miliosr

I saw Dune: Part Two yesterday. (Some mild spoilers ahead) On the plus side of the ledger, my attention never flagged for one moment despite the movie's great length (2hrs 45mins). There were no obviously bad or even mediocre performances (although Christopher Walken came close with the latter). The knife fight between Paul and Feyd was a thing of beauty. Finally, the movie was even more of a visual marvel than Part One was. And yet . . . I found Dune: Part Two to be dramatically inert at times. Timothee Chalamet never really drew me into his dilemma until Paul fled to Arrakis's southern hemisphere. That was the point where Chalamet's performance ratcheted up several notches, and Paul's dilemma and its resolution became interesting. I understand why Denis Villeneuve would have directed Chalamet to segment his performance into two segments reflecting Paul's pre-Water of Life thinking and his post-Water of Life thinking. The problem for me is that the former (and larger) segment wasn't all that compelling. Also, I found Jessica's motivations to be inscrutable. I'm inclined to believe that her own experience with the Water of Life drove her actions in regard to Paul's destiny. But this was not totally clear based on what was shown onscreen. Perhaps this is something the original source book was able to explain more directly. From what I understand, the movie ending represents something of a change of tone (if not in plot) from the book's ending. I don't know if Villeneuve made things better or worse by giving Paul more agency regarding the jihad that erupts at the end of the movie. I suppose we won't know until Part Three is made. In sum, I would maybe give Dune: Part Two an A-/B+. It is undeniably worth seeing as a visual experience. I just wish the actual storyline (and some of the performances) had drawn me in more than they did.

To finish off my annual summer reread of The Great Gatsby, I rewatched the Baz Luhrmann movie version again. I still stand by my objections from my earlier review: changing the character of Nick Carraway so drastically and having Gatsby be publicly identified as Myrtle's killer are both big, big mistakes. The latter, in particular, is non-sensical (and makes me question whether Lurhmann even understood the book) because it undercuts the devastating point Scott Fitzgerald was making about how amoral the people who attended Gatsby's parties were. In the book, Gatsby isn't pinned with the blame for Myrtle's death and so the failure of almost everyone to turn up for his funeral is a condemnation of that entire New York/West Egg society. In the movie, having Gatsby identified as Myrtle's killer gives all of the people who attended Gatsby's parties good reason to stay away from his funeral and thereby negates Fitzgerald's whole point. Another thing that irritated me this go-round are two separate scenes involving Daisy: one with her almost calling Gatsby on the day he is killed, and another with her looking wistful as the butler tells Nick (who has called Daisy after Gatsby's death) that the Buchanans have already left. There are no such scenes in the book and their inclusion in the movie softens Daisy so that she appears more sympathetic than she actually is. The book version of Daisy at the end is better because it reveals that Daisy is every bit as amoral as Tom -- if not more so. It also highlights how Gatsby's idealization of Daisy was a fantasy all along.

Fozzy Bear -- At the time, there was a lot of pushback from the audience regarding the Danny/Rachel/Who's the father? storyline. Danny's actions felt very out-of-character - and not just because of the adultery aspect. He was also toying with the idea of walking out on Steve, even though Steve's life was coming increasingly unglued in the run-up to the finale. None of it felt right at the time. I think the producerss recognized their mistake and got it out of the way at the beginning of Season 2.