superheroes don’t need gizmos on their nose to survive. They can fly through any atmospheric conditions. They can do whatever they want. They’re omnipotent.
But look what’s happening now. Audiences are connecting with these human, vulnerable faces, while superheroes have grown self-absorbed and detached. ‘Dune’ is leading with its humanity, while superheroes are having a hard time holding on to theirs.”
I’m a huge fan of Gross’s sentiment, but I’m not ready to declare victory just yet. Even if, inspired by “Dune,” studios suddenly start greenlighting a series of pensive, complex, people-centered science fiction epics, how do you replicate the once-in-a-generation talent of Denis Villeneuve? Still, we can always hope for better movies because once in a while, as with this one, we actually get them.
Roundup
Here’s the full list of all twelve movies I watched in February. (Technically I first saw “Dune: Part Two” on the first day of March, but I’m sneaking it into this post.) This is the latest in my monthly roundups of movies I’ve been watching. You can also see everything I watched in January, and summaries of everything I watched in 2023, 2022, 2021, 2020, 2019, 2018, 2017, and 2016. Also, you can always keep up with what I’m watching by following me on Letterboxd—where I’m also writing tons of capsule reviews.
“The Goonies” (1985) ★½ This inane, Spielbergian kids adventure includes a tremendous amount of shouting and is tonally all over the place—but some people adore it, for some reason. I don’t get it.
“Adventures of Arsène Lupin” (2004) ★ Incomprehensible, ridiculous and bombastic rendering of the classic French story of a gentleman thief, but I still watched it all the way through to see Kristin Scott Thomas.
“American Fiction” (2023) ★★★½ A genial satire about the publishing industry and the market for Black literature. It’s really more of a comfort than a provocation, but it’s still wickedly funny.
“Killers of the Flower Moon” (2023) ★★★ Rewatched. Few people seem to be willing to acknowledge that this Scorsese epic is not just overly long, but also a storytelling mess. Not me, I say it like it is.
“Defending Your Life” (1991) ★★★½ Rewatched. This Albert Brooks comedy about how we’re judged after we die went over my head as a teenager, but I get it now: it’s about being middle aged.
“The Caine Mutiny Court-Martial” (2023) ★★★ A very watchable cinematic staging of the classic play with two fatal flaws: a rocky performance from Kiefer Sutherland and an unwillingness to rethink the play’s dumb ending.
“The English Patient” (1996) ★★★★ Rewatched. An epic romance that has all the signs of the kind of prestige Oscar bait that I normally decry, except in this case it’s somehow extraordinarily good.
“Cruella” (2021) ★½ Yet another completely pointless bit of merchandising from the genius collective at the Disney marketing department.
“Bodies Bodies Bodies” (2022) ★★★★ A horror thriller with a brain, even if it does star Pete Davidson. Sharply executed, bitingly hilarious, and an instant classic.
“The Beekeeper” (2024) ★ Dumb as a box of rocks, obviously, but offers the alluring mystery of trying to figure out whether or not the filmmakers were aware of exactly how dumb?
“Orion and the Dark” (2024) ★★★ Charlie Kaufman finally gives the world what it’s been waiting for: an animated kids movie encapsulating all of his neuroses and anxieties.
“Dune” (2021) ★★★★ Rewatched. This was my sixth viewing and it was even better than I remembered.
What should we make of “Wonka,” Paul King’s completely un-asked-for prequel to “Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory”? For many people, Gene Wilder’s original interpretation of the character has achieved iconic status, capturing a kind of whimsy that was cut with an undercurrent of adorable menace—an utterly unique prism on childhood fantasy. To be honest, I personally don’t think very highly of that 1971 adaptation, but I respect how protective so many people have become of its place in culture. And, as a general skeptic of most franchises, neither was I hungry for a new take on the Roald Dahl story. Basically, no one wanted this movie to exist.
But it came into existence anyway and somehow it’s great! Well, maybe not truly great, but director Paul King has apparently mastered the art of overdelivering on suspiciously motivated “intellectual property” adaptations that, in other hands, would almost surely have turned into dreadful movies. “Wonka” is light on its feet, continually inventive, full of totally enjoyable songs and loaded with great performances—and it’s only moderately preachy about love, friendship, following your heart, blah blah. I’m not sure it’s destined for the (deserved) adoration that King’s two “Paddington” adaptations came to enjoy, but it’s full of heart and, maybe even more excitingly, shows King growing as a filmmaker. It’s rare for prequels/sequels like this to leave me excited to see what the director will do next, but this one did that.
Here are all sixteen movies I watched in January.
“Dumb Money” (2023) ★★★½ A not bad retelling of the GameStop “stonks” episode of just a few years ago. Certainly better than recent similar current events fare like “BlackBerry.”
“Wonka” (2023) ★★★★ Even devotees of the original might find this one disarming.
“The Zone of Interest” (2023) ★★★★ Like picking up a familiar rock you’ve seen a thousand times to examine the underside and discovering a creepy, crawly subculture of mendacious strivers, doing the devil’s dirty work.
“Big” (1988) ★★★½ Rewatched. Pretty delightful before all the feelings and lessons are learned, but no matter what you think of it, Tom Hanks and Robert Loggia dancing on life-sized piano keys is pure movie magic.
“Are You There God? It’s Me, Margaret” (2023) ★★★ Great performances from the two leads in an undercooked adapted screenplay. Feels like a missed opportunity to make a classic film from a classic book.
“Rebel Moon — Part One: A Child of Fire” (2023) ★½ Zack Snyder brought together this cast of mediocre also-rans to make this truly grand expression of idiocy.
“Chicken Run: Dawn of the Nugget” (2023) ★★ In all the ways that the original movie was smart, funny and unexpected, this one is not.
“Marius” (1931) ★★★★ Lovely, profoundly humanist look at provincial drama—and comedy—among a small group of blue collar barkeeps, shop owners and sailors in Marseilles, France.
“Fanny” (1932) ★★★★ A direct sequel to “Marius” that somewhat audaciously picks up moments after the original ends. It’s heavier, but also perhaps more richly written, and it’s delivered by a true ensemble of a cast.
“Baragaki: Unbroken Samurai” (2021) ★★★½ A story of samurai trying to hold onto honor in a politically internecine Japan. Honestly, I barely understood what was going on, but it was compelling nonetheless
“The Killer” (2023) ★★★★ Rewatched. Still enjoyed this a lot, but not a masterpiece.
“Theater Camp” (2023) ★★★ Completely enjoyable farce that betrays its origins as a short. There’s not quite enough here for a feature film, but what is here is pretty genial.
“Albert Brooks: Defending My Life” (2023) ★★★ Albert Brooks and Rob Reiner talking over Brooks’s career at a dinner, and we have the privilege of being a fly on the wall.
“Broadcast News” (1987) ★★★★★ Rewatched. It’s always a joy to revisit this comic classic that feels both like some kind of modern fairy tale and also a brutally honest, almost cynical view of the way the world works. A true masterpiece.
“Stand by Me” (1986) ★★★ Rewatched. Broadly entertaining but also somewhat false at its center; the kids in this movie act more like an author’s creations than like real kids.
“Inside Llewyn Davis” (2013) ★★★★ Rewatched. What a delight to watch the Coen Brothers torture those unlucky enough to be characters in their movies.
This is the latest in my monthly round-ups of movies I’ve been watching. You can also see my year-end summary of everything I watched in 2023, 2022, 2021, 2020, 2019, 2018, 2017, and 2016. Also, you can always keep up with what I’m watching by following me on Letterboxd—where I’m also writing tons of capsule reviews.
