Dune (Denis Villeneuve 2021; David Lynch 1984; Frank Herbert 1965)

Done

(Warning: plot details for the 2021 remake the 1984 adaptation and the 1965 original discussed in explicit detail)

Denis Villeneuve's long-delayed Dune (initiated 2016; shot in 2019; released 2021) does this much right: it tells Frank Herbert's story-- the societal complexity (Great Houses and Guilds), the skullduggery (plans within plans within plans within plans), Paul Atreides' meteoric ascent-- coherently. Villeneuve carefully hands over with both hands what Lynch in his 1984 version threw at us wholesale, not so much an info dump as explosive diarrhea. With Villeneuve you feel a touch overwhelmed; with Lynch it swirls past your eyebrows, climbing. 

The Wicker Man

Snicker man

Difficult to understand why anyone thought a remake of The Wicker Man-- the classic horror mood piece about a police officer who lands on a far island in search of a missing child-- would be a good idea: the film has a plot twist that once revealed was basically it for the audience; only thing left was to pick up your coat and look for the exit. Audiences who saw the 1973 production would know; those who haven't are advised not to bother.

American Fiction (Cord Jefferson, 2023)

His pafology

Cord Jefferson-- who penned an episode of the inventive (if somewhat reductive) sequel to Alan Moore's Watchmen-- has settled into the director's chair, adapting for his debut directorial feature Percival Everett's Erasure, and it's a treat of a film-- funny without being laugh out loud, intense without pratfalling into standard-issue melodrama, wry clear-eyed skeptical of whatever happens to be trending on socmed. 

L'Argent (Robert Bresson, 1983)

Reprinting an old article Bresson because--well, because there's no good reason not to read about Bresson (list of my posts on him as follows): 

Au hasard, Balthazar, 1966), Journal d'un cure de campagne (Diary of a Country Priest, 1951), Mouchette (1967), and Un condamne a mort (A Man Escaped, 1956)

On bread alone

(Note: plot discussed in close detail)

The ostensible subject of Robert Bresson's last film L'Argent (1983) is money (hence the title), and in fact Bresson uses the pulling out, counting, and passing over of franc notes from one person to another as a kind of repeated motif throughout. But it's the love of the stuff that causes the real trouble (a distinction Catholic priests like to remind us of in Sunday mass) and initiates the central movement in the film, the downward slide of Yvon Targe (Christian Patey) from heating-oil deliveryman and husband to convict and axe murderer.

Poor Things (Yorgos Lanthimos, 2023)

Pride of Frankenstein

Yorgos Lanthimos' latest has an early scene of Bella (Emma Stone) holding a scalpel at an alarming angle and stabbing a corpse's eyeballs multiple times while her horrifically disfigured father Godwin Baxter (Willem Dafoe in heavy makeup) looks up fondly from the patient he himself is cutting-- and yet I agree with the assessment that the film is a comedy-- possibly Lanthimos' warmest most cheerful most wholesome work yet. 

Master Gardener (Paul Schrader, 2022)

Bonsai!

Heard it said of Paul Schrader's Master Gardener that it's his umpteenth retelling of the God's Lonely Man trope, starting from Taxi Driver (1976) to three of his last four films including First Reformed and The Card Counter, but I disagree; those films ended with redemption or rebirth or some form of baptism as climax, either through love, or punishment, or blood. This film I think takes up the narrative years later, a 'what happens after?' question hanging in the air.

Films of 2023

List of 2023

Not everything I've seen for the year but everything I think deserves to be noted, for good or bad. More mainstream than I'd like but life happens. I do try note films I've seen but not newly released in 2023, and why I thought them worth talking about.