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370. Dune: Part Two (#12)

Posted on March 17, 2024 by Darren

Hosted by Andrew Quinn and Darren Mooney, and this week with special guest Brian Lloyd, The 250 is a weekly trip through some of the best (and worst) movies ever made, as voted for by Internet Movie Database Users. New episodes are released Saturdays at 6pm GMT.

So this week, Denis Villeneuve’s Dune: Part Two.

House Atreides has fallen to an ambush by their old rivals, House Harkonnen. Rumous swirl of the Emperor’s involvement in this scheme. However, as the Baron Vladimir Harkonnen schemes to get spice production back up to targets, not all members of House Atreides lie buried in the desert sand. Paul Atreides unites with the Fremen, and charts a course towards revenge.

At time of recording, it was ranked 12th on the list of the best movies of all time on the Internet Movie Database.

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Filed under: This Just In | Tagged: antihero, austin butler, brian lloyd, deconstuction, dune, dune: messiah, dune: part two, epic, fantasy, florence pugh, Frank Herbert, gen z, Hero, imdb, lord of the rings, podcast, sci-fi, science fiction, star wars, the lord of the rings, timothée chalamet, zendaya, zendaya coleman | Leave a comment »

Non-Review Review: Malcolm and Marie

Posted on January 26, 2021 by Darren

The reactions to Malcolm and Marie have been divided, to the say the least.

On one extreme, some critics have been quick to laud Sam Levinson’s black-and-white character study as a surprise late addition to the awards race, a bracing old-fashioned character drama anchored in two compelling performances that interrogates a relationship that never seems certain whether it will implode or explode. It is the kind of film that invites comparisons to works like Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?, The Boys in the Band or even something like Autumn Sonata: characters trapped in a confined space, with the drama ready to boil over.

On the other extreme, critics have been quick to argue that Malcolm and Marie is an indulgent mess anchored in a grossly unlikeable and shallow protagonist that never digs beneath the skin of its central characters. More than that, Levinson seems to use the film as an opportunity to work through his own issues as a promising (and privileged) young filmmaker who feels like he has not necessarily been given the critical respect that he deserves. Malcolm and Marie is a series of self-serious monologues delivered in the aesthetic of a (very pretty) Calvin Klein commercial.

As ever, the truth lies somewhere between these two extremes.