MOTION-PICTUREVERIE

So, I thought I'd get a few thoughts in before the Academy Awards are given out.  I've seen half of the Best Picture nominees: The Brutalist, Wicked, Conclave, A Complete Unknown and Dune: Part 2.
THOUGHTS:
Why does Dune keep getting remade?  And why hasn't there been a restored director's cut of David Lynch's Dune and now that he's gone, will there ever be one?  Lynch's version is by far my favorite.  Yes, the Villeneuve version is more technically superior in every way; but nothing can top Lynch's still startlingly strange touches in his version.  This scene still disturbs me both for it's simple disturbing quality and it's strange beauty.

I've been watching Elle Fanning in The Great and I'm simply blown away by how good she is.  Like, Meryl Streep good.  In A Complete Unknown she made me cry in this scene:

I think she should've gotten a "nom" for her performance in it.
In Wicked, I thought there was too much CGI.  I was eagerly awaiting "Defying Gravity" and the movie kept stopping the song for dialogue, which I thought diminished the power of it.  I mean, it was like: "Let her sing the song already!"  Maybe I'm wrong?

Conclave was enjoyable and for me, informative.  I mean I was raised Catholic and I knew next to nothing about the Pope-ularity Picks.  My husband had this comment: "Best Costume Design?  That's what they all wear anyways!"  He has a point.  I hope Isabella wins; she just should.  She's one of those actresses that is so good, all the time, you kind of don't notice the incredible work she does.  It's her time!

And finally, we come to The Brutalist.  We misread the run time and thought it ran for 2 hours and 35 minutes; so when the built in 15 minute intermission came, I was like: "Why?"  I mean, I thought it was neat, and I'm all for throwback cinema conventions, no matter how pretentious.  But then I thought: "Why does this get an intermission?  It's not that much longer than a typical Marvel flick; or John Wick Part 4."  So, that happened.  But I'm sad to say that from nearly the very start of the film (well, actually it kind of was); I was completely taken out of the story by the upside down shot of The Statue of Liberty.  Like, first of all, why was it upside down?  Whose POV was that?  Adrien Brody's?  Someone behind him?  Did they trip and end up on their head?  Like, what?  

But what really bugged me was her torch.  Her torch flame was made of glass and copper latticework, designed by the man who sculpted Mount Rushmore.  It was the version that would've been there in 1947.  So, it should've looked like this, that is, if the shot was at dusk:

Early in the film, when Brody is reunited with his cousin at the bus station, I was emotionally moved.  But it was the only time.

I found the falling out between the two to be a screenwriting contrivance, particularly when Alessandro Nivola (Masshole, yay!) was throwing his cousin at his wife.  And then Mr. Nivola disappeared from the movie, leaving a hole in his wake that the movie never recovers from.  And then it was kind of, The Perils of Laszlo.  And why was Brody's character named after the lunatic who went after The Pieta with a hammer?  If this was some kind of metaphor, it was lost on me.
And I just gotta ask: was that Mr. Brody's actual penis or a prosthetic that we get glimpses of in the "hand-job" scene?  And if it was a prosthetic, why wasn't the film nominated for Best Make-Up?  And I also gotta ask, why isn't Best Hairstyling a completely separate category.  It's an entirely different undertaking than make-up and I would say one of the MOST IMPORTANT categories.  Because when a movie gets the HAIR wrong; boy, you sure notice it!

Are you the blonde you became a blonde to be?

That is all.
Reidy out.
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CFR   2/5/25