Alex

VIP

OG

12

To the person who said this was Past Lives with robots, that's the most accurate review for this movie. The world had it out for these two.

Dev Patel really said I'm gonna outdo the bathroom fight scene (MI:6) and the kitchen fight scene (Tenet) and the elevator fight scene (Winter Soldier) while also addressing social and political themes and call it "Monkey Man"

This movie is already good on its own, but it becomes 10x better when you know what Patel went through to get it made.
The movie has already cemented itself as a classic of the vengeance subgenre, with echoes of Woo and Park Chan-wook, while bursting with enough originality for it to avoid feeling like a carbon copy.
It's a primal yell of a directorial debut from Dev Patel, already an underrated actor, who uses his unique experiences with religion and his own Indian heritage to bring the story of the film to life.
You can smell the blood and sweat wafting through the screen

With 'Poor Things', director Yorgos Lanthimos has created a film that has quite a few similarities with the box office hit 'Barbie'. Both are about women who start out as objects without any self-determination and, in the course of a journey, find themselves and discover their freedom. Both films also impress with fantastic costumes, good performances, and, most importantly, a phenomenal production design.

But, while I enjoyed 'Barbie', this Frankenstein story is in a completely different league. Lead actress Emma Stone delivers perhaps the best performance of her career, and Mark Ruffalo and Willem Dafoe are also great here. The absurd humor worked perfectly for me. I haven't laughed more in a movie all year than I did in this one. And ultimately, the world that Lanthimos creates is one that has never been seen before. It's really difficult to create something "new" in film in the 21st century, but that's definitely the case here.

All in all, I not only give "Poor Things" my highest recommendation, but it is also my favorite film of 2023.

This will probably become more beloved than Dune for being a bigger, more action driven film. Personally I prefer the first film by a long shot, but there's a lot to like here. I loved Paul's new journey for this installment as it doesn't develop in the way you'd expect based on the ending of the first film. The themes of colonialism, false prophecies and religion reach a level of depth that cannot be found in other sci-fi/fantasy contemporaries like Lord of the Rings or Star Wars; this film certainly made me understand why this story is taken so seriously as a piece of literature. Despite the source material being so old, there's still something new and refreshing about it. You don't often see major Hollywood productions calling out religion as a manipulative force helping the people in power. On top of that this brilliantly subverts the concept of the hero's journey we've become accustomed to by everything that was in one way or another inspired by Dune. The acting is pretty great, Timothée does a great job at playing the transition Paul goes through. Despite his boyish looks I was sold on his performance as the leader of the Fremen. Rebecca Ferguson and Javier Bardem are also scene stealers. The visuals are once again mindblowing, in terms of set/costume design, cinematography and CGI this is as close to perfection as you could get to right now. The vision and scope of this movie are truly unmatched, which leads to some breathtaking sequences that I'll remember for a while (sandworm ride; the black/white arena fight; knife fight during the third act).

However, for all the praise I have for Dune: Part 2, I think Denis is being uncharacteristically sloppy with this film. First of all, Bautista and Butler feel like they're ripped from a different franchise altogether. Their over the top, cartoonish performances are more suited for something like Mad Max than the nuanced world of Dune. The bigger cracks start to appear when you look at the writing. The brief moments where the movie pokes fun at religious zealots through Javier Bardem's character, while funny, probably won't age very well. Like the first movie, it has a tendency to rely too much on exposition and handholding, a problem which might be worse here. I feel like a lot of the subtlety is lost in order to make the movie more normie proof, and that's quite annoying for a movie with artistic ambitions like this one. For example, there's this scene where Léa Seydoux seduces Austin Butler's character, and everything you need to know as a viewer is communicated through Butler's performance. Cut to the next scene, where Seydoux is all but looking at the camera saying "he's a psychopath, he's violent, he wants power, etc.". I just feel like compared to Villeneuve's precise work on Blade Runner 2049, he's consciously dumbing it down here. It's understandable and somewhat excusable for a complex story like Dune, but he occasionally takes it too far for my liking. Then there's the love story subplot between Chani and Paul, which almost entirely misses the mark for me. It feels rushed, there's no chemistry between the actors and some of the lines are painfully cheesy. Because of that, the emotional gutpunch their story eventually reaches during the third act did little for me. Finally, I'm a little dissatisfied with the use of sound. I loved the otherworldly score Zimmer came up with for the first Dune, however this film is so ridiculously bombastic and low-end heavy that it starts to feel like a parody of his work with Christopher Nolan. For the final action beat of the film Villeneuve cuts out the film's score, and it becomes all the more satisfying for it.

Overall, I recommend this film, however maybe temper those expectations if you're expecting a masterpiece. There's a lot to admire, but it's flawed.

6.5/10