Napoleon (Ridley Scott)

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Phoenix

I’m the hostess of the dinner
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Apr 9, 2005
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I’m into this, it looks silly and epic. They don’t make them like that anymore.
 
Not me seeing that title and thinking it was the Gladiator sequel :manson:
 
I walked through the set of this on my way to work by accident last year

IMG_3023.jpeg
 
I think we have enough CURRENT tyrants as it is without me needing to watch any OLD ones in a glitzy movie.
 
This seems to be getting mostly positive first reactions. Exciting :disco:
 
Well this was sadly yet another listlessly directed Ridley Scott movie with no particular narrative thrust or point of view. It felt like a filmed wikipedia entry of key events in Napoleon's life, but it never really got under the skin of the man or even sufficiently explained his popularity or why he was able to rise to power.

The battle scenes were decent enough and it had some decent moments (the burning of Moscow was nice and eery, and the relationship with Vanessa Kirby was intriguing, if a bit underdeveloped). But none of it felt like it really amounted to anything.
 
I wonder if the double length Apple TV version will be any better? I'm going to wait for that.

It's a shame this hasn't been better received, but I don't think Ridley Scott's been at the top of his game for a while.
 
To be fair it did feel like it was cramming too much in. One other complaint I had is that it covered about 30 years of history and yet neither Joaquin Phoenix nor Vanessa Kirby appeared to age a day. It would have benefited from just focusing on one part of his life/career IMO.

But ultimately yes, the impression I got from this and Gucci (less so the Last Duel, which was also overlong but worked a lot better due to the three-part format) is of a director who's just running out of fumes. It tracks, he's 85 years old! But he's clearly not a good enough judge of his own material to trim the fat, but also too powerful for anybody else to step in and demand changes. The man is in desperate need of a judicious editor.

I liked Killers of the Flower Moon a lot more, but I get a similar feeling from Scorcese and his recent spate of four hour epics.
 
Funnily enough when I saw the running time I was planning on waiting to watch it on Apple in instalments like a mini series anyways, so if they increase it and make it better it’ll make no difference to me
 

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