Dune

Spoiler-free!

The most immediate thought that springs to mind when I think of how to break down Denis Villeneuve's adaptation of Dune into something that can qualify how I recommend it, is that it's a movie for fans. It doesn't gatekeep; anyone can be a fan. But you must be willing to invest, and to pay attention. If it does its job right, it will bring the uninitiated into the fold, and endow satisfied customers with a desire for more—whether that comes in book form or in eagerness for a sequel. But no matter if you came as a fan, or are made into one by the experience, casual viewing is the riskiest way of journeying into Dune's vast, sandy landscape. 

I find it all a bit overwhelming even after reading the book and watching the '84 film (twice.) 

If you're not willing to invest the mental energy it takes to remember all the weird scifi names and terms, keep track of the medieval space politics, or care about characters who don't see their journey's end by the time the credits roll, then the only thing you're likely to get out of this film is a treat of big-budget visuals portraying the immense, looming and extreme fictional world. That alone is worth witnessing once, so I guess my recommendation is won. Still, with Villeneuve directing, great visuals were a shoo-in. My fear was that focus would be put on the wow-factor to the point where story and characters would suffer from boredom or pretentiousness. But no. Conversation drives the story, yet I wasn't bored for one second. And visual awe is turned up to the max, with dedication to relaying the character side of things keeping easily in stride.

My biggest worry of all was the casting of indie darling Timothée Chalamet as the film's lead. I know he's an actor who actually puts stock into acting but there's no predicting my reaction to his roles and performances. And a Paul who comes across wrong is a fatal flaw. I was skeptical. But he proves to be a good casting choice, portraying an accurate Paul who is neither bland nor annoying. He reminded me of the book version and gives a lot, even through Villeneuve's style of preferring to film his characters still and stoic. Once I wasn't worried about the lead anymore, I knew I was in for something good, but the movie doesn't stop there.

Though it's giant, it's dedicated down to the details.

Rebecca Ferguson is a force as Lady Jessica, as she should be; everything always bubbling just under her surface, always strong; always on the edge of breaking down. She walks a beautiful line. From the outset she was my favorite casting decision and that holds. Her elegant but worn looks are perfect for the part. She's captivating. Oscar Isaac works in a role that's probably difficult to correctly balance. Stellan Skarsgård's ominously droll voice and face pairs with the intimidating character design of the villain to great effect. Jason Momoa is a surprise standout for me, his charismatic energy a welcome highlight against his subdued surroundings. Josh Brolin biding his time in my favorite book character; Javier Bardem is in full character acting mode; Zendaya has the right amount of grounded girlishness. Characters I confused with others in the book have clear personalities and outstanding looks to help differentiate. The cast is near-perfect.

The only cast member who doesn't fit into the subtle but refined vibe is Dave Bautista, whose character can be summed up as "angry" and who passively yells his lines to convey that single dimension. This is a small negative, though there aren't many more that could be called bigger. Mostly, I wished for more, though I realize that's an unreasonable ask considering the film is two and a half hours long. I wish they could have included the whole of the first book without cutting out anything or increasing the epic, steady pace (which felt to me like watching a massive river or flood flowing from a high distance—beautiful and serene even with the obvious turmoil and force on display). I think Villeneuve chose the lesser of the evils and I hope it pays off.

The scale conveyed is so enormous it's a little hard to grasp.

This is my personal favorite work from Villeneuve, though I have never considered myself a huge fan. Part of me knows his penchant for enormous scale, robust scifi worldbuilding, and calculated way of storytelling makes him ideal for trying such a difficult piece of adapting. At the same time, I've never been deeply moved by his work. And the same is true here. Seeing the scale of the world, and seeing the book transposed so cleanly to the screen, made me smile, but it didn't bring me to love the story or characters any more. The book didn't bring much emotional attachment either, so maybe it's simply not that kind of story. But a small part of me wonders if the neatness of the work, and the cool, stoic style, are holding me back from tipping from this pleased admiration into something more freely adoring.

How much more astounding would this movie be if it could be everything it is, plus be wild, visceral, and psychedelic? Still, I don't want to complain. Dune had me smiling, enraptured, and dreading it ending—which it did far too soon. It was clearly thoughtfully adapted, keeping everything from the book it could while expanding it in some details, such as the vibrating, liquefying sand under the sandworms' attacks. I loved that. I loved the way The Voice is portrayed, as well as the way the book's heavy inner dialogue is adapted without the characters having literal inner dialogues. The plot was clear. The characters were given room to breathe and grow and the actors given opportunities to break out of the stoicism to have a bit of fun or bring extra intensity. And the special effects are so good I can't differentiate in-camera effects from CGI.

I don't care about fight or action scenes but there were several good ones of those, too.

I have a growing list of favorite scenes, moments, and little details, and have as much a desire to see this again (which I will, probably before I post this) as I do to see what the sequels have to hold. Dune is expansive, grand, and epic filmmaking on an unreal scale. An alien behemoth that can be approached from many angles, but my recommendation is simply that you let it sweep you along in its vast currents of sand to see the mesmerizing world it proudly and boldly puts on display for our appreciation. At the very, very least, it's an impressive and skillful craft of filmmaking.

Aquaman

Spoiler-free!

Pro tip for the DCEU: don't try to copy Marvel. First, because you're bad at it so you'll fail, but also because it's an over-saturated market anyway and as the off-brand you'll never be anything but last place.

I'm so tired of Disney's Marvel movies that when I go to movies like Aquaman and something bad happens I think to myself, "Well, at least I'm not watching another Marvel movie." But Marvel movies are (mostly) still objectively better. (They have a secret ingredient, and unlike your grandma, it isn't love.) I want a new, better, game-changing method to be thought of, so superhero movies can be exciting again -- so, Dear DCEU, I have your best interest at heart.

Okay maybe MY interest is at heart, and your interest is right next to it.

Here's what you need to do, from the perspective of someone who wants to like superhero movies, but more often than not doesn't: Take risks. The last risky Marvel movie was Guardians of the Galaxy and that movie changed their game. The biggest risk y'all ever made was Wonder Woman, and she is, without a doubt, keeping your franchise afloat. Aquaman is a decent movie. It's got a fine cast who are having fun, a unique central setting, a basic plot with lots of locations to visit... but for a live-action movie that takes place 50% underwater, it's surprisingly un-risky. It's good enough. But in today's world, good enough is practically bad.

It has a lot of individual issues, each one speaking to a different origin of misguided intention. For one, it wants to be funny, but outright jokes rarely land and are mostly used to cover up lazy writing. Example: "You could've just peed on it." Yes. Or spit on it. That line draws our attention to the fact, but does little to endow the scene with any more sense. It would've been funnier to me if he had stopped her halfway through collecting his sweat with her superpowers and just spit a nice glob of foamy saliva on the thing. What is most genuinely funny in the movie is when it embraces its own bombastic clichés, so we laugh with them, not at them.

Self-awareness that circumvents the cliché > self-awareness that points out the use of a cliché.

Jason Momoa's presence is amusing in a completely natural way that works. Things like the hair flip, the way he plays off jokes, and his epic poses and awesome hero moments -- he's having a blast and it translates. For that reason, a comedy tone seems like a good idea, but the movie misses matching its tone to him still; it's comparatively dead. He even plays the drama well and comes across as sincere and comfortable, and kinda leaves the film behind in his wake. It gets bogged down in its effort to keep up with him by trying to structure that free-spirit vibe too much. Movies need structure, but this was an undisguised step-by-step adventure, and could barely establish itself in a location before he was ready to move on. It was holding him back.

When the focus was solely on him it always seemed to work. But I rather liked the supporting players so I'm not sure I'd wish for less of them. My favorite was his half-brother Orm, the primary villain played by Patrick Wilson. There was a early-era Loki vibe there, but not in a copycat way, that I enjoyed. Orm is very theatrical and I loved how often he'd yell and it would almost sound like he was singing. His motivations are also not convoluted, unlike the secondary villain (Yahya Abdul-Mateen II), who is necessary, yet still distinctly feels like he detracts from the film. I also loved Nicole Kidman and the drama that she brought. Her strange romance with Arthur's father (Temuera Morrison) was a highlight of the movie.

I figured he'd be my favorite part of the movie, and I figured right. His hair was awesome and that's saying something because everyone's hair was a really big deal.

Mera (Amber Heard) I could take or leave. She stole too much of Arthur's thunder, but her presence was necessary, and the Shakespearean battling wits might've worked excellently with a smidge more chemistry and more biting writing. Willem Dafoe was perhaps underused, but better that than overused. The movie seemed afraid to put Arthur in scenes alone, but the best scene was the one where he was alone (well there was a giant monster there too, but it counts), and got to carry the scene without someone inadvertently stepping on his toes. I'm sure it wasn't intentional, but his interactions with Mera especially feel more like a passive-aggressive fights to upstage the other instead of an actual scene where the actors play off and elevate each other.

Visuals are a big part of the movie, and overall, I was impressed. Atlantis looked vast and vibrant and almost like a lived-in futuristic water city. Creature design was cool -- they went all out for that giant sea-monster thing. And there was some memorable and neat camera work. Especially in underwater fight scenes it takes on a less 2D perspective of the environment like scenes in outer space. (Should've taken that further!) The underwater effects were my biggest worry and turns out they were well-founded. The animated floating hair was so distracting, I couldn't pay attention to the actors' expressions. And the water distortion bothered me a bit too. I was always relieved when scenes took place on ground or in air pockets.

 Lol check out Willem photo-bombing in the back.

The action isn't anything particular except when paired with good visuals or a pleasantly hammy performance. That second one-on-one brother duel would've been quite good if only Orm had lost that dumb helmet at the start of it. Seems like the whole movie was that: pretty good ideas killed by lazy details and no follow-through. Still, my experience skewed toward enjoyment with the deviance from the Marvel formula -- though I'm sure the idea was to copy it. People have called it a rehash of Black Panther but that's in passing plot points only. Overall, taking tone, theme, and plot into account, it's more similar to Thor, and in a way that I liked.

I had a fine time watching, but it was more the lack of irritation and less the presence of good that was the cause. It's silly, cheesy, and pleasantly extravagant; but in such a risk-less and amateurishly calculated way that much of the magic gets dried up before it reaches us. So, in the end... and I'm sorry for this... it doesn't make any waves. I'll see myself out.

Justice League

Spoilers!

It's sad that this movie feels like a small fry in comparison to Batman v Superman. It's a bit anti-climactic after most of the Justice League's members have already teamed up and fought something so powerful that it managed to kill Superman. How do you top that?

Answer: You don't. Not like this you don't. And topping BvS isn't even a high goal.

Well, you have to bring Supes (Henry Cavill) back to life. But casually sideline him because he's still OP. And you gotta find another super-powerful villain to challenge them. Then threaten the end of the world, cause that always ups the stakes. So CGI villain Steppenwolf (Ciarán Hinds) arrives, cued by the death of Superman, to destroy and conquer the Earth. Batman (Ben Affleck) and Wonder Woman (Gal Gadot), aware of the coming invasion, collect The Flash (Ezra Miller) Aquaman (Jason Momoa) and Cyborg (Ray Fisher) to fight him. The characters aren't bad, and the plot is cliched but not bad, but it's put together as if by random; everyone going through the motions; no soul, no power, no passion. Just... nothing.

Them deciding to use the weird liquid in the Kryptonian ship to bring Superman back to life, like Luthor did to create Doomsday, is the most unexpected and therefore most interesting part of the movie. Which is unusual because it happens in the middle of the movie, where most superhero flicks flounder before getting to the end battle. I honestly expected Superman to show up unprompted and save the day, but they had to decide to restore him, and it took up a good portion of the movie to make happen. Still he's in it very little, and spends too much time with Lois (Amy Adams) and yes, his upper lip (where a mustache has been CG-ed out) is distracting.

"So what happened in Justice League, Diana?" "Oh, nothing very interesting."

Superman is likeable once he gets over being woken from his nap, and even gets cheesy a few times. Is this good or bad? Well... yes. Wonder Woman doesn't have her character ruined or anything, but she's nowhere near the height she reached in her solo film. Batman is just Batman. There's nothing particularly good about him, or anything particularly bad. He's just there. Cyborg ended up being the only one to impress and be better than expected; he's equally as well-done as everyone else. Aquaman was somehow both worse and better than I expected. My highest hopes were that Flash would be my favorite, but he was exclusively used for forced comic relief that only tempted me to laugh once. His potential remains, so we'll see about that solo film.

From scene to scene Lois will change from wig to no wig. It's noticeable, and cheap, and honestly I wish she hadn't been in the movie at all. This plus Superman's erased mustache, plus Steppenwolf's appearance as some villain on loan from a video game, are the outward evidence of this film's fundamental problem: Movies this massive, this expensive, and this hyped, should not be anywhere near this small and cheap. I haven't been this underwhelmed since X-Men: Apocalypse promised the apocalypse and delivered nothing but Oscar Isaac disguised in blue silicone. To make this movie was the entire reason the DCEU existed! But now it feels like a casual afterthought to BvS and Wonder Woman.

The most exciting thing about it is the promises of more to come -- but at what point are we going to stop believing them, if more exciting promises is all they ever deliver?

This film spends $300,000,000 delivering nothing, and has nothing to stand on but flat jokes, horrendous CGI, characters that have been better elsewhere, and lackluster stakes. The best I can say for it is that it didn't make me angry. BvS did, but now I'm wondering which is worse. At least BvS tried to do something and made me feel something -- even a bad something. With this, I've never been more disengaged watching a movie in the theater. Justice League, DCEU's Big Event Movie, that's been building up for five years, just did the worst thing it could do, and made a safe landing. We were promised an Earth-shattering kaboom, and all we got was a soft, apologetic thump.