Nope, Belle, and HBO DiscoveryMax+?
Vast and virtual vistas, plus what's on the horizon for the best streaming app
Hello!
On this week’s episode of Criticism Is Dead, we discuss Nope and Belle, two films that are better suited for the big screen.
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01:47 Nope, currently playing in theaters, ensnares you in a spectacle that is so grand, so fun, it’s hard to resist.
Jordan Peele’s latest film is such a delight to experience, especially in a movie theater. Its landscape is so vast, its action scenes so well choreographed, its horror so existentially and physically imposing, that it demands to be seen in large scale. (Shout out to cinematographer Hoyte van Hoytema.) The narrative is straightforward enough, but the way that Peele plays with tension — both comedic and scary — and builds out layers of thematic resonance take the film beyond what could just be a perfectly entertaining summer blockbuster. It’s not a perfect movie, by any means, but it is a total pleasure, one that we would be glad to see again and again.
P.S. Origin story:
19:56 Belle, streaming on HBO Max (unfortunately dubbed), is a visually impressive, tech-inflected take on Beauty and the Beast.
We’re a little mixed on Mamoru Hosoda’s latest film. There’s no denying its gorgeous animation, nor its surprisingly good original songs, but other aspects let the movie down. The dialogue, for example, as well as the flatness of the characters (which is not at at all helped by a fairly mediocre English dub). Something about this world — both the inner virtual one and the outer IRL one — is disconnected from actual real-world mechanics, logic, and emotion. But it is interesting, at least, to see this spin on Beauty and the Beast, and to appreciate the ways in which it tries to convey the frenetic, obsessive, all-consuming energy of social media and the internet.
40:02 Plus, a week of chaos in the news for HBO Max.
Bonus links
RIP:
Station Eleven and Himesh Patel hive:
The Bear (2022):
We… love… art!!!!
That’s it for now. See you next week!
— Jenny
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Some credits:
Music: REEKAH
Artwork and design: Sara Macias and Andrew Liu