Gladiator, The Last Duel, Blade Runner, or Alien, it is not. Ridley Scott’s Napoleon was my most anticipated movie of 2023. The elements were in place. It had the director. It had the actor (Joaquin Phoenix – Walk the Line, Joker). It had the story. Yet, the pieces never came together. Instead, it was a two-hour and 38-minute chaotic mess that offered no logical transition of scenes, little connection between characters, and easily forgettable battle scenes that left much to be desired. This film was a catastrophic failure in many ways.
Category Archives: Vanessa Kirby
Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning Part One (2023)
In a summer movie season that has seen the unlikely pairing of Oppenheimer and Barbie dominate the box office, two surefire franchises have found it a bit more difficult than anticipated to generate sales. While Oppenheimer and Barbie have both faired well with critics and audiences, Christopher McQuarrie’s (The Way of the Gun, Jack Reacher) Mission Impossible: Dead Reckoning Part One has scored just as well, but whose box office revenue may have been slighted due to the Oppenheimer/Barbie dual release date two weeks after. It may have made the Mission Impossible franchise’s seventh movie out of sight, out of mind a little too quickly. Dead Reckoning Part One is a film that should be seen in the theater, which many will agree with. Saying that it is better than Oppenheimer and Barbie is an unpopular opinion but one that I believe to be true. The novelty of Oppenheimer and Barbie is undoubtedly an allure over the seventh installment of a franchise and is something I do understand and appreciate. However, as a whole, I found Dead Reckoning Part One to be far more entertaining and better executed.
Continue reading Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning Part One (2023)
The Son (2022)
Entering awards season two years removed from the success of his directorial debut The Father, a film that was nominated for six Academy Awards, winning two, Florian Zeller’s follow-up, The Son, had some lofty, albeit slightly unrealistic expectations, if for no other reason that some deemed it a continuation of the story. In contrast, others viewed its Christmas Day limited release to mean that the production company believed the movie would hopefully receive the same critical acclaim (98% critics, 94% audience) as The Father and wanted to keep the film fresh in voters’ minds as possible. Sadly, the film failed to resonate with either group (a paltry 26% critics and a lukewarm 67% audience). As a result, the film will fail to reach $1,000,000 at the box office despite a star-studded cast that flanked (and outmatched) the relatively unknown Zen McGrath (Dig), who played the title character.
The World to Come (2020)
Hope. Love. Tragedy. Despair. We desire the first pair of words. We dread the second pair. When we experience all five of these emotions in the order presented here, what comes after experiencing despair? Death? Rebirth? Complacency. If the suffering is deep enough, is any coming out of it? Do we even want to? Do we believe that we can find joy again? If we do, will we recognize it? Will we embrace it? In Mona Fastvold’s (The Sleepwalker) The World To Come, we spend 98 minutes with Abigail (Katherine Waterston – Mid90s, Alien: Covenant), a grieving mother who has spent the year before unsuccessfully trying to process her young daughter’s death.
Pieces of a Woman (2020)
Pieces of a Woman, Kornél Mundruczó’s (Jupiter’s Moon, White God) venture co-starring Vanessa Kirby (Mission Impossible: Fallout, The World to Come) and Shia LaBeouf (The Peanut Butter Falcon, Honey Boy), has the most excruciating half-hour of a film you’ll see this year. Expertly pieced together by the film’s editing crew is a single, continuous 23-minute scene meant to represent, likely, at least a few hours of a childbirth process. It’s intense, gutwrenching, fascinating, and heartbreaking all at once. As someone who didn’t know a thing about this film going in other than the first twenty seconds of its trailer that cemented my interest level, I thought for the entire 23-minute sequence that this would be the whole movie, likely sprinkled with flashbacks to a happier time.