I caught The Dog Stars this weekend. It was…fine, I guess. I know nothing about the book, so maybe my issues stem from the source material, but the film seemed like it was being pulled in two opposed thematic directions. Like, 80% of the runtime, it’s a snoozy little exercise in navel-gazing about what being “civilized” means in the context of the post-apocalypse. I’m paraphrasing, but that seems to be the core question the characters are grappling with. However, because it’s a big budget Ridley Scott production, there’s several action sequences with the spare parts of a Mad Max movie, and one sequence in particular which feels like the production took a pit stop in the world of Fallout for a scene. Tonally, these things are at odds with the rest of the movie. However, they’re also the only parts which had any juice. The rest of the movie was just kind of dull and predictable. Pretty aerial photography though. Scott still has a knack for widescreen spectacle. 3/5, but I admit that’s probably overly generous.
I caught The Dog Stars this weekend. It was…fine, I guess. I know nothing about the book, so maybe my issues stem from the source material, but the film seemed like it was being pulled in two opposed thematic directions. Like, 80% of the runtime, it’s a snoozy little exercise in navel-gazing about what being “civilized” means in the context of the post-apocalypse. I’m paraphrasing, but that seems to be the core question the characters are grappling with. However, because it’s a big budget Ridley Scott production, there’s several action sequences with the spare parts of a Mad Max movie, and one sequence in particular which feels like the production took a pit stop in the world of Fallout for a scene. Tonally, these things are at odds with the rest of the movie. However, they’re also the only parts which had any juice. The rest of the movie was just kind of dull and predictable. Pretty aerial photography though. Scott still has a knack for widescreen spectacle. 3/5, but I admit that’s probably overly generous.