Tenet

A pretentious series of scenes and concepts designed to confuse the slow-witted in order to make them praise a nonsensical attempt at science-magic made by a respected filmmaker.

A super-CIA agent recruits another CIA agent into a special program to stop an arms dealer from destroying the world by using reverse entropy weapons against the fabric of existence. Tepid and confused to say the least, with a final climactic pincer attack battle against a non-existent enemy.

All performances are disinterested, the music is at the same frequency as the dialogues, without any EQ or mix helping the separation, the love interest is less believable than a Bond flirt, every scene is clean and clinical, almost like a rehearsal instead of an actual performance.

Actually the internal monologues are in the book as well. It's a case being almost too faithful to the source material.

There is an "official" extended cut - I use quotation marks, because it was officialy released, but Lynch demanded his name taken off of it, hence it's known as the "Alan Smithee" cut. And it's terrible. Yeah, some of the scenes added are interesting and in their own right, but as a whole it just makes the movie unbearably long and slow, without really contributing all that much. There may be some fan edits that try to reconcile the two versions, but I have not seen any of them.

I'd disagree about "all performances" - I think Branagh is actually a pretty good villain. Not a role that would go down in history or anything, but a good performance. But yeah, aside from him, they are all rather wooden.

Overall, I think it's a movie worth seeing once, for the interesting sc-fi idea and its good execution on a technical level, but I agree that the whole thing doesn't really make much sense in the end, it defnitely tries to look and sound way smarter than it is, and lacks any real emotion. I'm glad Nolan's next film, about Oppenheimer and the creation of the A-bomb, will probably be a smaller, more grounded production and not another attempt to out-clever the Inception.

Sure, but I think some of them were only added after they tried to cut down Lynch's original 3 hour cut, and in the process several new scenes were also shot to try and condense the film. Going by the wikipedia article at least :P

I saw a clip of one the fan edits, only after I made the post, and I have to say that it looks like they managed to ruin several sequences. So I'd rather stay away I think.
I am curious though to see that 'official' extended cut, just to see what other scenes were made for the film, but yeah, I'd fully expect it to be a bit of a slog.

By the way have you checked out any of the Dune games? Iirc you're not big on strategy? The fmv sequences are pretty awesome and appropriately cheesy by Westwood standards, and clearly heavily influenced by Finch's Dune
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=niKt5pcyesA

Well, I like strategies, I just kinda suck at RTS games, which makes enjoying them harder :D

But the original, first Dune game, the adventure/strategy hybrid from Cryo was one of the first games I ever played and my first contact with Dune at all. I loved that game, played through it multiple times. It had a tremendous impact on me, it was really my introduction to space opera in general. Blew my mind it did. I still think it's an impressive and unique piece of work.

When I played Dune 2 I was very disappointed, because it was "just" a strategy game, without any of that narrative focus and first person exploration. In Cryo's Dune I actually got to walk that desert. Ride the sandworms. Experience visions. See the desert turn into a garden. Speak to all the Fremen leaders I recruit. Amazing stuff. Simply commanding some units as a nameless "eye in the sky" doesn't compare.

That said, I did recently install the OpenRA Dune 2000 mod, but as it turns out it's incomplete, with only something like half of the Atreides missions implemented, so I gave up on it.

Dune 2 was my entry into the setting :) What stuck me was the incredible artwork of the units and buildings which, against the backdrop of a mysterious desert planet, proved to be fascinating enough for me to hunt down the book several years later :)

But oh yes, everything I've seen from the first Dune game looks incredible, so I really should make a point of checking that out at some stage.

It's been a while, but I think what I used to play through the Atreides and Harkonnen campaigns was the Gruntmods edition: https://gruntmods.com/dune_2000_gruntmods_edition/

What I really want to finish though is Emperor:Battle for Dune, but I'm not sure how I'm going to get that one running. IIrc it's pretty difficult as well.

I honestly must have understood less than half of his lines, and aside from a few moments that were lost in magic nonsense, he seemed like some typical Russian Bond grumbling evilman.
"If I don't have you, no one will."
"You can leave, but you'll never see your son again."
etc.

I couldn't in good conscience recommend this film to someone. I hope he tries again in the same vein, but with more humility and interest in the audience. It made me think of how well Quantum Break fulfilled its promise.

I finally got around to watching Buster Keaton's The General, which I'd only seen clips of before. It's a very impressive movie. Lots of stuff that would today be done with trickery or CGI but which they just built or did. Interesting set pieces with the trains moving about. Keaton does his usual dangerous stunts, most of which involve him skittering about the exteriors of the trains.

It's not very funny, though. It's amiable enough, but I only laughed out loud a few times and I think half of those times involved Keaton's love interest getting abused or humiliated (getting her foot caught in a bear trap, getting drenched with water). Keaton's stunts, although dangerous, rarely end with a significant comedic pay-off. I thought there was something I was totally missing, but reading up on it, it appears the movie was a notorious bomb for its time and basically ruined Keaton's career. I hate to say but I think in this case the initial reactions were right and the reappraisals it's gotten since are inflating it a bit. I did enjoy it, but I'd be lying if I said I didn't get more laughs from an average Fatty Arbuckle short over it.

Earth vs The Flying Saucers

It's all true. All of it. ;)

Ghostbusters Afterlife

I loved it. I expected it to be quite good, but it still blew me out of the water. It's freaking great. Funny, thrilling, very good visuals, respectful of the original but still its own thing. A lot of it rides on the really great performance by Mckenna Grace as Phoebe. She has really top notch comic delivery and timing, and plenty of lines that could have fallen flat with worse actors work and are really damn funny. And her friend Podcast is really good and funny too. Considering we're talking about kids here, it's really impressive. And I think it was a smart decision to make it a film about kids discovering this Ghostbusters legacy/ancient mystery. This way we avoid constant comparisons with the original cast - the new group is just too different, but surprisingly the humor and acting still feel right. As a result it halso has a lot of those 80s kids adventure films in its DNA, like Monster Squad, but unlike Stranger Things it's not trying to be a slavish imitation. And since its set in the present day, it doesn ot rely on constant "thats an 80s thing!" refrence style "humor".

In fact, it also stays well clear of any popculture refrence humor that plagues most blockbusters, and unlike most, even though it is a comedy, it knows when to let a quiet moment linger and build some real emotion. There's a lot of other stuff I could praise, but I don't want to go into spoilers, because I hope everyone who gives a damn about Ghostbusters will go see it. I hope it does well enough to spawn a sequel of its own.

I just saw the movie Hell (1994).
I love different types of thrillers, while watching it you can think about a lot and clarify for yourself. The film Hell tells about the initially ordinary and happy couple who own a small hotel in the countryside, and they also have a son. As the plot develops, we see how jealousy develops in the husband of the main character. Which may seem causal, but then we will understand that it is just the inflamed brain of the protagonist who draws wild scenes of his wife's betrayal with almost every hotel guest.
This film will be interesting both for lovers of French cinema and for people who are studying to be psychologists and psychiatrists in order to see a clear example of the development and progressiveness of the disorder.

The Visitor 1978
Another take on God and Satan.
It starts with a snowstorm between an old man and a little girl. Blonde Jesus Christ tells about Commander Yahweh and Sateen to bald kids. Satan's dead but his progeny lives on a little girl. She's cute, but turns out to be a evil nasty mouthed psychopathic brat with zero empathy. Her nasty conversation with the detective surprised me, ouch. It makes me want to give her a big spanking. A secret cabal wants her mother to have a baby. And the brat's eager to have a baby brother. The bald kids at the end left me a little disappointed.
Bonus points for Blonde Jesus Christ [even with very little screen time] and Satan's brat. Not that great a movie but good for passing amusement.

No Safe Spaces
https://www.imdb.com/title/tt8363914/
You can watch it for free on Tubi.

The Warriors. It gets better with age.

Dune - enjoyed it, a lot.

I thought the art direction and dream-like vibe the film cultivated worked extremely well together, and that the film deserved particular praise for the way the it depicted technology in the 102nd century. The spacecraft and weapons seemed appropriately alien and lethal. Well, except perhaps for that Carry-all.
Other areas that I feel deserve praise are the depiction of the Bene Gesserit, as well as the worm design. That 'face-to-face' interaction was downright haunting!

I was worried about two things going in: that I would find Paul's actor annoying, and that Liet Kynes needless gender swap would be immersion breaking. Thankfully I had no problem with the former, but unfortunately I couldn't completely escape the latter. Not sure if it's because of the gender swap, or because her character was a little annoying. Either way, it just didn't seem to fit. (wasn't crazy about the deviation from the book regarding the character's role either)
But fortunately this turned out to be a lesser detail, since the rest of the cast were mostly phenomenal.

Perhaps two things the film could've spent a bit more time on are the role of mentats, perhaps also how Paul starts to turn into one, and the preciousness of water. The scene with the palm trees should've been longer I think, and included their comparison to humans in terms of water consumption.

Hopefully the film did well enough as I am definitely looking forward to a sequel. In the meantime I'll be on the lookout for a possible IMAX re-release over here, as this is one film I'd love to see on it.

Next I want to go and see Ghostbusters: Afterlife

Sounds good! And the contrast between the Rotten Tomatoes and Audience Score is another very good sign :D