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Midweek Movie Free Talk
Have you watched any movies recently you want to discuss? Any films you want to recommend or are hyped about? Feel free to discuss anything here.
Please just try to provide fair warning of spoilers if you can.
Dune: Part Two
I saw this during an "early access fan screening" on Sunday. Oh. My. God. This was awesome.
I went back and forth when the first Dune came out. I wasn't sure if I liked it. Yes it was beautiful to look at, but it was pretty slow and didn't really feel like a lot was happening during the runtime. I rewatched it in December and realized that I do really like the movie.
This was incredible though. It is so epic. It feels like the jump we did from Batman Begins to The Dark Knight. I don't know if this is how you guys felt when LOTR The Two Towers released or when Empire Strikes Back released. But I was blown away. I don't wanna say anything specific about it, but the scale of it is not something we don’t see in Hollywood films anymore. Everything feels big. A stand out performance for me was Austin Butler, I think he's perfect casting as the anti-Chalamet cause he's a little bit more masculine compared to Chalamet’s more twink build.
You guys are gonna love it.
Just got out of Dune Part Two and it was visually stunning and had that touch and care you want in an adaptation of such a book. It’s undeniably great sci fi. That being said, I bought in to a lot of the “masterpiece” hype beforehand and because of that I left a little underwhelmed. It is a great movie, especially when viewed with the first one, but it’s not going to change your life. I only say this to temper people’s expectations so they don’t leave feeling a bit underwhelmed like I did! Not trying to rain on anyone’s parade.
I saw it last night, and yeah. I'm not a superfan of the book. At one point I read several of them but dropped off when Herbert's son started authoring them. I read the first one twice I think? It was long enough ago that I didn't remember enough of the book to be sure about some plot developments in the movie and whether they adhered to the book - not that that matters to me.
I liked the first movie, and for some reason was compelled to rewatch it maybe as many as 4 times since it hit Max? But this one - whoa. Like you said - the scale - just huge. Even the care in how they spaced ships while in flight helped in make it seem huge. It's kind of hard to explain. They didn't pull back on the... I'll call it creative alien weirdness of the tech and cultures either. So good to see a completely different take on this genre as opposed to retreads of Star Wars, Trek, etc... I've not double-dipped in theater viewings since the 90's, but I might have to with this one.
I have been on the fence about Dune because I actually didn't like the book much, but your comparison to LOTR intrigues me, because that really felt big in a way no other movie has done ever since.
I don't love the book, I read the first 3 as a teen and re-read the first one as an adult and I'm good being done with that now. I don't think it's needed to appreciate the movie. You just miss the occasional "oh that thing is important later." Or "oh they're wearing kilts because they're descended..." Etc
But I enjoyed just the experience of the first movie. I'm glad to hear the 2nd continues and even improves.
I haven't read the book, but I loved these movies. The story told across these movies is epic! I don't have a better way to say it. A true sci-fi epic tale. The first movie does a great job of building the world and the characters. Setting the stakes. Part 2 hits the ground running.
I don't really get chills with visuals. I'm more of a sound guy, but there are moments that sent shivers up my spine. I feel invested in this world now. Almost want to try the books
My wife and I watched it a few hours ago. I think it was great.
It's been long enough since I read the books that it's hard for me to draw comparisons between them. But it's also the book that was responsible for my wife and I meeting, so it's very important to both of us. (My 14 year old daughter seems unconvinced by the idea that it's "the most important book in [her] life." She thought the last one was unbearably boring and was glad to skip this one. Even though she wouldn't even exist if my wife hadn't been reading Dune in our college biology class!)
I was curious beforehand about how they were going to handle certain aspects of this part of the story. (Alia in particular comes to mind.) But overall, I think they do a fantastic job of adapting a book I long thought was unadaptable. Not that that should come as any surprise after the success of the last one.
Spoilers
I saw someone on Reddit saying that they thought the changes made to Chani amounted to "character assassination." The retort that she had no real character to assassinate was amusing but I think an apt insight. Having her be the voice of a more skeptical perspective was, in my mind, a genius move. She is the only character in Paul's orbit who can still see him for who he is. Not as the Kwisatz Haderach, nor the Lisan al-Gaib Messiah, nor even the warlord Muad'dib. Just Paul. A man who once vehemently denied wanting power, glory, or worship. In some ways, these changes made Chani a voice for Frank Herbert's own perspective!
The only complaint I have about having Alia still in the womb at the conclusion of the movie is that it accelerates the timeline of Paul's ascension. I don't think that necessarily ruins anything, and I think the movie gains more than it loses by doing that, but I think there is a bit of a loss in having the whole of part two take place in under 9 months.
I really hope it does well and we get an adaptation of Dune Messiah. And maybe even Children of Dune after that...? The books get increasingly harder to imagine as movies after Messiah, but I remember finishing the first book more than two decades ago and thinking that, as much as I would love to see it as a movie, I never wanted to watch the David Lynch version because I couldn't imagine it being possible to pull off. So maybe there's hope for the 3rd and 4th books after all?
I'm watching a Fight Club fanedit called I Am Jacks Laryngitis.
It was amazing. It was over an open matte rip. The audio was really good... and the whole feels just a little more 90s but also super fresh. With the score, some scenes almost feel Refn-like.
As Oppenheimer is on its way to winning Best Picture in 10 days, I wanted to say that this is the first time my favorite movie of the year is also the Best Picture winner. At least since I got into movies back in 2013.
2014 came pretty close, as Birdman was my favorite of the nominees and was my second favorite movie of the year. My favorite movie that year, Gone Girl, wasn't even nominated (this was also the last time my favorite movie of the year wasn't a Picture nominee).
But yeah, the Picture winners are rarely even in my top 10 of the year. Birdman, Moonlight, and Parasite have been the only winners in my top 10 since 2013.
On a whim on Sunday, I threw on Righteous Kill without knowing basically anything about it besides the fact that De Niro and Pacino co-starred.
What a boring turd of a movie. About an hour in my wife turned to me and asked why we were still watching it. I didn't have an answer, but we watched all the way to the very predictable end.
The best thing about Righteous Kill is that another miniseries, The Kill Point was out at the same time and both had Donnie Wahlberg and John Leguizamo.
Its been a while, but I think its at the end of The Kill Point where Donnie has John on the ground at gunpoint. Donnie is a cop and John breaks into this breathy monologue that ends with him saying, '... just do it, man... it'd be a RIGHTEOUS KILL'
I have been wrapping up Scorsese for now with Wolf of Wall Street. Which I think is a movie that has many of Scorsese's usual ingredients all piled into one movie and turned to 11. Many of his movies have pictured broken men with questionable morals living an depraved lifestyle with little care for the people they hurt on the way. We as viewers are left to ourselves with how we feel about that, because Scorsese doesn't tell us.
I also watched Anatomy of a Fall which was amazing. Really silly that France didn't picked that as their pick for best international, because it will likely lose to Oppenheimer in the best picture at the Oscars. While it starts off as an intriguing locked room mystery spiraling into court-room drama, and of course I was thinking along the lines of "did she do it", it isn't really that kind of movie. After a while the "murder mystery" wasn't that important anymore, it was the deeper exploration of how we define personal truth, subjective truth, scientific truth and objective truth. It shows how we can try and pick apart human relationships or peoples inner thoughts in order to understand them, but the result is the opposite.
On a completely different note I rewatched Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade for the first time in more than 20 years. Peak Spielberg fast paced adventure and Connery has amazing comedic timing, overshadowing Ford for most of the movie in my opinion.
I also tried watching the fourth season of True Detective because of Jodie Foster, but I barely lasted half the first episode. Everything is so bland and poorly written. It reminded me why I gave up on the endless streaming shows from the big streaming services.
Yeah the committee really fumbled the bag on that one, so much so that they're probably going to be changing how they do things from now on. It would have easily won international film over Zone of Interest. It's winning Original Screenplay though so that's something.
I watched Witness for the Prosecution with Marlene Dietrich. It's a great film