#Tenet film complet

[warriorprincesstramp]

also evil dead sucked major ass I'm sick of staying silent the more I think about it the more it seems like a total failure under any criteria u give

[rebeccalouisaferguson]

Rebecca Ferguson had no qualms about leading her own TV show. In fact, she relished the opportunity to set the tone for the Apple TV+ series “Silo” from the top down with a “no bulls–t” attitude. “I’m not worried about the consequence of speaking up or saying no or coming forward,” she told TheWrap over Zoom, sitting comfortably on her bedroom floor, draped in a blanket and fiddling with a caffeinated toothpick as her passion for the acclaimed drama manifested physically — like an excitable friend waxing poetic in the wee hours of the night during a sleepover.

“There is no book of how you lead. You listen and you follow,” Ferguson said, speaking not just about her role as the star and executive producer of the dystopian sci-fi series but also about her character Juliet, who is unexpectedly thrust into the role of sheriff — a job she decidedly does not want. 

Based on a trilogy of novels by author Hugh Howey, “Silo” takes place entirely within the confines of a community living inside a giant silo that burrows hundreds of stories into the Earth. Life on the surface is uninhabitable, but Ferguson’s Juliet — an engineer with a tragic past — begins to question the basic tenets that hold the fabric of this community together in a sprawling and emotional storyline.

“She doesn’t want to be sheriff because the idea of human connection and leading people f–king terrifies her,” Ferguson said. “But by questioning, by being a rebel in some form of unchosen way, she changes the status quo of something that has been a structure and shakes it up. And that’s really fascinating, I love it.”

When “Silo” came her way, Ferguson was able to be picky about what projects she took on. She’d become a fan favorite in the “Mission: Impossible” franchise and was earning acclaim for her role in the Oscar-winning “Dune.” So when she was pitched “Silo” and she had some issues with the script, she turned it down. “They came back and said, ‘What was it you didn’t like?’ and I was like, ‘Well this and this,’ and then they came back and they had changed it,” Ferguson recalled. 

“The whole script came to life for me and then (creator) Graham Yost offered me the executive producer credit and — and this is not a joke — I literally grabbed my phone and under my computer screen I was Googling, ’What’s the difference between executive producer and producer?’” she said with a laugh.

Ferguson said she put in a lot of work to prepare for the show’s first season, which she described as “like Indiana Jones underground,” but the key to finding her take on Juliet was in the character’s movement. 

“I wanted to not walk the same way that I always walk,” Ferguson said. “I thought, what happens if I go completely introvert? What if she’s uncomfortable with people and environments?” That meant carrying trauma in Juliet’s shoulders, looking stiff and conveying discomfort when talking to others. “It’s fun!”

When asked if the responsibility she carries as No. 1 on the call sheet is ever daunting, without hesitation Ferguson said no: “I don’t feel that, ever.” She arrives on set early each morning, and she compared her giggly excitement upon seeing the rest of the cast and crew to that of a teacher greeting students each day.

“It’s a weird dynamic but I think the point is, I see you. You know in relationships when someone says, ‘I see you?’ That’s what I feel with these people.”

And she’s eager to see “Silo” through to the end. The show has only been renewed through Season 2, which wrapped filming earlier this year, but Ferguson said she’s under contract for four seasons total and hopes to finish the story. She even knows how it all ends.

“Season 2 is dark. It’s a bonkers exciting season,” Ferguson said of what’s to come. “It is huge, man.”

This story first appeared in the Drama Series issue of TheWrap’s awards magazine

[arviyya]

Hiya, I have some fluffy Rosekiller headcanons to make your day better ❤️

Barty is clingy, he loves to be petted, and he loves when Evan plays with his hair,

Barty can't cook at all, the only meat he can handle is Evan's cock,

Evan is a big fan of films like Interstellar or Tenet. He tried to explain them to Barty many times, but Barty's adhd brain simply can't focus and he just lays next to Evan watching him instead of the movie,

Evan loves comics, Barty loves video games,

Barty can't drink coffee because it's making him sleepy,

Evan will die if he doesn't drink two big mugs of coffee in the morning,

they both are switches, but some things are reserved for Barty only, like being spanked or edged,

Barty has zero manners at all,

Evan at least can pretend he's polite or nice (he's not).

h e l p

"The only meat he can handle is Evan's cock." This absolutely sent me. I love you, anon.

I LOVE when you all make my day better with fluffy rosekiller headcanons. Its the best.

Anyway, Barty really would be so clingy. He wants Evan to kiss and hold him and pet him at all times. Evan would 100% just be sitting there watching a movie and all of a sudden Barty is on his lap, straddling him with his head on Evan's shoulder, clinging like monkeys cling to their mothers. Evan wouldn't even flinch, he's so used to it.

Barty would love watching movies with Evan, and listening to him yap about the details and every single thought he has. This would be Bartys ultimate comfort. Evan's presence and the distraction of his yapping would just completely melt away all of Barty's anxiety.

The comics and video games and coffee headcanons are so cute, I love this.

Oh, and Evan 1000% drinks black coffee. And on the rare occasion Barty gets coffee it's always the most complicated order. It drives Evan nuts. He's always like "B, that isn't even coffee anymore"

Definitely both switches. I'll die on that hill. Gotta say tho, Barty would be the most pathetic in bed, always crying, while Evan would be so good at making him come with almost no effort at all. He just knows Barty. It's cute too, and he does it at inconvenient times like in public restrooms, in the car, at family gatherings - just taking Barty apart so easily.

Barty is totally that loud rude, while Evan is that quiet side comment rude but it's so much worse while he pretends to be so nice.

Ill stop yapping. Can you tell i love them so much

Send me more, I have a longgg drive today

[gacha-incels]

I think one of the reasons it’s hard for people to cold turkey drop being fans/consumers of a piece of contemporary media is how these “fandom” spaces on social media have been set up. you’ve got generalized spaces online (sub-reddits, tumblr, twitter, etc. I would put even those book and film review websites here and imageboards) where you can “join” a pre-existing group of friends completely based on specific pieces of media.

for those who are post-college years and perhaps more introverted, it’s easier to talk with people online in these places and you can log in 24/7. instead of making friends in a physical schooling atmosphere where you’re surrounded by other people daily for 12+ years, you can log in and make friends digitally by being surrounded by people who all consume the same piece of media as you. so your friendship is completely dependent on this piece of media for the most part.

for younger people growing up now I think this also ties into “finding yourself” where they will see consumption of a piece of media as a core tenet of their personality. I believe this is part of why there have been multiple posts about the Project Moon/Limbus Company situation that say “don’t worry whatever you choose you’re not a bad person either way.” This is also reinforced when people online comment “xyz fan” if they want to call your judgement of something into question. They have in effect assigned you a personality based on your consumption a videogame, for example. When the creators do something so ideologically opposite than what the work presents, it’s extra shocking to those fans who considered consuming the work as part of their personality. I think this way of consumption is also why, at least from what I’ve seen, there has been such a drive to label and categorize “aesthetics” into words you can search hashtags for or put in your online profile. This also has got to be a reason why people go so hard in their defense of whatever media, because they feel like when someone criticizes the media they consume they are in effect criticizing the person who consumes it. They are essentially trying to defend themselves.

When something shocking like the kowtowing to misogynistic men situation with Limbus Company, in a sense the way these “fandom” spaces work online now makes it harder for people to completely drop the game. The consumer now has online friendships and is in entire communities based completely on this media, maybe they have also even created fanart and fanfiction. For some of them it’s part of their personality. If they drop it completely they are also losing these online communities , friends and even a sense of self. I think this is a reason you will see a lot of fans ask “what fandom/game should I get into next”, they want to fill this void ASAP.

As a gacha game, Limbus further complicates this by getting the consumer into a routine they now have to break. Every day they have logged in, done the daily gameplay, even the events and gambling banners have a set schedule. These types of games typically have an ensemble cast with specific set types of personalities so fans can choose their favorite(s). As long as they make money they will keep making stories (just look at FGO), so it’s like having a never-ending story with your favorite character. It’s like a series of movies that always end with a teaser for the next one. It’s easy to get addicted, not just from the gambling aspect.

I was confused at first why other fans were having such trouble completely dropping the game because for me, it was like a switch turned off and I was able to stop caring completely. I think it’s amazing how some Korean fans have completely deleted all their fanart and even taken their fan merch back from the restaurant. But looking into how “fandom” works these days it seems this makes it harder to drop something completely. I’m not saying these are the only reasons, but it’s interesting how this works positively for companies that make these pieces of media that are up for public consumption.

[steelbluehome]

"The two leads are fantastic: Stan navigates from naïve wannabe to glowering mogul and never loses his way or slips into parody. His vanity about his hair and his looks is on display from the beginning, but in the early years he is unsure of himself and there is a vulnerability about him. Strong is also utterly believable as Cohn, a man as vain as his disciple and certainly as dangerous."

The Standard

The Apprentice review: Sebastian Stan shines in drama about how Donald Trump went from wannabe to mogul (click for article)

This origin story does an excellent job of showing the rise and rise of Donald Trump

Jo-Ann Titmarsh

4 out of 5 stars

One of the hottest tickets in Cannes this year is Iranian director Ali Abbasi’s The Apprentice, his tale of the rise and rise of Donald Trump.

The apprentice in question is Trump himself (Sebastian Stan), while the master he serves and later usurps is Roy Cohn (Jeremy Strong), a lawyer who hobnobs with leaders and has the ear of the president.

Cohn is ruthless and will stop at nothing to attain what he wants, often in the name of a patriotism which equals hard-right conservatism.

The film opens in 1970s New York. Donald is a baby-faced teetotal rent collector for his dad, but he yearns to break free of his father’s grip and strive for greater things, obsessing over the tycoons and millionaires that frequent Le Club.

This is where he meets Cohn who takes Trump under his wing and instructs him to follow his three essential tenets, which are all about achieving, denial and how even a defeat can be turned into a win.

Abbasi deftly recreates the feel of the city and the darkness of those years. And what starts gritty becomes colourful once Ivana (Maria Bakalova) appears her platinum blonde hair, scarlet dress and matching glossy lips.

The other important people are his family members. Martin Donovan plays Fred, the abusive and monstrous family patriarch. Donald’s mother Mary (Iona Rose MacKay) is a less forceful presence, while Trump’s brother Freddy (Charlie Carrick) is sympathetically depicted as a man slowly but irrevocably broken by his father’s contempt.

As the film moves into the 1980s, the look changes completely as the Eighties vibe comes clearly into focus, like walking into the neon-lit bathroom of a dingy club.

There is nothing but tackiness here, that harsh lighting revealing the deals in Atlantic City, the over-the-top décor of the Trump home and the gaudiness of the couple’s life together, even as their relationship falls apart.

The harshness also highlights Trump’s ascension as Cohn begins to falter and the apprentice becomes the master.

The film ends with Trump drafting his book The Art of the Deal, in which he dictates those three tenets drummed into him by Cohn. Nothing about Trump is original. Nothing has been gained by him alone. And there is nothing he won’t do to get what he wants.

The two leads are fantastic: Stan navigates from naïve wannabe to glowering mogul and never loses his way or slips into parody. His vanity about his hair and his looks is on display from the beginning, but in the early years he is unsure of himself and there is a vulnerability about him. Strong is also utterly believable as Cohn, a man as vain as his disciple and certainly as dangerous.

It’s hard not to bring up comparisons with Succession here: a New York dynasty, a tyrannical father, the wealthy elite, the presence of Jeremy Strong who played Kendall Roy… there’s even a fleeting glimpse and mention of Rupert Murdoch, whom Cohn says Trump should cosy up to. And then there’s the excellent music by Martin Dirkov, which has echoes of the Succession theme.

There are some problems, the story is too linear and the screenplay, by Gabriel Sherman, full of scenes seen many times before, such as Cohn chasing after Trump in the street begging for an audience or Donald refusing his calls, and the director could have been more inventive in the fil. However, there is a lot of humour here, particularly thanks to the character of Cohn, and almost always at Trump’s expense.

The Apprentice is not going to change anyone’s mind about Trump, who is so vain that he will almost certainly love this film, despite the references to his plastic surgery and big butt.

But Abbasi does an excellent job of showing us how and why Trump became the Trump of today and how his path to presidency was paved.

[atac-agent]

I WAS SUPPOSED TO BE SETTING UP THIS CHILDHOOD FRIEND OF MINE WITH MY BSF , NOT FALL IN LOVE WITH CEDRIC DIGGORY IN THE MEANWHILE!!!

Ok so as our exams got over, I asked for a good movie rec from this friend. He recommended me Tenet (directed by Christopher Nolan). Well no spoilers, but Nolan's films are the best and Tenet was obv. intriguing!!

Here's what happened: This character, Neil was like hot asf- So I googled Tenet's cast and found out Neil was acted by Robert Pattison. (Now simultaneously I was also watching this clip of HP and thought that Cedric looked actually good.) Anyways, I click on Robert Pattison and get these hot pics of his.. I scroll a bit and come to the movies. Then it happens...

Wait... Batman, you say? Makes sense why he's looking a bit fami- WTF! WHAT THE FUCK YOU MEAN BY HE'S ACTED IN HARRY POTTER AND THE GOBLET O- WTF!!! WTF!!! WAIT!!!! HE'S CEDRIC??!!! AIN'T NO FUCKING WAY!!

I click on Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire and ofc! I find Cedric has been acted by Robert Pattison.

Now, my day is completely ruined and I officially have a crush on Cedric Diggory (which makes his death even more painful, than it needs to be-) and I wanna kill my irl friend, rn-

[grigori77]

2024 in Movies - My Top 30 Fave Movies (Part 3)

10. HERETIC – I’ve never considered myself to be a very religious person, I’ve always preferred to just be spiritual and not worry too much about the specifics of what might come after we die, so my particular relationship with organised religion has always been pretty academic. So I’ve always looked on the particularly interesting case of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints from a distance, not judging them on the controversies or the running jokes from those outside of it, which made this deep-dive through the lens of psychological horror quite fascinating. Sophie Thatcher (who I completely fell in love with as an actress when I first saw her in Prospect and hasn’t disappointed me once since) and Chloe East (who I first saw in the criminally overlooked The Wolf of Snow Hollow) are Mormon missionaries Sister Barnes and Sister Paxton, who come to the home of Mr Reed (Hugh Grant) looking to convert him to their faith. At first it seems cosy and intriguing, as their verbose and highly intelligent host engages them in a fascinating debate about the values and tenets of their church, but as time passes they grow more uneasy, little hints telling them something is terribly wrong. But when they want to leave he won’t let them out, instead ensnaring them in a far more troubling debate about the nature of belief itself, and it finally dawns on them that they’re both in very real danger … I don’t want to give any more away, this is definitely a film which lives and dies on its surprises so I won’t betray any of the myriad skilful twists and turns the razor sharp screenplay takes. The writer-director duo of Scott Beck and Bryan Woods have been impressing me for a while already, first coming to my attention by conceiving the original story that John Krasisnki went on to refine into A Quiet Place before going on to create 2023’s criminally overlooked sci-fi thriller 65 and penning unsettling Stephen King adaptation The Boogeyman,but this goes WAY BEYOND anything I’ve seen from them so far, the pair seeming to have progressed in leaps and bounds in the creation of what has to be one of the smartest and most downright ORIGINAL horror movies I’ve seen in absolutely AGES. They weave an atmosphere of pregnant dread that slowly blooms into deep existential horror when the big reveal comes, while asking far more profound questions than the already weighty central concept originally promised, ultimately making some particularly astute points that genuinely left me a little mind-blown for a good while after, ably supported in what’s essentially a three-hander by some truly exceptional tour-de-force performances – seriously, the small but EXTREMELY POTENT main cast are ON FIRE, Thatcher and East effortlessly supporting each other as their characters’ seemingly disparate personalities turn out to be perfectly complimentary, making it VERY EASY for us to root for them, while Grant is simply MESMERISING in what may well be the very best performance I’ve EVER seen him deliver, at once affably charming and unsettlingly threatening with nary any warning about which way he’s about to turn. This is a truly TERRIFYING piece of work, but more than that it’s incredibly challenging and thought-provoking too, a fiendishly smart little indie horror that deserves to be a proper MASSIVE hit, marking a major turning point for two filmmakers I’ve already come to admire a great deal. If this really is an honest indicator of what they’re TRULY capable of, then I’m beyond excited for what they do next ...

9. KINGDOM OF THE PLANET OF THE APES – Matt Reeves is a tough act to follow, even before The Batman he was already blowing us away with his star-making directorial breakthrough helming Dawn of the Planet of the Apes and its follow-up War For the Planet of the Apes. The conclusion of that latter film put a very definitive exclamation point on one of the best cinematic trilogies of the 2010s, making ANY attempts to continue the rebooted franchise a tough prospect indeed, and something that even a seasoned filmmaker might balk at. But when I heard the proposed new trilogy, set hundreds of years after the events of War, would be directed by Wes Ball, I breathed a big sigh of relief – he did an INCREDIBLE job with the sci-fi trilogy adapting YA novelist James Dashner’s popular Maze Runner series, so I knew the saga was in very good hands indeed. Having come up in visual effects, Ball’s always maintained a very strong balance between physical and digital filmmaking, so he was certainly up to the challenge of bringing a new generation of photorealistic, vitally ALIVE super-intelligent talking apes to the big screen, as well as putting his flesh-and-blood actors through their paces with similar skill and flair. Most important, though, this film introduces a new lead protagonist who’s definitely got what it takes to succeed Andy Serkis’ mesmerizing Caesar in a new story, Owen Teague (It, I See You, Inherit the Viper, Black Mirror) thoroughly impressing in his first lead role as Noa, an uncertain young chimpanzee from an isolated tribal clan forced to grow up fast when his people are stolen in one terrifying night by masked ape raiders, leaving him to follow their trail with only intellectual orangutan Raka (The Orville’s Peter Macon) and an unusually smart “echo” (basically what humans have become since they lost their speech and intelligence) named Mae (The Witcher’s Freya Allan) to count as allies. Macon is a thoroughly endearing presence throughout, while Allan delivers a fascinatingly complex performance that fuels many of the film’s most interesting twists (although I’m sure you can spot one or two coming ahead of time); and then there’s Kevin Durand, who’s clearly having a whale of a time getting his teeth into a rewardingly robust screen villain in the form of Proximus Caesar, an ambitious bonobo warlord who’s using a corrupted version of his namesake’s teachings to build a tyrannical empire of oppressed apes – he’s not quite as compelling an antagonist as Toby Kebbell’s Koba, but serves most admirably indeed here. Altogether, this film definitely had A LOT of heavy lifting to do to even APPROACH the heights of Reeves’ tenure on the franchise, and Ball and screenwriter Josh Friedman (War of the Wolds, Terminator: Dark Fate, Avatar: The Way of Water) have risen to the task in fine style, delivering a thrilling, affecting and inventive epic action adventure which skilfully builds on the framework provided by the previous trilogy while courageously forging ahead into the future, leaving room to venture forward into exciting further instalments. Ultimately this isn’t QUITE as good as Dawn or even War, but with this the saga remains as rewarding, compelling and majestic as ever, and I see great promise in its future …

8. KUNG FU PANDA 4 – The Dragon Warrior is back once again for a long-awaited fourth adventure, and while there’s always room for more of my second favourite Dreamworks animated franchise there are strong indicators that this could well be the last, and if it is, it would certainly be a worthy bow-out for one of my favourite anthropomorphic movie characters. The eponymous martial arts master, Po (the boundlessly endearing Jack Black, inexhaustibly effervescent as always), is at the height of his astounding abilities, and his crabby red panda mentor Shifu (Dustin Hoffman) thinks it’s time for him to take his place as the spiritual leader of the Valley of Peace, while also choosing a successor to begin training as the new Dragon Warrior. Po, however, couldn’t be more against this particular idea, since there’s nothing he loves more than kicking butt and taking names (although he’s never been very good at the latter), so when it seems like his old foe Tai Lung (a welcome return for the great Ian McShane) has returned he jumps at the chance to investigate. Instead he discovers that there’s a new threat out there – a shapeshifting sorceress known as The Chameleon (Viola Davis) has taken control of the distance metropolis of Juniper City, making it her base of operations from which to launch her nefarious plan to reach into the Spirit World and steal the Kung Fu of ever master villain there. Po’s only hope of defeating her is to enlist the very reluctant help one of the city’s residents, a nefarious corsac fox thief named Zhen (Awkwafina) who may prove more of a handful than he bargained for … the series continues to fire on all cylinders with all prerequisite elements functioning exactly as they should – the franchise may have peaked with the second film, but they’ve maintained an impressive level of quality throughout, and this fourth entry definitely measures up very well in comparison, regardless of what some naysayers may have said. This is just as amusing, ingenious, exciting and visually arresting as previous outings, and rather than stripping away much of the fun by leaving the Furious Five out this time round, the story’s a good deal tighter and much more focused, rightly focusing on the relationship that develops between Po and Zhen as they go from rivals to uneasy allies to true friends in very organic fashion. It certainly helps that the two leads have such strong chemistry – Black’s having as much fun as ever while his creation remains his adorably geeky self, while Awkwafina brings plenty of likeable sass and snark to proceedings, and they gel very effectively over the course of the film. Davis, meanwhile, creates a compelling villain with strong motives for her dastardly plot, while there’s quality support from returning voices like Hoffman alongside Bryan Cranston and James Hong as Po’s two dads Li Shan and Mr Ping and series newcomers such as Ke Huy Quan, fresh from his post-Everything Everywhere All At Once success as Zhen’s estranged pangolin mentor Han. Granted, ultimately this feels like just a lot more of the same, but when the end results are still so consistent there’s no real room for complaint, and as far as I’m concerned the series remains as strong as it was when it started, from the gorgeous animation and stylish design to the exquisitely executed action and, once again, a spectacular score from Hans Zimmer, this time joined by regular collaborator Steve Mazzaro (the highlight here is a truly WILD orchestral rendition of Ozzy Osbourne’s Crazy Train during the film’s best set-piece). Ultimately, if this really IS the end of the franchise, it’s a fitting place to call it a day, although I’m sure I’m not alone in hoping for a little more, and there’s definitely a strong indicator where they COULD go from here …

7. A QUIET PLACE: DAY ONE – It’s interesting, most of the time when you get a really great movie that becomes a big hit and spawns a franchise, THE LAST THING it needs is a prequel, and oftentimes when it DOES happen it feels like a shoehorned mess or even a disrespectful retcon (they can’t ALL be Furiosa, after all). A Quiet Place was never one of those – right from the start it was clear that how it all began was going to be JUST as interesting as where the original story was going, a fact that was DEFINITELY reinforced when Part Two dropped that TERRIFYING flashback cold open. So when this finally arrived I was FIRST in my local queue, raring to go and so unswervingly excited that anything less than amazing was liable to be a disappointment. Thankfully it turned out to be EVERYTHING I was hoping for – this is a super trim 99 minutes of knuckle-whitening terror with a (by now, not really all that) surprising amount of emotional power packed in, one of those films that brings you to tears when it’s not scaring the living bejeezuz out of you, just like the first two. Lupita Nyong’o is a breath of fresh air as our new lead protagonist, Samira, a world-weary young New Yorker who’s been beaten down by a life of tragedy and chronic pain from the very same kind of advanced cancer that killed her beloved father, only to find a reason to stay alive (at least for a few more days) when the sound-seeking murder-beasts crash-land in the middle of the loudest city in the world and instantly go apeshit from all the noise. Stranger Things’ Joseph Quinn, meanwhile, puts us through the emotional wringer right from his entrance as Eric, a timid Brit law student whose anxiety is going THROUGH THE ROOF as this all goes off around him, forced to find inner reserves of courage he never knew he had after he latches onto Sam as she makes her way across the city in search of the last slice she’ll ever be able to get from her favourite Harlem pizzeria. There are equally heartfelt turns from Alex Wolff (Hereditary, Jumanji, Pig) as Reuben, Sam’s put-upon hospice nurse, and Djimon Hounsou, showing how his character started his own apocalyptic struggle as Part Two’s Henri, but perhaps the biggest stars of this film are, unsurprisingly, Nico and Schnitzel, a pair of tuxedo cats who perfectly portrayed the role of Frodo, Sam’s service cat, who’s probably THE MOST CHILLED-OUT feline I have EVER SEEN in a movie, and definitely one of the cutest. Ultimately this is an absolute TRIUMPH for its breakout writer-director, Michael Sarnoski, whose INSANELY impressive feature debut Pig already made him one to watch back in 2021, and he definitely did the original property justice while carving his own equally impressive path in the franchise. The end result, then, is a welcome addition to an already INCREDIBLE horror movie series, and definitely a strong contender for the genre’s movie of the year.

6. DEADPOOL & WOLVERINE – Damn … if ever there was a movie that I really can’t say much of ANYTHING about for fear of dropping spoilers, even if most of the core fandom has already seen it … this is an IMPORTANT MOVIE, maybe the most important of the past year, because the MCU has been on the rocks of late, despite Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3 going a long way to setting its fortunes back on the right track (but then that one has very much been considered a BLIP, really), and this one looks to have SINGLEHANDEDLY knocked the whole mess back on the right track while simultaneously mercilessly ripping the piss out of the whole debacle. No, I mean IT REALLY DOES, there isn’t A SINGLE STONE that the Merc With a Mouth leaves unturned in his quest for meta-fuelled irreverence (except maybe that dead Celestial poking out of the Pacific that NOBODY seems to be talking about after Eternals … or maybe I missed a joke somewhere). Anyway, this is EVERY BIT as good as James Gunn’s third and final feature for the franchise, as well as another SUPER-solid entry in what was already Fox’s now expired X-Verse’s most popular series, but most importantly it’s also an EXTREMELY successful bridging film between that and the flagging Marvel Cinematic Universe, the perfect way to bring Mutantkind into the franchise with the least amount of fuss. That being said, the BIG attraction here is getting to see two of Marvel’s biggest heavyweights going head-to-head in one movie, and of course beating seven shades of shit out of each other while they’re at it. If you will … yeah, if you haven’t seen it yet and don’t want to get spoiled, you really should jump off at this point and just GO SEE FOR YOURSELF, safe in the knowledge that it’s a fucking AWESOME movie and you won’t be disappointed. Now SHOO!!! Be off with you … okay, still here? Right then, watch me try to be as spoiler-light as I can moving forward … as much as Wade Wilson and Logan may be the very EPITOME of chalk-and-cheese onscreen, behind the scenes Ryan Reynolds and Hugh Jackman have got on like a house on fire for a while now, ever since the former started lovingly teasing the latter in the first Deadpool movie and started his long-running campaign to lure the original Marvel Movie superstar into a big screen team-up, so

it comes as NO SURPRISE that they’re both clearly having the time of their lives finally working together. Their chemistry in this is OFF THE CHARTS, the pair trading razor sharp quips, dirty looks and well-deserved face-punches with gleeful abandon from their first scene together RIGHT to the end, while the incredibly strong screenplay from Reynolds, series regulars Rhett Reese and Paul Wernick, Robot Chicken’s Zeb Wells and the film’s director Shawn Levy (who previously worked with Reynolds on Free Guy and The Adam Project, as well as Jackman on Real Steel) definitely gives them a really big Multiversal playground to let loose in, all while doing a really beautiful job of taking the baggage that the current condition of the MCU property’s left the franchise in and stuffing it all into what’s always been a much more stable (if also far less RESPECTFUL) cinematic sandbox. There are easter eggs galore, both overt and a whole lot more subtle throughout, especially during an extended sojourn in the Void (the TVA’s pruning dumping ground) which not only introduces a few fun (relative) new faces (including at least one X-Men franchise missed opportunity AS WELL as the VERY welcome return of my very favourite Marvel mutant of them all – so nice to see you back, Laura! Sure hope you get to stick around for more) but also a bunch of fan favourites from across Fox’s Marvel pantheon, and as far as I’m concerned there ain’t a single bum note in the entire symphony here! Certainly this is BY FAR the funniest Deadpool movie so far (which is saying something), but that’s not really surprising since Shawn Levy has consistently proven to be one of the VERY BEST cinematic comedy directors out there (especially with his consistently high quality Night At the Museum series), so this is just another day at the office for him, and he definitely delivered something TRULY SPECIAL here. This is THE MOST I laughed at the cinema this past year, but thankfully like its predecessors it’s got plenty of emotional heft on offer too, meaning that it definitely fits in JUST FINE with the best that its new peers in the MCU have to offer. Topping this off with a selection of genuinely BRILLIANT soundtrack needle-drops (particularly in the thoroughly irreverent and MASSIVELY disrespectful opening title sequence which sees Wade mercilessly desecrating one of Marvel’s most sacred cows) and a genuinely moving closing credits farewell homage to Fox’s Marvel legacy, the filmmakers have done their material so very proud as well as opened the door to so many fresh possibilities in the Marvel Cinematic Universe moving forward, and I for one hope this is a sign that things really are FINALLY back on the right track for the series. Now if they could just get that Blade reboot out of Development Hell (wink wink) …

5. THE WILD ROBOT – My animated feature of 2024 pretty much came out of nowhere to steal my heart in the closing months of the year, a truly spellbinding work of art which made me cry MULTIPLE TIMES through its hundred-odd minute runtime. Writer-director Chris Sanders, who already had strong form bringing us to tears helming Lilo & Stitch and the first How To Train Your Dragon film, continues to manipulate our emotions without mercy by introducing us to Roz (Lupita Nyong’o), a caretaker robot who’s part of a shipwrecked cargo consignment which washes up on the shores of a deserted forest island. After being accidentally activated, she follows her prime directives and goes in search of someone to assign her a task, but with only animals around her she finds this is a far harder prospect than she has any kind of programming to compute. Ultimately her journey finds her taking accidental responsibility for a lone gosling, Brightbill, forcing her to rewrite her core programming and become something more than a mere thinking machine as she discovers what it really means to become a parent. Roz is a magnificent creation, endearingly fallible as she goes far beyond her initial capabilities without ever losing her core principles to help those around her by any means necessary, and in a way this is just what ultimately makes her such a great mother; Brightbill, on the other hand, is a wonderfully complex character in his own right, perfectly encapsulating the various evolutions a child goes through from sweet innocent to awkward, uncertain teen, with Kit Connor getting to build upon his similarly exceptional vocal work on His Dark Materials; Pedro Pascal, meanwhile, is very much the third part of the heart of the film as Fink, the wily fox almost universally hated by the island’s animal population, who goes from initially trying to take advantage of Roz for his own gain while helping her navigate the wild world she’s found herself thrust into to genuinely coming to love and depend on her while becoming just as much of a loving parent to Brightbill. The rest of the cast is pretty stacked too, rounded out with stellar turns from Catherine O’Hara, Bill Nighy, Stephanie Hsu (Everything Everywhere All At Once), Mark Hammill and, best of all, a particular scene stealing performance from the ever reliable Matt Berry. Not only is this a really excellent example of how to do a perfect family film, it’s ultimately one of the most perfect FILMS I’ve seen this past year, PERIOD, incredibly well written and directed with particularly inspired flair, gob-smacking gorgeous compositions and complex but rewardingly clear thematic insight, Sanders and co delivering something which is so much more than the sum of its already quite superior parts. Perfectly pitched in its humour, wonder and pure, beautiful HEART, this is an undeniable MASTERPIECE of the animated art-form, and I really cannot possibly praise it ENOUGH. This is one of those films that deserves to be seen by EVERYONE ...

4. CIVIL WAR – Alex Garland is a filmmaker I’ve been a big fan of since before he even WAS a filmmaker, back when he was just writing screenplays for the likes of 28 Days Later and Sunshine. That being said, he’s consistently blown us away ever since he covertly took the reins for 2012’s criminally overlooked Dredd (I’m definitely inclined to believe the rumours that he actually helmed that one himself, since it’s SO MUCH an Alex Garland movie), rightly wowing audiences with both ex_machina and Annihilation (Men was, ultimately, TOO strong and visceral an experience for me to really LIKE, but I must admit I was definitely IMPRESSED by it), so I was already onboard for this one even before the genuinely exciting first trailer starting making the rounds. But even if I hadn’t already known his work, I definitely would’ve been up for this truly fascinating premise – set in an uncomfortably believable near future (especially given where the current US political system looks to be heading), it follows a quartet of journalists as they travel into the war-torn heart of an America ravaged by a potent clash between the loyal forces of an authoritarian President who’s refused to step down after the end of his official term (Nick Offerman) and a coalition of secessionist states determined to oust him and his administration. Kirsten Dunst leads the cast with what might be the best performance of her career as Lee Smith, a cynical photojournalist with a fearsome reputation, joining her longtime work-partner Joel (Narcos’ Wagner Moura, effortlessly charming and lovably cocky as an unapologetic adrenaline junkie) in his quest to interview the President before he’s forcibly removed from Office; tagging along, meanwhile, are Sammy (a typically charismatic and stately turn from the mighty Stephen McKinley Henderson), a world-weary veteran reporter who’s just hitching a ride to the front lines of the conflict, and Jessie Cullen (Priscilla’s Cailee Spaeny, sweet and naïve but with a deep reserve of feeling), a wannabe photojournalist who idolises Lee and is determined to prove herself to her hero, even if it ends up getting her killed. Through their experiences on the open road and the various events they witness, we watch this terrifying war unfold as it builds to its powerful endgame, moving from the wilds of Upstate New York to the streets of Washington itself, and it’s brought home in genuinely harrowing detail just what a nightmare this could well be if it really does happen. Garland’s certainly not pulling ANY punches here, clearly fundamentally aware of where America might end up if we don’t wise up REAL QUICK (although by this point I wonder if the warning came a bit TOO LATE), while also delivering an endlessly fascinating dystopian action thriller for good measure, packed with stunning explosive action sequences and at least one genuinely UNBEARABLE scene of proper pants-wetting pregnant implied threat (those who know will already know), all while making us really THINK thanks to a particularly shrewd and fiendishly subversive screenplay, and even offering up moments of incongruous aching beauty in the midst of all the chaos, much as he did on Annihilation. Ultimately this is a perfect demonstration of a master filmmaker reaching the very height of his powers, final confirmation, if it was even NEEDED any more, that Garland is one of the most original and challenging cinematic storytellers out there right now.

3. REBEL RIDGE – I’ve been a pretty massive fan of writer-director Jeremy Saulnier ever since I first stumbled across his very original indie thriller Blue Ruin, and that love grew consistently with his next two feature films (Green Room and Hold the Dark) and the first two episodes of True Detective season 3. So I was VERY EXCITED when I learned he was returning to the big screen (sort of) with his second collaboration with Netflix … but I really wasn’t prepared for what was to come, which is essentially HIS VERY BEST FILM YET!!! Seriously, this is a stone cold MASTERPIECE, not just the best screen thriller of 2024 but one of the VERY BEST for the decade so far, and to be honest one of my biggest takeaways from it wound up being what a criminal shame it was that this DIDN’T release in theatres! The Underground Railroad’s Aaron Pierre (soon to be seen as the new Green Lantern in the upcoming DCU TV series) stars as former US Marine Corps instructor Terry Richmond, who finds himself the victim of an unfair civil forfeiture of funds which he intended to use to bail out his little brother during a seemingly routine traffic stop in the small Louisiana town of Shelby Springs. Backed into a corner, he attempts to come to an arrangement to get the money back from local police chief Sandy Burne (Don Johnson), who instead gives him the runaround just because he can, which just makes things SO MUCH WORSE, because it turns out that Richmond really isn’t the kind of person you screw around with … starting subtly, this is a wonderful exercise in increasing stakes and cranking tension, Saulnier letting the story and characters breathe first while slowly revealing just what a serious BADASS the main protagonist actually is before FINALLY letting him off the chain in SPECTACULAR style, and the film is all the better for the time taken to establish just how badly these ignorant, self-entitles racist cops have fucked up before it finally all goes off BIG TIME. Of course it helps that Pierre is SO GOOD at being quiet, still and oh so patient, doing so much with a simple look or gesture to deliver a genuine MASTERCLASS in subtlety while letting his showier cast-mates let off some cracking performative fireworks around him. Johnson is, as always, AMAZING, portraying a pitch-perfect entitled douchebag villain that it’s so easy to love to hate, and David Denman (13 Hours, Brightburn, The Equalizer 3) and Emory Cohen (The Place Beyond the Pines, The OA) both shine bright as the two very different patrol cops who kick this whole mess off in the first place, while AnnaSophia Robb (yes, that IS the little girl from Bridge to Terabithia) is the film’s only real ray of light as local courthouse clerk Summer McBride, the one friend that Richmond has in this whole shitshow, often very much to her own detriment. This is essentially a PERFECT THRILLER, Saulnier having basically unlocked the ideal blueprint for how to wring tension and dread out of a seemingly everyday miscarriage of justice in America and showing how, when the wrong person’s pushed too far, it can go so terribly wrong for EVERYBODY. No surprise, then, that this film has been very favourably compared to First Blood, and indeed this does feel like a very natural successor to that action cinema classic, albeit one which is much better suited for today’s far more morally ambiguous cinematic landscape. Needless to say Saulnier really does deserve to become a proper MEGASTAR filmmaker because of this, and I’m just happy to have been proved right for all the faith I’ve had in him over the years ...

2. DUNE, PART TWO – As if there was ever any doubt, after the already amazing first part made its KILLER debut back in late 2021 … no, it was a foregone conclusion that the second half of writer-director Denis Villeneuve’s immensely ambitious adaptation of one of his very favourite books OF ALL TIME, Frank Herbert’s genuine game-changer space opera Dune, would be JUST as incredible as the first, and it thrills me to no end that that proved to be entirely the case. After all, this is also MY favourite book of all time, if they’d f£$%ed it up I would have been more heartbroken than I could possibly imagine, so Villeneuve and co have made me a VERY HAPPY BUNNY INDEED!!! Picking up RIGHT where the first film left off, we return to the desert world of Arrakis tens of centuries into the future, with young Paul Atreides (Timothee Chalamet), now the Duke of an all-but-eradicated Galactic noble House, and his mother, the Bene Gesserit holy woman Jessica (Rebecca Ferguson), forced to hide among the desert tribes of the Fremen, hatching a desperate plan to take revenge on the monstrous Harkonnens and seize control of the planet, its massively lucrative trade in the obscenely valuable spice Melange, and through it the Galactic Empire in its entirety. To do so, Paul must use his growing prescient abilities to convince the Fremen that he is the Kwisatz Haderach, their prophesied messiah, but he’s keenly aware that this means walking a deadly knife’s edge in order to prevent triggering a bloody Holy War that will burn half the known Universe … once again, Chalamet and Ferguson are the beating heart of the story, both acquitting themselves admirably throughout as they perfectly encapsulate the myriad complexities of their characters, but this time round they’re finally joined by Zendaya, barely glimpsed in the first film but now brought front and centre as the emotional CRUX of the film in the role of Chani, the free-spirited and stubborn Fremen warrior Paul falls in love with as he learns to become a true denizen of Arrakis; other old faces return too, with Josh Brolin bringing a roguish twinkle and welcome sense of humour to proceedings as the exiled Atreides warmaster Gurney Halleck, and Stellan Skarsgård once again chills our blood as the repellent Baron Vladimir Harkonnen. More newcomers make their presence felt throughout, however, with Florence Pugh particularly standing out as Princess Irulan, the fiercely intelligent daughter of the Padishah Emperor Shaddam IV (Christopher Walken, nowhere NEAR the bum note some have made him out to be), although the true shining star among the new cast (beside Zendaya, at least) is Austin Butler (Elvis), enthusiastically sinking his teeth deep into the meaty role of the Baron’s viciously sadistic sociopathic nephew Feyd Rautha. Once again Villeneuve has done his dream project justice in EVERY conceivable aspect, continuing to pay truly REVERENT respect to the source material as he makes Herbert’s incredibly rich universe live and breathe on the screen, the peerless production and costume design, visual effects and cinematography never hitting a single off-note in any scene, while the screenplay perfectly translates the weighty themes, compelling narrative and shocking twists into a deeply involving cinematic tour-de-force that keeps you invested throughout its seemingly brisk and pacy run-time (this may be close to THREE HOURS LONG but it sure doesn’t FEEL like it), enthusiastically propelled by another MASTERPIECE score from fellow Dune superfan Hans Zimmer. This was a truly MASSIVE cinematic event that left 2024 audiences awed by the experience while also drumming some EXTREMELY weighty ideas and themes into us, as well as perfectly setting up the continuation when Villeneuve gets his already in-development adaptation of the next book in the series, Dune Messiah, off the ground. I’m definitely looking forward to that, and I know I’m not alone …

1. ALIEN: ROMULUS – Ultimately landing JUST AHEAD a certain other major genre heavyweight entry on my list for the past year, my number ONE science-fiction film of 2024 was also easily the SCARIEST movie I saw in the entire year. It’s also a very interesting and IMPORTANT film in that it goes A LONG WAY to knocking yet another major cinematic franchise back on track after spending years spiralling further and further out of true alignment. Okay, I admit it, I LIKE Prometheus a whole lot as an actual FILM, but even I can admit that IN UNIVERSE its attempts to connect with Ridley Scott’s own original masterpiece and James Cameron’s (even better) follow-up were clunky at best and downright EMBARRASSING at worst (and in the end, the less said about Alien: Covenant the better, really). So I guess it’s actually A GOOD THING that Scott took a step back into more of a producing role to allow somebody else to take the reins for this sort-of soft reboot, and it turns out that Fede Alvarez, writer-director of the first Evil Dead remake and Don’t Breathe (as well as the CRIMINALLY underrated The Girl In the Spider’s Web), was the PERFECT CHOICE for this job. Fitting in somewhere between the events of Alien and Aliens, Romulus sees the dastardly Weyland Yutani Corporation find the blasted remains of the Nostromo floating in deep space, as well as traces of the original xenomorph itself, which they transport to the film’s eponymous space station, in the orbit of colony world Jackson’s Star, in the hopes of exploiting the organism’s unique properties for their own gains. Something clearly goes HORRIBLY WRONG in the interim, because when a gang of opportunistic young colonists, looking for a chance to jump ship to a freer life in another system outside of Corporate control, sneak onto the station in the hopes of scavenging some cryogenic resources for their journey, they find it derelict and ravaged by some kind of horrific disaster. Then their poking around lets loose some of the fruits of the scientists’ biological labours, and before they know it they’re neck-deep in facehuggers and more than a few of their bigger brethren too … Cailee Spaeny (Priscilla, Civil War, Bad Times At the El Royale) is a surprisingly robust action heroine in the classic Ripley mould as Rain, her diminutive size belying her character’s fierce determination and wily resourcefulness; Archie Renaux (Shadow & Bone) and Isabel Merced (Sicario: Day of the Soldado, Dora & the City of Gold, Turtles All the Way Down) are both extremely likeable as Tyler and Kay, a brother and sister who are, respectively Rain’s ex-boyfriend and best friend, while Spike Fearn (Tell Me Everything) is kind of a prick as their cocky cousin Bjorn, and newcomer Aileen Wu is standoffish but precocious as talented young pilot Navarro. The real breakout star of the piece, however, has to be Rye Lane’s David Jonsson, who delivers a complex, multifaceted turn as Rain’s adopted brother Andy, a former Weyland-Yutani android dug out of a scrapheap and reprogrammed to protect her by her late father.

They’re all put through hell by the events that unfold within the faltering station, Alvarez turning the screws and fraying our nerves with his characteristic masterful skill as their situations progressively go from bad to worse to truly fucked, paying loving homage to the first two movies while also creating something new and fresh for the series if they do decide to move forward from here. Best of all, though, as he’s always done in the past he largely eschews CGI, preferring to do as much as he possibly can with physical effects, which makes the impressively icky creature work and seriously NASTY gore all the more delightfully gnarly throughout, with the film’s ONLY bum note being a particularly problematic “resurrection” choice which has already had a great deal made of it in the press, but which I, ultimately, found was actually handled surprisingly well in the end, so that it didn’t really detract very much from my personal enjoyment of the film as a whole. Rounded off with an evocative and enjoyably old school score from Benjamin Wallfisch (who clearly had a great time channelling both Jerry Goldsmith and James Horner here), this is a rousing success, a phenomenal return to form for one of my very favourite sci-fi cinematic franchises and yet another standout offering from one of the very best young turk talents working in horror cinema today. If he does indeed choose to stick with the property, I think Alvarez could well keep this series fresh and exciting for a fair few years yet.

[zalrb]

Oppenheimer Review

OK let’s start with things I didn’t quite care for:

1. The exclusion of Indigenous and Japanese people, which has been a well-detailed criticism on Twitter and in articles:  

“The Pajarito Plateau, where Los Alamos is located, was indigenous homeland for multiple villages of Pueblo people, as well as more than 30 Mexican American families who owned ranches and farms[...]”

We can get into a discussion about which movies are made and how studios would rather fund movie after movie about the ‘tortured white male genius’ than a movie about the Pueblo people or the effects of the bomb on Japan. We can talk about the general boredom of seeing these movies over and over again. But I think that’s a larger conversation. That’s a conversation about which stories TPTB determine get told, that’s a conversation about the systemic racism and barriers in Hollywood and filmmaking because it’s not surprising that a Nolan film didn’t feature BIPOC or nuanced depictions of BIPOC. Nolan is going to Nolan. Dunkirk is an entirely whitewashed film. It is so typical of a Nolan film that I was surprised John David Washington was in Tenet (which I have not seen) and this isn’t to defend him or to let him off the hook, this is just to say that conversation is about the systems in place that allow for Oppenheimer to be a movie while not showcasing other stories, which this person has also indicated

The defense for Nolan’s omission has been Oppenheimer is about Oppenheimer but I don’t think that defense holds.

Considering that it is first and foremost a character study about a man with conflicting morals, a man who “famously” told Truman that he feels like he has blood on his hands. Considering the movie is meant to take us into the mind of this man, we’re supposed to see what tortures him, what lies heavy on him, considering that there is a scene where he is confronted with the carnage and the destruction of his invention, considering  that in the movie Oppenheimer told Truman they should give the land back to the Indigenous peoples, glossing over the injustices and the atrocities undercuts the fact that this is supposed to be deep dive character study, because Oppenheimer helped cause these things. That’s the point. A pivotal point in the movie comes when Oppenheimer is being asked over and over again when he had moral qualms about the H bomb considering that he made the atomic bomb and whether or not he had quandaries then and the fact that there was a history of people suffering because of this bomb before it dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki would emphasize that question. It’s not a full character study.

Another defense has been that the omission was purposeful as a condemnation of what they did and how they didn’t think about the consequences or thought about the consequences and ignored them/didn’t care about them but there are ways to do that. We can see people being displaced from the land and then afterwards Oppenheimer going to Los Alamos declaring there’s nothing around. If this movie is also about his ego and his tunnel vision and about the dangers of building weapons of mass destruction and their consequences, we can see what the testing of the bomb did to communities while they celebrate the success of the test, it would simply drive the point the movie is making home, it would make it more poignant and complete. When Oppenheimer gives that victory speech after the bomb was dropped, he keeps seeing the people around him burned or dead or crying, there’s no reason why his speech couldn’t at least be intercut with the realities happening in Japan at the time.

Outside of it is simply right for these stories to be showcased and acknowledged, there are too many reasons why Oppenheimer could’ve and should’ve shown these aspects for me to really find any defense viable.

2. I also don’t expect nuanced depictions of women in a Nolan movie but the female characters in this movie are so laughably one-dimensional that I feel like it would’ve been less offensive for him to just not include women at all. Emily Blunt and Florence Pugh do as much as they can with the material they’re given but they’re really not given much and when we’re meant to gain insight into Kitty’s (Emily Blunt) emotional state and to see what the hearing of Robert is doing to her, it’s when he admits on record to sleeping with his ex-wife Jean (Florence Pugh) when he was with Kitty so it’s Kitty imagining him having sex with Jean in a very uncomfortable and entirely unnecessary sex scene. So it’s actually quite funny talking about Oppenheimer and Barbie at the same time because Oppenheimer proves one of Barbie’s points about the way women are perceived and treated through the way the Kens are portrayed in the first 30 minutes of the movie because Kitty and Jean are around to serve Oppenheimer’s plot and Jean actually dies, she commits suicide, and the implication is that while she was suffering from mental health issues, Oppenheimer cutting ties with her led to her death so in the movie anyway, a female character literally dies because the male protagonist is no longer in her life.

Alright, things I liked.

1. Cillian Murphy. Cillian was magnetic onscreen. The beauty of what he can convey with his eyes, it was mesmerizing and he does such a good job playing the charismatic womanizing egocentric asshole but does an equally good job portraying depth, portraying vulnerability and betrayal and guilt and remorse. He inhabited this role, it was great watching.

2. RDJ! RDJ is indeed an actor so watching him in the few Marvel movies that I did watch just always had me like *sigh* they’ve flattened you so it was really fun seeing him really dig his teeth into a role and also seeing the way he changes throughout the movie, particularly the third act when you realize his personal vendetta against Oppenheimer and how his true colours kind of start bleeding through, it was very well done.

3. It was surprisingly funny? Like not laugh out loud funny even though there were moments where I did indeed LOL i.e. “I’m a self-made man.” “I can relate to that.” “Really?” “Yes, my father was one.” the wit and the back and forth and the riffing I quite enjoyed. Seeing all the scientists place bets and get into arguments, I quite enjoyed that.

4. I don’t care for Matt Damon, he annoys me, so when I saw him in the trailer I rolled my eyes and when I saw his introduction to the movie I also rolled my eyes but he and Cillian had a good chemistry so over the course of the movie, I ended up enjoying his scenes with Cillian because they worked so well together and they establish a lot of about that dynamic and they feel comfortable with each other. Although I think my favourite dynamic was Oppenheimer and Isidor. I don’t like Casey Affleck though so that “reveal” just had me like ugh, why.

5. The score. The SCORE. Ludwig Göransson did a beautiful job with the music, giving the movie a sense of scale and tension, it was fantastic.

6. It felt like three hours but it felt like a three hours well spent.

[shehungthemoon]

Ty for the tag @vera-dauriac! 💗It's been weeks with this in the back of my mind and I'm finally getting around to it (also bugs have been going around like wild, i hope those fluids worked quickly!)

Tag Game: 9 People You'd Like to Get to Know Better

-`♡´- last song:

fingertips by lana del rey

-`♡´- currently watching:

Waiting on the third episode of True Detective season 4 to come out tonight! ❄

-`♡´- three ships:

Ahhhh I'm not really OBSESSED with a certain 3 right now, so I'll just list the last 3 ships I bookmarked for on ao3!

Sonny Corleone/Tom Hagen from The Godfather

Trapper/Hawkeye from M*A*S*H

Marcus Keane/Tomas Ortega from The Exorcist (TV)

So we've got 70s mafia power plays, weird dramedy angst, and religious horror soulmates. Quite the list haha

-`♡´- favorite color:

Cool shades. At the moment, powder blue! 🩵

-`♡´- currently consuming:

Water + orange 🍊

-`♡´- first ship:

Probably percabeth from the PJO books!

-`♡´- relationship status:

single (much needed!)

-`♡´- film:

A favorite film? That goes to Christopher Nolan's Inception without a doubt! A lot of his work is special to me, including Tenet (which completely pulled the wool over our eyes and gave us a River Song lovestory with NO warning, tears were welling) and Interstellar (which as an astrophysicist it was NOVEL to see so much sci-fi accuracy on screen, and of course my physics grandfather Dr. Kip Thorne was a big consultant so I'm proud by proxy.)

-`♡´- currently working on:

Fandom wise, I'm finishing up a Green Lantern/Flash secret santa from dc comics! 🎅

Life wise, working on applications to get another degree. Phew 🤓🤪💀

Tagging: @adizzyninja @mihrsuri @scare-ard--sleigh @midnightestsun @dantaliones @billowypantss @ellena-asg @mirabilefuturum @sjwromanroy

[blindrapture]

it's time for DJay's Review Corner!

I've seen almost all of Christopher Nolan's movies now. just missing Following and Insomnia, which are also relatively obscure.

I am absolutely fond of his stuff. I even like The Prestige now, only took me three attempts. hell, I *love* it. such a cool movie with compelling themes. Tenet? takes a couple views, but there is depth in there, it is very much a less interesting Homestuck but it's also a lot more *impressive* for managing to convey the time travel stuff on film. Interstellar, took a couple views but it's an incredible space film, I kinda wish it didn't start with like an hour of Earth stuff but I wish the same about 2001 so that's just Space Film Tradition, and *unlike* 2001 I think Interstellar goes to a goddamn perfect place of human drama. Oppenheimer is, like, Actually A Perfect Movie, you don't need me to tell you that, it completely surprised me and shattered my expectations of how a biopic can be. Inception is Inception. the Batman movies are a whole-ass three-part opera cycle in modern times. Memento is okay! I'll like it more if I watch it a few more times.

but I am here to mention Dunkirk, which I just finished watching.

I don't know how long to spend rambling about it, as I don't know truly how much I care.

Dunkirk was.. cool! there were elements of it that got me engaged and kept me so. frankly it was the best world war 1 movie I've ever seen.

....what? it's supposed to be world war 2? haha, no, it'd be one of the *worst* world war 2 movies if that were the case. it rendered the warfare abstract, divorcing all politics and ideology from the matter (the, y'know, reason any of this was happening), and just instead focused *exclusively* on the viscerality and horrors of being there on the beaches, in the sea, in the air, leveraging any drama for the sole sake of suspense. it was a War Is Hell movie. and *that's* world war *one*, that was the War Is Hell war. world war *two* was the Ideology Is Hell war, where the Allies literally *chose* to put themselves back into the visceral Hell of war *because* of the *context*, the *fact* that their enemy truly seriously actually *was* that bad and *needed* to be stopped. to make a movie about a part of world war 2, have hardly any paratext, have hardly any *dialogue*, and never once even show a human from the opposing side, effectively make Cloverfield But With Humans.... well, that's just pointless, a movie that is already obsolete before even being created.

well. Dunkirk was that movie!

it is entirely true that I was not its ideal audience. I went into this movie having no idea *what* "Dunkirk" was. I did not know *when* in the war this took place. I could gather that "Dunkirk" was a *place*, but then I had no idea what was significant that *happened* there to warrant it being a.. self-evident name. like, people can say something happened "at Dunkirk" and everyone around them instinctively knows, "ah yes! you are discussing something that happened during the noteworthy evacuation of Allied Forces from the beach at Dunkirk in 1940!" before I watched this movie, I would not have instinctively known that.

*after* watching this movie, I would not have instinctively known that.

I just fucking looked it up on Wikipedia after the film.

the film did not just *fail* to communicate this context, it *had no interest to begin with*. that is a really interesting choice. not a choice I appreciate.

like. the film did at least communicate some things.

this was a War thing, taking place on a beach near a French town (there were signs with the word "rue" on them). I knew it was world war 2 because of the technology. the fighting had basically *stopped*, with a small number of German stragglers taking potshots at the 400,000 Allied soldiers who had lost interest in fighting ("no, there were definitely a lot of German soldiers, the Allies were losing" yes I know that *now that I have read Wikipedia*, I am telling you what the film, in a vacuum, communicated to me). honestly, if I didn't already know that the English and French were fighting against the Germans, I wouldn't have been able to tell from this movie either, as the movie *insists* on referring to the enemy as... "The Enemy." without fail, other than one implied exception during a rare instance of drama an hour and a half in. and, as mentioned before, we never even *see* The Enemy in this movie, so I wouldn't have been able to tell from their accent or anything.

so. beach near French town. the Allies want to retreat. there is a boat, but just one boat isn't gonna be nearly enough, so everyone has to wait indefinitely, hoping more boats will show up. is there a protagonist? yes there is! what's his name? I couldn't tell you! what does he look like? I cannot tell him apart from any other character! everyone in this movie is a narrow-faced soft-spoken English young man with short black hair, covered in mud and wearing an identical brown coat! well, what about his voice? oh the protagonist hardly speaks! this is not a dialogue film.

but wait, there's two other plots! this was pretty cool, I like having more threads to follow, keeps me engaged. the beach stuff was just plot 1, which the movie tells us takes place "one week." ....what? so like.. one week into a fight, I guess. plot 2 is boat stuff, taking place "one day," except when it.. skips forward in time, which I did not realize until the boat stuff was literally caught up to the beach stuff, because IT'S A FUCKING BOAT ON OPEN WATER, AND WE NEVER SEE IT AT NIGHT, IT'S ONLY EVER FUCKING DAY, I assumed it was always *the same day!* but at least the three characters *here* are very distinct from each other. they are on a civilian boat, this dingy little private yacht or whatever, that's on the way to Dunkirk to help evacuate. or. honestly when I was watching, all I knew was they were gonna deliver some life jackets. there's a young man who looks very similar to the Beach Protagonist, but he's not because the eyes are slightly different, and he dies off-screen after getting injured very quickly in a series of events that really could have been better explained (involving rescuing an Allied soldier only to LOCK HIM UP and NOT LET HIM OUT EVEN WHEN TOLD TO). the other two make it to Dunkirk and successfully evacuate a bunch of soldiers.

then there's plot 3, subtitled "one hour" even though I *highly doubt* the timing of that. three spitfires, planes up in the sky! above the water, and only ever at daytime, so similar problem with gauging passage of time. except we have a big clue this time-- one of the planes' fuel gauge is broken! at "one hour" he has about 50 gallons of fuel left, and periodically we cut back and it seems like fuel is dropping steadily, 5 gallons every..... hour, maybe? but he manages to not run out of fuel until his storyline catches up with the Beach, a fucking week later. anyway, most of this plot is just the other two planes getting shot down (one of those pilots gets rescued by the Boat protagonists!), and then at the end of the movie the guy without fuel manages to save the day, shooting down more planes above the beach even while he's cruising without a running engine. it's a great moment. I love that guy.

so then the bulk of the actual plot is Beach Guy, and his buddy who.. literally looks identical to him. one of the two turns out to be French, and I *cannot* remember which of the two that was. that whole scene was incredible, it felt like the movie acknowledging its own problem, as the whole point was all these other soldiers being like "WAIT THAT GUY, the protagonist, HASN'T SAID A SINGLE WORD, AND THE ENEMY HAS SOMEHOW FOUND OUR HIDING SPOT, HOW DO WE KNOW THAT QUIET GUY ISN'T ACTUALLY GERMAN, A SPY???" and they point guns at him and TWO FUCKING MINUTES OF THIS goes by before protagonist opens his fucking mouth and says "I'm French!" my guy, you *need* to *speak!* this fucking MOVIE needs to fucking speak!!! that scene was the one, the first moment, possibly the only moment in the whole film, where the word "German" is ever said!!! which just made me even more aware of this movie's aversion to, or even *fear of*, communicating any fucking REASON or MEANS OF THE VIEWER BEING ABLE TO DISTINGUISH anything at all.

this wasn't a fucking world war 2 movie! this was just a fucking war movie! as said before, this was Cloverfield!! context is entirely absent, you'd have to go looking on the internet to read up on all the lore. and we never see the antagonist, we just follow the Exciting Suspenseful Will-He-Make-It Action of protagonists, like, existing in the vicinity of explosions, then swimming in the sea, and listening to nearby soldiers say how scared they are or how not-scared they are.

and I *do* think this would have made for a brilliant format for a WW1 movie! that war is traditionally seen as, y'know, *horrific*, soldiers dying to gases and new machines, the *viscerality* of it all! WW2 *needs* the context! we did finally get a *tiny* bit of context at the end of Dunkirk, we got the Churchill speech, and, dammit, that did make all this a little more impactful, that emphasized how all this visceral panic amounted to *one losing battle* and they were gonna need to be committed to potentially a lot more of that. I think we needed even an *excerpt* from that speech given to us *at the beginning* of the movie. even just as text on a black screen.

(hell! this movie *literally started with* text on a black screen! and all it fucking told me was "ooh boy, these French and English soldiers, they're gonna need a *miracle* to get out of this mess!" ......fucking thanks???? literally redundant, literally something the cinematography was going to communicate. the movie needed some text telling us something the cinematography alone *doesn't* communicate!!! aaaargh!!!)

am I making sense here???

god at least it was only 106 minutes! that's like.. the shortest Nolan movie ever. that's a damn surprise to me. maybe this movie *should have* been three hours, just to put in some damn dialogue.

Dunkirk was *all* visceral, no way *in* for people who don't know what's going on. and then it was *hard to distinguish characters or even Times, Whens, from each other*, so even that fucking viscerality stumbled and lost its grip on my brain.

what a fucking *mess*.

will probably get better if I watch it more. especially now that I went and looked up the context *myself*. but dammit, even if this first impression disappears entirely and I end up loving the movie later, I think the shit I'm talking about has some *value*. it has... well, context.

[destinyc1020]

I remember Rob from big movies like twilight, Batman, Tenet, and I saw him as well from the devil all the time, and the king of course. I had never really seen a regular and somewhat intimate movie from him till I saw Remember Me the other day, boy now I cannot wait for The Drama. He is super interesting as an actor, the charisma is at 💯 and he can certainly turn on the sexy. Never seen him that way prior to this movie.

Wow! You had never seen "Remember Me"? That's actually one of my favorite films of his. 😊 I actually watched it again last year.

Great job by Rob and everyone in the film. That last scene in the film is heartbreaking. 🥺😭😩

I love watching a movie going into it thinking it's about one thing, and then towards the end later on realizing it's about smthg else completely. I LOVE films like that! 😊

Have you seen "Water for Elephants" 🐘? Rob is pretty good in that one also! 😁 Although, I will say, if you find animal cruelty and abuse difficult to watch, I would probably skip that one, or FF through certain parts. 😞 I've only seen that movie once because those scenes just broke my heart 💔 😭

I'm telling y'all, when you all branch out and discover other films, genres, and actors, you'll be pleasantly surprised! 😁👍🏾

[thecinemarattifilmclub]

Join us as we celebrate the films that we love starting with Movies That Make You Want to HUG the Weekend! The List, in no particular order:

Tenet In Her Shoes John Wick Chicago It's Complicated Train to Busan Honorable Mention: Call Me By Your Name, I Am Legend

Tenet, 2020 From the opening scene, Tenet is an electrifying blend of heart-pounding action and mind-bending science fiction. Director Christopher Nolan delivers a captivating and visually stunning film. The Protagonist, portrayed by John David Washington, is a complex figure who moves through the film asking the same questions we have as viewers. The cast is fantastic, and there's this one unforgettable scene towards the end where The Protagonist has a revelatory, emotionally charged moment with Neil, Robert Pattinson's character, that leaves you heartbroken. I love this movie and will watch it again and again! -Alana

In Her Shoes, 2005 Often overlooked in the flurry of rom-coms released in the early aughts, director Curtis Hanson’s In Her Shoes exists as one of the most endearing films of the genre. In this 2005 gem, the film’s leads, Toni Collette, Cameron Diaz, and Shirley MacLaine, each deliver performances that are beautifully nuanced in telling the story of two estranged sisters finding their way back to each other, and themselves, after reconnecting with their estranged grandmother. Yes, this is a story about love - the unexpected ways we might find it, learning to permit ourselves to experience it, how it profoundly changes us, and what we are willing to do to rebuild it after it’s been broken - but this film is about so much more than that. In Her Shoes pulls the curtain back on how grief and mental illness change our relationships in ways that can reverberate through generations and how we might be able to pick up the pieces and build something beautiful for ourselves. This movie fundamentally changed me when I first watched it. I love watching movies exploring the depths of sisterhood, both loving and complicated, and this one just means so much to me. -Victoria John Wick, 2014 Keanu Reeves, a fan favorite, is dynamite in the John Wick series. The movies are action-packed, well-acted, and feature a simple yet intriguing storyline. Whenever I'm in the mood for an exciting film with snappy dialogue and an interesting cast, I always turn to a John Wick film. Among the series, the original John Wick is my go-to because what's more exhilarating than a grieving hitman seeking vengeance for his puppy and his car? I mean, if "you've effed with the wrong one" was a person, it'd be John Wick. I'm here for it! -Alana Chicago, 2002 Based on the 1926 play and 1975 stage musical of the same name, 2002’s Chicago is a soaring accomplishment from director Rob Marshall. This musical crime dramedy tells the spellbinding tale of Roxie Hart and Velma Kelly, both inmates on Murderess’ Row at Cook County Jail, as they chase celebrity and notoriety while awaiting trial. What is at once a tour-de-force of its own merit is also an enchanting homage to its source material, this film is one I simply cannot get enough of. The performances from Renee Zellweger, Catherine Zeta-Jones, Richard Gere, and Queen Latifah are electrifying and completely mesmerizing, each wholly embodying their lauded characters. Aside from the spectacular acting each delivers in this film, the musical performances are simply out of this world, with credit to the original music and lyrics by John Kander and Fred Ebb respectively, of course, but the production comes to life in a whole new way on the big screen. I watch this film a few times a year and highly recommend keeping the soundtrack in your rotation. -Victoria It’s Complicated, 2009 Oscar-nominated writer and director Nancy Meyers followed up a legendary four-film run (The Parent Trap, What Women Want, Something’s Gotta Give, and The Holiday) with 2009’s rom-com It’s Complicated. Starring Meryl Streep, with charming supporting performances from Alec Baldwin and Steve Martin, this film follows a 10-years divorced baker as she navigates life as an empty-nester and discovers what might be next for her - which appears to include an affair with her now-married ex-husband (Baldwin) and a blossoming romance with the architect remodeling her home (Martin). This film explores the complications of divorce and moving on, while highlighting the joys and pits of rediscovering yourself, especially in your golden years. While this film was met with mixed reviews from critics, there is an undeniable sense of the Nancy Meyers charm that makes it the cozy and beloved film it is to me. Like any Meyers film, the set design is a character and story to discover in itself and perhaps one of my favorite elements of this movie - it’s an aesthetic feast! I have loved this movie for years and it’s one of those movies that pulls on your heartstrings, tickles your funny bone, and makes you feel hopeful for the future by the final scene. -Victoria

Train to Busan, 2016 Train to Busan is an electrifying and almost unmatched zombie film. Like any good movie, it has emotional depth. Your investment in the characters and their survival catapults you from scene to scene. Yeon Sang-ho’s directorial choices build the tension and suspense required for the film’s propulsion, but he also incorporates space for you to catch your breath. And with this plot, you'll need it. Gong Yoo and Ma Dong-seok are a great pair, using their ingenuity and sheer power to fight their way through zombie hoards. Whenever I'm looking for something exciting to watch, this film never fails to deliver. -Alana

[pritishsblog]

BEST DIRECTORS IN CINEMA-5

Hi everyone! This blog is going to be the 5th part of my 8 part series of who I think is the Best Director Cinema has ever seen

And today I will be talking about

CHRISTOPHER NOLAN

Christopher Nolan (born July 30, 1970, London, England) is a British film director and writer acclaimed for his noirish visual aesthetic and unconventional, often highly conceptual narratives. His notable films include Inception (2010), Interstellar (2014), Dunkirk (2017), and several Batman movies. In 2024 Nolan won an Academy Award for best director for Oppenheimer (2023), which was also named best picture.

(Early Life)

Nolan was raised by an American mother and a British father, and his family spent time in both Chicago and London. As a child, he attended Haileybury, a boarding school just outside London. From a young age Nolan was interested in moviemaking and would use his father’s Super-8 camera to make shorts. He was influenced by George Lucas’s Star Wars trilogy and by the immersive dystopian films of Ridley Scott.After attending University College London, where he studied English literature, Nolan began directing corporate and industrial training videos. At the same time he was working on his first full-length release, Following (1998). The film centers on a writer going to dangerous lengths to find inspiration; it took Nolan 14 months to complete. On the strength of its success on the festival circuit, he and his producer wife, Emma Thomas, moved to Hollywood.

(His Famous Works)

Nolan gained international recognition with his second film, Memento (2000), and transitioned into studio filmmaking with Insomnia (2002). He became a high-profile director with The Dark Knight trilogy (2005–2012), and found further success with The Prestige (2006), Inception (2010), Interstellar (2014), and Dunkirk (2017). After the release of Tenet (2020), Nolan parted ways with longtime distributor Warner Bros. Pictures, and signed with Universal Pictures for the biographical thriller Oppenheimer (2023), which won him Academy Awards for Best Director and Best Picture.

(Filmmaking Style)

His Filmmaking Style

Nolan's films are largely centred in metaphysical themes, exploring the concepts of time, memory and personal identity. His work is characterised by mathematically inspired ideas and images, unconventional narrative structures, materialistic perspectives, and evocative use of music and sound.Joseph Bevan wrote, "His films allow arthouse regulars to enjoy superhero flicks and multiplex crowds to engage with labyrinthine plot conceits. Nolan views himself as "an indie filmmaker working inside the studio system"

(His Filmography)

Nolan made his directorial debut in 1998 with a movie named Following (1998). He made many other films such as Memento in 2000,Insomnia in 2002. He also made the Batman Trilogy which included Bataman Begins (2005),The Dark Knight (2008) and The Dark Knight Rises (2012). In between the Batman Trilogy he directed movies like Prestige (2006) and Inception (2010). After this Nolan directed movies such as Interstellar (2014),Dunkirk (2017),Tenet (2020) and Oppenheimer (2023).

Nolan's hand and shoe prints in front of the Grauman's Chinese Theatre

(Awards & Honors)

Nolan has won 2 Academy Awards out of the 8 nominations, 2 BAFTA's out of the 8 nominations and he has 1 Golden Globe Award out of 6 nominations.

(Sources)

And that's it for this part folks, I'll meet you with another blog about some of the Greatest Directors Cinema has ever seen. Until then

CIAO

[not-for-granted]

Fancasting Harvey Dent (The Batman 2)

There’s been rumors that the latest casting choices for Harvey Dent, DA of Gotham and future villain ‘Two-Face’, set to appear in “The Batman 2″ has been Josh Hartnett and Joel Edgerton. Both of them are splendid actors, physically impressive, and could do the part justice for sure. Quite a few people are disappointed that they didn’t go for a younger, less known actor, or maybe strike out with someone more unique. Perhaps even going for gender-swapped like they did in “Batman: Earth One”.  I just think that there is a better actor for the role, especially in a ‘Battinson’, Reeves-set Batverse. Specifically, Oliver Jackson-Cohen. 

Best known for his work in “Haunting of Hill House” and “Haunting of Bly Manor”, he’s been in all sorts of works across a variety of genres. He’s been a corrupt knight in the “World Without End” miniseries, he’s been a particularly strange take on the Scarecrow in the reimaging of Oz in “Emerald City”, and he’s been a twisted abusive ex-boyfriend / mad inventor in “The Invisible Man”.  So, goes without saying, he’s got range. And that’s important for Harvey Dent. He needs to believably alternate between upstanding moral guardian, traumatized victim barely coping with his fragile psychological state, the no-nonsense, cutthroat politician and crafty lawyer, and even a complete monster that puts gangsters and hardened criminals to shame. 

What else does he bring to the table though, that other actors suggested for the role haven’t? Fan-favorite and current darling Oscar Isaac has been proven to crush it with playing psychologically damaged characters, “Moon Knight” is testament to that. But that’s a Marvel property and crossing the streams too much can break the already fragile emersion. And John David Washington is fresh-off numerous successes with “BlackKklansman” and “Tenet”, and a black Harvey Dent isn’t unheard of (we forever were robbed of Dee Williams’ chance to portray Two-Face in the Burton films).  Great actors, just as Hartnett and Edgerton are, so apart from a history of very psychologically mature and empathetic performances, what does Oliver Jackson-Cohen bring to the table? Well, he’s the right age at 36, currently closest in age to Robert Pattinson, believable enough to be an especially young and ambitious DA (not a stretch at all when Jayme Lawson, the actress who played Bella Real in “The Batman”, was in her early twenties and running for mayor of Gotham). Also, it’s always favorable when Harvey Dent is a peer to Bruce Wayne, even friendly, rather than rivals or opponents immediately. Part of the draw of Two-Face isn’t just that he’s a well-connected and ruthless crime-figure, but that he’s psychologically tormenting Batman by being one of the victims he couldn’t save, which hurts all the more when they had a close working-relationship, even friendship. 

But also, he’s 6′3. I know that sounds like a miniscule quibble, the camera trickery can make anyone as tall as need be for a part and height alone hardly makes for a successful action scene, but in this case, I’d argue it’s a necessary part to not just Harvey Dent’s natural charisma, but Two-Face’s successful menace. Consider this: Harvey Dent, as Two-Face, stripped of all the fancy dual-toned suits and Tommy-guns, is a burn victim with a law-degree. No superpowers, no other specialty skills or training, just a maimed man who would most definitely be disbarred as soon as he turns to criminality. So how can he be such a longstanding and formidable threat to the Batman?  Slapping a gun in his hand helps, a lot, for sure. Being physically imposing is a definite plus and has been utilized in the animated Batman series and video games. Richard Moll’s gravelly voiced Two-Face in “Batman: The Animated Series” was drawn not dissimilarly from the mobsters he aimed to put away. This was repeated with Travis Willingham’s Harvey Dent in the Telltale games, who was built much like his 6′4 voice actor and capable of beating a man to death with his bare hands when cornered... and even Josh Duhamel’s Harvey Dent in “Batman: The Long Halloween” was snapping the necks of Mafia goons.  Furthermore, in comics like “Batman: Year One”, Harvey’s longstanding attempts to put away Carmine Falcone as well as his physical build both put him in the investigative crosshairs of the GCPD, with Gordon briefly suspecting him of being the Batman. And one of the most satisfying moments in “Dark Victory” was Two-Face physically beating the Joker for daring to pull a gun on him.

So yes, the added bonus of a Two-Face actor who could pose a genuine threat to Batman in his armor with all his training, however briefly, is warranted.  Between the right age, height, and past roles, Oliver Jackson-Cohen seems tailormade to play Harvey Dent. His part in “Haunting of Hill House” showcased his talent in portraying a vulnerable, broken, traumatized young man as well as a pretty flawless American accent. His part in “The Invisible Man” had him completely different, giving off an aura of palpable, oppressive malevolence and manipulative smugness that filled what few scenes he was in. And even his cheesy role as an eccentric hitman in the 2010 film “Faster” showed off a believable familiarity with firearms.  My choice for Harvey Dent / Two-Face, especially in “The Batman” universe. Everyone else, let me know what you think, and any other fancastings you’d like to hear about.

[plastic-tulips]

@achapnamedtom tagged me to list 6 comfort films, it's also ages since I did one of these and I love listing anything so here we go!

Brief Encounter: what list of comfort films would be complete without a sad film to put on when you're feeling a bit fragile and want to enjoy a beautifully shot doomed romance amongst all the bits and bobs of a bygone era (the steam trains! the repressed emotions! the hats!)

We are the Best!: incredibly sweet and quietly realistic story about a trio of teenage punks in 1980s Stockholm. Wonderful naturalistic performances from the young cast makes me almost (almost!) nostalgic for my own early teens

Fantastic Mr Fox: I find the intentionally creaky handmade-ness of this film inherently comforting, especially the way the puppets' fur moves around like the 1930s King Kong. This was also the first thing I ever saw Jarvis Cocker in, so it's close to my heart for that reason too.

When Harry met Sally: yes the central tenet of this film clearly comes from a very different time but it's nonetheless an absolute treat, from the beautiful shots of autumn in New York to the believability of the relationship between the main characters. It's always on telly and I can never not watch it

Romantics Anonymous: what could possibly be more 'comfort film' than a story of two shy chocolate makers who are meant for each other but too afraid to say how they feel? It does that charming Gallic move of having a little musical number in the middle even though the film isn't really a musical, which I always find irresistible.

The Wicker Man: it's just so 70s and low-budget and unerringly odd that I can't help but be charmed by it. Even Christopher Lee's voice as he's sentencing Edward Woodward to get burned alive sounds soothing. I always give it a watch around springtime (May Day if possible) so it ties in with the general sense of renewal and optimism I think a lot of us feel around that time. RIP to Neil Howie but i'm different.

HONORARY MENTION goes to The Muppet Christmas Carol, not a comfort film in that I can stick it on at any old time of year but that little frog dressed as Tiny Tim makes me believe in the magic of Christmas every single year. Look at him.

whew this ended up being a lot longer than I planned but anyway I tag @rock-n-rollin-bitch @snookicoin @tautittology @britannia-hospital @iwatch-thebees and @veradune

[thoughtportal]

How Warner Bros. Discovery CEO David Zaslav Became Public Enemy Number One in Hollywood

A series of maneuvers from the executive has angered the film community.

By Jason Bailey

July 3, 2023

Picture this: A captain of industry standing at the lectern at his alma matter, resplendent in his red-and-black graduation regalia—and getting booed. David Zaslav, president and CEO of Warner Bros. Discovery, was delivering the commencement address to Boston University, recalling how the late General Electric CEO Jack Welch once told him, “If you want to be successful, you’re going to have to figure out how to get along with everyone—and that includes difficult people.”

But instead of soaking in that kind of wisdom, some students were heckling Zaslav. Others had turned their backs to the stage. Now more were chanting, “Pay your writers.” Zaslav, a studio head, is often invoked as a villain by the striking Writers Guild of America.

He tried to press on with his story, continuing to quote Welch: “Some people will be looking for a fight.” The booing continued.

Zaslav later issued a statement thanking BU for the invitation, and insisting, “as I have often said, I am immensely supportive of writers and hope the strike is resolved soon and in a way that they feel recognizes their value.” But while BU President Robert Brown publicly apologized for the incident, blaming it on “cancel culture,” many observers saw it as a victory for the striking writers.

David Zaslav has become the face of a rocky and controversial new period in Hollywood. Few people who weren’t industry insiders even knew his name two years ago, when Discovery merged with WarnerMedia to become Warner Bros. Discovery. Zaszlav had been CEO of Discovery Communications since 2006, where he oversaw the transition from, in his words, “no longer a cable company, (but) a content company.” What that meant, from his critics perspective, was Discovery’s transition from educational programming to low-effort reality programming—which seems to be a much more lucrative business model.

There were, of course, considerable challenges awaiting the CEO of the new Warner Bros. Discovery conglomerate, whomever that might have been. Essentially every studio has taken fire the last few years. (Scarlett Johansson went nuclear on Disney!) Warner Bros. had, like most motion picture studios, struggled considerably during the pandemic. And then, in late 2020, before AT&T spun it off and Zaslav was brought on to lead the company after its merger with Discovery, Warner Bros. decided to simultaneously stream their entire 2021 theatrical slate on the HBOMax streaming service. This upset filmmakers, including those whose films were impacted by it, as well as theatrical chains that showed the movies. Christopher Nolan, whose enormously profitable relationship with WB began back in 2002, was reported to be so pissed that he took his new film Oppenheimer to Universal out of frustration with the company’s handling of his 2020 feature Tenet.

After a grueling pandemic, some are wondering whether the right person for the job of healing the wounds and reestablishing relationships with filmmakers might not have been Zaslav, the guy best known for shepherding the likes of Naked and Afraid, Dr. Pimple Popper, and My 600-lb Life. But, to be fair, figures from the world of reality TV are often seen with suspicion, if not outright snobbery, by those responsible for scripted fare. And Zaslav's most visible moves have been as a businessman. 

One oft-referenced move: Zaslav announced that two nearly completed films that had been greenlit and produced under the previous regime—the DC superhero story Batgirl and the family-movie sequel Scoob!: Holiday Haunt—would not be distributed on the platform or released in theaters. Instead, they would be essentially used as a tax-write down. “We’re not going to put a movie out unless we believe in it,” Zaslav said in an earnings call, responding to a question about Batgirl. “We’re going to focus on quality. DC is something that we think we could make better and we’re focused on it now.” A WBD spokesperson told The Hollywood Reporter, “The decision to not release Batgirl reflects our leadership’s strategic shift as it relates to the DC universe and HBO Max … We are incredibly grateful to the filmmakers of Batgirl and Scoob! Holiday Haunt and their respective casts and we hope to collaborate with everyone again in the near future.”

Eagle-eyed subscribers subsequently noted that several other Max originals, including the Seth Rogen comedy An American Pickle and Robert Zemeckis’s remake of The Witches, had been quietly removed from the service, in a further attempt to save money. The service proceeded to remove several dozen series from its library, from HBO originals like Westworld and Vinyl to family programming like The Not-Too-Late Show with Elmo to animated series like Infinity Train. Even episodes of Sesame Street weren’t safe. (Westworld and other programs were moved to free ad-supported streamers like Tubi and The Roku Channel.) Several other streaming services, including Paramount+, Starz, Showtime, Disney+, and Hulu, have followed suit, disappearing their underperforming originals.

Meanwhile, the merger of the HBOMax and Discovery+ services continued apace, with HBOMax rebranding to “Max,” removing its most prestigious and identifiable piece of branding, and as result, playing down its history of high-quality, high-profile scripted programming. It didn’t help that, on the “details” tab for film and shows on the service’s new interface, the writers, directors, and producers were initially lumped together, in no particular order, under the nebulous designation of “creators.” A joint statement from the Director’s Guild of America and the Writer’s Guild of America West criticized the “unilateral decision by Warner Bros. Discovery to change the long-standing individual credits of directors and writers in the new rollout of Max.” Max quickly promised to “correct the credits, which were altered due to an oversight in the technical transition from HBO Max to Max.” The company called the terminology a “mistake” and began rolling out revised credits around a month later.

The most star-studded criticisms of Warner Bros. Discovery came in mid-June, when the company cut loose five of the most senior executives at Turner Classic Movies—“the people who’ve been the architect of the brand for decades,” according to one insider. The cable network is beloved among cinephiles—and high-profile filmmakers. Steven Spielberg, Martin Scorsese, and Paul Thomas Anderson quickly released a statement noting that “Turner Classic Movies has always been more than just a channel. It is truly a precious resource of cinema, open 24 hours a day, seven days a week. And while it has never been a financial juggernaut, it has always been a profitable endeavor since its inception.”

The writer's union is striking for better wages and working conditions, and many of these fights are simply about how to split up a financial pie that has been radically changed by the pandemic and tech. But Zaslav's critics say it's more than that, expressing a fear that the financial machinations reflect not just shrugging indifference but outright hostility to the creative side of cinema. That's not a very novel line of attack: Netflix, for instance, has drawn comparable fire. But that company's CEO, Reed Hastings, doesn't seem to attract quite the same vitriol. Fair or not, with Zaslav, the criticism has gotten personal.