‘Eternals’ vibrant plot full of big ideas held down by MCU-enforced technical weaknesses

Posted on November 13, 2021 by reelentropy
Ugh, why does it have to look so flat and sad and boring! Images courtesy Walt Disney Studios Motion Pictures.

4/10 Eternals has long been built up as a shift in direction for the Marvel Cinematic Universe, and boy, is it ever. There’s a new production mentality, a new story mentality, new story directions and relaxed series rules. It’s more of a lateral move than a step up, the series’ signature terrible action scenes and visual design is still here, but instead of being the point like in Black Widow and Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings, they now feel like vestigial organs that could eventually be shed.

Eternals’ marketing painted a deceptive picture of its plot and I’m not sure what is or isn’t a spoiler, you’ve probably already seen it anyway, whatever. Consider this a spoiler review.

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In the beginning, the celestial Arishem (David Kaye) sends eight angel-like immortal beings, dubbed “eternals,” to Earth, where they protect the indigenous population from wild alien predators called deviants. They arrive 5000 B.C. in Mesopotamia and take their sweet, sweet time, partying with humans and embedding themselves into our myths and legends. When they finally finish getting rid of the deviants in 1521 A.D., they split and hang around the globe while they await further orders, but after the mass destruction and restoration related to Thanos and the Avengers, the emergence, which will destroy the planet, begins, and the eternals must reassemble to stop it.

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‘Dune’ is not a complete movie

Posted on November 4, 2021 by reelentropy
Images courtesy Warner Bros. Pictures.

1/10 Dune is not a complete film. It is a deliberately incomplete film, and despite what writer/director/producer Denis Villeneuve will tell you, the decision to only make half of it was made at the story’s expense, not its benefit.

The Galactic Padishah Empire, 10191- The emperor has reassigned fiefdom over the planet Arrakis from House Harkonnen to House Atreides in a transparent attempt to consolidate power by triggering a war between the richest and most powerful houses in his empire. Arrakis, a desert planet informally referred to as Dune, is the only source of the spice Melange, the most important logistical, medical and religious substance in the universe, meaning the planet is a great source of wealth to its rulers, but it also poses incredible danger from the heat, the indigenous Fremen population and the great sandworms that shape the desert. Duke Leto Atreides (Oscar Isaac), knowing the Harkonnens will soon attack, seeks to build an alliance with the Fremen, whom the Harkonnens brutally suppressed, while his son, Paul (Timothée Chalamet), at the confluence of several destinies, studies the politics of the situation.

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‘The Last Duel’ a brilliant work of storytelling, period action, and a nervous apology

Posted on November 4, 2021 by reelentropy
Awesome. Images courtesy 20th Century Studios.

9/10 The Last Duel doesn’t just tell a story, it builds one, layer by layer, interlocking and leaving gaps at all the perfect points, creating a pyramid worth observing as a whole, as individual layers and as connections between the layers. It’s a genius work of storytelling that captures and dramatizes not just conflicting accounts, but the conflict of those accounts.

Paris, Dec. 29, 1386- Sir Jean de Carrouges (Matt Damon, who also writes and produces) meets his former squire, Jacques Le Gris (Adam Driver) in a trial by combat. de Carrouges’ wife, Marguerite (Jodie Comer), has accused Le Gris of raping her that January, but Le Gris is the favored tax collector of Count Pierre d’Alençon (Ben Affleck, who also writes and produces), and de Carrouges knows he will be protected in court, making this duel the only way to pursue justice. However, if he loses, Marguerite will be found guilty of perjury and burnt at the stake. This was the last judicially sanctioned duel in French history, and the truth of Marguerite’s accusation remains disputed.

The Last Duel is split into three chapters, dramatizing first de Carrouges’ version of his relationship with Le Gris going back 15 years as they served together in various campaigns of the Caroline War, then Le Gris’ account of their friendship, his service with d’Alençon and his meeting of Marguerite, then finally Marguerite’s account, which is distinguished as “the truth.”

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‘Halloween Kills’ lumbers dully, aimlessly through theaters

Posted on November 4, 2021 by reelentropy
Most of Halloween Kills’ imagery is around Myers surviving the last movie’s fire, another plot point that’s been repeated endlessly throughout various sequels. Images courtesy Universal Pictures.

1/10 Halloween Kills is a film after Michael Myers’ own heart, a mindless machine doing something no one really wants over and over again with no distinguishing features, nothing to say, no discernible motive and no discernible reason why audiences keep coming back.

Haddonfield, Illinois, Halloween Night 2018- After the events of Halloween (2018), on the seemingly interminable Halloween Night of 2018, Michael Myers (James Jude Courtney, credited as “the shape,” with Nick Castle reprising the role he originated in scenes where Myers’ mask is compromised and Airon Armstrong and Christian Michael Pates joining in flashbacks) has survived Laurie Strode (Jamie Lee Curtis, who also produces executively) burning her house down around him. As word of his activities spread and seemingly the entire state of Illinois congregates at Haddonfield Memorial Hospital, working themselves into a frenzy over his reemergence, Myers works his way to his still-standing childhood home, killing as he goes.

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A24 as genre in ‘Lamb’

Posted on November 4, 2021 by reelentropy
You can really see the Midsommar in what feels like a deliberate homage here, when she puts Ada in a crown of flowers. Images courtesy A24.

3/10 As movies continue to centralize and series entries become more uniform, A24 studios, which still feels like an upstart studio after nine years in operation, has been a haven for weirder films. But as the distributor has become more widely known and more associated with narrower kinds of entries, we’ve seen tropes and very specific audience expectations develop, threatening to turn what started out as weird and new into a genre to be repeated ad nauseum.

Lamb is that development.

Rural Iceland- Sheep farming couple María and Ingvar (Noomi Rapace and Hilmir Snær Guðnason) discover one of their flock has given birth to a lamb with the torso and lower body of a human. They name the hybrid Ada after their own lost daughter and raise her as their own child. Most of the surface-level conflict in the film is between them and Ada’s birth mother, who wants to raise her own child, and Ingvar’s brother Pétur (Björn Hlynur Haraldsson), who comes to crash with them after Ada is about a year old and is shocked by her presence.

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