In which Nat talks briefly about the movies she’s been watching this week for no particular reason and that probably don’t warrant proper reviews, but hey? Wouldn’t it be nice if we all chatted about them anyway?
The TMINE multiplex is open again – and no one has to wear masks, I promise, unless you really want to show off that stylish one you bought from Mint Velvet the other day. That’s fine. I’d really like to see it, too!
I’ve been flitting about this week and I’ve already talked about my TMINE theatre trip elsewhere. Unfortunately, that meant I didn’t watch anything at the cinema on Sunday, so I had nothing to review for you on Monday. Don’t worry, I’ve already booked my tickets for No Time To Die (2021), so I’ll definitely be reviewing that on Monday or Tuesday next week.
But! Even though I am really crying on the inside that I’ve not been the cinema this week, I have been watching what I can, when I can, so let’s go to the movies now! Yay!
This week’s viewing I’m not especially proud of. But (deep breath), I went and saw David Lynch’s Dune (1984) on the big screen with my best friend.
I’ve been tormenting her with it since we were at school together, since I love the books and she humours me in this, but this was the first time we’ve ever seen the movie on the big screen.
And this was basically me all the way through – imagine her joy, as well as the amount of popcorn she threw at me:
Don’t worry. I told her that she was bad for doing that.
For reasons that now escape me, my husband and I also chose to watch Fantastic Four (2005), possibly because we’ve never watched it together and we both do like superhero movies. But OMG, it was not a good choice on our part.
The last movie in the TMINE Multiplex was my Wednesday Movie Night viewing. Continuing with last week’s Heath Ledger theme, our choice was A Knight’s Tale (2001). Thankfully, it was very, very good.
Screen 1: Dune (1984)
Director: David Lynch
Writer: David Lynch
On general release and available on DVD, as well as Amazon, iTunes and other streaming services
A Duke’s son leads desert warriors against the galactic emperor and his father’s evil nemesis to free their desert world from the emperor’s rule.
Nat says: ‘It’s mind-altering!’
Objectively, Dune is not a good movie. How could it be, with its producer ripping a page out of the shooting script every day it over-ran?
Dune is a hard read anyway. Set in a far-flung future, it’s so detailed in its world-building that it has several appendices. Much of its most-quotable dialogue is either in Arabic or author Frank Herbert’s wisdom on everything from psychology and ecology to religion and history.
Even trying to describe the plot, the universe in which it is set and the characters is problematic, so it’s far easier for me to give you the introduction Lynch gave the movie.
But Lynch’s movie is very much his own version of the book, with many things that stem from his transcendental, nightmarish imagination rather than Herbert’s already strange vision. Strangely mutated by its producers into something more mainstream, more Star Wars, Lynch’s Dune also suffers from having to have huge fight scenes involving ‘sound weapons’ and a cast that reminds you of 70s movies like Murder on the Orient Express where anyone famous the producers could pay would show up, no matter how briefly. Jose Ferrer, Sting, Brad Dourif, Jurgen Prochnow, Sian Phillips, Francesca Annis, Richard Jordan come and go, while Lynch’s own coterie of actors and friends fill the central roles. The same principle governs other departments, with Toto and Brian Eno providing enough snatches of soundtrack to fulfil their contracts.
Yet, I’ve inexplicably loved it all my life. I just can’t help myself. I’m blind to all its failings. All I can see are the wonderful creature effects, Lynch’s amazing additions that even Herbert ended up including in later books, the costumes, the set designs. It’s a vision of the future made of brass and clockwork, wood and water, that takes in 19th European aristocracies and steampunk.
It’s all so wonderful. I even have the new steelbook at home.
The fact that it’s definitely still a David Lynch movie and you can see elements of The Elephant Man and Eraserhead in there only makes me love it more. Oddly, it’s also the Lynch movie I quote, not Herbert’s dialogue, when I quote Dune – he makes some fine additions, as well as the occasional quotable but poor addition.
And watching the trailers for Denis Villeneuve’s Dune next month, it’s amazing just how influential Lynch’s adaptation is: a lot of the iconography isn’t in the books, it’s in Lynch’s movie. Those are Lynchian stillsuits, not Herbert’s; the Fremen’s blue within blue eyes aren’t the almost uniform blue Herbert imagined.
However, watching it on the big screen made me stop and realise that no matter how many times I’ve seen the original, things have been hidden from me because I’ve only seen it on the small screen. It’s a lot more Lynchian than I remember. There are moments of pure horror that the small screen ‘smears out’ but the big screen doesn’t hide. Even simple things, such as the speckle-flecked Baron Harkonnen’s dialogue or the food on his face aren’t obvious on the small screen, but add to the characters and the movie when you watch them on the big screen.
Seeing it on the big screen also reveals that certain effects were just badly executed: you can see dirt stuck on the glass mattes in places, leaving smoke stuck in the sky. But that’s old movies for you.
The sound system also makes a difference. I felt the Fremen thumpers making my body vibrate and the worms’ screeching and even singing was a physical presence, too. If you love the movie as much as I do, it’s so fantastic to see these new aspects of it.
I felt the print may have been a little low resolution and blurry, too, but it wasn’t shot for IMAX or 70mm, so maybe that’s not a problem with the re-release version.
But do you love it? Will you think it a good movie if you’ve never seen it before? Should you watch it?
In all honesty, it’s not and you shouldn’t. There is some awful acting from the supporting cast, the models are good for their time but terrible now. Despite the narration, there’s so much mentioned or referenced in the movie that’s not explained, from CHOAM to the Landsraad, from the Bene Gesserit’s prana-bindu training and Weirding Way through to the forms of kanly and the Gom Jabbar, that it’s still a difficult movie to follow if you’ve not read the books.
The hubris of the production is there for all to see.
I loved it. You probably won’t. Although Sting in his budgie smugglers is a surprisingly appealing sight.
Screen 2: Fantastic Four (2005)
Director: Tim Story
Writers: Michael France, Mark Frost
Available on DVD, as well as Amazon, iTunes and other streaming services
A group of astronauts gain superpowers after a cosmic radiation exposure and must use them to oppose the plans of their enemy, Doctor Victor Von Doom.
Nat says: ‘Fantastic is not the word’
Fantastic Four is not a good movie. Not in the slightest. I think it’s fun. When people think of Marvel’s MCU movies, Fantastic Four would fit right in with the styles of the early ones, particularly Iron Man. This is a group of superheroes that get sponsorship money, are world famous and even have Chris Evans among them. You can certainly watch the whole thing and enjoy it.
I certainly enjoyed watching Chris Evans in his underwear most of the time. But Ioan Gruffudd, dodgy American accent to one side, proved a remarkably enjoyable draw, too, and my husband certainly advocates for greater appreciation of Jessica Alba’s many ‘slightly naked’ scenes as the Invisible clothes less woman.
But it’s really not good, unfortunately, mainly because the movie was encumbered with the idea prevalent at the time that only 13-24 year old boys like superheroes and go to the movies, so pitches itself at that demographic – or at least what it imagines that group to be like.
The plot is initially close to the comic book origin of the Fantastic Four, with everyone getting their superpowers from cosmic rays and then coming to terms with them, as well as each other. The attempts at a romantic dynamic between Gruffudd and Alba is insultingly poor – the level of insight into heterosexual male-female relationships you’d expect of a superhero movie aimed at 13 year old boys.
However, Alba’s not exactly there for her heavyweight acting talents. Look at that poster. Does that say “We hired her for her brains and plan on treating her respectfully?” Certainly, Sue Storm has none of the agency she has in the comics these days.
It’s strange how much we’ve come on since 2005, and perhaps if there’s one good aspect of rewatching Fantastic Four, it’s that it reminds you that we are progressing culturally in some regards at least.
The second half of the movie is less fun and I found it very much a movie that enabled me to do better, more interesting things on my phone at this point. Attempts at ‘science’ to one side (“Go supernova, Johnny!”), it all degenerates into the standard superhero punching match the genre almost demands (I’d like to do a shout out to Dr Strange for doing something different there) – and quite a boring one at that.
So it’s fun, but only half of it is fun. True, that’s at least half a movie that’s more fun than the even worse Fantastic Four (2015). But that’s still not a recommendation, is it?
Screen 3: A Knight’s Tale (2005)
Director: Brian Helgeland
Writer: Brian Helgeland
Available on DVD, as well as Amazon, iTunes and other streaming services
After his master dies, a peasant squire, fueled by his desire for food and glory, creates a new identity for himself as a knight.
Nat says: ‘It’s time to revaluate this one’
It’s easy to think from watching TV and movies that English culture started with Shakespeare. Sorry, Geoffrey Chaucer.
Fortunately, A Knight’s Tale goes some way towards redeeming that in what is a wonderful, much overlooked movie that most people didn’t understand when it first came out. It stars Heath Ledger as the son of a London thatcher who goes to France as a child in the service of a knight. When that knight dies, Ledger takes his armour and fights in his place. Soon, he and his friends have ambitions to get rich by continuing their pretence. But will their ambitions grow beyond their ability to keep up the pretence at being nobility? And when true love comes knocking at Ledger’s door, will he be able to keep his humble origins a secret?
Fortunately, he’s got Geoffrey Chaucer helping him.
Not, of course, that the movie is written in Chaucerian English. Or uses much of the plot or dialogue of Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales. In fact, it’s very modern. Deliberately so.
What I adore about the movie – something many critics didn’t seem to realise at the time – is it’s both very historical and completely ahistorical. It tries to show us the 14th century in all its glory and privations. We see rich and poor alike: courtly life, jousting, politics, royalty and all the things fine and noble about the time sit side by side with horrific, gut-wrenching poverty and people starving to death.
But director Helgeland tries to show us what things now distanced by time probably meant to those living in the 14th century. He makes jousting explicitly like football; he makes dancing modern; he uses a modern soundtrack and gets people to act like they can hear Queen or David Bowie music instead of what they’re actually hearing. If you’re not aware that’s what he’s doing, it seems crass; but it’s sometimes brilliant.
We see a courtly dance at first, but soon we see what it’s truly like for someone in the 14th century – in our terms.
The cast is wonderful, bar the always annoying Shannyn Sossamon, who cropped up in too many movies of the time. Ledger is a sympathetic and attractive lead (I would say that, wouldn’t I?) and Paul Bettany is so charismatic as Chaucer; Alan Tudyk and Mark Addy provide great comic appeal, while Rufus Sewell is at his glowering, adorable evil best. James Purefoy throws everything he has into a small but important role and Christopher Cazenove as Ledger’s dad will have you weeping buckets.
Aspects of it are predictable and inevitable, as most romances and rags-to-riches tales are, but it’s a rare American who gets English class structures and culture as well as Helgeland does. And it’s such a rare movie that can make Chaucer and the 14th century come to life and be so accessible as well. Please watch it!
