Movie Reviews - 2024 posts

WARNING: SPOILERS

Is the movie an argument against women directors? Even though it was directed by a guy? 

I know, it’s just a comedy, shut up. But I kept thinking of that “Godfather” line: “It’s not personal, it’s strictly business.” While directing her first film, Jody Moreno (Emily Blunt) does the opposite. She makes it very, very personal.

Eighteen months earlier, we’d gotten intimations of a romance between Jody, then a movie editor, and cocky stunt man Colt Seavers (Ryan Gosling), who suddenly breaks his back during a stunt and winds up quitting the business and parking cars for a living. (Cf., Wade Wilson getting rejected by the Avengers and becoming a car salesman in “Deadpool & Wolverine.” If your exciting dream job falls through, 2024 movies are telling us, the only fallback is car-related customer service. Beware, beware.) 

Ah, but then Colt gets word from producer Gail Meyer (Hannah Waddingham of “Ted Lasso”) that they need him on the set of the new big sci-fi action flick, “Metalstorm,” being filmed in Australia. More, Jody needs him, because she’s directing her first film. She’s asked for him. So off he goes. And for his first stunt, shortly after he arrives, he rolls a car eight and a half times—a new world record!

Except it turns out Jody didn’t ask for him. In fact, she’s not happy to see him at all. During his convalescence, we later learn, she tried to nurse him but he disappeared on her. Basically he disappeared. She didn’t see it as a man losing his raison d’etre and thus sinking into depression; she thought it was all about her. And she took it very, very personal.

So for the next stunt, while telling him the backstory of the romance within “Metalstorm”—which, in key details mirrors their own—she has him do a stunt where he’s lit on fire and, post explosion, slammed against a giant boulder. And then she has him do it again. And again. And again. She’s like a cat toying with a trapped mouse. She uses precious time and studio resources to wage a personal vendetta against a man who—let’s not forget—was attempting to return from a broken back! For her!

What a fucking dick. 

Anyway, that’s why women shouldn’t direct movies.

Fall from a tall building
“Fall Guy” is flip and flippant. Cars flip, people are flippant. It’s movie insider-y and popculture-y. Since it’s based on an ’80s TV series, we get references from that awful decade (from hair-metal music to “Miami Vice” homages), as well as post-credit cameos from the TV series’ stars Lee Majors (looking great at 85) and Heather Graham. We also get a snippet of bionic sound-effects from Majors’ previous series, “The Six Million Dollar Man.” I liked that bit even if it was nonsensical. But you get the idea: the movie doesn’t take itself too seriously. It doesn’t take anything seriously except stunts.

The movie also gives us a double meaning for the title, since Colt is being set up to take the blame for a crime. If you unpack the plot, though, it makes zero sense. But who would do that? That’s not nice. Let people have their fun.

Yeah, here I go.

While partying in Australia during the filming of “Metalstorm,” movie star Tom Ryder (Aaron Taylor-Johnson)—who, it turns out, sabotaged Colt’s stunt 18 months earlier out of jealousy or something—is taunted by his stunt double Henry Herrera (Justin Easton, Gosling’s own stunt double) about not doing his own stunts, and they get into a drunken fight that Ryder wins. Yayyy! Except he’s kicked Henry into an end table and killed him. Ooops! Plus it’s all been filmed on his phone. He’s guilty of murder. What’s a poor movie star to do?

This one calls producer Gail Meyer, forever sucking on the straw of something Starbucks-y while literally chained to her cellphone. And she, or they, decide to pin the blame on someone else. They’re going to use AI to deepfake the phone video so it appears someone else did the kicking. Sure, why not? More, they’re going to do this not with someone at the party—and there were, what, about 20 people there?—but with someone who wasn’t even in the country. They’re going to make Colt Seavers the fall guy. 

Why not a stuntman who’s in country? Cuz that’s not the story. As is, Gail has to call Colt, get him to give up his life, buy a ticket, and fly to Sydney—a 15-hour nonstop flight—and then be driven to the movie set, where tests are done, including the CGI stuff so they can duplicate his face. Then he begins to work. He does the rollover record and the numerous lit-on-fire takes. He doesn’t discover the body of Henry on ice in a bathtub until that evening. So that’s what, 24 hours? At best? And is a corpse on ice really going to fool forensics about time of death?

Plus, whey are they assuming everyone in the room will keep quiet? If it were me in that room, seeing what I saw, and then reading that Colt Seavers was arrested for the crime, I’d mull it over for all of five seconds before heading to the police. Or the press. Or both. Moral reasons, sure, but also self-preservation. I’d know I was a loose end. Sooner or later, I’d feel, they’d come for me, too. All to save the career of a worthless movie star making a worthless movie in the Australian desert.

Roll a brand-new car
So is Tom Ryder supposed to be Tom Cruise? After he kicks Henry, but before he realizes he’s killed him, he shouts at the camera, “Do I do my own stunts? I think I do!” That’s very Cruise. Elsewhere, they use Cruise’s name twice, maybe to suggest, “No, see, not him, he’s over here,” and thus avoid litigation, but I’m not convinced. Is Cruise known for having riders in his contracts? Maybe about doing his own stunts?

The director was a smart choice anyway. Before he began helming such actioners as “Atomic Blonde,” “Deadpool 2” and “Bullet Train,” David Leitch was a longtime stunt man. Looks like he never doubled Cruise, but he was the longtime stuntman for Brad Pitt.

Overall, Gosling’s great, Gosling and Blunt have good chemistry (even if her character is a dick), and I liked “Black Panther”’s Winston Duke as stunt coordinator Dan Tucker. Teresa Palmer’s in this? I guess she played the chick with the sword who attacked Colt? Here’s a wake-up call: I think of Palmer as one of the newbies, someone the kids dig. Turns out she’s nearly 40. 

Aaron Taylor-Johnson is another good choice. He feels like a movie-within-a-movie star rather than the real deal. Out in the wild, he doesn’t survive. Waddingham’s Gail Meyer is the movie’s true villain but you wonder over her motivation. Is Ryder important enough to orchestrate all this? To implicate yourself? To ruin your life?

The theme song, once sung by Lee Majors, has been given an update by Blake Shelton. References to Farrah, Bo, Cheryl Tiegs, Robert Redford and Clint Eastwood have understandably been removed—even though, wow, 45 years later, Redford and Eastwood are still making movies. No new movie stars’ names have been added. Not even Tom Cruise.

WARNING: SPOILERS

Are these Deadpool movies getting funnier or are my standards dropping? Or both?

I tend to suffer through fight scenes and explosions, and this movie has more than its share, but I enjoyed it. I laughed. A lot. With the original “Deadpool,” I had a little problem with the meta stuff. As I put it back in the innocent days of Feb. 2016:

He says about the movie what you and I would say about the movie if we were watching it in your mom’s basement. … But is this a losing strategy? They’re not fixing the problems of the genre, they’re just making snarky comments from within the genre. It’s like Deadpool is winning the battle (this moment) but losing the war. He’s badmouthing the entire enterprise on its way down. 

At the same time, in other posts, I was complaining that there were no great modern-day superhero satires—the way that the Adam West’s “Batman” was a great superhero satire. Watching “Deadpool & Wolverine” last week at SIFF Downtown, I realized, “Oh… This is the great modern-day superhero satire.”

Again, it helps that it’s funnier than the original. We get our share of outré stuff:

B-15: I’m gonna show you something. Something huge
Deadpool: That’s what Scoutmaster Kevin used to say.

But I prefer lines that skewer the culture:

Kid: That’s Wolverine!
Deadpool: Damn straight it is. Fox killed him, Disney brought him back. They’re gonna make him do this till he’s 90.

I say all this even though the movie’s focus is not only on the Multiverse, but the TVA, the Time Variance Authority, which is a bureaucratic, authoritarian organization, introduced in the “Loki” TV series, that ensures timelines don’t overlap or run into each other or whatever. And I’m tired of all that.

But so is Deadpool: 

Deadpool: Can we just be done with the whole multiverse thing? It’s not great. It’s just been miss after miss after miss. … Let’s just take the ‘L’ and move on.

Now that’s a hero!

Snuhkuhtuh
The movie begins at a gravesite, Wolverine’s, which Deadpool (Ryan Reynolds) is digging up. In voiceover, he mentions the film’s title, and, right, how can Wolverine be fighting Deadpool if he died in “Logan” in 2017? Well, there’s his regenerative powers. That’s what Deadpool assumes. Mid-dig, though, he comes across something and curses: Logan’s adamantine skull and skeleton. So much for that.

Chronologically, the movie begins with Deadpool applying for a job with the Avengers. Let’s just say he doesn’t interview well. Trying to be polite to corporate boss Happy Hogan (Jon Favreau), he still runs off at the mouth, asking Happy if he didn’t used to be the chauffeur. “What's your super power? Is it parallel parking?” Then he says he needs this. To which Happy tells him that Avengers aren’t the ones who need; they help those in need. 

And just like that, he gives up the superhero biz. As Wade Wilson, he gets a job at some superstore; but like most folks working at such stores, he’s dying inside. He’s not himself. He loses himself and then he loses Vanessa (Morena Baccarin, call me). They break up. And then at a birthday party, the TVA arrives. 

What’s the rationale again? Right, his timeline is dying. Apparently, timelines have “anchor beings” who are so important that when they go everything begins to deteriorate. Ours was Wolverine. A new petty functionary, Mr. Paradox (Matthew Macfadyen of “Succession”), is trying to make a name for himself by speeding up this process via a “Time Ripper.” That’s a good understated bit: that all corporations reward managers who promote efficiencies, and this is true even if the corporation sees itself as moral and the efficiency causes the deaths of trillions. Wade understandably doesn’t want his friends to die, so he steals Paradox’s little iPad thingee and makes for Wolverine’s grave. No luck.

Then he decides to re-anchor his timeline with a Wolverine from another timeline. Smart. Cue montage of Wolverines—including a short one, like in the comic book, and one played by DC’s castoff Superman Henry Cavill. Per Paradox, Deadpool winds up picking the worst one (Hugh Jackman), the Wolvy that let down everyone else. Even his claws come out slowly: less snikt! than snuh … kuh … tuh…

The two fight, of course. Then Deadpool discovers Paradox’s secret—he’s rogue—so they’re banished to “the Void,” the end of the timelines, which is even more “Mad Max” here than in “Loki.” Alioth is a consuming cloud that kills all but the true villain is Cassandra Nova (Emma Corin, who’s great), the twin sister of Prof. X, who runs her fiefdom beneath the long dead corpse of Goliath. (At one point, the helmet opens, revealing a skull. Deadpool: “Huh. Paul Rudd finally aged.”)

The two keep running into the castoffs of long-dead Marvel movies. First there’s Johnny Storm (Chris Evans), whom Deadpool initially thinks is Captain America. After they escape Cassandra Nova and fight each other again, they run into Elektra (Jennifer Garner), Blade (Wesley Snipes), and Laura (Dafne Keen), the little girl from “Logan” who is now a young woman. These last three, along with newbie Gambit (Channing Tatum), team up with our stars to storm the castle, as it were, with a plan to place the helmet of Juggernaut (Aaron W. Reed) onto Cassandra, rendering her useless. And it works! But then they stupidly spare her—a move that won’t look good when she later decides to destroy all the timelines. I.e., everything everyone has ever known. 

Might’ve wanted to kill her when you had the chance, boys.

The Han Solo bit
How do they get out of the Void again? They just do. (Movies are half maguffin these days.) At one point, on a NY city street, they wind up squaring off against a whole host of Deadpools—the funniest of which is Nicepool (also Ryan Reynolds), who’s got white-guy samurai hair, a perpetual smile, and the blandest of personalities. At one point he tries a meta riposte of his own, bringing up a past Ryan Reynolds movie, and it’s brilliant in its nothingness: 

Nicepool: “The Proposal.”
[Pause]
Deadpool: What the fuck is that? Bitch, is that what you think I do?

Throughout, Nicepool’s smile never leaves him. He’s not ashamed at all. His witlessness is his superpower.

How do they win? Oh right, DP and Wolvy battle over who will take on Cassandra in the NYC subway, and even as they do I’m thinking, “Shouldn’t it be both? She’s kind of powerful.” Which is what happens. DP does it alone, then Wolvy does the Han Solo bit of showing up just when he’s needed. Or vice-versa. Anyway they win, Cassandra dies, the Black TVA chick from “Loki” arrives to take away Paradox. This timeline gets this Wolverine, whom DP introduces to his friends. Hugh Jackman can now do it until he’s 90.

Or not. For once, in the MCU,, there’s no midcredits foreshadowing. Instead we get nostalgia—clips of the first days of “X-Men” filming. My friend Jeff commented on how young Hugh Jackman looked in these, but it was a quarter-century ago, and those years haven’t been exactly kind. I was more surprised by something else: that the little girl in “Logan” is now a woman. WTF? But it’s been seven years, and though mine were full of slow deterioration, as I went from 54 to 61, she went from 12 and 19. Bigger deal.

It was also fun being reminded that Brian Cox, the star of “Succession,” created Wolverine. He was the villain in “X2,” just as his successor in “Succession” is the villain here. Nice bookending.

This is the first “Deadpool,” not to mention “Wolverine” appearance, that wasn’t created by the idiots at Fox Studios. As Deadpool tells him, “Welcome to the MCU. You're joining at a bit of a low point.” Indeed. Since Tony Stark died, they’ve given us one great superhero movie (“Spider-Man: No Way Home”), two good superhero movies ( “Black Widow,” “Guardians 3”), and a whole lot of crap. But this helps. It’s the funniest movie I’ve seen this year.

WARNING: SPOILERS

For someone who loves the early 1960s as much as Jerry Seinfeld, he sure gets a lot of it wrong. “Unfrosted” is set in 1963 and there’s a whole host of anachronisms. Most feel completely unnecessary. 

They reference Gus Grissom dying. Yeah, that was 1967. Marjorie Post calls one of the dumpster divers “Cabbage Patch kid.” Not introduced until 1978. Fruity Pebbles? 1971. Missing kids on milk cartons? Mid-80s. Turns out the “Doublemint Twins” ad campaign was invented before this, so I was wrong on that; but the idea of “Jackie O’s” as a cereal is a few Kennedy assassinations early.

The entire opening is anachronism. A kid lays out one of those classic red bandanas and loads it up with iconic early ’60s items: Slinky, G.I. Joe, Bazooka Joe bubblegum, 1964 baseball card, and Gold Key Woody Woodpecker comic book. Then he ties it all to a stick and hits the road. At a diner, he asks for Pop-Tarts and reads its origin story on the box aloud.

Kid: Wow, that’s a pretty good story.
Adult: You think so? Bunch of baloney.

The mise en scene is Norman Rockwell, though the runaway kid there is talking to a cop; here it’s Bob Cabana (Seinfeld), a Kellogg’s executive who promises to tell the kid the real story. He begins it this way: “Well, in the early ’60s, the American morning was defined by milk and cereal...”

Me: Early ’60s? I thought we were in the early ’60s.

The movie is full of such errors. It feels like everyone was riffing, and the riffs stayed in even if they didn’t connect. As for the real story about how Pop-Tarts came to be that Bob promises to tell the kid? Bunch of baloney.

Gaffigan again
Who cares, right, as long as it’s funny. This isn’t. I’d heard it didn’t have a single laugh in it but that’s not true. Jim Gaffigan, as Edsel Kellogg III, has some good line-readings. Opening the newspaper: “Oh, Vietnam. That seems like a good idea.” I know, but it’s the way he says it. I laughed out loud.

The movie itself seems like a good idea: take the battle between Kellogg’s and Post to launch the first toaster pastry and film it through a “Right Stuff” prism. Make it seem like it matters. But they don’t. They keep shrugging. They keep winking. They keep losing the thread.

In Battle Creek, Michigan, Kellogg’s is on top, particularly at the annual “Bowl and Spoon Awards,” winning everything; but then why is Marjorie Post (Amy Schumer) so smug? What are they working on?

Yeah, toaster pastries. With Kellogg’s own abandoned research into the project! It’s so delicious they have kids diving into their dumpsters for the castoffs. But then why is Post so behind on the project?

Either way, Kellogg’s ramps up. Bob requests his old partner, Donna “Stan” Stankowski (Melissa McCarthy), currently employed by NASA. Stan, in turn, hires a crack team of “the most innovative minds of the 1960s”:

• Tom Carvel (Adrian Martinez)
• Steve Schwinn (Jack McBrayer)
• Harold von Braunhut (Thomas Lennon)
• Chef Boy Ardee (Bobby Moynihan)
• Jack LaLanne (James Marsden)
• The UNIVAC computer

At a press conference, Tom proclaims, in his best “Mercury astronauts” voice: “I give you, Kellogg’s first-ever taste pilots!” Not bad.

Interestingly, all the above people are historical figures. Well, it’s Ignaz Schwinn rather than Steve, while Chef Boyardee is Ettore Boiardi. But yes, Carvel created soft-serve ice cream while von Braunhut was apparently the odd creature who created Sea Monkeys and X-ray goggles and all that crap they sold on the inside covers of comic books.

And here, together, they create … a mess.

I like the subplot about the Milk Syndicate disliking the milk-less turn of events and strong-arming everybody. “It’s the calcium in milk that makes bones strong,” milkman Mike Diamond (Christian Slater) says to Bob outside his home. “Without it, bones can break. They just .. snap.”

Sadly, they don’t do much with it. Too many other subplots. When Post gets close to launch, Kellogg’s talks to “El Sucre” (Felix Solis) in Puerto Rico and cuts off their sugar supply. So Marjorie goes through Nikita Khruschev (Dean Norris) to get Cuba’s sugar, which gets JFK (Bill Burr) involved. There’s a “Mad Man” bit, with Jon Hamm and John Slattery giving the Kellogg’s product an inappropriately sexy French name, so Kellogg’s goes back to the dumpster-diving kids, who tell them knowingly, “Look, the name is the game, people.”

I’m like: Wait, weren’t you kids literally diving into dumpsters for an unnamed product?

More subplots. Marjorie Post and Edsel Kellogg are secretly in love, Von Braunhut and Chef Boy Ardee raise an odd Sea Monkey/ravioli lifeform together, Schwinn is killed in a toaster-pastry experiment, and the actors playing the cereal mascots—including Hugh Grant as Thurl Ravenscroft/Tony the Tiger—not only strike, they storm Kellogg’s headquarters, Jan. 6-style.

Too much, and not enough of it is funny.

Citizen Seinfeld
But the dumpster-diving girl is correct: the name is the game, people, in art and in life. Kellogg’s product was originally called “Pop-Tart,” Post’s was named “Country Squares,” and the former had it all over the latter. It won the space race. 

We get wrap-ups. The Univac is sent to Vietnam (cue unfunny “Apocalypse Now” parody), the Milk Syndicate is implicated in JFK’s assassination (seriously unfunny), and Bob goes on “The Tonight Show” and is shot by Andy Warhol (Dan Levy), angry that Pop-Art is being co-opted. None of this made me laugh.

What did? Stan suddenly becoming a hippy, inventing granola, and pulling out of Dodge in a VW Van. OK, it wasn’t any of that. It was Edsel yelling after her, “Get a job!” Gaffigan again.

Serious question: Is Jerry Seinfeld’s trajectory the Charles Foster Kane trajectory? Rising to unprecedented fame, wealth and power, and all he longs for are childhood playthings. For Kane, it was the red sled; for Jerry, everything in that red bandana.

Maybe that’s all of us. No matter where life takes us, even to great success, we just want to go back.

WARNING: SPOILERS

I’ve seen this documentary twice already and I’m sure I’ll watch it again. It’s a sweet doc about a sweet man who was one of the biggest stars in Hollywood when I was coming of age. And he was totally unique. He didn't look like a traditional leading man, his hair went everywhere, but there he was again—starring in another box-office smash.

And not just starring. Here’s some of the stuff, per the doc, that Gene Wilder brought to his films. These were his ideas:

• Willie Wonka’s intro: the cane getting stuck in the cobblestone leading to the fall and—alley oop—the summersault. From then on, he said, you never knew what was real or fake about the guy.
• “Puttin’ on the Ritz” in “Young Frankenstein.” Mel Brooks was against it—he wanted a truer James Whale homage—but admits he was wrong here. “It’s the best thing in the movie,” he says.
• The very idea of “Young Frankenstein.” I always assumed it sprung from Brooks’ mind, part of his great satires/homages of great Hollywood genres: westerns, silents, Hitchcock. Nope. It was part of Wilder’s satires/homages: Frankenstein, Sherlock Holmes, Valentino.

Spinoffs were big in the 1970s and they kept spinning off writer-directors from Mel Brooks’ universe, including Wilder, but one wonders if they should have. They were stronger together. “Blazing Saddles” and “Young Frankenstein” were the second- and third-biggest box-office hits of 1974, and beloved to this day, but then each of the elements went off to do their own thing. Gene wrote and directed “The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes’ Smarter Brother” and “The World’s Greatest Lover” and those were meh, Marty Feldman did his “Beau Geste” remake, another meh, and even Mel with “Silent Movie” and “High Anxiety” became a bit meh.

And then Gene teamed up with Richard Pryor and became a smash again. He was always partnering with people, wasn’t he? First Mel, then Richard, then Gilda. That describes most of his theatrical releases.

Here’s a shocker: He has just 37 credits on IMDb, including television. He was huge for an actor with just 37 credits.

His life as a dog
Gene’s childhood in Milwaukee in the 1940s reminds me a bit of the Swedish film “My Life as a Dog.” Ingemar’s mom was terminally ill, he tried to make her laugh, but he was still too much trouble and had to be sent away. Gene’s mom wasn’t terminal but she had heart trouble and a doctor told a young Gene that he should never make her angry; that it might kill her. So he tried to make her laugh. And became funny. And bottled up everything. 

He met Mel through Anne Bancroft. Wilder was cast (he uses the term “miscast”) in a small role in the 1963 Broadway production of “Mother Courage and Her Children,” starring Bancroft, and Bancroft thought he would be perfect for the role of the innocent accountant in that new movie Mel was writing. Mel met him and agreed. The producers, of course, wanted a handsome leading man for this part, but Mel did his usual chicanery: “Great idea, boss!” he said, and then ignored them until it was too late to change anything.

On IMDb, there’s a three-year gap between “The Producers” and “Start the Revolution Without Me.” Was Wilder doing stage work? The doc doesn’t help us. Alan Alda and Harry Connick Jr. are talking heads here, longtime friends of Gene’s, but we get no indication how they became so. Worse (for me), we don’t get Wilder’s longtime attorney and friend, Eric Weissmann, whom I interviewed back in 2011. Was he unavailable? I remember asking him who was funnier, Mel or Gene, and he paused. Not to think it over, but because—I think—he’d never heard such a stupid question. The answer is Mel and it wasn’t a contest. Mel was one of the funniest people alive. Gene could be funny, as we see, but it wasn’t his default mode.

We get some of “Willie Wonka” but not enough, and nobody underlines the fact that this actor, so sweet and innocent, could play demonic so well. That’s what stunned me when I saw “Willie Wonka” again as an adult in the 1990s: how uncompromising Gene is in his performance; how much he doesn’t care if we like him. There should’ve been more roles like that for him.

For the Pryor-Wilder teamups, “Silver Streak” is given short shrift here while the doc is all over “See No Evil, Hear No Evil.” I get it: Rain Pryor, one of the doc's talking heads, was on the set for the latter, and it’s also where Gene met his second wife, another talking head. They have stories about “See No Evil.” But it was a bad movie that had no cultural impact. “Silver Streak” was huge at both the box office and in our imaginations. So was “Stir Crazy.”

Here’s how the Pryor-Wilder teamups did at the box office, along with their B.O. ranking for the year:

• “Silver Streak” (1974): $51m, 4th
• “Stir Crazy” (1980): $101m, 3rd
• “See No Evil, Hear No Evil” (1989): $46m, 27th
• “Another You” (1991): $2m, 137th

I just realized: Did they shy from “Silver Streak” because of the blackface scene? I recently rewatched the film. There’s nothing embarrassing about that scene 50 years later. It’s subterfuge, and the joke is on the white protagonist (a bit), but mostly on the white police force who can’t see past the black. The thing that’s truly dated in the movie is the ’70s swinger vibe. Horrible dialogue and Jill Clayburgh is given nothing to do. But it would’ve been nice if someone here had talked about the film.

Encore
I feel like a dick complaining—it’s such a fun documentary, totally in my wheelhouse. Anytime I can hear Mel Brooks tell stories, I’m there. I also found it lovely seeing Peter Ostrum, Charlie from “Willie Wonka,” as a seemingly well-adjusted adult. That was his only film role, it turns out. It was huge, but he just said, “Well, that was fun. Bye.” He became a animal vet.

The stuff about Gene’s Alzheimer’s is tough to watch but worthwhile and not without grace moments. His wife talks about a day when he suddenly broke free of whatever Alzheimer’s was doing to him and decided to go for a swim. In the pool, he seemed himself again, flicking his head to get water out of his ear the way he’d always done. It was as if his true self decided, “I want to do this one more time.”

WARNING: SPOILERS 

The movie begins with a voiceover from super-scientist Ilene Andrews (Rebecca Hall) about how for centuries we humans thought we were the dominant species on the planet, and that life could only exist on the surface, and now we know there are titans, giant creatures like Kong and Godzilla, with thousands more living in Hollow Earth, the prehistoric jungle realm in the center of the world. 

“You have to wonder,” she intones, “what else we were wrong about.”

Great lesson! The rest of the movie is people—mostly her—stating with absolute certainty what they can’t possibly know.

Why is Kong leaving Hollow Earth? “Godzilla won’t come down here unless Kong brings him,” Ilene says.

Why is Godzilla absorbing massive amounts of energy? “The Iwi must have known it was just a matter of time, and that’s why they’ve been calling for help, and that’s why Godzilla is changing,” Ilene says.

Right. The only possible answer, old chum.

Most of this know-everythingism is exposition, since Kong and Godzilla can’t tell us why they’re doing what they’re doing, but it doesn’t help that many titan actions are the result of telephathic communications from the Iwi tribe in Hollow Earth, and they don’t talk, either. So Ilene keeps filling the nonsensical gap.

But my favorite example of someone stating with absolute certainty what they can’t possibly know is just good old fashioned hubris:

Trapper: It’s a bit rough and ready, but it should hold.

Who’s Trapper? He’s a hippy-dippy veterinary-dentist (Dan Stevens of “Downton Abbey”). Initially I thought his character was an homage to Jeff Bridges’ slacker-hippy in the 1976 Jessica Lange version of “King Kong,” but no, he's apparently like some 1980s G.I. Joe named “Chuckles” because director Adam Wingard’s wanted to make the movie akin to the experience of walking down a toy store aisle in the 1980s—as every good director wants to do. We first see Trapper, amid blaring rock music, helicoptering onto an anesthetized Kong to replace a sore tooth. But the new tooth isn’t the thing that “should hold.” No.

Deep breath.

You see, when Kong battles the movie’s villain, Skar King, in the Great Ape colony in Hollow Earth, Skar King unleashes Shimo, a kind of reverse-Godzilla whose breath is ice rather than fire, and who, according to Iwi legend, caused the last Ice Age on Earth. In this battle, Shimo freezes Kong’s right hand, rendering it useless. Ah, but ever since the last movie the Monarch team has been working on “Project Powerhouse,” augmentations for Kong against existential threats, and these include an exoskeleton-type glove. Ilene and Trapper figure now’s the time to trot out the prototype. So Trapper flies to get it and then puts it on Kong. And that’s when he says the line.

I can’t change a tire without worrying it’ll come off, but this guy, a dentist by trade, puts a giant mechanical glove on King Fucking Kong and assures everyone “It should hold”? My kingdom if it had fallen off as soon as Kong stood.

The x is silent
Why was this the plan anyway? I mean for the filmmakers. Who thought, “You know what’s missing from this franchise? A mechanical glove for Kong!” Turns out, per IMDb trivia, it was to boost sales of Kong toys. Shocker.

OK, but what’s with the X in the title? The last one was “Godzilla vs. Kong,” because they fought. Now they’re teaming up, so shouldn’t it be “Godzilla + Kong”? Or is it “x” because they’re not just being added together, they’re being multiplied? Nope. Per studio PR, the “x” is silent. It's supposed to be like something that appears in a lot of Hollywood contracts. Great. Thanks for thinking of us.

For those paying attention, which I assume is a handful of sad folks somewhere, this is the fifth installment in Warner Bros.’ “Monsterverse,” its sad attempt to do with monster IP what Disney/Marvel did with superhero IP. To wit:

• Godzilla (2014)
• Kong: Skull Island (2017)
• Godzilla: King of the Monsters (2019)
• Godzilla vs. Kong (2021)

The first of these Godzilla movies was simply envisioned as a reboot, and the first Kong set in WWII/1973, so the continuity really begins with the 2019 movie. Except there’s no continuity in terms of human characters. Kyle Chandler and Millie Bobby Brown show up in the first movie with Vera Farmiga, who’s replaced in the second by Rebecca Hall, who’s in this one even as Brown/Chandler vamoose. Brian Tyree Henry also reprises his role as conspiracy-theorist podcaster Bernie Hayes, while Kaylee Hottle returns as Jia, the deaf-mute who taught Kong sign language. So in the third true installment, no human from the first installment remains. 

Kong and Jia have more in common than sign language. Both are the last of their tribes and both are lonely. That’s the theme. Kong looks sad and moans, while Jia, now raised by Ilene, doesn’t fit in at school, and it gets worse when she goes into a trance and sketches something that looks like an EKG of a heart attack. But guess what? She does it because of telepathic communication by the Iwi tribe from within Hollow Earth warning of an existential threat! She’s not the last of her tribe!

And neither is Kong! When Ilene, Jia, Bernie and Trapper transport to Hollow Earth, they see a giant bloody handprint on a mountainside:

Fat asshole who gets eaten by a tree: You think Kong did that?
Ilene: No, that’s not Kong. That’s something else.

There’s a whole giant ape colony on Hollow Earth. Except, whoops, it’s actually a slave colony. Stuff is being mined, ape heads on spikes, you get the idea. Why is stuff being mined for apes? Who knows? But the tyrant ape is Skar King, who’s tall and thin. He’s the existential threat.

Him?

Yes. Because he controls Shimo with some pain crystal thingee.

Sure, but with Godzilla, how is this even a battle? Godzilla takes on Shimo while Kong knocks out Skar with one punch.

Nope, it’s a battle. More than battle. Godzilla and Kong need help.

They need help? Against that skinny fucker?

Yes. Mothra. Whom only Jia can awaken.

Why only Jia?

It’s been prophesied. Anyway, Mothra, who looks like a giant moth, isn’t particularly scary—you feel like a strong breeze could pull off her wings—but her role is to stop Kong and Godzilla from fighting each other in Cairo so the two can return to Hollow Earth to battle Skar/Shimo. But then Skar/Shimo find the portal to the surface and Skar tries to initiate a new Ice Age in Rio de Janeiro. How do our guys win? Suko, the annoying teen ape Kong found earlier in the movie finally comes through. He uses Kong’s axe to destroy the pain-crystal-thingee, freeing Shimo, who immediately freezes Skar. Then Kong shatters him with one punch from his exoskeleton fist.

And the prototype holds.

Toys R Him
Want to see something sad? Here’s a roll call of the talent we’ve seen reacting to and interacting with the monsters of the Monsterverse over the last 10 years:

• Ken Watanabe (twice)
• Juliette Binoche
• Bryan Cranston
• Sally Hawkins (twice)
• David Straithairn (twice)
• Elizabeth Olsen
• Tom Hiddleston
• Samuel L. Jackson
• John Goodman
• Brie Larson
• Shea Whigham
• John C. Reilly
• Vera Farmiga
• Millie Bobby Brown (twice)
• Bradley Whitford
• Alexander Skarsgard
• Lance Reddick
• Demian Bichir
• Rebecca Hall (twice)
• Brian Tyree Henry (twice).

Imagine the other movies you could've made with these people.

But if you’re going to make these things, Warners, do what your international partner Toho did with “Godzilla Minus One.” They grounded the story in history—WWII and its immediate aftermaths—and focused on characters. This thing is just a cartoon. When Kong tears a giant wolf in half, then has to shower off its green insides, I could help but think of “Shrek.” Is Skar a nod to Scar of “Lion King”? Meanwhile, the fights make the battles in the WWE seem legit.

Now that I think about it, Warners did ground “Kong: Skull Island” in history—WWII/Vietnam and its aftermaths—and that was the best movie of this sorry bunch. The good news? Apparently, after two films, Adam “Toys R Us” Wingard is leaving the Monsterverse, so maybe someone not trying to recreate a 1980s toy aisle, but actually trying to make a movie with a story, will be hired. Stranger things have happened.

WARNING: SPOILERS

My father is a big tennis fan, and the other day I was telling him about the trailer to this movie, in which various hip and hip-hop people talk about the Stan Smith tennis shoe, and one of them (DMC from Run-DMC, it turns out) asks the title question. Because he has no idea. To him, Stan Smith is a tennis shoe, not a person.

I’m the opposite. I’m like, “Wait, Stan Smith is also a tennis shoe?”

My father, who was recovering from a stroke, was a little confused by this talk for a different reason. “There’s a movie about Stan Smith?” he said. “Is there enough material there?”

“It’s a documentary,” I said.

The doubt remained. “Is there enough material for a documentary?” 

Dad was right.

The Pilic boycott
When I was young, tennis suddenly became a thing—my parents began to play, and watch—and this was when Stan Smith, with his laughing eyes, moustache, thinning blonde hair and plain American name, was ranked No. 1 in the world. In 1971 he won the U.S. Open and in 1972 he won Wimbledon. Both times he leaped over the net in victory. (When did that practice stop?) He was at the top of his sport.

And then he wasn’t. The doc details his rise through Southern California tennis circles—winning the Davis Cup for the Americans with Arthur Ashe and company—but less the swift decline. What caused it? The change in styles? The switch to metal rackets? Age?      

The boycott probably didn’t help. In 1973, 81 of the top tennis players, including Smith, boycotted Wimbledon because a Yugoslavian player named Nikola Pilic had been suspended by his national lawn tennis association, and the newly formed Association of Tennis Professionals decided to stand by their man. So Smith didn’t even get a chance to defend his title. He never made the Wimbledon finals again. He made the semis in ’74 but in ’75 he got knocked out in the first round. Ditto the U.S. Open. He seemed to gather himself the following years, making it to the fourth round of Wimbledon in ’76 and ’77 before being bounced by Jimmy Connors both years. He was still highly ranked but not in the top 10. In 1981, 35 years old, he again made it to the fourth round before another brash American, John McEnroe, eliminated him in four sets.

The doc makes it seem that Smith and Bob Lutz dominated the doubles circuit even as Smith’s singles game fell off, but that’s not quite true. They mostly dominated the U.S. Open but at intervals, winning it four times: ’68, ’74, ’78 and ’80. They won Australia in 1970, but they never Wimbledon nor the French Open.

I do like drawing out the difference between the two men—particularly since from a distance Smith seemed like an early ’70s swinger. Opposite. Lutz was the party animal, Smith the churchgoer. He pursued a pretty blonde girl, they married, had four kids. I like the stuff about the birth of the Open Era in 1968 when professionals were finally allowed to play the Grand Slam tourneys. I like John McEnroe as talking head. I could listen to him on the history of tennis for a good long while. 

Ka-ching
But Dad was right, there’s just not enough material here. Or the doc keeps going in uninteresting post-tennis directions. They must do 15 minutes on helping that kid from South Africa come to America and become an author. It almost becomes a mini-doc about him rather than Stan Smith.

The shoe stuff is OK but incomplete. East Enders began to wear them because Bowie did, but why did Bowie begin to wear them? Why did Run-DMC like them? Why did they sing about them?

That said, when I got home from SIFF Egyptian, where the documentary was playing, I did order a pair. So I guess the doc served one purpose. Or its only one.

Our titular 弟弟 filming and uploading his own petty crimes in the YouTube age.

WARNING: SPOILERS

I was reminded of how screwed up I was as an adolescent. And I was screwed up a long time ago.

Chris Wang, WangWang to his friends (Izaac Wang), 14 years old and our titular didi (弟弟or “younger brother”), lives in a nice neighborhood in Fremont, California with his older sister (Shirley Chen), with whom he fights; his mother (Joan Chen), whose artwork nobody wants; and the father’s mother, Nai Nai (Zhang Li Hua, writer-director Sean Wang’s own grandmother), who is comically up-front and hectoring in the way of Chinese grandmothers. Where’s dad? Working in Taiwan for all of them. In the way of Chinese dads. We never seen him.

So how is Chris screwed up? I guess being Asian American in a mostly white culture is part of it, but not overtly. A girl tells him he’s “good looking—for an Asian” (which, yeah), and a white bully make a slant-eye gesture at him (is that still a thing?), so there are elements of racism even though it’s 2008. But he’s hanging with a multicultural crowd, black and Pakistani kids, so that’s not really the problem. His friends just seem more adept at making the leap. They’re cooler. He’s a step behind—sometimes literally. They walk ahead, all braggadocio, while he quietly trails after.

But his real problem is he lies to fit in and still doesn’t fit in. Also he’s holding back a lot of anger. Also he’s not holding back a lot of anger.

不是乖孩子
Let’s ask the perennial protagonist question: What does the dude want?

Chris wants:

• to date Madi (Maheala Park)
• to hang with skateboard kids
• to make YouTube videos about skateboarding 

He gets to do each of these things. But then something goes wrong, or something is wrong, and the goal, the desire, is crumpled up and tossed aside.

With Madi, he checks out her MySpace page, finds out what she likes and doesn’t like, and acts accordingly. Example: He pretends he’s a big fan of the 2002 rom-dram “A Walk to Remember” when he’s never seen it and probably wouldn’t like it if he had. (He’s also never seen “Star Wars,” which … what?) But his machinations work, he gets close to Madi. She does most of the heavy lifting. One night, at the park, while they’re talking their silly talk, she suggests playing the nervous game. She keeps moving closer while asking “Are you nervous?” and he keeps saying “No.” Until he doesn’t. Until he says he’s nervous. I get that. Moving in that direction is scary even for adolescent boys. The oddity is that it ends the relationship. Completely. He ends it. He blocks her IMs and ghosts her.

Then he meets some older skateboard kids and lies about his video prowess in order to get in good with them. As a result, a cool confrontation with and escape from a hapless mall security guard doesn’t get filmed properly. Everyone’s disappointed. But that’s not the dealbreaker. At a party, he said he's half-Asian, so when the skateboard kids meet his mom they assume the husband isn’t Chinese. But he is. Everyone’s confused. She’s confused. And Chris blows up at her and slams the door. That’s the dealbreaker. The cool skateboard kids chastise him for being disrespectful to his mom.

I love that for several reasons. One, I was reminded of a white lie I told back in 10th grade. For some reason I suddenly didn’t like my middle name, Anton, maybe because it was too close to “ant,” and I was small, or maybe because it was just different and Danish, so I began writing my middle name as “Antony.” I think I just wanted to be further away from me and this was a small way of doing that. But the main reason I love the above scene is that it upends the stereotype. It’s the non-Chinese kids who are guai haizi, or filial or obedient children, a common, common phrase in Chinese culture. While we have similar words in English, they aren’t commonly used (who uses “filial”?), and they’re certainly not aspirational the way they are in Chinese culture. In Chinese culture, it’s what you’re supposed to be. Chris isn’t, but the cool skateboard kids are. I love that.

Along the way, Chris’ best friend, Fahad (Raul Dial) ditches him one night, and so he ditches him back, and then as school is about to start again he’s going to IM him: Are we still friends? During summer he also decks another kid because—I guess—he was good friends with Madi?

Here's something interesting: The longer the film goes, the less I like the protagonist. That’s not like most coming-of-age films but it is like coming of age. The protagonist there is forever disappointing.

真的
The movie, for its time of life (8th grade going on 9th), not to mention the YouTube of it all, reminded me of Bo Burnham’s “Eighth Grade”; while the stuff with the older skateboard kids reminded me of Jonah Hill’s “Mid-90s.” But it’s never quite as fraught as the former, nor as poignant as the latter.

But it certainly feels real. And it’s fraught in this way: By the end, we’re truly worried about Chris. Has he backed himself into a corner? Can he break out of being himself? Is there a better self to be?

It’ll be interesting to see where this young director goes. Sean Wang was nominated for an Oscar last year for his short “Nai Nai & Wai Po” (“Father’s Mother & Mother’s Mother”) and one wonders if he’s going to do all the Chinese family member words: Gege, Meimei, Fumu. With the Chinese language, you could go on forever.

WARNING: SPOILERS

A few memories.

After Steve Martin hosted “Saturday Night Live” for the second time, so around Feb. 1977, I took the bus with my friend Peter to buy comics at Shinders in downtown Minneapolis. There was a shoe store across the street that we never went to, but on this day, for some reason, we stopped in. I think Peter needed something. And we began telling the salesgirl about this ad plan we’d concocted about how some shoe store—hey, maybe this one!—could team up with Steve Martin on a Happy Feet campaign. We probably did the little insane dance, too. Poor salesgirl. She didn’t know from Steve Martin (“Who's Steve Martin?” she said) and we didn’t know how the world worked. 

That same year (yes, just checked: Nov. 11, 1977), my brother Chris and I went to a Steve Martin concert at the 5,000-seat Northrop Auditorium on the University of Minnesota campus. I think we got Star-Tribune seats, because we were second row center. At one point, Steve asked for a volunteer with a big voice from the audience, and while I dithered in my head (“Oooh, I don’t know, that’s really putting myself out there…”), my brother shot his hand up. And was chosen. He talked with Steve Martin:

Steve: What’s your name?
Chris: Chris Lundegaard!
Steve [chuckles]: No, what’s your full name?

(I think that’s how it went. I wish Chris were here to corroborate.)

Here's why he was chosen: Steve had Chris pick a card, the King of Hearts, and Steve said he wanted everyone to concentrate on the card; and when the vibes were just right, Chris should shout as loud as he could, “KING OF HEARTS, COME DOWN AND DANCE!!” I think it was a kind of satire on the paranormal shit popular at the time. Because after my brother shouted the line, Steve took the card and danced it down his arm and around the stage, making dopey “Doop-de-doo” sounds.

A month later Steve made the cover of Rolling Stone (“Bananaland’s Top Banana”), and the following spring he was on the cover of Newsweek (“A Wild and Crazy Guy”). His album “Let’s Get Small” (1977) went platinum and his follow-up “Wild and Crazy Guy” (1978) went double platinum, while “King Tut,” reached No. 17 on the billboard singles chart. And suddenly all the kids in my ninth-grade class were huge fans. In English, I remember Tim F. imitating him ad nauseum: “Wild and crazy,” he’d say. “Wild and crazy.” He made the last word sound like creh-see. It drove me nuts. Guy was late to the party, his imitation sucked, and girls liked him better?

Anyway, that’s how Steve Martin broke from my perspective. “Steve! (Martin): A Documentary in 2 Pieces” is how he broke from his. Basically, he kept butting his head against the massive indifference of the world until slowly it began to crack and something trickled out. And then it became a deluge.

Chaplin no Chaplin
Here’s that journey, per the doc:

• Young Steve had an early visceral need to be on stage
• His magic act seemed a dead end unless he added comedy
• He liked a girl who told him to go to college, where he applied the methodology of philosophy to stand-up comedy and became an early disruptor; he broke down the Bob Hope-ian elements, removing the cue to laugh; there was tension without release
• His onstage persona shifted to a parody of the overconfident untalented showman
• He struggled for 10 years

He struggled, in part, because he was doing the opposite of what everyone else was doing. This was a conscious decision. Everyone’s doing politics, so I won’t. Everyone’s serious, so I’ll be silly. Everyone dresses down, I’ll dress up. I’m curious what drove that urge. It’s so smart.

“I always thought of him as the door out of the’60s,” a talking head says in Part I. “You could be silly again.” Yes, but there were a lot of such doors. Our most popular TV shows went from working class and multi-ethnic (“All in the Family,” “Sanford and Son”) to white and cleavage-filled (“Three’s Company,” “Charlie’s Angels”), while our most popular movies went from serious and scary (“The Godfather,” “The Exorcist”) to safe and uplifting (“Star Wars,” “Superman”). That was the zeitgeist. That was the wave. Steve anticipated it and rode it. 

So why did he quit doing standup after he’d succeeded beyond his or anyone’s wildest dreams? When he’d become, per Jerry Seinfeld, the most popular comedian ever? I always assumed he got tired of it. But he also admits he didn’t have anywhere to take it. He’d spent 10 years creating this persona, this concept, and now everyone knew it. Audiences repeated it back to him. He didn’t see a path in standup—except out.

That’s part I—his search, rise and supernova status—and it’s a particular kind of documentary: historical footage and talking heads as voiceovers. We hear Jerry Seinfeld, Lorne Michaels and Adam Gopnik; we don’t see them.

Part II is a different particular kind of documentary. It’s recent footage, filmed by documentarian Morgan Neville (“20 Feet from Stardom”), of Steve living his life with his wife, a former New Yorker fact-checker, and their daughter, represented as a stick figure to protect her. He makes a poached egg. Martin Short comes over and they gibe each other and then work on their routines in which they gibe each other. They go to the dry cleaners, they go for a bike ride, they work on “Only Murders in the Building.” It’s not exactly wild and crazy, but it’s sweet and sometimes funny, and anyway Steve was never a wild and crazy guy. One of the big reveals of his great memoir, “Born Standing Up,” was, rather than being the hippest dude in the land, which is what he seemed to us in 1977, he was the squarest. That’s underscored here.

Steve talks through his post-standup life: the movies, the relationships, the depression. He recounts seeing “Flashdance” in a movie theater in London in 1983, and one of the characters, a standup, says he wants to be Steve Martin, and Steve Martin, watching, thought, “No, you don’t.” If part I is the search for success, part II is the search for happiness. It’s less deluge than revelation: “Oh, it’s right over here. I should’ve looked over here before.”

A lot of his unhappiness stems from his relationship with his father, Glenn, who was, like many fathers of the day, emotionally distant. He was also wary of the path his son was taking. “I always thought my father was a little embarrassed by me,” Steve says. “He couldn’t quite be proud of an unconventional showbiz act that he didn’t quite understand.” It’s a reasonable concern but oddly it doesn’t go away even when the son becomes a phenomenon. After the premiere of “The Jerk,” family and friends went out to dinner to celebrate, and one of Steve’s friends asked Glenn what he thought of seeing his son in the movie. “Well,” Glenn said, “he’s no Charlie Chaplin.”

Watching, I wondered if we all weren’t a little hard on Steve Martin’s movie career. There was this expectation that because he’d remade standup comedy he would remake movie comedy, too, and that’s a big ask. It’s a bit Paul McCartney after The Beatles. “What's this Ram shit?” Interestingly, or poignantly, Martin did become one of the most gifted physical comedians since Chaplin, particularly with his mid-80s output: “All of Me” and “Roxanne,” in particular. A personal favorite of mine was his insanely joyous and childish dance after his son makes a catch in a little league baseball game in “Parenthood.” I don’t think I’ve ever seen it without laughing. 

The wave
What I’d like to know that Neville doesn’t ask? Did Martin anticipate anything with film the way he did with standup? Did he try to do the opposite of what everyone else was doing? Or is that not possible in such a collaborative and established medium, where failure means millions of dollars rather than a rough night?

There’s no inkling in the doc of this grand irony, either: The less-serious, post-sixties wave Steve rode to massive success never ebbed; and it kind of stranded him in the 1990s as he tried to smarten up—doing essays for The New Yorker, Mamet on film and Beckett on stage. When, that is, he wasn’t doing meh reboots of “Sgt. Bilko,” “Cheaper By the Dozen” or “The Pink Panther.” (I know Scorsese talks about doing one of them and one for yourself, but those are some extremes.)

I’m also curious why the doc contains no mention of Carl Reiner, Robin Williams and Bernadette Peters. I could’ve used some discussion there rather than more shots of Steve putzing around the house. But we do get a poignant remembrance of a John Candy speech that was cut from “Planes, Trains and Automobiles,” and that, even to this day, moves Martin to tears.

Is that his most beloved film? Seems like it. 

I am surprised that “Roxanne” is so ill-thought-of while “Grand Canyon,” which felt insufferable to me three decades ago, makes the cut. Maybe I should rewatch some of these.

WARNING: SPOILERS

Is Dune the text at the fulcrum of popular culture? Feels like it. It’s the midpoint of the journey of our heroic journeys.

Which go something like this. 

In David Lean’s 1962 Oscar-winning film, “Lawrence of Arabia,” a blue-eyed member of the elite goes native in a desert community and prospers; he winds up attacking his own empire and is exalted by the desert people. They chant his name.

Three years later, Frank Herbert published his novel, “Dune,” in which a member of the elite goes native and blue-eyed on a desert planet. He learns mind-control and the desert people exalt him as the long-lost messiah. They chant his name. He is deemed The One as he takes on the Empire—only to realize that he is related to his enemies.

Twelve years after that, in George Lucas’ “Star Wars,” a boy on a desert planet learns mind-control in order to take on the Empire—only to realize, mid-journey, that he is related to his enemies.

Denis Villeneuve’s “Dune” movies really underline how much Herbert’s story owes to T.E. Lawrence, and how much “Star Wars” borrows from it. But the journey of our heroic journeys feels less than heroic to me. Once upon a time, our stories were grown-up and historical, rooted in life on Earth; then they gave way to childhood fantasy.

But these are good movies. This is arthouse “Star Wars.”

How do you like your blue-eyed boy, Mr. Death?
My favorite moment of revenge, by the way, didn’t have anything to do with the demise of Baron Harkonnen (though the insects on his corpse were a nice touch), nor making Christopher Walken’s Emperor bow and literally kiss the ring (because, like in “Star Wars,” the Emperor was unseen in the first film and a last-minute addition to the second). No, it was when Paul used THE VOICE against the all-powerful and shrouded Rev. Mother Mohiam (Charlotte Rampling), the seer who orchestrated most of the tragedy we’ve been watching for the past three years:

Rev. Mother: Consider what you are about to do, Paul Atreides …
Paul: SILENCE!
[The force of the voice knocks down the Reverend Mother]
Rev. Mother: [fearfully] Abomination.

God, that was great. And maybe my reaction is indicative of the true power in this universe. It’s not with this bloated man, nor that decrepit old one, nor the young, bald psychopath. It’s with the women. The seers. The Bene Gesserit. And now a man has joined them.

“Dune: Part Two” totally worked. It’s a great story, the visuals are amazing, and while it’s long (nearly three hours) I felt like it wasn’t long enough. I felt like, to truly tell this story, you need a miniseries. Maybe we’ll get that someday. Though I do recommend watching the first movie again before you see this. Unless, of course, you already know the story. I just know it helped me.  

Hell, even with rewatching it, I missed the part where Gurney Halleck (Josh Brolin) survived. I thought he bit it along with Leto (Oscar Isaacs) and Duncan Idaho (Jason Momoa).

So, in our last episode, the Atreideses were assigned by the Emperor to replace the Harkonnens as fiefholders on the desert planet of Arrakis, the source of “spice,” a psychotropic substance that also allows for interstellar travel. It’s as if LSD also powered automobiles, I guess. But it was less promotion than set-up. The Emperor feared Leto’s growing power and wanted him eliminated. The Harkonnens do just that. But Paul Atreides (Timothy Chalamet) and his Bene Gesserit mother, Lady Jessica (Rebecca Ferguson), escape into the desert.

There, they meet, and are almost killed by, the native Fremen peoples, who know how to fight and survive in the desert. Jamis, the warrior, challenges Paul, Paul wins. That’s where we left off.

Now they’re going native. And as Paul goes through various rituals and adopts the name “Muad’Dib” (Desert Mouse), and his eyes keep getting bluer from the spice and he keeps outfoxing Baron Harkonnen’s inept nephew (Dave Bautista), we periodically cut to other planets, where we see:

• Baron Harkonnen plotting ponderously amid the mudbaths designed to excrete the poison inhaled in the last movie
• Princess Irulan (Florence Pugh) journaling, and realizing that Paul Atreides may be alive, and that her father, the Emperor, caused the whole fiasco
• The rise of the youngest Harkonnen nephew, Feyd-Rautha (Austin Butler), who is pale, hairless, brutish and insane

Lady Jessica also goes through rituals, drinking yadda yadda, and oh no, she shouldn’t have done that when she was pregnant! But whatevs.

Increasingly, and via Fremen leader Stilgar (Javier Bardem), amusingly, or maybe heartwarmingly, the natives think Paul is the return of the Messiah. This is particularly true in the south, which is why Paul doesn’t want to go there. Lady Jessica does. She figures, hey, nothing safer than being considered the Messiah. But Paul is disturbed by visions: millions dying in his father’s name. He doesn’t want that. Or that Paul doesn’t want that.

I’d forgotten he gets corrupted. Is that why I never finished the trilogy? The hero stopped being the hero? Watching this, I was also disappointed when Paul reunites with Gurney Halleck. I liked him alone with the Fremen.

Eventually, though, he’s forced to flee south, where for some reason he drinks the Water of Life, goes into coma, comes out of it, and now he’s less Paul than he was before. He can see the future clearer and he believes in the prophecies more. Or does he merely use them? I’m unclear. How much is calculated and how much is he buying into everything? Or maybe he should be buying into it all, since he is what he is. 

Anyway, massive forces move against each other, Paul and the Fremen overwhelm the Harkonnens and retake the planet, and Paul kills the Baron. Then he agrees to fight Feyd-Rautha, who, I don’t think, the movie played up enough. His one big battle before Paul is with three creatures in an arena, but the decks are stacked—two of them are drugged. He seems less menacing than pampered. Or he’s menacing for being pampered. Either way, he proves a tougher battle for Paul than anyone else in these movies. But he loses. 

A lot of what happens in the last hour I was confused by. Why does he demand Princess Irulan’s hand in marriage? To unite families? He’s already defeated her family. Is he trying to avoid the holy wars he sees in his visions or doesn’t he care about that anymore? Maybe he’s a big fan of journaling. 

Books of Thomas, Paul, Luke
I shouldn’t make fun. I liked it. I particularly liked Javier Bardem’s Stilgar: the crumbling of his curmudgeonly nobility as more and more he wants to believe. Chalamet is great, too, in a tough role for such a skinny malink. Zendaya works as Chandi, the Fremen guide and love interest. Lea Seydoux is in this too? What a cast. Anya Taylor-Joy even shows up in a vision as Paul’s grownup sister. Yes, like Luke, Paul has a sister. Maybe this one will prove more useful. (Sorry, Leia fans.) 

I’m interested in seeing where this goes. Maybe it goes to places the “Star Wars” movies should have but didn’t. And I’m curious how this, the outsider in the desert, the T.E. Lawrence story with superpowers, became the heroic journey of all of our voyeuristic lives. Not enough has been written about that.