This week I decided to watch the new Dune movie. It was its last day for being on HBO Max so I took this opportunity to watch it before it goes away for a while. I also watched this with my brother and my dad because we agreed we would all watch it together. Overall I enjoyed this movie. I was going in with only the information of the box scene because that was about how far I got reading the book. Even though things were a bit confusing with the politics I still think I understand why things happen. The only real questions I have are about a character that didn't even show up in the film, the Emperor. I want to know more about that character, but besides that, I think I understand things. Enjoyment was still high though. Even though though the movie is 2 hours and 35 minutes long I didn't feel bored at all which is a very good thing.
I'll start by saying that so far the world that was created in this film is awesome. All the different peoples environments say a lot about how they do things. The Atreides' world was about what I expected and the same was for the Harkonnen's and how things were dark and ominous. Arrakis was awesome to see especially the main city that Paul and Co. went to when the first arrived on Arrakis. I liked how we went from the houses from Atreides being rounded to the sharp angles all around in the city on Arrakis. It shows the differences between Atreides and Arrakis. All the technology in the movie is really cool as well. I liked the designs of the dragon fly like vehicles as well as the massive hollow cylinder ship because its so massive and it makes it super menacing looking. The stillsuits for the desert are well designed and look awesome as well. The only technology I didn't really like was the shields. I guess it's because I don't quite understand how they work, but they just didn't appeal to me because why would you turn it on if it doesn't seem to do anything whenever someone is in a fight. Another cool looking thing in the movie are the sandworms. We really only get a good look at one outside of the sand, but their design is both creepy and threatening and it makes you wonder how anyone survived before the technology came around. The spice was... there. That's all I'll say about that. However, it did lead to one of my favorite little things in the film. The cinematography in this film was pretty good. I'm a sucker for silhouette shots and those got me good in this film. I also felt lots of Star Wars vibes whenever the sun was shown during sunset. I kept thinking to myself "hey this is similar to the Luke looking at the double suns shot" but I didn't think it was a bad shot at all. Another shot I remember being pretty cool was when the House of Atreides was first arriving on Arrakis in all of their ships because we were basically seeing it from the view of someone on the ground and with the silhouette shot of all the ships coming into view I saw a nice shot. It was in the trailer, but when the leader of the Harkonnen's did the first float up into the air it was so creepy looking because we see that he has feet that touch the floor, but its almost disturbing because everyone else looks normal compared to him. Now onto the scene I mentioned earlier relating to the spice. When the spice miner is going to get eaten by the sandworm and Paul falls to the ground outside because the spice gets to him Brolin's character goes to get him. The cool thing is while Paul is on the ground you can hear him lightly say "I recognize your footsteps old man." Bam! All of the sudden Brolin's character is there and grabbing Paul even though you didn't see him. I don't know what kind of cut that is, but I saw it and thought that it was an awesome shot. I also enjoyed all the different shots of people getting in or out of their ships because they were appealing to look at. The cinematography of this film was really freaking good. Now onto the characters. I really liked Paul as a character. It took a second for me to really like how Chalamet portrayed Paul. Especially in the beginning, but as soon as they left the planet wherever the House of Atreides was and got to Arrakis I really started to enjoy Paul as a character. I would actually disagree with what other people in the class have said about Zendaya in this film. Yeah I know she isn't in a lot of it and is mostly there in visions, but I think that she did really well with the stuff she did do. I agree that more of her would be nice, but from what I've heard she'll play a bigger role in the next movie. I actually enjoyed a lot of the actor's performances in this film. Oscar Isaac did really well, which was surprising because I think him being Poe Dameron in the new Star Wars movies killed my perception of him, but he really proved he is a good actor in my opinion. Rebecca Ferguson wasn't my favorite in the film, but she was still was pretty good. Jason Momoa was pretty good as well. I think that Bautista was a little wasted in this film, but he was there. Every time I heard Josh Brolin speak I couldn't get Thanos' voice out of my head. His first line was really off putting too because it sounds exactly like Thanos does in the MCU and I wanted to laugh because Brolin will only be known for Thanos now. At the end of the film when Paul fights the Fremen, both the one Paul kills and the leader of that Fremen group played their roles really well even if it wasn't for a long time. The music/soundtrack of this movie was also really well done. I just looked up who composed the music for it and I don't know why I was surprised that Zimmer did it. Hans Zimmer is the guy you get for any movie soundtrack. Looking at his Discography you know that he is THE guy for a big movie now. Some other guys are good too like John Williams, but I think that Zimmer is the most famous movie composer and is the greatest of all time. Anyways the music timing and everything was so nice to listen to in this film. Dune was a solid movie. I think that I'll need to read the book to get more when the second film comes out but I think that this movie led pretty well into setting up the second film. 8.5/10.
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The Way Way Back is a fun feel good movie. I had no idea what this movie was about, but my dad showed me a trailer of this and I thought that it looked liked a good movie. This movie didn't do anything major visually or the things I usually find wise, but as I said this is a very feel good movie.
I think that the story is very good and sweet, but I don't feel like I have much to say about this movie. I get second hand embarrassment easily in movies and I got this a lot in this movie for the first bit. After that I was fine, but I find it hard for someone to be that awkward a character even if it is a movie. I guess that was part of the actor who played Duncan did it so well, but it made me mad how awkward he was. Another thing that made me mad was his posture. His neck was always tilted forward and it looked like it would be so uncomfortable to do literally anything. However, with the criticisms, I still think that this was a good movie. Most of the acting was good and the story was pretty good. Steve Carrell did well with the little time he was on screen, but Sam Rockwell did very well as was pretty funny in my opinion. That's about all I have to say about this movie. 6.5/10. Ip Man was a pretty good film. It wasn't the greatest that I've watched on this blog, but it still had some strong things going for it. This is a movie that has been on my watchlist for a while, but it was always at the back of my head, so I wasn't thinking about watching it until I saw it while searching for a movie. One thing I didn't know that this film is loosely based off of a real person. The cool thing is that this person in real life was the person who trained Bruce Lee, an absolute legend.
This movie was a pretty good watch. If you enjoy fighting, there was a whole lot of it in this film. The good thing about it though, is that it there isn't a single bad fight scene in the entire movie. Every single one flows well and isn't confusing to follow at all. The choreography for these fights is also insane. At one point Ip Man fights ten Japanese fighters at one time and just absolutely beats the crap out of them. That makes it so enjoyable to watch, because the Japanese are seen as the villains in this film. The fights aren't 100% realistic because in some parts you can tell that something wouldn't happen in real life, but you don't really care because of how cool it looks that a simple kick sends someone flying about 20 feet backwards. It also isn't just hand to hand combat. Weapons are used mostly by the villains, but when Ip uses something to defend himself, he doesn't use a weapon at all. He uses a feather duster (I think) to beat Master Jim towards the beginning and towards the end he beats him with just a long bamboo pole as well. The fight scenes from this movie are definitely the stars of this movie. The acting was pretty good. However, I was watching with subtitles and listening in Cantonese which should make sense since the movie takes place in China, but something felt off. When the actors spoke it didn't look like they were actually saying their lines in Chinese. It sounded more like they filmed the movie and voiced over all of the characters afterwards. To me that just didn't make sense. I got used to it by the end, but when I first saw it I kept noticing it for a little while. The cinematography was just okay. There were not a whole lot of knock your socks off shots (I can't believe I actually just typed knock your socks off), but the movie isn't boring to look at. In the beginning when Ip and everyone else are doing well things are very colorful, but once the Japanese invade the only colors that you really see are black, grey, and white. Besides that the only color really is from the red of the Japanese flag, and the red blood after someone gets hit. That was visually interesting, but the shots were a bit lacking. I don't have a whole lot to say about this movie. It was just above average for me, but will probably be forgotten about unless someone wants to watch it later in my life. 6.5/10. HOLD ON!
Before you read there may or may not be spoilers of the movie ahead. Read at your own risk for future enjoyment. Ahh Edgar Wright, a true artist in the medium of film. From the first shot you can tell that the movie fits his style. This movie was very great in my opinion. Not Wright's best movie, but still a very good film anyways. From the trailers that we watched in class, I didn't know what to expect from this movie because every movie from Wright that I have watched is more of a comedy or fun than this movie that is a mix of Thriller and Horror. However, with unclear expectations I think that they were mostly met. The film is very beautiful in its production and looks throughout the movie. I'll start with the cinematography because it was very very well done. I mean that is almost expected from Wright, but it was still very nice to see the nice camera movements and tricks. I mean the first shot of the movie is a very beautiful silhouette shot of the main character in a door frame that is just slightly off center. I already mentioned it, but that first shot solidified the movie was going to be good for me. The rest of the film also has great shots. When Ellie first goes into the dream with Sandy in the Rialto and you see both of them in the mirrors its so cool to see. Even after they are outside of the mirror filled Rialto Sandy gets into a car and you can see Eloise in the reflection of the mirror looking in onto Sandy's actions. This movie isn't the first to do this kind of trick with mirrors, but the movie does make the shots work very well. The use of mirrors throughout the film are also very well done. In the same scene with the mirrors flipping Sandy and Ellie, Jack and Sandy start dancing and as they start dancing whenever Sandy leaves frame she is replaced by Ellie and this flips back and forth and its a really cool thing to see because you can't see any cuts on Matt Smith as he is dancing with the girls. With the cinematography being so well, the use of colors is also so satisfying to watch. In her room, Eloise has a Neon sign blinking through three different colors white, blue, and red. The first night this seems normal because the lights take up a lot of the room. This is until the red light is the one that continually flashes. Eloise then enters the first dream in the Rialto. After this as things start to get worse and Eloise's mental state continues to deteriorate you begin to fear when the red lights continue to flash because of the ghosts of the dead men start chasing Eloise. Those neon colors are very nice use of color, but another kind of nice scene to watch is when Ellie and John go to the Halloween party together and there are all of the flashing strobe lights so you see what is happening, but only so much. This is visually interesting until Sandy and the other ghosts show up and cause her to freak out. This movie also has a similar view on women that Silence of the Lambs does. In the movie after the first couple of dreams Ellie changes her hair color from brown to blonde and as she is walking from the shop you see a lot of men staring at Ellie when before almost no one payed attention to her. This is a parallel to what happened to Sandy because she was seen as a beauty from the older men that tried to make advances on her. How this happened in the movie isn't exactly like how it happened in Silence of the Lambs, but I did just notice the similarities. The movie does take a little bit of time to get to the horror/thriller part of the movie, but the scares are alright. There are a couple of jump scares which whatever your opinions on them are, they got me and did take away slightly, but it kind of has to happen. The design of the ghosts of the dead perverts is creepy, not super scary, but disturbing enough to put you on edge. There are a couple of twists in the movie. One I did guess before it was revealed to us, but the other I only had in the back of my head until it was revealed. THE REST OF THIS PARAGRAPH IS SPOILERS AS I EXPLAIN CONTINUE TO NEXT PARAGRAPH FOR NO SPOILERS! The twist that I guessed was that Sandy was Mrs. Collins the whole time. I didn't get that she actually killed all the men instead of only getting raped and sexually assaulted by them. I did have in the back of my mind though that Sandy was somehow still alive and that Mrs. Collins was also Sandy. The other twist I didn't guess was that the creepy old dude was not actually Jack/Matt Smith, but a completely different character. Right before it was revealed, I thought to myself that the old dude wasn't tall enough to be an older Matt Smith, so I was like they kind of messed that up in the movie, but then they revealed he was actually a cop and it all made sense. So I'll give myself like one thirds credit on getting that twist. BTW Snape kills Dumbledore. I almost completely forgot about another thing that Wright is a master at. Music. The movie doesn't use the music like Wright does in other movies, but the songs that are used are so nice to hear. Almost all of the songs used in the movie are older songs, but they fit the style of the old 60s so well and are just so nice to listen to as the movie is happening. The only real thing that I disliked from the movie was the ending. It kind of had the same problem that Strangers on a Train had where it was a feel good ending, but then something comes back up. This ending is also only like 2-3 minutes long, but it did kind of negate the things that happened a little bit. For context, after the first dream Ellie starts seeing young Sandy in mirrors and as visions, but in the end of the movie, Ellie has a successful fashion show, but Sandy shows up again even thought the conflict was resolved. After Ellie sees this she goes up to the mirror and taps her finger on it which happened earlier in the movie. This just kind of ruined the ending for me. However, the rest of the movie is still very good. Altogether, this was a very solid movie from Wright. I said it earlier, but this is not his best film. I think that Baby Driver and Scott Pilgrim are still the peak of Wright. Shaun of the Dead is the only Cornetto Trilogy film I've seen, but I would say it is around that level for me. Probably just slightly lower. I'm very glad that I got to see this movie. 8/10. |
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