The Zone of Interest is either on Hulu or Max and I plan to watch it very soon -- it's one of the big films I wanted to watch before the Oscars but it wasn't on regular streaming services before then. I agree that Oppenheimer was way overrated. I mean, I can live with it being Best Picture compared to schlocky films like CODA from a few years ago. But I was strangely unmoved for much of it and found Strauss far more interesting a character than some of the more prominent scientific figures (and it drove me to do some reading about him after the film). Aside from Emily Blunt's five minute scene where Oppenheimer was grilled, she and Pugh were criminally underused, and Pugh's character was just not well-written. There are multiple other Nolan films I consider to be better -- like, most of them -- in terms of story telling and story cohesion.
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I feel bad mentioning
Rebel Moon Part 2 after descriptions of two actually decent films.
I won't go into much length about it because there's little to say that people would not have expected. This piece is two hours long. The first hour is mostly dialogue and setup for the battle sequence. The best past works of the non-Snyder writers on this film are the last two John Wick films, and those films were stronger in writing despite the reality that no one would ever like a John Wick film because of the writing, but more because of the action sequences and kinetic performances. I laughed fairly regularly through the first hour over the schlocky moments. The writing didn't seem to mesh well with Snyder's excesses. Some of the casting is way off (it's hard to watch Cary Elwes in anything where he's not well-directed, as he seems to drop into caricature nowadays). I don't understand why they hire crap writers for films like this.
The last hour (the battle itself) is decent enough if one is into those things. There are some pretty decent moments. But it felt more like a jumble of characters and imagery from older Snyder films or pop culture (like Star Wars).
For me, the high part was Bae Doona, who is an exquisite actress even without a good script. She brings gravitas to the words that come out of her, and can act without words. This is obviously hyperbole, but I texted my son as I was watching her: "her eyes are like deep pools full of haunting echoes and glimmers of sunlight, and her voice even used sparingly is like glimpses of half-realized dreams and half-forgotten memories." It's really disappointing she doesn't get a ton of time in this film, and they did this with Rebel Moon 1 as well, with Ray Fisher's character, who was only in the last 40 minutes or so of that film (if that). Most of the other characters seem so interchangeable. I feel so much when Bae Doona is on the screen, and she does so much with so little. My understanding is she didn't really learn English until she was cast in Cloud Atlas.
You'll hear much of the movie stars and familiar faces that pop up again and again in Tom Tykwer and Lana and Andy Wachowski's sprawling, ambitious Cloud Atlas, from Tom Hanks to Halle Berry to frequent Wachowski Starship performer Hugo Weaving. But the beating heart of the film belongs to...
www.yahoo.com
she also had one of the most bad-ass backstories of any of these characters:
I will probably watch the "fixed" versions in August if it seems significantly different, because these two films were near the bottom of Snyder's output IMO. If the later version is just adding violence and swear words, though, versus a significant restructure, that will be a waste. Again, the pattern is pretty clear -- Snyder might have talented (if quirky/excessive) visuals and putting together a film, but whether it's any good will always depend on the script and dialogue. This story just feels like a clusterf*ck with a lot of things jumbled in.
I actually have never watched The Seven Samurai but I think I picked it up this past year on bluray. That will now go on my list as a film to watch for itself and so I can recognize any homages to it.