Author: allen0997
Dune ~ A Capsule Movie Review
Dune
~ A Capsule Movie Review by Allen Kopp ~
Frank Herbert’s famous science fiction novel, Dune, was first published in 1965. It is a long book, over 700 pages, a difficult and rather tedious book to read. Dune is now a long movie (two hours and forty minutes), and this is only Part One. Part Two will be along at some future time. We’ll be watching for it.
Dune, the movie, is a serious science fiction film, meaning that it’s for the thinking grown-ups in the audience and requires a lot of attention to keep track of what’s going on, what just happened, and what’s going to happen next. The main character is a boy-man named Paul Atreides (a grown man but still rather like a boy). He is the son of a government leader Duke Leto Atreides and Duke Leto’s “concubine,” a woman called Lady Jessica. They live on an alien (to us) planet called Caladan. Lady Jessica has been teaching Paul the special powers of the religious order to which she belongs called the Bene Gesserit. Paul has been having dreams that might or might not be visions involving the planet called Arrakis. Do these dreams/visions mean that he has a unique destiny among his people?
Arrakis is important to the people of Caladan because a valuable spice, mélange, is found only there. Mélange extends life and perception. It is also necessary for instantaneous interstellar space travel between planets.
Arrakis is a desert planet, a very inhospitable place. A race of people called the Fremen live on Arrakis. The Fremen must share their planet with gigantic and deadly “sand worms.” The cruel Harkonnens control Arrakis. The Fremen have been trying to expel the Harkonnens from Arrakis for a long time, but without success. Unexpectedly, the Emperor has ordered the Harkonnens to leave Arrakis and has awarded control of the planet to the House of Atreides. The Emperor has set up a conflict between House Atreides and House Harkonnen, to force them into a war that will weaken both of them and benefit himself. Duke Leto Atreides wants to strike an alliance with the Fremen to harness their “desert power” to outwit the Emperor.
Paul Atreides travels to Arrakis with his mother and father. When a crowd of Fremen gathers to witness their arrival, they begin chanting a phrase that Paul doesn’t recognize. Lady Jessica explains to Paul that it’s a local prophecy of the Lisan-al-Gaib, the “voice from outer world,” a prophesied Messiah on Arrakis. Will it be revealed that Paul Atreides is the long-awaited Messiah?
The Harkonnens are not going to easily give up control of Arrakis to House Atreides. They sabotage House Atreides at every turn. The Emperor’s wish of war between the two houses is being fulfilled. Paul Atreides and his family are in for some difficult times. Paul, at the end of the movie, is told what has happened to him so far is “only the beginning.”
Dune is weighty science-fiction/fantasy, much more in the vein of The Lord of the Rings than Star Wars. I wouldn’t take my eight-year-old son to see it, if I had an eight-year-old son. He wouldn’t understand it and the sand worms would cause him to have nightmares.
Copyright © 2022 by Allen Kopp
The Castle on Sunset ~ A Capsule Book Review
The Castle on Sunset
~ A Capsule Book Review by Allen Kopp ~
It overlooks the famous Sunset Strip in Hollywood. It stands seven stories tall and was built, in 1929, in imitation of a French chateau. It was an apartment building at first and was later turned into a residential hotel. It has long been a mecca for artists and creative people, in an out of the movie business. It is the Chateau Marmont.
Shawn Levy’s nonfiction book, The Castle on Sunset, is a detailed account of the life of the Chateau Marmont, a Hollywood landmark that has seen its fortunes rise and fall. It has had many different owners over the decades, some indifferent and uncaring, while others were scrupulously caring and attentive. The Chateau Marmont was a quiet, “un-Hollywood” retreat in the thirties through the fifties; a favorite of stage-trained, New York, Method actors in the fifties and sixties who came to Hollywood to make movies; in the seventies and eighties, it was a bohemian enclave, slightly seedy and run-down; in the twenty-first century, it became, with its upgrading and renovations, a trendy destination for hip, young Hollywood. Over the years it went from being a reasonably priced hotel to one that only the wealthy can afford. If you think you can go to Hollywood and stay in the Chateau Marmont, you won’t be able to get in unless you are a Hollywood A-lister. (Do you know anybody who is? Neither do I.)
I might not have learned much that I didn’t already know by reading The Castle on Sunset, but it’s intermittently interesting to read, depending on how interested you are in the person being discussed. If you are interested in the death of John Belushi, you will be riveted by the section on his drug overdose death that occurred in one of the hotel’s bungalows in 1982. You didn’t know that Anthony Perkins was gay? He was known for entertaining his male dates at the Chateau Marmont. Movie director Nicholas Ray conceived of his classic film, Rebel Without a Cause, while staying at the Chateau Marmont, while simultaneously having an affair with his sixteen-year-old leading lady, Natalie Wood. He was considerably older than she was.
If you are interested in Hollywood lore, gossip, and naughtiness, you are sure to find The Castle on Sunset a valuable addition to your reading list.
Copyright © 2022 by Allen Kopp
West Side Story ~ A Capsule Movie Review
West Side Story
~ A Capsule Movie Review by Allen Kopp ~
A pattern has been established. Every sixty years, there is a new movie version of the classic American musical stage play, West Side Story. The 1961 movie version was a smash hit, winning eleven Oscars, and starring the late Natalie Wood as Maria. It remains a classic, landmark film sixty years later. The 2021 movie version of West Side Story uses all the modern-day film techniques that didn’t exist in 1961, while retaining the flavor and the spirit of the original stage play. The next version of West Side Story will be in 2081. We’ll be watching for it.
Almost every person in the world knows that West Side Story is a retelling of William Shakespeare’s famous tragedy, Romeo and Juliet. The star-crossed lovers here, though, are not named Romeo and Juliet, but Tony and Maria. Tony is a “white” boy of Polish descent and Maria a “brown” girl from Puerto Rico. (Right away we see there is going to be a problem.) Tony has been in prison for almost killing another boy in a fight. He works, and lives, in a drug store owned by a kind elderly woman named Valentina (played by Rita Moreno, who won a Supporting-Actress Oscar for the 1961 film version). Maria works as a cleaning woman in Gimbel’s department store. “I’m poor,” Maria tells Tony. “I’m poorer,” he says.
The story is set, of course, in New York City in 1957, giving the entire movie a retro look and feel. On the “West Side” of the city, where many Puerto Rican immigrants live, whole sections are being demolished to make way for new buildings. Most of the outdoor scenes are set against piles of rubble.
The young Puerto Rican men in the neighborhood have a gang called the Sharks. The young Anglo men have their own gang called the Jets. The Sharks and the Jets despise each other and are engaged in turf warfare. Each gang wants to be the dominant gang in the neighborhood. This is not going to end well.
Of the lovers Tony and Maria, Tony is a Jet. Maria, while not a member of the rival gang herself, is close to the gang because her intense brother, Bernardo, is the leader of the gang. Bernardo is appalled that Maria, his sister, is cavorting with a member of the Jets. It brings out his killer instinct. The rival gangs are planning a big “rumble” to resolve the issue. They have weapons and, more importantly, high levels of testosterone.
Tony, during one of his romantic interludes with Maria, tells her not to worry. As a member in good standing of the Jets, he can reason with his fellow gang members and persuade them not to fight the Sharks. The year he has spent in prison has made him into something of a pacifist. When the two gangs come face to face in the “salt shed” to fight it out, however, his efforts to bring about “peace” are ineffective. The inevitable consequence is tragedy.
There are many fine moments in West Side Story, some exuberant dance numbers and beautiful, though familiar, music. The whole thing is beautiful to look at. Ansel Elgort as Tony and Rachel Zegler as Maria are sincere and believable. There is lots to like in this remake of West Side Story. If you don’t see anything here to like, then it probably isn’t your kind of movie.
Copyright © 2022 by Allen Kopp
Nightmare Alley ~ A Capsule Movie Review
Nightmare Alley
~ A Capsule Movie Review by Allen Kopp ~
If you are a grown-up movie fan and you are not interested in movies about comic book super heroes (or other youth-oriented claptrap), you might want to take a look at a 2021 movie called Nightmare Alley, directed by Guillermo del Toro and based on a novel by William Lindsay Gresham. It’s a movie that’s bursting with intelligence, cinematic artistry and vintage atmosphere. A feast for the eyes, the ears and the mind.
The story is about the rise and fall of a fake “mentalist” named Stanton Carlisle (played brilliantly by Bradley Cooper). He comes from out of the gutter and, purely by chance, begins working in a seedy traveling carnival. He falls in with a fortune teller/tarot reader named Zeena (Toni Collette), who, if you haven’t guessed, is a complete fake. Zeena has an old, booze-addled husband named Pete. The two of them (Zeena and Pete) teach Stanton their elaborate “code” for reading minds. The idea is to dazzle the audience and make them believe they are truly witnessing the miracle of mind-reading, while, in reality, it’s only a paper moon.
Molly (Rooney Mara) is a fresh-as-a-rosebud girl working in a sideshow in a skimpy outfit with electricity coursing through her body. She believes in Stanton Carlisle and comes to love him. (Can anybody truly love him?) Stanton tells Molly that the two of them can transcend the traveling carnival and graduate to the high-class big time.
A year or so later, Stanton and Molly have “made it.” They have perfected the mind-reading code and are performing before white-tie audiences in swanky nightclubs. (Stanton does the reading of minds while Molly feeds him the cues.) One night, a “consulting psychiatrist” named Lilith Ritter (Cate Blanchett) sees the show and is impressed when she tries to fool Stanton and he sidesteps with a clever dodge. She arranges to meet Stanton later, when she tells him how he can make some real dough with a “spook show” in which he convinces wealthy “marks” that they are reconnecting with long-lost loved ones. These heart-broken rich people, it seems, will pay any amount to believe they are communicating with their dearly departed.
In reptilian Dr. Ritter with her scary red lips, Stanton Carlisle has met his match. He tells her in one of their more intimate moments that she is no good; he knows this because he is no good, either. She tells him he is an “Okie with straight teeth.” We come to see by the end of the movie that she is actually worse than he is.
Stanton Carlisle does some horrible things throughout the two hours and thirty minutes of the movie, but we can’t help liking him (even just a little bit), so that makes him (in my book, at least) an anti-hero. He somehow manages to capture, and keep, the sympathy of the audience through to the end. What a movie! I loved it!
Copyright © 2022 by Allen Kopp
Literary Fictions 