The Last Temptation of Christ review

 Number 659 on the top 1000 films of all time is Martin Scorsesee's epic religious-drama 'The Last Temptation of Christ.'

'The Last Temptation of Christ' is a semi-fictionalised retelling of the last days of Jesus Christ (Wilhelm Defoe) after he is betrayed by Judas (Harvey Keitel.) It portrays Jesus as battling against different temptations like love, sex and the devil himself.

Last Temptation felt like the wet fever dream of an American White Christian Nationalist. And Defoe's portrayal of Jesus Christ was like a crazed televangelist. Everything was just too surreal and bizarre to really take seriously. Although I enjoyed the original score which brought together traditional instrumentation and musicians from Pakistan, Egypt, Turkiye and Armenia, they sounded like something I would hear in the throes of a fever.

This was only exacerbated with Defoe's very peculiar portrayal of Christ, not as some benevolent saviour of humanity, but as a revolutionary who would bring about the revelation whether humanity was prepared for it or not. It was all very much this is my army and this is my revolution. I'm almost surprised that he didn't go all Pete Hegseth and start talking about holy wars, warriors and crusades. However, perhaps some of this might be down to the writing.

Last Temptation was based on Nikos Kazantzaki' book of the same name. It was adapted by screenwriter Paul Schrader. Despite how he received the credit, most of his script, including all the dialogue was rewritten by Scorsesee himself as well as fellow writer Jay Cocks. Perhaps that's why all of the dialogue seemed over-the-top.

The film was also over-long at almost three hours with the last part of the film acting as a superfluously long denoument/epilogue. Of course, Scorsesee is the same director who went onto to direct the marathon-long 'The Irishman,' so long films shouldn't be a surprise to me. Yet the length of Last Temptatin wasn't justified. And the ending just stretched on forever. 

It was a bit like LOTR with its ten endings. Don't get me wrong, LOTR will always be a GOAT of cinema, but did we need ten endings? Similarly here, did we need a fever dream ending on top of a fever-dream film? Too many dreams. Too much dreaming. It was like I was watching Inception again.

This isn't even getting into all of the controversy about the film. Last Temptation severely angered the Catholic church for portraying Jesus getting it on with Mary Magadelene, but just like the film itself, this review is becoming long and surreal. I'll finish it by saying I didn't care for this film at all.

Fantastic Mr Fox review

 Number 496 on the top 1000 films of all time is Wes Anderson's animated comedy Fantastic Mr Fox.

Based on Roald Dahl's 1970 story, Fantastic Mr Fox follows Foxy Fox (George Clooney) who regularly thieves from three farmers: Boggis (Robin Hurlstone,) Bunce (Hugo Guiness) and Bean (Michael Gambon.) These farmers swear revenge on Foxy Fox endangering him, his wife Felicity (Meryl Streep) and his family and friends.

This was a stop-motion film and the animation was absolutely gorgeous. I loved the rich Autumnal colour schemes. The colour truly popped. All the different animals looked adorable too from Foxy Fox to his badger lawyer voiced by Bill Murray to the villainous rat voiced by Willem Defoe.

However, this star-studded cast and lovely animation wasn't enough to stop this ultimately being a film made for kids. I was hoping that it would be a family friendly film that would appeal to children and parents alike a la Monsters Inc or Toy Story, but this really was meant for little children. And that did hurt its watchability factor. Maybe I'm just a grumpy old man, but maybe it was seemingly obvious that this film was always meant for kids. Children would love the bright colour scheme and the adorable animal characters.

Nevertheless, the conflicts were very juvenile such as the subplot of Mr Fox's son Ash Fox and his rivalry with his cousin Kristofferson. Ash feels threatened and jealous of his seemingly perfect cousin. This is a subplot that would be obviously appealing to little kids but not grumpy, old curmudgeons like me. All the violence bordered on cartoonish, like Mr Fox and his oppossum sidekick climbing up an electric fence. With every climb, the electric shocks x-ray their entire bodies. 

And a lot of the dialogue was contrived. It didn't seem natural and I think that some of that was down to George Clooney himself. I noticed that in a lot of conversations Mr Fox had with his son there were these strange hesitations at the end of each line. You could argue that, at first, this signifies their strained relationship. But their relationship fixes throughout the film, so why are there still the strange hesitations?

I think if I was twenty years younger I would have loved this film, but, now,  I'm far too much of a grumpy old man. It was good as far as it went, but that wasn't very far at all.