Another movie update

[mellicious]

Hi Dreamwidth! Hi Holidailies!

I'm doing the easy thing today and talking about movies. I've been keeping a running list of what we've seen in theaters this year, and there's mostly been things to see, unlike last year. Rob's list, which is the things he went to see and I didn't, is especially long, since horror movies were still coming out for the most part all during the pandemic, where the regular middle-of-the-road movies didn't really get going full-tilt until summer.

We never really avoided going to the theater once they opened. Last year I believe I said the theaters were ghost towns - there were never many people there at all. This year attendance increased but it was still never to the point that I felt uncomfortable. I don't think I've once had anybody other than Rob sitting next to me. (The Ghostbusters movie this past weekend was about the most crowded one I'd been to, but that was in a very small theater.)

Since I last posted in September, Rob and I have seen four movies:
Ghostbusters Afterlife
Eternals
Dune (twice)
Spirited Away

And then Rob also went to these:
Antlers
Halloween Kills (twice)
Lamb

I enjoyed the Ghostbusters movie. I really don't want to say much more because everything I can think of to say about it gets into spoiler territory, and I think some people might still be interested in seeing it.

Eternals... is sort of problematic, but I still enjoyed it. It's a bit different than your average Marvel movie, for sure. (You know, for all there hadn't been a Marvel movie in, what, a year and a half or more, hey, they got four of them out this year, counting Spiderman coming in a couple of weeks. I keep forgetting about that last one!)

I liked Dune a lot, and I wasn't at all sure I would. I had just re-read the book right before I saw it, too. I gather a lot of people weren't prepared for that hidden "part 1" in the title - they sure didn't advertise it - and maybe people were taken by surprise about that, although I had heard that a long time ago. (I don't exactly read the trades regularly or anything like that, but I do kind of try to follow movie news, so maybe that's why I knew that when other people didn't.)

Earlier in the year I said that Judas and the Black Messiah and Promising Young Woman were the best movies I'd seen this year (both of which got nominated and then roundly snubbed for Best Picture). I don't know, I liked Nomadland, too (which is what actually won Best Picture) and I liked, well, a lot of the things I've seen. I really don't bother going to movies I don't think I want to see, that's the way I look at it now.

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Previously in 2021, Rob and I saw:
Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings (twice)
The Suicide Squad
The Green Knight
Black Widow
Army of the Dead
The Courier
Raya and the Last Dragon
Nomadland
Judas and the Black Messiah
Promising Young Woman
News of the World

Rob saw all of those plus these:
Malignant (twice)
Candyman
The Night House
Don't Breathe 2
Old
Escape Room 2
The Forever Purge
The Conjuring: The Devil Made Me Do It
A Quiet Place 2
Spiral
Separation
In the Earth
The Unholy
Nobody
The Father

Comments

[wheresmyplan]

I liked the Dune movie, but to be honest I don't know why anyone is trying to turn any substantial novel--and Dune is certainly that--into anything less than a big-budget series, a la Game of Thrones. It's not like the old days when a tv show was, cinematically, bound to be worse than a movie. You can make equally high-quality work in both media, so the question really comes down to the shape and length of the story.

Should Dune have been on TV?

[mellicious]

Somebody put up a comment that I could read in my e-mail but doesn't show up on Dreamwidth, for whatever reason. I thought it was a good comment and I wanted to reply to it, anyway.

The gist of the comment was that Dune is really too long of a book to make into a movie, and it really should have been a miniseries instead. And I totally agree with this. I really think any book of any complexity whatsoever is better suited to a miniseries than a movie. Movies have more status, historically, and directors and actors like that, but luckily this is changing, gradually. See: Game of Thrones, after all. (And Dune has a ton of sequels - it could easily go on just as long as GoT if it was well-made and found an audience.)