A lazy destination movie, a glorious throwback to the mid-00s

Posted on March 31, 2024 by reelentropy
Images courtesy Sony Pictures Releasing.

Rating: 1 out of 5.

Anyone but You, writer/director/producer Will Gluck’s crappy modernization of “Much Ado About Nothing” that fervently insists the mid ‘00s never ended, we just got smartphones, was so successful during its first run that Sony pushed out a Feb. 9 re-release with a little extra content.

This re-release would be embarrassing if anyone found out about it – the film was still in its initial run, adding only 186 theaters for the “re-release” in total, and other than that, the numbers look like nothing changed. It dropped 23.2% that, and it had been dropping close to 25% every weekend since the Christmas season ended. It didn’t even change positions, moving from no.7 at the box office the weekend of Feb. 2 to no. 7 at the box office the weekend of Feb. 9.

A round of applause for Sony Pictures.

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Survey’s in – no, ‘Aquman’ did not save the DCEU

Posted on March 31, 2024 by reelentropy
The DCEU seems tired of its own fantasy. In Aquaman and Wonder Woman, it establishes two entire races of human native to Earth who can stand up to Superman, which takes the scale away from the character. Images courtesy Warner Bros. Pictures.

Rating: 1 out of 5.

It’s over. It’s finally over.

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‘Maestro’ is basically ‘Raging Bull,’ that’s what you should watch instead

Posted on March 31, 2024 by reelentropy
On the plus side, there’s significantly less domestic violence and fewer racial slurs in Maestro. Images courtesy Netflix.

Rating: 4 out of 5.

Maestro is a biopic of Leonard Bernstein (Bradley Cooper, who also writes, directs and produces), an American conductor/composer who wrote a lot of, you know, he was really famous. It says here he was the first American composer to receive international acclaim – I do movies, not music.

The project started its life way back in 2008 with Josh Singer, who had not yet received his first feature credit, attached to write and Martin Scorsese attached to direct. He eventually stepped down and the project fell to Steven Spielberg, who approached Bradley Cooper to star. When Spielberg left the project, Cooper took control, seizing the director’s chair and rewriting the screenplay, though Singer is still credited. Scorsese and Spielberg are still credited as producers along with Cooper and a whole slew of other middlemen bridging these relationships.

Scorsese’s participation is ironic, because Maestro feels a lot like a remake of his 1980 masterpiece Raging Bull. It’s unfortunate that Maestro releases into a world where Raging Bull already exists, because I would never, ever recommend the newer film over the classic, and there’s too much overlap for them to coexist.

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Now complete, ‘Dune’ still disappoints

Posted on March 3, 2024 by reelentropy
Images courtesy Warner Bros. Pictures.

Rating: 3 out of 5.

Dune began its life as a deliberately incomplete project, with writer/director/producer Denis Villeneuve insisting on adapting the famous novel in two parts, but only securing funding for one of those parts, with a follow-up film contingent on its success. There are several problems with this approach, but Dune was successful enough – well, no it wasn’t. Its box office performance certainly didn’t warrant a sequel, but that was hindered by Warner Bros.’ unilateral decision to release all its 2021 movies day-and-date on HBOmax, so executives gave it a handicap and took all its technical Oscars into account. They’ve all been sacked, that’s not even what the god damn website’s called anymore, everything’s much worse now – whatever logic was used, someone decided this was worth another $190 million, so here we are. 

Ironically, this is not the first attempt at adapting “Dune” to film that is known to be incomplete – David Lynch’s 1984 adaptation ran out of money in the middle of production, leaving an obviously incomplete film relying on cheap “Star Trek” style sets that starts skipping like a broken record halfway through, fortuitously at almost the precise point part one of Villeneuve’s adaptation cuts off. This second part is the realization of not just the last film, but more than 50 years of trying to bring this novel to the screen.

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‘Poor Things’ an artistic, crowd-pleasing snuff film

Posted on February 18, 2024 by reelentropy
The longform riff on “Frankenstein” is filled with silly little creatures created by God. Images courtesy Searchlight Pictures.

Rating: 4 out of 5.

Poor Things is a conspiracy to trick you into watching star/producer Emma Stone get drilled. We’re going to talk about the artistic merits and its place in the culture, but make no mistake – director/producer Yorgos Lanthimos and Stone made this primarily as a big porno.  

London- A deformed surgeon called Godwin “God” Baxter (Willem Dafoe) has surgically transplanted a late-stage fetal brain into the body of a grown woman, a creation whom he calls Bella Baxter (Stone). Baxter almost immediately discovers masturbation and, like a child, tries to share this new joy with everyone she meets – but, like an adult, this is taken as a sexual advance. She quickly agrees to marry Max McCandles (Ramy Youssef), whom God hired to study her around the clock, but just as quickly runs off to Lisbon with depraved lawyer Duncan Wedderburn (Mark Ruffalo).

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