Originally published on 15 April 2024.
Last updated on 15 April 2024.
Every quarter I briefly the discuss the movies and TV series I watch. The length of each entry doesn’t reflect my esteem for it: just the fact that some movies or series are easier to say something about.
The complete list of all the movies, series and documentaries I have seen is here.
2024 Q1
Dune: Part Two (2024)
Euphoria (2019, Season 2)
Lady Snowblood (1973, Shurayukihime)
Napoleon (2023)
Succession (2018, Season 1)
The Wheel of Time (2021, Season 2)
Tokyo Vice (2022, Season 1)
True Detective (2014, Season 4)
Entries are more-or-less in the order that I watched them.
Euphoria:
Last time I gave Euphoria the benefit of the doubt, partially based on the strength of the Special episodes. Unfortunately, the second season can’t really reach that level, let alone reach it consistently. That leaves us with very pretty shots, great acting, and stories that are sometimes all over the place. The season’s final two episodes are strong though, and leave our protagonist Rue in a better place. Her road to get there was excruciating to watch — as in, hard to watch because of her actions, as Zendaya’s acting is again stellar.
Napoleon:
More like NOPE-oleon, amirite? (My apologies but I waited for almost 3 months to drop this lame joke on you.)
Amazing cinematography, good performances (Vanessa Kirby as Josephine), Ridley Scott helming a historical epic. This could’ve been good, maybe even great. Unfortunately Ridley Scott delivers a 2,5+ hour version of “and then, and then, and then”, without a clear reason why we should care about these people or the activities they’re engaged in. As one IMDb comment puts it, the movie “feels like the highlight reel of a lengthy miniseries.”
Succession:
This HBO series came highly recommended by my colleagues, and I can see why. The premise is simple: the elderly patriarch of a super-wealthy family (Brian Cox) is supposed to hand over the reins to one of his offspring, except he doesn’t. Cue scheming by the ultra-wealthy extended family.
After an uneven start, it finds its feet around the fifth episode. Not sure what exactly changes there: maybe it’s mainly about tone. Succession is very much a satire, but in the first half it doesn’t quite hit its mark? It’s a thin line between “this is ridiculous” and “this is ridiculous, but it tracks” I guess?
I’ve added this to my list of “(very) well made but no sympathetic characters so no further viewing” TV series, joining House of Cards and Homeland.
True Detective (2014) on
Re-watch: True Detective, season 1:
10 years after it first aired, the original season hasn’t dimmed its brilliance. Rarely, if ever, was a pulpy detective story so vibe-y, so ingrained in its environment and so beautifully shot. Matthew McConaughey and Woody Harrelson are excellently matched. Sure, McConaughey steals the show with his drawling, hypnotic delivery of nihilistic philosophy, but Harrelson delivers a tour de force in his portrayal of toxic masculinity.
Re-watch: The Newsroom, season 1:
This Aaron Sorkin-penned show didn’t age as well as True Detective, or The West Wing. It’s still fun and certainly has its heart-warming moments, but its shortcomings are very apparent, too. The very competent characters that suddenly become dumb as bricks when around their love interests, the righteous soapboxing, the grumpy-but-heart-of-gold protagonists who probably would be insufferable to work with in real life.
Lady Snowblood:
Based on a manga by Kazuo Koike, this bloody Japanese revenge story was a big inspiration for Quentin Tarantino’s Kill Bill and is still very watchable. It boasts an intense lead, beautiful cinematography and brutal, bloody fight scenes.
True Detective, season 4:
10 years after the original, this is the first season not written by Nic Pizzolatto. Indeed, I read that this season was not originally written for True Detective, but was retooled to make it work as a season. This could explain the gratuitous and redundant callbacks to Season 1.
Instead of the sweaty, sun-drenched earlier seasons we’re now in Alaska, during the winter where the sun never rises. This makes everything feel claustrophobic and messes with our sense of time.
It still has a lot of the elements we’ve come to expect, though, like the capable detectives that have their own history (Jodie Foster, Kali Reis), a current case that’s somehow connected to an old case. It leans heavily into the supernatural. However, where the previous seasons said “these events seem supernatural, but are just coincidence”, Night Country says “yep, the supernatural exists” — or it’s just a bunch of unresolved and unexplained threads.
Dune: Part Two:
A few weeks have passed since I saw Part Two in the cinema, and I’m not sure how to rate it. It was undoubtedly good, but personally I didn’t feel the hype as much as some of my friends and colleagues felt.
Partially this is because there are many more deviations from the source material than for the first part. Again, most of them make sense and take care of the differences between the mediums — what works in a book is different from what works in a movie.
For example, in the book the Fremen are unaware of the manipulations of the Bene Gesserit in their religion, and Stilgar is a capable leader who believes in his religion.
In the movie, there’s suddenly a divide between the northern and southern tribes of Fremen, with the southerners suddenly being religious fanatics, and at least Chani is aware of the Bene Gesserit’s manipulation. I like the greater focus on Chani (Zendaya), her agency and her duality: she loves Paul, but doesn’t see him as a messiah. Unfortunately, Stilgar is now a deluded fanatic who is also used as comic relief.
If you liked Part One, you’ll probably still like Part Two, too, though. The basics (characters, worldbuilding, plots) are already in place so the movie can move quickly. The cinematography is still mesmerising, and the cast is still an embarrassment of riches.
The Wheel of Time:
At this point there are so many deviations from the book, I won’t even try to list them. And I’m not even mad, because Season 2 is a briskly-paced fantasy yarn which, although diverging from the source material, still delivers a lot of the same plot and characters and beats. Great casting, good special effects, amazing production design and costuming. Yep, I’m here for it, please continue. I still have no idea how you’re going to distil 14 books into however many seasons of prestige TV, and I’m looking forward to being surprised.
Tokyo Vice (2022) on Tokyo Vice:
This neon-drenched crime thriller is based on the memoirs of Jake Adelstein, “the first non-Japanese reporter working for one of Japan’s largest newspapers” in the 1990’s. He starts at the bottom of the ladder, makes some rookie mistakes, but slowly his peers and superiors warm up to him. He befriends fellow expat Samantha, a hostess in a yakuza-controlled night club; Sato, a member of the same yakuza gang; and the cops Miyamota and Katagiri. We follow Jake as he quickly becomes entangled in their affairs in the shadowy underworld of Tokyo.
I never really watched Miami Vice, but I imagine it looked much like this: very stylish and deliberate, with a cool but oppressive atmosphere pervading every shot. Michael Mann was executive producer on both Miami and Tokyo Vice, and directed the latter’s pilot, setting the tone for the rest of the series.
Most of the cast is splendid (Ken Watanabe is a powerhouse as the gruff father figure Katagiri), but I’m afraid I have to ding it some points for Ansel Elgort as the lead. He plays the initial wide-eyed, enthusiastic and driven reporter with verve, but the turn towards the more experienced and cynical version of himself is less convincing.
