Archive for category: Reviews

As good as Timothee Chalamet was in Wonka, he’s that bad in Dune. His thin frame and wispy good looks do not an action hero make. I suppose there is a story, as the film is based on a famous book, but I couldn’t discern it. The ‘2’ in the title might have tipped me off to the movie’s ending, which was less  resolution than warning that ‘3’ is still to come. The shots of the dunes and flying machines may be spectacular, but the effects weren’t special. Star Wars made more sense and was better in every way.

The charisma and warmth of Kingsley Ben-Adir’s face and Bob Marley’s reggae music make this film a joyful experience, even if the dialogue is hard to decipher and the plot rarely goes beyond this-happened-then-that-happened. The supporting characters are colorful and convincing, but it is the songwriting and performing that carry the day.

Disquieting, thought-provoking, beautifully filmed and acted. “Is this what it was really like?,” is only the first of many questions. How would the revelation that this was Auschwitz have hit us if we hadn’t known ahead of time, from the reviews? How did German actors feel about portraying their history as told by a British director? Why was there a black dog running through so many of the scenes? Why was the commandant vomiting at movie’s end? I don’t know how to describe, technically, the square, straight-on long shots that director Jonathan Glazer used throughout the film, but it provided visual consistency and power: you are looking at this in full, without editorial comments. (The leads’ ugly hairstyles may have prejudiced the viewer, but I think they were props to help us identify the characters.) And as with many great films of ideas, I can’t remember whether it was shot in color or black-and-white.

A Danish version of Shane, without the subtlety. There wasn’t a character, plot development or scene that offered any surprise. Mads Mikkelsen is a pleasure to watch, but he joined the class of Joaquin Phoenix and Adam Driver for fewest facial expressions in a role. I couldn’t count the number of movie cliches that piled atop each other, although it was nice to get a glimpse of 18th-century Denmark.

This hand-drawn animated feature by the 83-year-old Hayao Miyazaki, purportedly the “most expensive film” ever made in Japan, is visually breathtaking. The movie’s first half, when young Mahito is taken to the country estate of his new mother, captures everything I saw and felt in my high-school summer in Japan, with a landscape from Yoshida or Hasui. The second half, a fantastical journey through an underworld that is less Japanese and more Wizard of Oz, grew repetitive and tiresome and would have improved by being cut a half-hour. There are messages about peace, love and understanding stitched in near the end, but they don’t feel deserved. Again, the “real world” is compelling; the land of pelicans and parakeets not so much. The music–a series of songs more than a score–is equally enchanting.