One Good Point (Movie) - Dune, Part Two

SPOILER - TO ANYONE WHO HASN'T WATCHED BOTH DUNE MOVIES YET, THIS REVIEW WILL HAVE MASSIVE SPOILERS, IN THAT IT WILL TALK ABOUT THE MOVIES IN ANY SORT OF DESCRIPTIVE TERMS. BE WARNED, ALL YE WHO ENTER.

Ahem, now that that's out of the way.

Dune has always been a story that's enticed me, but like so many things that entice me, I've somehow managed to avoid watching or reading any of its content for decades. I like sci fi, I like grimly realistic future settings, I like monsters, I like palace intrigue, but it took this long and this many entries into the fiction before I finally got into it. But hey, better late than never right?

I enjoyed Dune a lot, though I specifically enjoyed the first two hours more than the ending. I found the interactions between the great houses, the grand schemes, the brutal warfare, and oh my goodness, that confrontation between Baron Harkonnen and Leto Atreides, *chef's kiss*. The stuff with Paul Atreides and his mother was less compelling to me, as it felt more whimsical and spiritual. So when I heard more about Dune, Part Two being more closely tied to Paul and his journey, I was a little wary of what I might find.

But it turns out, it was fantastic.

The film does focus heavily on Paul Atreides, and while there's definitely still some spirituality and whimsy to his adventures, it feels less tacked-on, and more essential to the story at large. But the movie also offers plenty of grand-scale happenings, the politics of the great houses, the machinations of various other factions, and a whole host of stellar acting performances.

The movie also dives headfirst into the idea of Paul as a messianic figure in this world, which is understandable; he's got a unique combination of martial prowess and spiritual destiny. Whatever you might think of the reality of sorcery in this world, there's no denying that Paul does things that other people cannot do, and he is widely seen doing these things. You can only pilot a sandworm the size of an aircraft carrier so many times before people start to notice.

If you liked Dune, Dune Part Two is gonna have more of the stuff you liked, more of the characters you liked (and hated), and does a great job of expanding the world and driving the story forward. And it gets you absolutely jacked for what comes next. I haven't read the original books (yet?), but there's apparently a good bit more canon content available, and with where this movie ends, you're fiending for more. Bring it on!

If you want to watch Dune, Part Two right now (and you really should), click here to check JustWatch to find out where it's streaming!

One Good Point (Movie) - Annihilation

I've discovered my prime locations for finding movies to watch, at least on Netflix and Peacock: the "leaving soon" lists. Something about the knowledge that a movie is leaving a streaming platform and the potential convenience of watching said movie will decrease in the near future gives me that spark of motivation I need to go from "I should watch that sometime" to actually hitting Play.

One such movie that benefitted from its classification in that category is Annihilation, starring Natalie Portman. I didn't know much at all about the movie when I started it, but someone had mentioned it favorably on a podcast so the name rang a bell, and the preview image showed people looking worriedly at the corpse of a massive crocodile. So, monsters, accolades, and impending departure from a streaming service, the holy trinity for me when it comes to watching a movie.

Without giving up too much of the story, the movie mostly takes place in a mysterious and dangerous wilderness, inside a strange looking barrier where people and technology have been disappearing. The team finds... more than they bargained for? Or more realistically, exactly what they bargained for: danger and mystery. 

The movie has a definite classic "prestige" movie feel, with lots of intense emotional moments to go along with some tense action and thrilling revelations. I actually found myself reminded of 2001: A Space Odyssey during the second half of the movie, but in a surprisingly unannoyed way. Those of you who know my movie opinions know that I find 2001 to be overly drawn out to the point of being boring...exceedingly boring. But while this movie definitely had some long scenes, the tension was such that I was thoroughly engaged the whole time.

Overall I found this to be an interesting and enjoyable watch. The final "twist" was fairly predictable, but still well-executed, and the whole last half-hour is a really great culmination to an already pretty good movie.

If you'd like to see where Annihilation is available to stream right now, click here to check JustWatch!

One Good Point (Movie) - Anaconda

 Oh man.

So as most of you know, I enjoy a good monster movie. Jurassic Park is probably my all-time favorite movie, and Jaws is right there with it. I was pretty sure Anaconda wasn't going to hit those highs, but even cheesy monster movies can be pretty fun if you've got a good cast, and theoretically, this movie had a good cast. Jennifer Lopez has had some good roles, Jon Voight as well, plus Owen Wilson and Ice Cube. And I'll watch pretty much anything with Kari Wurher (if you're a big time perv and haven't seen Kate's Addiction, phew, go do that. But don't tell me about it, perv).

But very early in the movie, you realize that no, no this isn't that. Somehow both the practical and CGI versions of the giant snake are unimpressive. I'm sure the visuals reflect the in-world descriptions, a 40-foot long snake, but it just doesn't measure up to the bigger, scarier monsters in the better monster movies. The dialogue is often ridiculous; shortly after a scene where multiple people are killed, two of the characters are joking about creature comforts like wine and cell phones. It's completely disjointed, and takes away from the tension of the movie. If this guy is only worried about getting his next pinot noir, why should I be worried about the giant killer snake?

By far the most incredible aspect of the movie is Jon Voight though. I can't fathom how this even happened, unless someone owed Voight some money or people just deferred to Voight out of respect, but this is an absolute debacle. Like, to the point that it can only have been done in jest. No one could have seriously watched his performance in this movie and said, "This is a thing I want to be associated with." There's other bad acting and terrible dialogue in the movie too, but Voight is a tour de force of catastrophe.

Overall, I'm perfectly glad to have finally seen the movie. It's wildly bad, but now I know that it's wildly bad, and I can be conversant about how bad it is. And it sets the stage for (hopefully) a near future monster movie that rises to the occasion.

If you'd (for some reason) like to watch Anaconda right now, click here to use JustWatch to find out where you can stream it!

One Good Point (Show) - The Acolyte, Season 1

I'm a massive fan of pretty much anything Star Wars. I love the original trilogy, I enjoyed the prequel trilogy more than most, and... well, we won't talk about the sequel trilogy, but that didn't stop me from continuing to watch The Mandalorian, Andor, The Book of Boba Fett, or Ahsoka. And it would never stop me from playing a number of Star-Wars-based video games, as well as turning off the standard music for Starfield and putting on a curated collection of Star Wars music instead. I love me some Star Wars.

Even so, I did my best to avoid any sort of spoilers or trailers coming into The Acolyte, and I did such a good job that I had no idea who any of the cast was when I finally arrived. I think ultimately that's a good thing, though I did spend a few minutes here and there during/between episodes looking up various actors to figure out where I saw them before. Which, by the way, was Squid Game (for Lee Jung-jae) and The Good Place (for Manny Jacinto).

Okay, let's get to this actual show!

(Spoiler alert: I'll try to avoid anything momentous, but there will be some details you can't get around)

The Acolyte is a Disney+ series in the Star Wars universe that takes place about a century before the events of The Phantom Menace. It was originally billed as a mystery show, but like Ahsoka before it, it kind of abandons the whole mystery premise a couple episodes in. But unlike Ahsoka, this show probably benefits from the gearshift (I absolutely loooooved the first two episodes of Ahsoka, but found the back half less appealing as the show effectively became a sequel to the Clone Wars animated series).

The first couple episodes of The Acolyte are a bit over-acted at times, and there were a lot of situations that felt like kind of forced drama, where you knew the moment was supposed to be tense, but the dialogue or performances didn't carry that tension. Two of the main characters are a pair of twins, which is one of those classic television tropes that I have trouble getting behind, similar to time travel. Also, the characters are supposed to be about 20 years old, but they carry themselves like teenagers, and are largely treated like adolescents as well. This makes it difficult to really respect the decisions they make as adult decisions. By comparison, Cassian Andor is supposed to be 21 in Andor.

One thing the show does well though is embrace its essence: it is a Star Wars show. There are dangerous creatures, countless aliens, various space vessels, good and evil, lightsaber battles, and an ongoing question in your mind about who might be secretly a Sith lord. While it starts a bit slow and doesn't elevate to Andor levels of quality (a largely unfair comparison, because Andor is so freaking good), The Acolyte ends up telling a pretty good story, and leaves you with enough questions to make you want to see more.

One last comment I'll offer: this show was edited terribly when it comes to episode splits. I'm not sure if there was some last-minute corporate demand to extend/shorten the show, but the ending moments of some of the episodes in the back half of the show are jarring. For this reason, I strongly recommend a binge-watch. Plan on watching the whole thing over a weekend and I think you'll have a pretty good time.

Click here to check out JustWatch and see where you can watch The Acolyte today!

One Good Point - Public Enemies

On paper, I should love this movie. I enjoy a good crime/heist/gangster movie as much as anybody. Goodfellas, The Untouchables, Ocean's Eleven, the whole spectrum of criminality has always been fertile ground for entertainment in my book. I also usually like Johnny Depp; he's charismatic, and does a good job of portraying morally grey/bankrupt characters. And Michael Mann directed it, a guy with Heat and Collateral under his belt.

But it was just not very good.

The pacing of the movie was jarring, with frantic moments that weren't set up properly or allowed to breathe, and then lingering scenes that felt like they didn't add anything to the story. Depp's portrayal of John Dillinger was fine I guess, but I don't think the movie did a good job of explaining why this literal mass murderer would've been celebrated at all. Through some additional reading, I found that people seemed to like that Dillinger was robbing banks, as the public trust in banks and the federal government was very low. You know what wasn't captured in the movie though? ANY OF THAT.

One last note: I did not like the video quality of this film at all. During many of the darker scenes in the film, the picture became incredibly grainy, to the point that I was wondering if there was something wrong with my television. But it wasn't that; it looks like was just a directorial/production decision, presumably as a way to make the movie feel more "old-timey." If that was the case, there's got to be a better way.

Anyways, I don't recommend the movie, but here's the traditional link!

Click here to see where Public Enemies is streaming right now!

One Good Point - Barbenheimer

Ahh, the movie event of 2023!

What? What do you mean? Of course I participated in it... just not until 2024. What's the rush, right?

Barbie

First things first, full disclosure, any movie with a heavy dose of Margot Robbie is going to innately be more entertaining than movies without Margot Robbie. That doesn't mean I can't be objective, but there's a baseline value we're working from here.

Going into the movie, I was expecting a couple things:

• Margot Robbie will look perfect. Check.
• Ryan Gosling will be entertaining, but I won't like him as much as everybody else did. Check.
• There will be a couple of jokes that are subtle and not laugh-out-loud funny, but I will laugh out loud at them. Kind of check (there was one).
• There'll be 2-3 moments where the feminism of the movie feels like it overrides the story. Kind of check (there was, again, one).

Overall I enjoyed the movie. I thought that despite effectively portraying Barbie as a kind of clueless, blank slate, Robbie did a good job of making the character relatable. Setting big business against her did a lot of that legwork too. Gosling did well too, Ken just became the sort of antagonist that I have no patience for. Those of you who know me in the real world would be able to draw pretty simple comparisons to other folks who irritate me.

Hint: It's the same people who reduced the movie to that one heavy feminism scene and dismissed it out of hand.

Click here to see where you can watch Barbie today!

Oppenheimer

Christopher Nolan is a serious filmmaker. I've only seen a couple of his films so far (including watching Interstellar literally hours before I wrote this!), but he's a very gifted storyteller. The Dark Knight is one of my absolute favorite movies of all time, and you have to wonder if The Dark Knight Rises might've been even stronger if not for Heath Ledger's tragic death; rumors abound that the Joker might've played an integral role in that last film of the trilogy.

But we're not here to talk about The Dark Knight (this time). Oppenheimer was alright, but it was... something less than the other Nolan films I've seen. Not length-wise; it was very long, and you felt every minute, something that sets the movie apart from Nolan's best work. I think that impression wasn't helped by jumping around the timeline unnecessarily, and this might seem sacrilege, but I think Robert Downey, Jr.'s role could've been eliminated from the movie almost entirely and it would've benefited the story.

And somehow, in a movie about a literal nuclear bomb, the scope of the effort somehow felt not large enough? I'm not sure what it was missing exactly, but even after the movie ended, I felt like I was still waiting for *something* else to happen. It's entirely possible that it was a movie you gotta see in a theater, for the (spoiler alert) nuclear explosion; maybe that puts a bow on the story better than when you're in a living room.

I will say that the acting was tremendous, particularly Cillian Murphy and Emily Blunt. I would've been happy to spend another half hour with Blunt's character. She seemed to perfectly capture a quiet  internal torment while absolutely eviscerating people who cross her. Florence Pugh was good, depressing, but that was the point. And Downey did well, too; I just think his part in the story wasn't necessary.

Tune in over the next couple weeks to read what I thought of Interstellar!

Click here to see where you can watch Oppenheimer today!

One Good Point - Battlestar Galactica (2004-2009)

Every time I told people that I was watching Battlestar Galactica for the first time, they were shocked that I hadn't already seen it. My Star Wars and Star Trek credentials would suggest that I would've definitely watched it long ago, perhaps even as the show was originally airing, but alas. Back in 2004 I was very busy... well, I'm not sure what I was busy doing. Playing a lot of Diablo II and Civilization II mostly, I think. But for whatever reason, I didn't watch a lick of BSG when it first came out.

But in 2023, after watching Katee Sackhoff kick ass in another season of the Mandalorian (which, screw you guys, I enjoyed season 3 despite its flaws), I finally saddled up and started watching BSG. I caught the first 1.5 seasons on Peacock in full binge mode, as right after I started, they added a note that the show would be leaving Peacock at the end of the month. It was June 27th.

I investigated some other ways to watch the show after it left Peacock, but ultimately my motivation petered out until earlier this year when I noticed it was available to stream on Amazon Prime Video. I started up again and discovered that I had apparently managed to stop watching right at a massive lull in the action; once I picked the series back up, the excitement ramped back up and I zipped through the rest of the four-season show.

There are a lot of things to like about Battlestar Galactica. The aforementioned Sackhoff is one of the biggest bright spots towards the back half of the show, but there are strong performances across the cast. And the premise of the show is fantastic. How would a small group of humans try to survive as a caravan of space-bound refugees, after a massive, near-complete genocide of their species? The idea is compelling, albeit bleak.

Unfortunately, I think this is a show whose whole comes up a little short of the sum of its parts. The individual characters are interesting, the twists are mostly cool, and there are some awesome concepts for the sorts of scenarios that would develop in such an environment. But the execution of these ideas ends up being a little bit of a disappointment. The characters are interesting, but the ways they interact sometimes feel wooden; a lot of the dialogue in the show had an unnatural sort of tone to it.

This is also a weird thing to complain about, but this show had some of the least believable portrayals of drunkenness that I've seen in shows or movies. I've seen drunk people, like, a lot of drunk people. The drunk people on Galactica seemed like sober people trying to act drunk.

HEAVY SPOILERS BELOW!

My biggest complaint, though, is with the culmination of the show. Any sort of science fiction property has the tall task of trying to explain how something impossible is possible. It doesn't have to be elaborate though; Jurassic Park found one idea that seems feasible enough to a layman (ancient mosquitos with dinosaur blood in dried amber), and they handwaved the rest with "cloning" and "computers." Done. Perfect.

From the very beginning of Battlestar Galactica, we had the question of how is Gaius Baltar seeing this image of his seemingly deceased Cylon lover when no one else is seeing her, and what's her purpose? We dance around the idea of Baltar having some kind of microchip in his brain, of him being a Cylon himself, or simply a fabrication of a traumatized mind. And in the end... angels? Angels is your explanation? And that's essentially the explanation for Starbuck too? But even with all of that, we don't get any actual meaningful vision or interaction with this "higher power," just a quick zinger at the very end of the show about how "he doesn't like" being called God. The whole thing felt cheap and lazy, and took so much of the air out of the show for me.

In the end, it was a fantastic premise that had some amazing moments and stretches, but in the end didn't live up to its full potential. I'd be absolutely game for a modern team giving it another try though.

Click here to check JustWatch and find out where you can watch this show right now!

One Good Point - Resident Evil HD REMASTER

So far I've talked about a few movies that haven't really lived up to my hopes (or for which I didn't have much in the way of hopes, and matched that lack of excitement). Well, it's high time to talk about something that lived up to my hopes and then some: Resident Evil.

I've never been much for scary games, scary movies, scary anything really. I can appreciate some compelling horror/thriller content, and I do very much like monster movies, but spooky creepy stuff doesn't usually do much for me. But I have to say, after getting past my initial jumpiness at turning corners and finding zombies, the core gameplay of Resident Evil was a ton of fun. I enjoyed entering this mansion and slowly peeling back layer after layer, finding out new pieces of the story with each unlocked door and solved puzzle. As I played through it, I found myself already thinking about whether I might enjoy playing it again.

One particularly unexpected turn was that I actually enjoyed combat in the game. I've watched streams of Resident Evil playthroughs, and I had briefly played Resident Evil 5 at a friend's house, and I remember being frustrated with the controls. Having to stand still while shooting is not what I'm used to at all. But after just a handful of encounters in my first playthrough of this game, I felt the game provided a harrowing and enjoyable twist on combat, a stark contrast to most of the other modern adventure games I've played (Dead Rising, Grand Theft Auto, etc). The "clunkiness" of the controls are one of the prime examples of something being "a feature, not a bug." You're supposed to find the combat uncomfortable and frightening. That's the point.

I'm sure it's far too late to be able to offer much in the way of meaningful recommendations for this game; it's been out forever, and if you were thinking about playing it, chances are you already have. But on the off chance you haven't, I strongly endorse this game, and I'm looking forward to giving future games in the series a shot.

Click here to view this game on Steam!

Click here to view this game on Fanatical!

One Good Point - Ready Player One

This is one movie in particular that I'd been especially looking forward to finally watching. It didn't rise to Marvel or Star Wars levels of urgency, and I definitely had access to the movie a couple times via streaming services before I finally got around to it, but a movie about futuristic immersive video games and the evils of mega-corporations? Yeah, that's about my wheelhouse.

And it was... pretty good? In hearing about the premise, and in reading/watching the Hunger Games series, I was expecting/hoping for another story about young adults being thrust into the greater world, and that's sort of what this is, but there are a few too many cheesy moments that sort of break the seriousness of things. The massive final battle is the perfect example, where it's a climactic clash between good and evil, but the tension gets slightly dampened with the insertion of random pop culture cameos. That said, as a sort of popcorn action-adventure movie, it was enjoyable.

I also was kind of surprised at how uninteresting I found Ben Mendelsohn's villainous character. He's a great actor and I had high hopes, but he's sort of another symptom of the same disconnect I felt with the movie between gimmick and seriousness. Interestingly, I would've expected T.J. Miller's voicing of i-R0k to be too silly, but he did a good job of balancing the two aspects of the film. And Olivia Cooke's Art3mis felt like a character who exactly captured the essence of the movie's world.

My sister bought me the book like a decade ago, still haven't gotten around to that. But hey, maybe 2025 will be my year to catch up with reading. For now, it's full steam ahead with movies!

Oh, one more thing. This movie definitely made me want to finally follow through and watch The Shining, so that's on my 'high priority' list for the year. I watched the first five minutes sometime last year, at like 3:30 AM, and I decided that watching a scary movie right before bed probably wasn't the best call. My dreams are scary enough as it is.

Click here to check JustWatch and find out where you can watch this movie today!

One Good Point - John Wick: Chapter 2

Alright, time to make some enemies.

The original John Wick was a fine movie. I watched it many years after it came out (of course), after I already knew there were a couple more John Wick movies, so his survival wasn't ever in doubt for me, but even still, I thought it was just good, not great.

John Wick: Chapter 2 wasn't good.

I get that Keanu Reeves isn't known for his soaring soliloquies or his rapier wit, but his performance in this movie felt utterly flat. The plot had no rising action; you got dropped onto the track at full speed, stayed at full speed, and ended at... you guessed it, full speed. The action scenes were good, but there's a ceiling to how entertaining an action scene can be if it doesn't feel meaningful in the context of a story.

Maybe worst of all is that they try to give you little teases about some larger over-arching story, a High Table organization that promises to be even more riveting next chapter! Maybe someday when I'm feeling forgiving, I'll give Chapter 3 a try. But with my vast list of unwatched movies that I actually am hoping will be good, I'm in no hurry.

Click here to check JustWatch and find out where you can watch this movie right now!

One Good Point - Fantastic Beasts: The Secrets of Dumbledore

 As was the case with my movie-watching experience, I'm immediately following up the second Fantastic Beasts movie with the third one. All of my information was fresh going into the third one, though it did take a moment to get used to Mads Mikkelsen as Grindelwald. He does a great job though, and while his portrayal is a bit different from Johnny Depp's, that's not where this movie falters.

Where this movie falters is in kind of basic storytelling lol. It's more complete than Crimes of Grindelwald, as it does have a definitive ending, and answers most of the questions you have lingering from the first two movies. But there are frankly too many instances where some problem gets overcome by "magic" or "beasts." And look, I get that that's the whole point of the series, right? It's a fantasy story, there's going to be some fantasy to it. It just feels like this movie comes up short when it comes to incorporating that human element that the original series was able to deploy so effectively.

I'm not mad at the effort, though. I think the world of Harry Potter has some room to tell interesting stories, and I'm always open to renewing compelling IP; I'll watch every live action Star Wars thing they come out with until the day I die. I wish this movie series was better, but chances are I'll tune in again when the next one comes out...eventually.

I thought about finishing this post with a ranking of every Harry Potter movie, as I do love lists. But I haven't watched a lot of those movies in a while, and we're in a "look forward" mode here. Eventually someday though, sure, I'll rewatch them all and put together a list.

I fucking love ranked lists.

Click here to check JustWatch and find out where you can watch this movie right now!

One Good Point - Fantastic Beasts: The Crimes of Grindelwald

So to set the stage here, I enjoyed the full first run of Harry Potter movies. I'm good with magic, and I felt like the Harry Potter stories did a good job of balancing fantastical whimsy and human emotions and experiences. They were a little more angsty than they needed to be at times, but that's the deal with movies about kids/teenagers, right?

Fantastic Beasts is a series *not* about kids or teenagers, but rather about (unsurprisingly) fantastic beasts, as well as a couple of, you know, humans. This second installment, The Crimes of Grindelwald, was okay, but it felt very much like an interlude movie. It advances a few relationships, and gives you more time with the titular villain, but was ultimately not very satisfying, adding questions and offering few answers.

One other note I have, and it's something that comes up oftentimes for me, and I've noticed bothers me in many, many stories these days. Without spoiling specifics, there are a couple of scenes in this movie in which swaths of folks are killed, and these deaths seem only to serve the purpose of convincing the viewer (and/or the protagonists) that their enemy is dangerous. This can be useful if done elegantly, but for the most part I find wanton murder to be a frustratingly heavy-handed device for storytelling. I know for certain that's the reason it took me a while to come around to Captain America: The Winter Soldier, and it's still not my favorite aspect of the movie.

Anyways, Crimes of Grindelwald was fine. I don't think I would recommend unless you're a real Potter-head, but if that's the case you've already seen it anyways.

Click here to check JustWatch and find out where you can watch this movie right now!

One Good Point

So far this year I've been watching a lot more movies than I normally do. I have this massive list of movies I've been aiming to see for years, and with assorted inspiration, I've finally started to tackle that list.

In the spirit of getting myself to write more, I'm going to write tiny little "articles" about these movies that I watch. The premise I'm working under is "One Good Point," as in, my goal is to just try to say one meaningful thing in my mini-review, and then post it. I have a habit of agonizing over articles, watching them grow and grow until I've written six pages on Brett Saberhagen. And I mean, I like doing that too, but this can be a small thing. That's how we build skills, right? We practice.

So! Coming up soon (hopefully), a flurry of small articles about the many movies (and a few shows) I've watched this year.

I'll still do my end-of-year rankings; I'm a man love who loves a Top 5 list, and you couldn't stop me from doing that. See you soon!