Dune (2021)

Saw Dune (2021) (the secret part one of this new film franchise) it was really good!  It's too bad I saw it on my dinky little TV screen because it's a very grand film, full of epic megastructures and shots of nature's mighty beauty and epic, wailing music.  It's appropriate for this epic story of interstellar political intrigue and maybe-religious drama.

The film has that modern realistic sci-fi look that's so popular now.  There's a lot of austere, blank structures in earth-tones with tiny little humans to give a sense of scale.  It's a sort of brutalism for sci-fi.  As is fitting for the source material, everything is done in a slow, deliberate, almost ceremonial way.  It reminded me of Drawing Restraint 9 in that way.  (Thankfully, this film is a bit more briskly paced than that one though.)

One last thought: the spaceships clearly resemble dragonflies which are aquatic creatures in their first stage of life.  As adults, they fly, so in order to transition from water-breathing to air-breathing, dragonflies must pull their adult body out of their juvenile body, tearing out their aquatic lungs.  This is likely unrelated but ties in well with the story's theme of rebirth and cataclysmic growth.

Wild Things (1998)

Saw Wild Things, a tawdry, sexy, mystery thriller about a guidance counselor and two girls under his care.  The movie opens with shots of gators and caiman in the everglades swamp.  We then cut to a highschool assembly, laying the groundwork for a film with many predators in it.  The film really gets going after about 15 minutes when one of the girls accuses the counselor of raping her.  Now, it's relatively clear that she's probably lying just from the tone of the film: 90s movies about actual rape don't bill themselves as a sexy, flirty thriller, but there's many many twists in the film.  During the credits sequence, we even get further hole-filling and plot twisting.  It's a little ridiculous.

I didn't really think the film was about very much.  It was an interesting mystery/procedural in the vein of like Brick or Purple Noon but it becomes almost an SNL parody of itself by the end.  There's just a cavalcade of last-minute revelations and secret alliances, it's all a bit much.  Very sexy film if you happen to be into boobs (not so much otherwise) and pretty fun until the final silliness.

Sing 2

Saw Sing 2.  Oh my god it was ridiculous.  It's not very good but in a campy, minions-style way: the whole thing is so ephemeral, it's harmless.  It has all the dumb entertainment of a reality TV show but with the rapid rhythm of a scripted cartoon.  It's a film that lives for the unrealistic bliss of catharsis achieved in the middle of a musical act: the audience singing and clapping along, the klieg lights glaring, and the main characters maybe learning a little something about themselves.  So silly!  I was sort of interested by the idea of an act within a piece of media: you can see the stage scaffolding (and the klieg lights) and somehow it makes it more realistic, this visual clutter of artificial behind-the-scenes.  Very strange!  It's all a cartoon anyway, why not make it just a fantasy, like they do in (I dunno) the climax of Madagascar 3?  I have opinions about funny-animal cartoons.

The Bad Guys

Saw The Bad Guys.  It was an adorable animal heist which was clearly inspired in the nicest ways by the Lupin the 3rd cartoons.  It was fun and jokey and consistently amusing.  It never really hit the dizzying emotional punches of golden era Pixar or anything, but it was good silly business.

Puss in Boots: The Last Wish

Saw Puss in Boots: The Last Wish.  It was really good!  The usually fearless Puss is down to his last life (out of nine) and for the first time must contend with mortality.  Surprising topic for a children's movie!  There's also a really great depiction of a panic attack.  As he comes out of it, you could hear the little noises of Puss's jaw unclenching.  It's so visceral and intimate.  It's great!

There's also a wonderful therapy dog played by Harvey Guillén who is a delight!

The Princess and the Pirate

 Saw The Princess and the Pirate, a Bob Hope comedy.  It was okay but very old-fashioned, full of dated but tame humor involving people hiding in bedrooms and such.  It was clearly for Bob Hope fans and didn't really hold up outside of the Bob Hope fandom.