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Article updated on January 13, 2022 at 4:10 AM PST

Dune: Part One review - Stunningly weird sci-fi epic cuts out early

On Blu-ray and DVD now, Denis Villeneuve's star-studded adaptation is a sumptuous sci-fi experience.

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The best-selling books in the Dune series are as intriguing and ambiguous as a desert's shifting sands. So it makes sense a star-studded new movie adaptation from director Denis Villeneuve  manages to be both hugely satisfying and incredibly frustrating. The 2021 Dune  film is a tour de force of cinematic sci-fi, a star-studded yet deeply weird fantasy epic, and a thoughtful and thrilling movie experience.

Then it stops right in the middle.

Villeneuve's version of Frank Herbert's 1965 novel opens with a title reading "Dune: Part One." That's your first warning that the film isn't going to give you a lot of closure. It's certainly packed with ideas and stunning visuals and information by the spaceship-load, but it's also the setup for a story that's just getting going when out of nowhere the credits roll.

Having premiered to (mostly) critical acclaim at the Venice and New York Film Festivals, Dune hit theaters Thursday, Oct. 21, and debuted the same day on US streaming service HBO Max . It's now available to rent and buy online, or you can own it on DVD and Blu-ray.

Dune is already the  biggest hit for Warner Bros. in the pandemic era , so Warner has confirmed Part Two will open in 2023 -- which is good, because Part One would've been an unsatisfying cinematic experience if the sequel never came. 

The powerful Atreides and Harkonnen families are space aristos squabbling over the planet Arrakis, a desert world where the only thing more treacherous than the shifting sands is the backstabbing politics. Arrakis is the only source of spice, a substance that acts as the fuel for space travel in the Dune universe. On Arrakis, spice glitters in the very air, riches so intoxicating you can taste them.

Spice has a mysterious allure for Timothée Chalamet's young princeling Paul Atreides. He's got a lot going on: His dad ( Oscar Isaac ) is an upright duke teaching him to play the game of cosmic realpolitik; his mom ( Rebecca Ferguson ) is a superpowered space witch; he's plagued by horny teen dreams of a blue-eyed desert warrior ( Zendaya ); and he just might be an intergalactic messiah.

Josh Brolin and Oscar Isaac eye up a sequel as the new Dune movie arrives.

Paul is at the heart of this thumping space epic, which combines Shakespearian castle intrigue with wide-screen desert vistas, incendiary battle scenes and a cast of billions. In Villeneuve's hands, this version of Dune is a richly detailed and hugely evocative imagining filled with striking imagery. It's supremely and winningly odd. 

The film juxtaposes fever-dream science-fantasy with medieval imagery: Sinister space nuns in billowing robes descend from looming spaceships; Interplanetary treaties are endorsed with wax seals beneath fluttering banners; Berserker armies make blood sacrifices before donning silent jetpacks. It's all faceless helmets and deep shadows as the action moves from rain-slicked granite to iridescent sand, set to a hypnotic and throbbing Hans Zimmer score of wailing choirs, electric drones, nerve-jangling percussion and great honking bwaarrrrps. And bagpipes. 

Rebecca Ferguson and Oscar Isaac are concerned parents in Dune.

The rain-lashed home world of the upright House Atreides is perfect for moody pacing on wave-battered cliffs. The vaguely Catholic decor of that world includes a bullfighting motif, which suggests two separate but intertwined themes: a foolhardy fight against an unpredictable opponent, and a link to Spain that recalls Spanish conquistadors of old.

That link to ancient invaders highlights the timelessness of the urge to conquer and enslave, drawing a line from the past to the present. Dune's theme of ransacking desert resources has always resonated with western manipulation and exploitation of the rest of the world, from bygone days of colonialism to the Gulf War and the War on Terror. The conflict is explicitly grounded by Villeneuve and cinematographer Greig Fraser in the visual style of a modern war movie. Dragonfly-like aircraft thrum past the camera like Vietnam-era helicopter gunships as the air fills with distinctly 20th century radio chatter. All that's missing is Ride of the Valkyries on the soundtrack as Dune channels combat flicks from Apocalypse Now to Lawrence of Arabia to Black Hawk Down.

The film opens with an army suddenly withdrawing from Arrakis, and it's a chilling image in light of the chaotic US withdrawal from Afghanistan in recent weeks.

"Arrakis has seen men like you come and go," says one indigenous character. "Who will our next oppressor be?" asks the world-weary narrator.

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The conflict is explicitly driven by wealth, and it's fascinating to see a sci-fi movie grapple with the economic aspect of politics as well as the familiar interplanetary power struggles of Star Wars and Star Trek. House Atreides may be noble and the Harkonnens venal, but their nature is irrelevant in this galactic economy: No matter how they feel about it, they must fill their quotas. Space capitalism!

It's hardly a polemic, however. There are so many ideas flying about in this film that many are mentioned only once, and you're invited to develop your own thoughts on inequality, scarcity of resources, climate crisis, war, feudalism, space travel, dreams, parenthood, oneness with nature, and so much more. As if that wasn't enough to mull over, it's all wrapped up in a dense lore of multiple languages and strange terminology , which means multiple voice-overs explaining it all.

The weirdness of the sci-fi is also grounded by a limited range of color on screen. Beyond the blackness of space, the only colors in this universe are gray and beige. Don't get me wrong, Dune looks great, but outside of the fantastical design, the muted palette borders on drab.

Rebecca Ferguson gets weird in Dune.

The acting is also similarly muted: everybody is impassive and solemn and mutters the often incomprehensible dialogue in hushed tones. Like Villeneuve's previous films, it's dramatic and intense. But it's also rather one-note, allowing Jason Momoa to stand out, for example, just by showing that he's enjoying himself. The most dynamic range comes from Ferguson as the conflicted Atreides matriarch, embodying the emotional turmoil of a character who's both impassioned mother and scheming zealot.

As for the actor in the leading role, Chalamet's cheekbones and soulful eyes do most of the storytelling. Like Ryan Gosling in Blade Runner 2049 , he doesn't have a great deal to say, which makes his character either beguilingly ambiguous or vaguely defined. Is he dutiful or distracted? Is he a reluctant leader or ambitious plotter?

The young prince is troubled by visions of the future, and they're troubling for the viewer too. Some of those visions flash forward to a sequel, and frankly look more exciting than some of Part One's drawn-out sequences. With such an abrupt ending begging for a sequel, you might wonder if they shot the two films together. Nope: The sequel may go into production in late 2022 , which was far from guaranteed in the face of a pandemic and a streaming release potentially cannibalizing box office takings.

If you loved Arrival and Blade Runner 2049, then Dune is perhaps Denis Villeneuve at his Villeneuviest. If you love sweeping military sci-fi with a dash of weirdness thrown in, Dune will be your jam. The muted palette and performances won't be to everyone's taste, but I could spend a lot more time in this world -- when the sequel finally arrives in 2023, anyway.

Even if it doesn't deliver much of an ending, this new Dune is a hell of a beginning. 

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Dune review – Denis Villeneuve’s awe-inspiring epic is a moment of triumph

Villeneuve’s take on the sci-fi classic starring Timothée Chalamet, Oscar Isaac and Zendaya has been given room to breathe, creating a colossal spectacle

I f there can ever be a moment of triumph for a director, when the anxiety of influence is vanquished – for a bit, anyway – then Denis Villeneuve might have achieved it. This eerily vast and awe-inspiring epic, a cathedral of interplanetary strangeness, is better than the attempt a generation ago by an acknowledged master.

David Lynch’s Dune from 1984 was an interesting, rackety, flawed movie that attempted to cram the entirety of Frank Herbert’s classic sci-fi novel into its running time – the result was like Flash Gordon without the laughs. Villeneuve, with his co-writers Jon Spaihts and Eric Roth, has used less than half the book (with a second episode to come) and allowed it room to grow: to breathe and drift through unimaginably vast reaches of fictional galaxies, with images of architecturally enormous spacecraft moving into view, or delicately lowering themselves on to alien landscapes of parched and austere beauty, particularly the ravishingly pure desert landmass of “Dune”, the contested planet itself. Star Wars ’ debt to Dune, and now Dune’s debt to Star Wars, has been extensively discussed (amusingly, Dune gives us moving holograms rather like the one in which Princess Leia first begged Obi-Wan Kenobi for help). But this blockpulverising film feels more like TE Lawrence ’s imperious version of The Phantom Menace. This is how it ought to have been.

Dune’s story takes place millennia into the future, in which the ruling class live like Renaissance Italian princes, occasionally impressing wax seals on documents with signet rings as if they have just arrived at Hampton Court by boat. Timothée Chalamet plays Paul Atreides, son and heir to the distinguished Duke Leto Atreides ( Oscar Isaac ), whose family has just been ordered by the emperor to take up the lucrative governorship of the desert planet Arrakis, or “Dune”. It is their task to suppress or appease its indigenous people, the Fremen, but get the sole commercial exploitation rights for the planet’s mineral, “Spice”, which, properly refined, gives the consumer superhuman mental powers (although oddly this transformation is never shown on screen). The previous masters, the Harkonnen, led by its obese baron ( Stellan Skarsgård ) are furious at their ejection, but understand that this is a political stratagem by the emperor, to undermine the overweeningly powerful Atreides family with an impossible colonial posting.

As for Paul, his most intense relationship is with his mother Lady Jessica ( Rebecca Ferguson ), who is part of a Jedi-like sorceress cult called the Bene Gesserit, led by the glowering Reverend Mother ( Charlotte Rampling ). Paul is inheriting their mind-control powers and with them weird intuitions of destiny. He could be the messianic insurgent leader dreamed of by the embattled Fremen, and particularly the defiant young Fremen woman Chani (Zendaya), with whom Paul is fated to fall in love.

Villeneuve is superb at juxtaposing the colossal spectacle with the intimate encroachment of danger and a mysterious dramatic language that exalts the alienness of every texture and surface. Perhaps even more than in his previous film, Blade Runner 2049 (another audacious reinvention), the sound design and musical score of this film is compelling: it throbs, grinds and whispers through the cinema. There is a superb scene in which Paul realises that a tiny metal insect floating towards him in his private chamber is a hunter-seeker, a remote-controlled device intended to kill him. As this insidious little object with its sharp sting approaches, Paul remains still and calm until the very last heart-stopping split-second, knowing that any sudden moves will allow the device to locate his position.

The other disturbing predator to be evaded in Dune is the gigantic and bizarre sandworm that snakes under the planet surface, and occasionally surfaces, to reveal its huge … what? Mouth? Anus? Or some other aperture, like the tip of an elephant’s trunk. Either way, its appearance spells real trouble for those unlucky to be close enough to make out the ring of fine hairs around that massive orifice of doom.

As one character unselfconsciously says: “The mystery of life isn’t a problem to solve, but a reality to experience.” What Dune offers us is not quite that, more an unreality, a giant variant version of the universe, with its own culture, society, rituals, physics and chemistry. An experience is definitely what it is.

• Peter Bradshaw's film of the week
• Science fiction and fantasy films
• Film adaptations
• Timothée Chalamet
• Denis Villeneuve
• Stellan Skarsgård
• Oscar Isaac

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41 One-Star Movie Reviews That Are Equal Parts Hilarious And Baffling

There exists on Twitter an incredible account dedicated to finding, and sharing, funny movie reviews from Amazon Prime. Most of the reviews posted by Amazon Movie Reviews are one-star reviews, and they often have very little to do with the film itself. They gripe about misleading titles, lack of “realism,” and, maybe not-so-surprisingly, foreign language and black and white films. 

Here are the best, most funny movie reviews of the year, courtesy of Amazon Movie Reviews Twitter.

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‘Girls State’ Review: One Nation, Under Girls

Balancing confidence with broad smiles, the high school students in this documentary understand that camaraderie goes hand in hand with political ambition.

By Natalia Winkelman

In 2018, over 1,000 boys gathered in Texas for an elaborate, weeklong program aimed at students interested in politics. This meeting of teenage minds — part of a countrywide initiative sponsored by the American Legion — was captured in the Sundance hit “ Boys State ,” a vérité chronicle of the event, where participants are elected by their peers to different positions in government.

Considering that movie’s success, it hardly comes as a surprise that the filmmakers, Amanda McBaine and Jesse Moss, used their momentum to produce the follow-up “Girls State.” The directors shot the documentary in 2022 at Lindenwood University, in St. Charles, Mo., where, the movie repeatedly notes, it’s the first time that the boys and girls groups are holding their events simultaneously on the same campus.

If you are imagining coed frivolity or drama, though, think again: These motivated girls are only concerned about the boys insofar as their proximity highlights the lack of parity between their programs. We meet Emily Worthmore, one of the film’s central subjects, as she ticks off achievements. At Girls State, Emily, a conservative Christian, hopes to be elected governor, a goal she shares with the left-leaning Cecilia Bartin, who canvasses the lunchroom by shouting from a chair. Others, including Nisha Murali, eye seats on the program’s Supreme Court, which the attendees anticipate will hear an abortion case.

If the vibe of “Boys State” is that of a Young Republicans conference, the atmosphere at “Girls State” suggests a freshman orientation. By turns giddy and gutsy, the students share in communal songs, icebreakers and empowerment sessions. They seem to intuit that camaraderie goes hand in hand with political ambition, and that they shouldn’t take the curriculum, or themselves, too seriously. Here, cute selfies and résumé building receive equal attention.

Modesty, sympathy, generosity — these are valuable qualities in life and not necessarily in documentary cinema, where tension often acts as a narrative engine. The film tries to complicate its sororal ethos by pointing to the ways in which women are socialized to strive for perfection and avoid raising a stink. But as the film goes on to track a series of frictionless exercises in campaigning, litigation and reporting, one wishes there were more complex ideas introduced in tandem.

“Girls State” uncovers a fascinating division early on after Emily remarks that she has no trouble identifying the girls who lean liberal. “Maybe they’re just,” she pauses, searching for a diplomatic term. “Louder?” The filmmakers pair this observation with a shot in which a cluster of attendees, led by Cecilia, joyfully chant Pitbull lyrics while Emily and others watch from the side.

How is this new generation of young women from both sides of the aisle making their voices heard? What qualities do they prize in their leaders? And what qualities are they learning to prize in themselves?

These questions linger before they are eventually subsumed into the movie’s broader, blander portrait of female rapport and resilience. “Girls State” endears, but it also leaves viewers with the sense that, for a film about young women eager to take on the world’s challenges, the movie could stand to tackle a few more.

Girls State Not Rated. Running time: 1 hour 35 minutes. Watch on Apple TV+ .

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Movie Reviews

'coup de chance' is a typical woody allen film — with one appalling final detail.

Justin Chang

Niels Schneider and Lou de Laâge star in Coup de Chance. GRAVIER PRODUCTIONS hide caption

Niels Schneider and Lou de Laâge star in Coup de Chance.

Once upon a time, it might have been strange to think that the arrival of a new Woody Allen movie in theaters would qualify as some kind of event. But much has changed, especially over the past decade, with renewed focus on allegations that Allen sexually abused his adopted daughter, Dylan Farrow , when she was 7 years old — accusations that the director has long denied. Amazon Studios, which had been distributing Allen's movies, cut ties with him in 2018. His two most recent movies, the critically panned A Rainy Day in New York and Rifkin's Festival, were barely shown in the U.S.

And so it came as something of a surprise when news broke weeks ago that Allen's new movie, the romantic drama-thriller Coup de Chance , would be released in American theaters. The decision probably has something to do with the movie's strong reception last fall at the Venice International Film Festival, where more than one critic called it Allen's best film in years.

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That may not be saying much, given how weak his output has been since Blue Jasmine 11 years ago. But there is indeed an assurance and a vitality to Coup de Chance that hasn't been evident in the director's work in some time. That's partly due to the change of scenery, as Allen's difficulty securing American talent and financing has led him to the more receptive climes of Europe. While he's set movies in France before, this is his first feature shot entirely in French with French actors. It may have been done out of necessity, but it lends a patina of freshness to an otherwise familiar Allen story of guilt, suspicion and inconvenient desire.

It begins with a random reunion on the streets of Paris. Fanny, played by Lou de Laâge, works at an auction house nearby; Alain, played by Niels Schneider, is a writer. (Even if his name weren't Alain, it would be pretty clear that he's the Allen avatar in this story.)

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This is the first time Fanny and Alain have seen each other since they were high-school classmates in New York years ago, during which time, Alain confesses, he had an intense crush on Fanny. There's an immediate spark between them, but alas, Fanny is now married to a wealthy businessman, Jean, played by Melvil Poupaud.

Before long, Fanny and Alain are having a full-blown affair, taking long lunch breaks in Alain's tiny apartment, which is homier and more appealing to Fanny than the spacious Parisian residence she shares with Jean. They also have a beautiful country house where she and Jean go for regular weekend getaways.

Jean often invites friends along to go hunting in the woods, and even before the rifles come out, it's clear that this romantic triangle is destined to end in violence. Many moviegoers will recognize the elements from films like Crimes and Misdemeanors and Match Point : an adulterous romance, a premeditated murder and a darkly cynical consideration of the role that luck plays in human affairs. At one point, Jean notes that he doesn't believe in luck at all — which sounds like an echo of the nihilism that has long been at the heart of Woody Allen's work.

Nothing about Coup de Chance is terribly surprising, in other words. It's a decently executed version of a movie Allen has made many times before, enlivened by Vittorio Storaro's elegant if overly burnished-looking cinematography. As you'd expect, there's a lot of jazz and a lot of loftily repetitive dialogue, the effect of which is somewhat neutralized because the actors are speaking French. They all give crisp, engaged performances, especially Valérie Lemercier as Fanny's shrewd mother, who begins to suspect that Jean is not as trustworthy as he appears.

As the story unravels, one appalling detail sticks out. In a few scenes, Jean is shown playing with a large model train set — and as others have pointed out, it seems to evoke a key detail, also involving a train set, from Dylan Farrow's testimony. Could Allen be referencing his own off-screen scandals, and to what purpose? Perhaps, suspecting that he might be done with the movies at long last, as he's hinted in interviews, he wanted to thumb his nose at his detractors with a provocative parting shot. Or maybe it's just a reminder of something that, for better or worse, has always been true about Woody Allen: For all the many, many characters he's introduced us to over the decades, his truest protagonist and subject has always been himself.

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‘Sugar’ Gives You a Sweetly Hardboiled Colin Farrell and One Sour WTF Twist

By Alan Sepinwall

Alan Sepinwall

The most succinct piece of TV criticism I’ve read in the last decade was this 58-word tweet from Topher Florence:

The new Apple TV+ drama Sugar is an extreme case even by Surf Dracula standards, where it’s more like there was a show just called Surf Guy , and it took until late in the season to find out that our would-be surfer was, in fact, lord of the vampires. 

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Based on everything we can see, Sugar is a pure-hearted hero. He consistently offers bad guys a peaceful way out of their messes, confident that he’ll always win if things turn violent — and afraid of the side of himself that’s so good at hurting others. He volunteers to pay for an unhoused man’s fare to go home to stay with the sister the man is too ashamed to call without prompting, and later takes in that man’s dog. When he inadvertently gets ex-rock star Melanie too blitzed to properly answer his questions, he makes sure to get her home safely, and to ignore her drunken advances. Ruby (Kirby), who manages his business affairs, is perpetually worried that Sugar is investing too emotionally into every case. 

If Sugar seems to be good to be true, then… well, no. He really is that good. But he is also not just a saintly private detective, and it’s the other part that makes Sugar a lot messier to both discuss and watch. 

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This is frustrating on several levels, not least of which is that the private eye pastiche stuff is very entertaining. Several episodes are directed by the great Brazilian filmmaker Fernando Meirelles ( City of God ), and he and Protosevich lean way into their influences. Sugar is a big film buff(*), particularly of the kind of Forties and Fifties noirs that the series is informed by, so his travels through modern-day Los Angeles are frequently interspersed with clips from Double Indemnity , Night of the Hunter , Kiss Me Deadly , Sweet Smell of Success , and more. It’s not a new device, though better known for being used by satires like Dead Men Don’t Wear Plaid or the early HBO sitcom Dream On . It would be easy for this to make Sugar seem like a very poor imitator of Mike Hammer and company, or for the clips to feel like they are hitting the audience over the head with the point of various sequences. But they feel deployed just right, in large part because Colin Farrell’s performance is so charismatic and lived-in, it’s not hard to imagine him starring in a version of The Big Heat if he had been born back at the same time as Glenn Ford.

(*) Amusingly, he mentions loving L.A. Confidential at one point, never remarking on the fact that he’s currently working for a man who looks exactly like the villain of that movie.

For that matter, the show that Sugar turns out to be is interesting, too. It just completely undercuts what came before, while also arriving much too late to feel fully-formed when Protosevich decides it’s time to turn his cards face up. It also feels like a cheat, because the series is told from Sugar’s POV, complete with voiceover narration that in no way discusses [REDACTED] until after the audience has found out about it. Everything is presented this way entirely to pull the rug out from under viewers, but without nearly enough value gained from it. If we were watching things unfold through, say, Melanie’s eyes (Ryan is terrific, as are all the supporting players), and then [REDACTED] came out, that would have real weight. Ditto a version of the story where Sugar somehow didn’t know about [REDACTED], and we learned it at the same time he did.

This is just trickeration for its own sake, and it’s counter-productive and annoying. The resolution of the mystery becomes an afterthought, while the reality of what Sugar is doesn’t get enough room to fully get up to speed. The two concepts could work together very well, with this star, this ensemble, and this much care given to the look and feel of the world. But they have to be allowed to co-exist, rather than one being held in reserve for weeks and weeks, all in favor of a one-shot burst of WTF.

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Just let Dracula surf, guys. Please. People want to see the show you are trying to make, not an endless warm-up for that show.

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23 Unintentionally Hilarious One-Star Amazon Movie Reviews

In the past few decades, reviews have become an inextricable part of the cultural identity of movies, moreso than perhaps any other creative medium. The obsession has culminated into the coveted film status of a "Certified Fresh" rating on Rotten Tomatoes, a site that aggregates film reviews by both professional critic and user alike and doles out a score based on the collection's averages. Social media platforms have even been built around the idea of reviewing movies with your friends, with the one of the most popular renditions being Letterboxd.

However, as valuable as reviews can be for understanding different perspectives and informing readers, they must also be taken with a grain of salt. Not every review is created equal, and some are so misguided that they work better as jokes than as constructive commentary or criticism. We've done you the favor of collecting a list of the most hilarious reviews that left us scratching our heads in disbelief.

1. Magic Mike (2012)

2. Pitch Perfect (2012)

3. Taken 3 (2014)

4. The Shape Of Water (2017)

5. Aquaman (2018)

6. Bumblebee (2018)

7. Free Solo (2018)

8. The Wolf of Wall Street (2013)

9. Toy Story (1995)

10. Paul Blart: Mall Cop 2 (2015)

11. Spider-Man: Into The Spider-Verse (2018)

12. Rent (2005)

13. The Blair Witch Project (1999)

14. Spider-Man: Homecoming (2017)

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16. Deadpool (2016)

17. The Silence of the Lambs (1991)

18. Frozen (2010)

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23. Shoplifters (2018)

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Screen Rant

The people's joker review: dark comedy superhero masterpiece is the batman parody the world needs.

Vera Drew's parody superhero film The People's Joker is unlike anything in the exasperated genre and is a unique take on the classic DC story.

• The People's Joker is a hilarious superhero parody film that incorporates dark humor and compelling character development.
• The film uses a mix of live-action, animation, and special effects to create a unique and captivating visual experience.
• While heavy-handed with DC Comics references, The People's Joker stands out in the superhero genre as a fresh, significant, and entertaining addition.

The People's Joker is unlike any other superhero film (or any movie in general), and its strengths lie in its differences, dark humor, and intriguing and thoughtful character development. The superhero parody film is directed and co-written by Vera Drew, who also stars as the titular character — Joker the Harlequin — with Bri LeRose also co-writing. While on the outside it might look like another live-action version of the Joker (and Harley Quinn), The People's Joker is able to stand out from the rest.

The People's Joker is a parody DC movie from director/writer Vera Drew and writer Bri LeRose. Vera Drew stars as Joker the Harlequin, an aspiring clown who is navigating their gender identity while fighting Batman in Gotham City. The film originally premiered in 2022, but was delayed due to rights issues.

• The film's visuals are fantastic, a combination of live-action and animation
• The People's Joker's parody is top tier, surpassing others in the genre
• The film is not only funny but has great characters and story
• The DC references can get a bit heavy-handed

Aside from Drew as Joker the Harlequin, the cast of The People's Joker includes, Kane Distler as Mr. J, and Phil Braun as Batman. Many other actors portray various parodies of iconic DC Comics heroes and villains (especially in the world of Batman ). But these are the most memorable and present characters throughout the movie. Drew undoubtedly gives the dark comedy's standout performance as Joker the Harlequin, since she is the protagonist and has the most character development in the unique story. However, the talented cast's achievements are only one of the highlights of The People's Joker .

The People's Joker Is A Hilarious (Yet Heartbreaking) Take On DC Comics

Vera drew's superhero film is parody at its best.

One of the best (and often overlooked) corners of Hollywood is the superhero parody genre. Given the apparent superhero movie fatigue in audiences in the 2020s , satire of these movies is warmly welcomed. As a result, The People's Joker is an exciting and fresh addition to the superhero parody genre that delivers numerous laughs by poking fun at various renditions of Batman, the Joker, Penguin, and other DC Comics characters that have plagued the media for decades.

While it rarely takes itself seriously, the dark comedy seamlessly weaves heartbreaking tales (like Joker the Harlequin's turbulent relationship with her mother and the abusive and toxic romance between Joker the Harlequin and Mr. J ) throughout the movie. A viewer could be crying from laughter during one scene and tearing up due to Joker the Harlequin's harrowing journey in the next. Thankfully, The People's Joker has a (somewhat) hopeful and content ending.

[ The People's Joker ] incorporates live-action, animation, and other special effects to capitalize on the satire the story relies on, which is significantly effective.

Of course, DC isn't the only element being parodied in The People's Joker — Drew also incorporates a satirized version of the NBC sketch comedy variety series Saturday Night Live (titled UCB Live in the film). A caricature of Lorne Michaels, the famous creator of Saturday Night Live , is also featured in the dark comedy. No one and nothing is safe from the parody's criticism, and although it can't be described as "on the nose," the meaning behind the satire is difficult to miss.

The People's Joker Director Explains Legality of Unauthorized DC Movie

The visuals in the people's joker are fun & unique, the coming-of-age movie incorporates a mix of live-action and animation (and other trippy mediums).

It's hard to talk about The People's Joker without discussing the various mediums and visuals it uses throughout its 92-minute runtime. The coming-of-age movie incorporates live-action, animation, and other special effects to capitalize on the satire the story relies on, which is significantly effective. The use of different visual aids distinguishes it from other superhero parodies, but it's also just a smart way to keep us glued to the screen from beginning to end.

The People's Joker isn't perfect, and one of its faults is how heavy-handed it is with the references to Batman characters and DC Comics.

Needless to say, the entertaining story is captivating in and of itself, but the mixture of multiple mediums takes The People's Joker to another level. Some aspects of the special effects could be cleaned up and sharpened, but the roughness adds to the movie's charm, so it's futile to complain about the quality.

The People's Joker (2024)

The people's joker is a breath of fresh air in the superhero genre, the film is unlike anything anyone has done before.

The People's Joker not only separates itself from other movies in the superhero genre but also from superhero parodies. It's not comparable to The Boys , Invincible , or Kick-Ass , due to its distinguished and important story revolving around a transgender woman in Gotham. It's hilarious, heartbreaking, distinctive, significant, and just what Hollywood needs after countless DC and Marvel projects (including the upcoming Joker sequel Joker: Folie à Deux ). This superhero parody is just as good as Marvel and DC films (it may even be better than most of them).

Of course, The People's Joker isn't perfect, and one of its faults is how heavy-handed it is with the references to Batman characters and DC Comics. It's overkill at times, as if the DC lore is constantly being shoved down our throats. While the references are fun at first, they get tiring and overwhelming by the film's end. However, if the excessive mention of DC characters and storylines is the only problem with the parody, it's still a success. Ultimately, it's evident that the world needs The People's Joker .

The People's Joker premiered at the 2022 Toronto International Film Festival and is playing in US theaters.

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1/1 Reviews

Aside from its narrative flaws, 1/1 still manages to thrive thanks to its quietly commanding, leading performance by Lindsey Shaw.

Full Review | Oct 8, 2020

1/1 is not a movie you passively watch. It is a full-throttled experience that encompasses a variety of styles.

Full Review | Original Score: 10/10 | Oct 4, 2020

‘Godzilla x Kong: The New Empire’ Review: A Godzilla Spectacle Minus One Thing: A Reason to Exist

The clash-of-the-titans climax lifts off into the awesome zone, but until then the fifth entry in the MonsterVerse is overly busy boilerplate.

By Owen Gleiberman

Owen Gleiberman

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• ‘Godzilla x Kong: The New Empire’ Review: A Godzilla Spectacle Minus One Thing: A Reason to Exist 1 week ago

Watching “ Godzilla x Kong: The New Empire ,” I realized that the movie, a standard overly busy and mediocre blockbuster with a pretty awesome wow of a clash-of-the-titans climax, was demonstrating one of the essential principles of Hollywood movie culture today. Namely: All blockbuster movies are now connected!

In other words, Kong is facing a force who’s exactly like the villain in “Ghostbusters: Frozen Empire”!

Then there’s Godzilla. He spends the film preparing for an apocalyptic showdown by traveling from one place to the next and absorbing radiation, first from a nuclear facility, then from an undersea battle with a flower-headed monster so radioactive it’s iridescent. By the time Godzilla is done with all this, his very being has been suffused with radioactive power, to the point that he literally turns pink .

In other words, he looks like he’s having his “Barbie” moment.

The film’s central character, Dr. Ilene Andrews ( Rebecca Hall ), while she’s busy charting all this, is most invested in the fate of Jia (Kaylee Hottle), the adoptive daughter she rescued after the Iwi people of Skull Island were destroyed. As it happens, the Hollow Earth is home to another tribe of Iwi (there’s a lot going on in that basement), who Jia can communicate with telepathically. And she turns out to be a kind of chosen one, since Jia will prove the key figure in activating Mothra (now reimagined in shimmery designer gold), Godzilla’s old nemesis-turned-ally, who will be instrumental in the outcome of the final clash…

The thing that connects “Godzilla x Kong” to last year’s run of superhero films — the ones that everybody complained about — is that, just like them, the movie can make your head hurt. But not because it’s too convoluted to follow. It’s because the real convolution is: Why are we supposed to care? About any of this?

The fact that we might not makes “Godzilla x Kong” feel like one of those “Jurassic Park” sequels where everyone is huffing and puffing about the fate of the world and “relevant” issues of genetic engineering — but we’re just there for the ride, which now feels like it has a study sheet attached. I guess this is the part of the review where I’m supposed to say that Brian Tyree Henry , as the wide-eyed tech-whistleblower-turned-conspiracy-blogger Bernie Hayes, and Dan Stevens , as the snarky British veterinarian Trapper, are a riot, but it felt to me like the two actors were mostly filling space. Rebecca Hall, in a no-nonsense haircut, uses her avid severity well, and Kaylee Hottle, as Jia, has a luminous presence, but I’m sorry, every time the film summons a human dimension it feels like boilerplate.  

You could say that the qualifier, the one that’s always there in a Godzilla movie, is that in the kaiju films of Japan the stories don’t matter either; they are often nonsense. But not always. The original “Godzilla,” in 1954, was schlock with a fairy-tale sci-fi gravity; that was true, as well, of the other two standouts of the early kaiju films, “Mothra” (1961) and “Destroy All Monsters” (1968). And it may turn out to be a stroke of karmic bad luck that “Godzilla x Kong” is coming out right on the heels of “Godzilla Minus One,” the movie that rocked the world of monster cinema. It had the lyrical majesty of those earlier films, as well as a story, rooted in Japan’s World War II trauma, that was actually linear and moving. It reminded you that these creatures could carry an emotional grandeur.

Kong unfreezes himself, and proves once again to be the fiercest primate around. And Godzilla outradiates his foes, even as he’s now so defined by that pink glow that it’s almost as if he’s being set up as a new kind of allegorical monster: not a metaphor for the bomb, but a metaphor for…the return of responsible nuclear energy? Stay tuned for the next eye-popping and meaningless sequel.                

Reviewed at Warner Bros. Screening Room, March 27, 2024. MPAA Rating: PG-13. Running time: 115 MIN.

• Production: A Warner Bros. Pictures release of a Legendary Pictures production. Producers: Mary Parent, Alex Garcia, Eric McLeod, Thomas Tull, Brian Rogers. Executive producers: Yoshimitsu Banno, Kenji Okuhira, Dan Lin, Roy Lee, Adam Wingard, Jen Conroy, Jay Ashenfelter.
• Crew: Director: Adam Wingard. Screenplay: Terry Rossio, Simon Barrett, Jeremy Slater. Camera: Ben Seresin. Editor: Josh Schaeffer. Music: Tom Holkenborg, Antonio Di Iorio.
• With: Rebecca Hall, Brian Tyree Henry, Dan Stevens, Kaylee Hottle, Alex Ferns, Fala Chen, Rachel House, Ron Smyck, Chantelle Jamieson, Greg Hatton.

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It takes about a half hour (or, approximately 27 minutes) for the admirably ruthless indie psychodrama “1BR” to get really unpleasant. Until then, “1BR” is a familiar Los Angeles horror story: an unfortunate patsy, I mean young woman runs away from home and is immediately preyed upon by the members of an unassuming, but vicious gated community.

At first, you might not think that Sarah’s neighbors are capable of being bloodthirsty cultists, because they listen to AM radio (a lot of “Happy Heart”), and live in a cozy apartment complex with a pool and regularly scheduled barbecue shindigs. Still, you also might be able to guess that something’s amiss as soon as twenty-something architecture student Sarah ( Nicole Brydon Bloom ) attends an open house: paternal community leader Jerry ( Taylor Nichols ) asks Sarah if she has any LA-based contacts or pets. These two boilerplate questions might not seem like red flags, but well, this is a horror movie about a single white woman called “1BR.”

And as if that wasn’t bad enough: writer/director David Marmor prefaces this scene with a dialogue-free, slow-motion montage that looks like it’s the cornerstone of a tacky and totally unbelievable ad campaign. Just take a look at the apartment’s inclusive, multi-culti community, whose members include: a little white girl chasing a ball; a pregnant woman talking to an older beardo; a same-sex couple doing their laundry; and a black woman watering her plants. Everything seems too good to be true, because it obviously is.

Marmor also immediately over-stresses the blatant creepiness of quirky neighbors like klutzy retiree Esther (Earnestine Phillips), one-eyed lurker Lester ( Clayton Hoff ), and Bobby Sherman-eque love interest Brian ( Giles Matthey ). These side characters are walking, talking plot points waiting to be set into motion, so it’s easy to get lost imagining what they’ll eventually become once Sarah realizes that she’s unwittingly joined a hippie-ish cult (imagine a combination of Charles Manson’s “ Family ” and Charles Dederich’s Santa Monica-based Synanon group).

To be fair, you can’t honestly blame Sarah for her victimization. She just ran away from her overbearing father ( Alan Blumenfeld ), and while she owns a concerned-looking house-cat, she only has one other source of non-neighborly human contact: Lisa (Celeste Sully), a sympathetic colleague at Sarah’s generically taxing and underpaid internship.

Then again, if you think Sarah’s cat will survive “1BR” unharmed, you are probably not the ideal audience for “1BR.” Sarah’s neighbors essentially live in a self-policing panopticon, a central metaphor that’s made explicit in a later scene where her neighbors observe each other through closed-circuit cameras. There are also a few conspicuously mounted cameras trained on the neighborhood’s human monitors, though Sarah’s told not to think about those cameras. Just like when Brian, in early scene, tells Sarah not to worry about the cameras that are posted above the apartment complex’s mailboxes. Everything in “1BR” is over-exposed, often literally thanks to the movie’s basic camera set-ups and general emphasis on naturally and/or harshly front-lit close-ups, or medium shots of brown stucco walls.

At this point, I must admit: I was also reluctantly taken in by “1BR,” mostly because, at the 27-minute mark (or so), Marmor truly commits to making life hellish for poor Sarah. In theory, there’s not much to Jerry and his Synanon-like fixation with de-programming all the “selfish fantasies” and “bad conditioning” that define Sarah as a normal, self-interested twenty-something. But it’s hard to resist “1BR” given that every other scene escalates Sarah’s peril in a memorably sadistic way.

Several sequences involving graphic violence and psychological torture are effectively jarring because they’re as over-ripe and sensationalistic as this type of horror movie needs them to be. I mean, I knew what type of movie “1BR” was before I found out how evil Brian is, or what happened to Lester’s eye. But I was still impressed by “1BR,” especially since Marmor somehow found a way to make his movie’s pervasive grubbiness seem more like a feature than a bug.

I’m honestly not sure how well a movie like “1BR” will play for horror fans now that there are so many true-crime docu-series and LA-set indie horror films about serial murderers, religious cults, and other seductive frauds. I can, however, tell you that I eventually stopped second-guessing Marmor’s creative choices, and eagerly waited for Sarah’s situation to become even more bleak. There’s a light at the end of the tunnel for Sarah, and seeing her claw her way to it is often fun, albeit in a gasp-inducing sort of way. 

Premieres on VOD today, 4/24.

Simon Abrams

Simon Abrams is a native New Yorker and freelance film critic whose work has been featured in  The New York Times ,  Vanity Fair ,  The Village Voice,  and elsewhere.

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The First Omen Review

You have been warned: the prequel is great..

More moviegoers in 2024 may know The Omen by reputation than from firsthand experience. It’s not that the 1976 horror classic about a little boy who turns out to be the antichrist isn’t a great movie, but despite spawning multiple sequels and revival attempts , it just hasn’t had the same pop-culture resonance or staying power as, say, its contemporary The Exorcist . So the prospect of an in-canon prequel to the original film feels a bit strange – and yet that prequel, The First Omen, works, thanks to a clear directorial vision, a strong central performance, and some gnarly visuals.

This is one hell of a calling card (pun intended) for director and co-writer Arkasha Stevenson, who makes her feature debut chronicling the harrowing ordeal that befalls young American novitiate Margaret (Nell Tiger Free) in a Roman orphanage. The film goes all in on its dark storyline and imagery as Margaret forges a connection with the teenage Carlita (Nicole Sorace), a particularly troubled orphan who’s prone to violence, reminding her newfound protector of her own turbulent childhood. As ominous signs and strange behavior swirl around Carlita, Stevenson and cinematographer Aaron Morton provide a technical flair that evokes the cinema of The First Omen’s 1970s period setting. But they don’t try to mimic that style from start to finish – though obliged to lay the groundwork for 50 years of movies and TV shows about the sinister Damien Thorn, Stevenson’s movie is, thankfully, allowed to have its own identity.

The First Omen Gallery

It’s evident in the standout sequence where Margaret joins her roommate, Luz (Maria Caballero), for a night of rather un-nun-like behavior. Stevenson and Morton stylishly capture Margaret’s buzzed point of view and state of mind in the midst of a busy Italian club whose atmosphere grows menacing and unsettling. It's a welcome escalation in a story that begins sluggishly but picks up momentum in its second half. The First Omen can also be a rough watch at points, delving even deeper into motifs and analogies of bodily autonomy than the recently released, similarly themed Immaculate . Yet Stevenson’s depiction of a woman’s body being controlled and invaded by others doesn’t feel exploitative as much as it is forthright about the horror of Margaret and Carlita’s predicament.

There are also fun and effective jump scares and memorable, suitably creepy moments throughout, plus one shot so graphic that Stevenson says it nearly led to an NC-17 rating. (You’ll know it when you see it – it garnered incredulous applause both times I’ve seen the movie.) The First Omen leans into the franchise’s proto- Final Destination legacy: People who get too close to stopping Damien in these movies tend to meet intricately grisly ends – either by “accident” or their own hand – and that remains true even before the spooky little kid is born. This string of often grimly funny and macabre deaths kicks off in the very first scene, which deftly sets up a big, dangerous object that will quickly turn lethal. It’s great that The First Omen keeps this tradition alive, even if its callback to The Omen’s iconic “It’s all for you” sequence feels a bit forced. (Though, since it’s a prequel, does that make it a call-forward?)

What's your favorite religious horror movie?

The cast are all very good, but this is an especially terrific spotlight for Free. The Game of Thrones and Servant alum is excellent here, in a role that asks quite a lot of her. Margaret is a woman of faith, doing her best to lead a pious existence despite some curiosity about a more conventional path in life. The events of The First Omen put her through the wringer, both emotionally and physically, and Free skillfully conveys all of these challenges and how Margaret changes to meet them. Veteran actors Sônia Braga and Bill Nighy (the latter popping in and out of the movie at random) exude expected gravitas as church leaders, and Caballero brings the right edgy-yet-likable vibe to Luz, who is determined to push the boundaries of novitiate behavior. Sorace manages to combine the unsettling yet vulnerable traits that help Margaret connect with Carlita while Ralph Ineson also brings some great frenetic energy as Father Brennan, who has quite a bit of important information for Margaret about what is occurring and why.

Brennan is also notable as the one major character connection to the original Omen, where Patrick Troughton played the role of the priest who desperately tries to warn Gregory Peck’s Robert Thorn that, whoops, he’d adopted the antichrist. In that regard, the end of The First Omen is both amusing and also slightly eye-roll inducing. It looks to both seamlessly lead into the original’s events and set up further entries in the franchise, all without contradicting the earlier films. There’s definitely some silliness at play in how these elements are intertwined, but there’s also something entertaining in the realization that of course Disney and 20th Century Studios wouldn’t go through all the trouble of reviving The Omen without plans for making more of them.

The First Omen manages to serve as a well made prequel as well as an unsettling and creepy horror film in its own right. It takes awhile to get going, and the very end bends backwards pretty far to create setup for potential follow-ups, but the brunt of the movie is very strong, with lead Nell Tiger Free and director Arkasha Stevenson both cementing themselves as stars on the rise.

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Someone Like You

Based on the novel by #1 NYTimes bestselling author Karen Kingsbury, "Someone Like You" is an achingly beautiful love story. After the tragic loss of his best friend, a grieving young archit... Read all Based on the novel by #1 NYTimes bestselling author Karen Kingsbury, "Someone Like You" is an achingly beautiful love story. After the tragic loss of his best friend, a grieving young architect launches a search for her secret twin sister. Based on the novel by #1 NYTimes bestselling author Karen Kingsbury, "Someone Like You" is an achingly beautiful love story. After the tragic loss of his best friend, a grieving young architect launches a search for her secret twin sister.

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