Try not to blink when watching Kasi Lemmons’ spiritual sequel to Bohemian Rhapsody. You’ll miss half a dozen edits and about three months in narrative. Such is the rapid, montage heavy pace of I Wanna Dance With Somebody, the long time coming Whitney Houston story. If Rhapsody was the Wikipedia scribed life and times of Freddie Mercury, Lemmons’ film is the picture pages wedged in the middle of Houston’s authorised biography. No depth, no grit, no analysis. Pretty and competent. Pretty boring too.
Rian Johnson is a disrupter. His directorial debut – 2012’s Looper – broke the back of paradoxical time travel sci-fi. His take on Star Wars five years later – The Last Jedi – threatened to break the Internet. It is, then, with a deliciously wicked sense for the ironic that Johnson’s latest film – Glass Onion – gleefully lambasts the whole notion of disruption as hollow arrogance. That his obnoxiously self-proclaimed “disrupter” protagonists are each wholly at the lap and call of a cultural leach financier only adds to the fun. Netflix forked out $429m solely for the rights to make Glass Onion, a predominantly housebound folly that will little directly provable financial return. They’re disrupters too.
It’s been such a long time since James Cameron’s largely forgettable Avatar supposedly changed the face of cinema that a recap almost feels due. Or, rather, it would were such a prelude not to extend this second instalment’s already overwhelming runtime. If Avatar was a tale of romance, its sequel – The Way of Water – is one of familial ties. Thematically, little has changed in the transition. The same is true of the now franchise’s questionable approach to indigenous appropriation. And yet, it’s not narrative prowess that will draw the crowds to a Pandora return. Thirteen years of work has fuelled the technological advancement of Avatar 2. It shows.
The Film Blog 