Da hell? That was awful. How did this steaming pile emerge from perhaps the most celebrated and renown TV series in history? The tone is inconsistent; the motivations vague and unjustified; the acting (with the exception of the mighty Ray Liotta) was lame. An entire subplot (maybe 30-40% of the film) was a misguided paean to social justice. It even fails as wanton fan service. Just a top-to-bottom disaster.
A month back I speculated whether any of the pantheon TV from the aughts could get made today. I think this is the clear answer: no. This is what The Sopranos would be in the current cultural atmosphere. It is a sad, sad time for the arts. My advice: do not watch this. In fact, let's all agree it never happened.
Black Widow
Not bad. Nothing revelatory. As seems to be common in movies of late, the tone is haphazard and the motivations contrived. But then, it's a superhero film, not high art. It's saved by likeable characters and engaging portrayals. Middle-of-the-road MCU fare. In the grand scheme it would probably have seemed more relevant had it come out a pre-Endgame.
Dune
It's gotten to the point with movies that my first expectation of anything is that it will suck. Filmmakers generally have so many priorities that supercede dramatic quality (social justice, sequels and universe building, the Chinese market) that if you end up with a coherent, humanistic story you can count yourself lucky. In that way, Dune was a pleasant surprise.
I read Dune as a youth and was left uninspired. Perhaps I should read it again, but it strikes me as an odd story to have gathered so many admirers. It is effectively an allegory of an aspect of late twentieth century cultural interaction between an advanced civilization (The Empire in Dune; The West in reality) and an un-advanced civilization (The Fremen in Dune; Arabs/Muslims in reality) where the un-advanced have a resource that the advanced need and will fight for (The Spice in Dune; Oil in reality). From this we make a gumbo out of with imaginative tech and paranormal people and organizations as de rigueur for speculative fiction. The elemental narrative is the bog-standard trope of The One.
Saying Dune is visually impressive is an understatement. On my 65-inch plasma it was mesmerizing; I can only imagine how good it would look in Imax. It could have trimmed a bit of excess running time, but it never bogged down for too long. To director Denis Villenueve's credit there was minimal wokery in a story line that is ripe for it. To his discredit there was virtually no humor or light hearted moments to offset the rather grim tone and story.
Still it set the stage very well for the upcoming sequel (this movie only covered the first half of the book) and carried my interest enough that I am looking forward to the next installment.
Here's a question: If Dune is an allegory for West/Islam relations in, say, the 1970s and '80s, why not make a contemporary movie of it. Reset it in Riyadh in 1975, where Duke Leto is a British Petroleum exec assigned to Saudi Arabian production and the Bene Gesserat are, oh, I don't know, al-Jihad or something, and Ollie North is Baron Harkonnen. I am only half kidding. It could be the stuff of serious adult historical drama if handled correctly, which of course it would not be. It would require cliched, narrow, Aaron Sorkin-level viewpoints if it was to be greenlit. Sigh. But mix in some blasters and mind-control and you're golden.
