Netflix giveth and taketh away this week with Rebecca Hall's subtle B&W racial drama and a $200 million waste of time. And Kenneth Branagh would like his Oscar, please.
One stray thought about BELFAST: I like that it was short. That’s not a knock. I enjoyed the movie. But movies in general seem to have forgotten that it’s OK to clock in under 100 minutes and it’s kind of unheard of in a movie with this subject in 2021.
Sometimes best thing critic can do is tell you film would be better off cut up into guitar picks for needy children. (Me not sure what digital streaming equivalent is to that.)
And in some cases, me angry with bad movie because it waste good actors' time (see Dead Not Die, or better yet, not see that because it was terrible). But in this case, none of those three were going to anything worthwhile with time it took to make this thing.
It wasn't until after BELFAST ended that I recognized Jamie Dornan as Christian Grey from, you know, *those* movies. He has such quiet charisma here that I'm retroactively impressed by how the directors of the Fifty Shades flicks managed to drain it all out of him.
I think we're seeing in Dakota Johnson and Jamie Dornan what we've been seeing with Kristen Stewart and Robert Pattinson: Excellent actors who were stifled by their most famous roles, but have now been liberated to express themselves in films that are more worthy of their talents. I definitely second Keith on BARB AND STAR, too: Dornan is really up for anything in that.
One stray thought about BELFAST: I like that it was short. That’s not a knock. I enjoyed the movie. But movies in general seem to have forgotten that it’s OK to clock in under 100 minutes and it’s kind of unheard of in a movie with this subject in 2021.
"Fuck off, Red Notice". Excellent, all I needed to know.
Sometimes best thing critic can do is tell you film would be better off cut up into guitar picks for needy children. (Me not sure what digital streaming equivalent is to that.)
And in some cases, me angry with bad movie because it waste good actors' time (see Dead Not Die, or better yet, not see that because it was terrible). But in this case, none of those three were going to anything worthwhile with time it took to make this thing.
It wasn't until after BELFAST ended that I recognized Jamie Dornan as Christian Grey from, you know, *those* movies. He has such quiet charisma here that I'm retroactively impressed by how the directors of the Fifty Shades flicks managed to drain it all out of him.
Did you see BARB AND STAR? He's amazing in that.
I keep hearing good things about that one. I need to stop resisting and bump it up my queue.
I think we're seeing in Dakota Johnson and Jamie Dornan what we've been seeing with Kristen Stewart and Robert Pattinson: Excellent actors who were stifled by their most famous roles, but have now been liberated to express themselves in films that are more worthy of their talents. I definitely second Keith on BARB AND STAR, too: Dornan is really up for anything in that.
I like that parallel. I'm definitely eager to see more of him after BELFAST.