Dune (2021)

Director: Denis Villeneuve. Cast: Timothée Chalamet, Rebecca Ferguson, Zendaya, Oscar Isaac, Jason Momoa, Stellan Skarsgård, Josh Brolin, Javier Bardem, Dave Bautista, Charlotte Rampling. 155 min. Fantasy/Adventure.

• Denis Villeneuve (Sicario, Arrival) is again handed a project with very high expectations (Blade Runner 2049), and again, delivers better than expected.
• Another one of those huge fantasy stories people call "non-filmable" (as proven by the failed 1984 version, directed by the great David Lynch). But last time, the termed was used for Lord of the Rings ... and we saw how well that turned out. This is the first of two parts (Part Two slated for October 2023), and I'm predicting this is going down the same successful path LOTR did.
• Aside from a well-paced screenplay, meticulous character development, and breathtaking cinematography, what's fascinating was that the practical effects and CGI effects could not be differentiated - the transition is seamless, and you could not point out which scene is computer imagery. The technology is finally there: Villaneuve achieves what many richer and well-equipped filmmakers before him could only dream of. Special effects here serve as a background to tell the story, as they should - not as a foreground to merely dazzle. The scenes where the giant earthworms show up, are scenes to behold.
• I was always suspicious of Timothée Chalamet's acting abilities. Here, he proves to be the right choice for the Luke Skywalker-like lead. His latter-half scenes with his movie mom, Rebecca Ferguson (a most unique mother and son pairing, for action sequences, that is) are some of the most memorable. Dune has great casting choices, but Chalamet is the best.  
• Frank Herbert wrote his grand novel in 1965, and taking into account story elements such as central desert planet (Tatooine?) or the use of a certain voice pitch to order people against their will (Jedi mind trick?) makes you wonder how much George Lucas was inspired by Herbert to write Star Wars several years later. The magnificent documentary Jodorowsky's Dune should give you an idea. 
• Curious Islamic references: the "Lisan-al-Gaib"(the tongue of the unseen; i.e., the prophet), and the "Mahdi" (the Savior, the Messiah), used as synonyms for what other fantasy stories/movies call "The One" who brings order.
• Dune should be watched on the biggest screen available/imaginable. Anything less is a mistake. Again, the great David Lynch provided a hint years ago, here. 
• The movie is incomplete, and since I'm not sure how Part Two and the entirety of the saga will turn out, I'm hesitant to give it a full 10/10 score. Nevertheless, this may end up as my favorite movie of 2021. We'll see.

MoGo's rating: 9/10

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Annette (2021)

Director: Leos Carax. Cast: Adam Driver, Marion Cotillard. 141 min. Rated R. Musical/Drama.

• After a 2-year hiatus due to Covid, the Cannes Film Festival opened this year with Annette. I guess they wanted to prove "We're back!" with an artsy, exotic film by the auteur of weirdness, Leos Carax, whose Holy Motors was the most bizarre movie I saw in 2012. Just imagine Adam Driver (Kylo Ren from the new Star Wars trilogy) singing ... 
• A stand-up comedian and a soprano singer fall in love, and after they have a baby (a doll!), the rise of the singer coincides with the downfall of the comedian. We have elements of the creepy Chucky doll, A Star is Born's storyline, and Natalie Wood's real-life death, all together in one musical. Yes .... that weird.
• Marion Cottilard does quite a job at opera here, but I kept wondering why Adam Driver was chosen for this role - he's not even trying to sing. He's just speaking melodically.  
• The movie suffers from its long running time (it should've more appropriately played as a Broadway musical), but the immense audacity for such a project is hard to ignore.

MoGo's rating: 7/10

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The Last Duel (2021)

 

Director: Ridley Scott. Cast: Matt Damon, Adam Driver, Jodie Comer, Ben Affleck. 152 min. Drama/History.

• Based on a true story, in 14th century France, a knight's wife accuses the king's squire of rape.
• The story is told Rashomon-style in three perspectives: the knight's, squire's, and wife's narratives. I'm suspicious of the movie's vocabulary (whether the word rape was used in the same context as we use today), and while the actual scene is as disturbing as other prominent moments in director Ridley Scott's career (namely, the Alien chest-bursting scene), the story wisely ends as though the truth embedded within rape accusations has been troubling human societies for centuries.
• Matt Damon plays his Stillwater role if that character had been around 700 years ago: a simpleton with strong loyalties, going against stronger forces by sheer willpower. Twice in the same year we're seeing a different Damon. Good on him.
• Ben Affleck continues his trend of playing "ill-suited" roles. I've always had this uncanny feeling that he's is in competition with Damon (even though they co-wrote and co-produced this) - like: "You think Jason Bourne is tough okay then I'll be Batman." He makes no effort here to look anything ... medieval. Wrong actor for the role.
• After Free Guy, this is new-to-movies Jodie Comer's second great presence in one year. Her agent must be doing something right.
• The rate at which the great Ridley Scott is churning out grand, engaging epic-scale movies blows my mind. While I would've settled with a shorter movie, I guess its story-telling structure makes the long duration inevitable. The movie's namesake final dual will throw you into palpitations.

MoGo's rating: 8/10

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No Time to Die (2021)

 

Director: Cary Joji Fukunaga. Cast: Daniel Craig, Léa Seydoux, Rami Malek, Ralph Fiennes, Ben Whishaw, Naomie Harris, Jeffrey Wright, Christoph Waltz, Ana de Armas. 163 min. Action/Thriller.

• After Casino Royale, Quantum of Solace, Skyfall, Spectre, and finally No Time to Die, Daniel Craig is the first James Bond to complete a multi-movie story arc, through a great/weak/great/weak/great sine wave, respectively. All five of his movies have story connections - never done before to this extent with other Bonds. And the end of Craig's role as Bond couldn't be more perfect.
• This isn't only limited to James Bond, as in this longest-running of all 25 Bond movies, long-time villain Blofeld and long-time CIA buddy Felix Leiter all complete story arcs - if you know what I mean.
• Obvious hints prepare us for a possible non-white/female becoming the next "Jane Bond". If I were to choose, I'd go with Ana de Armas, as she has a short but terrific run as an amateur agent splendidly completing a mission (at the time of this writing, no one has asked my opinion).
• Strange how Covid postponed the release of the movie, and the plot is about virus-like nanobot biological weapons. Conspiracy-theories abound ...
• Strong themes of "family". James Bond is not a single-minded action hero anymore, and has other, more important concerns which dictate how he handles a mission. The only other prior Bond movie that approached the hero as real person, was the 1969 On Her Majesty's Secret Service, where Bond got married, and his bride was killed at the end. Of course, here we hear the soundtrack and song of that movie throughout, and its famous line: "We have all the time in the world ..."

MoGo's rating: 9/10

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Pinocchio (2019)

 

Director Matteo Garrone. Cast: Federico Ielapi, Roberto Benigni. 125 min. Fantasy/Family.

• It's the thousandth version of the beloved story ... and it still delivers.
• This Pinocchio is darker than prior (beknownst to me) renditions. Geppetto is heart-wrenchingly poor, the cat and fox are filthy evil, the blue fairy looks like the walking dead (which I guess she's supposed to), there are school beating scenes, and of course, the donkey transformation scene is quite disturbing (as it always is). But these extremes and contrasts are all used to good effect, as the wooden Pinocchio becoming a boy at the end will bring a tear to your eye (I didn't spoil anything, did I?).
• Among the magical elements are the stunning Italian locations, and the make-up. The puppets look truly wooden, while their facial motions are mesmerizing. Deservedly, the movie was nominated for two Oscars, in make-up and costume design. 
• This is Roberto Benigni's second participation in a movie adaptation of the story: in 2002 he directed himself in the role of Pinocchio, and here he plays Geppetto.
• Check out the beautiful soundtrack here. 

MoGo's rating: 8/10

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The Wolf of Snow Hollow (2020)

 

Director: Jim Cummings. Cast: Jim Cummings, Riki Lindhome, Robert Forster. 83 min. Comedy/Horror.

• A series of grisly murders take place in a small snowy town, and the town folks try to convince the young sheriff (a recovering alcoholic with anger management issues) it's the work of a werewolf. Hilarious.
• The blend of comedy, mystery and horror reminds of David Lynch's Twin Peaks (especially with the late Robert Forster in his penultimate movie role), or the more obscure The Love Witch. Of course, there's a nod to the latter movie, with a poster of the film in the hero's daughter's bedroom. 
• You can't avoid it: every time the police suddenly finds him/herself alone in the killer's home in a movie's final scene, you're reminded of Jodie Foster and Silence of the Lambs' climactic moments. It happened to Kate Winslet in this year's HBO show Mare of Easttown, and it happens again here. 
• Director/writer/actor Jim Cummings' second feature film. The man looks promising.

MoGo's rating: 8/10

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The Witches (2020)

 

Director: Robert Zemeckis. Cast: Anne Hathaway, Octavia Spencer, Jahzir Bruno, Stanley Tucci, Chris Rock, Kristen Chenoweth. 106 min. Fantasy/Comedy.

• In this remake of Roald Dahl's book (first directed in 1990, by Nicolas Roeg), a boy attempts to expose a covenant of witches, even after they've turned him into a mouse.  
• As he's done again and again, in Back to the Future, Who Framed Roger Rabbit?, Death Becomes Her, Beowulf, ..., Zemeckis tries to see how much he can push benign story ideas into adult territory. Here, the witches (their appearance, and what they do to kids) are quite scary, and I'm not sure I'd show this kids' movie to my 10-year-old - even though he's seen his fair share of R-rated movies. From the opening scenes of any movie, the viewer should have a good idea what the movie wants to be; you shouldn't surprise them by going off course and delivering something else. 
• Guillermo Del Toro, lover of surreal fantasy and horror (Pan's Labyrinth, Crimson Peak, The Shape of the Water) co-wrote and co-produced this with Zemeckis. No wonder.
• Nevertheless, Octavia Spencer and Anne Hathaway are always great. Always.

MoGo's rating: 6/10

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The Marksman (2021)

 

Director Robert Lorenz. Cast: Liam Neeson, Jacob Perez. 108 min. Action/Drama.

• Liam Neeson keeps on with his "retired action guy" roles (the Taken trilogy, Unknown, Non-Stop, The Commuter, etc etc), because hey ... acting may be an art form, but even actors need to pay bills. Neeson seems to have given up on that trivial thing called versatility. 
• Here he has a calling to deliver an illegal alien boy to his family in Chicago, with the Mexican drug cartel in hot pursuit. The storytelling and kind-hearted old man with youngster in peril themes are highly reminiscent of Clint Eastwood's style (as recent as Cry Macho), and of course, midway through the movie we see the boy watching an Eastwood movie in a motel. (I later found out that the director has produced some of Eastwood's films, namely Million Dollar Baby and Gran Torino.)
• The movie shows the drug cartel pulling some powerful strings both at the border and within the US. This much influence is either dramatized, or if true, quite scary.
• Don't blame me for watching this - I was stuck on an airplane.

MoGo's rating: 5/10

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Venom: Let There Be Carnage (2021)

 

Director: Andy Serkis. Cast: Tom Hardy, Woody Harrelson, Michelle Williams. 90 min. Fantasy/Action.

• Watching this lifeless sequel to Venom, the 2018 anti-hero Marvel movie about alien symbiotes who take over the hero's body, I kept wondering: who directed this? Whom did they entrust all this budget to? Of course: Andy Serkis, the famed motion capture actor of Gollum in Lord of the Rings, Caeser in Planet of the Apes, Snoke in Star Wars, Kong in King Kong, ... I can imagine a studio boardroom meeting where they were deciding who'll be the director, and someone said: "Give that body horror sh*t to Serkis."
• Who wrote the tepid story? Of course, Tom Hardy, the actor for Eddie Brock, the movie's hero. This must've been a passion project for all involved (rolling eyes ...).
• The first movie at least had some science-fiction elements, regarding symbiosis vs parasitism - which led to some funny dialogue between Brock and Venom. This one just has the funny dialogue.
• The entire plot and minimally interesting points of the story are already spoiled in the trailer - except the result of the climactic ending clash between Venom and Carnage, the villain played by Woody Harrelson. And considering the history of Hollywood, if you have any inclination that the villain might possibly win that clash, then this movie is definitely for you. Watch it and keep guessing till the very end.

MoGo's rating: 5/10

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