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Reviews
Napoleon (2023)
Impressive, cold and empty
Napoleon? It's quite amazing. Not the spectacle, not the film ... but the way a 2½ hour movie feels crushed and hurried into its screen time. A lot's packed into the 28 years of the eponymous hero's life here, from bloody revolution to exile in the South Atlantic, but it's done in such a frenetic, breathless way, that not only do we never have time to properly 'see' our gallant soldier, we barely glimpse those around him. They are the third violins or the percussion, as the orchestra leader struts from Paris, to Toulon, to Tilsit to Waterloo.
Yes, Vanessa Kirby as Josephine is allowed some screen time to display her idiosyncrasies and beauty to her suitor, but that apart, it's battle, army and war. You sense that Ridley Scott knows his audience may be struggling: 'helpful' names are burnt onto screen to direct the audience. Oh, so that's Tsar Alexander I. Oh, now we're in Austerlitz. Oh there's the leader of Austria (and on the subject of Austria, it's plain annoying to see a comedian - Miles Jupp - hamming it up as Emperor Francis I ... why cast him there?).
The set pieces of the battlefields, the coronation, the location of the First Empire's palaces and country homes are undeniably clever, spectacular and beautiful in equal measure. And at the same time, Scott shows us the ghastliness of war. For this he must be praised. The Waterloo re-enactment is a tour-de-force. But but but - the man at the centre of it all remains as unknowable as the Sphinx he gazes upon in Egpyt. Ridley Scott has done wonderful work. Joaquim Phoenix too. This, however, like the real accomplishments of one of the greatest strategists in our common European past, is best consigned to history.
A Little Water (2019)
STILL WATERS RUN SHALLOW
Poor direction, awful script, dislikable characters and acting as wooden as the boathouse where most of the action's set. The reasons for the four main characters gathering on the lakeside house are logical enough, but - ultimately - we just don't care about them or their privileged self-indulgence: their mood swings suggest a two hour film cut down to this 90 minutes. The score is vapid, the symbolism of the animals and insects leaden. The highlight happens 1 minute in with a quote from Shakespeare. But has the mighty Bard ever been associated with such self-indulgent tosh? Nice location though. But that's it.