Been catching up on recently released movies and series again. I can't recall which of these I've mentioned on social media and which I haven't, so up goes the whole shebang.
Beekeeper. You already know whether you're going to enjoy this or not based on the description: Jason Statham kills cryptocoin dudes and scammers. I feel like "Jason Statham kills stand-ins for known dude archetypes from tech" could be a lucrative franchise, tbh.
Alien: Romulus. Possibly the most competently executed Alien movie since Aliens. Also everything about it is completely unnecessary. Being a prequel, it's already committed not doing anything that fucking matters.
Furiosa: Probably the second-best Mad Max movie after Fury Road, but still completely unnecessary and adds nothing. Heavy prequelitis.
Dune parts one and two: well-executed if quite tedious. Each movie should have been 30 minutes shorter. Mostly understands the brief and makes the changes necessary to attempt to preserve said brief. Although, like the original novel, this does not need the inevitable sequel. And I say that as somebody who read all of Frank Herbert's original Dune sequence. (I have a love-hate relationship with Frank Herbert's misanthropic, pessimistic, and queerphobic stories.)
Agatha All Along: somebody described it as "the whole is lesser than the sum of the parts" which pretty much nails it. I know many people liked it but I felt the ending was a genuinely off-putting piece of sequel-bait and the series would have been much improved had it just finished the story for these characters and given them a proper ending.
Cross: watching this was a mistake. Great leads but I'd forgotten just how distasteful I find James Patterson's stories to be
Theater Camp: really enjoyed this one. Funny, sharp and incisive, but also sincere and endearing. Not a common combination.
I'm sure there were more but those were forgettable enough for me to forget them.
When I say the Dune movies understood the brief what I mean is they recognise that the original novel is fundamentally about feudalists, nazis, and religious fanatics fighting over a natural resources with no good guys, ultimately showing you that humanity is a brutal and violent species with few redeeming qualities, done in a way that shows you how seductive the certainty and power of religious fanaticism can be. Like I said, Frank Herbert was a pessimistic misanthrope.
True. It is like Star Wars without a Luke or a Rebellion.
The fatal flaw of the Snyderverse was that Snyder is an even worse pessimistic misanthrope than Herbert, which is a terrible way to manage a superhero franchise as big as DC. The Authority would have been a much better match for him.
@jgg This is true.