Napoleon

Ridley Scott delivers a spectacular but flavourless French history lesson.

If film fans trek to their local cinema, the meticulously staged war sequences, played like chess games, will keep them intrigued.

The best thing about this Napoleon can be found in the scenes that reproduce the intense relationship between Bonaparte and his first wife, Josephine. [Full review in Spanish]

I feel like Ridley Scott and Joaquin Phoenix dislike Napoleon too much to actually make a film about Napoleon.

Phoenix is a wonderful actor, but seems miscast to the point where you wonder if that was the point.

The result is a colossal bore that is never passionate, exciting, sexy or entertaining—save for exploding horses with their guts blown all over the landscape.

What is this movie meant to be? It moves at gratifying speed, but looks rushed and downright dingy at times—an especially disappointing point, because if Ridley Scott is hardly given to introspection, he is nimble at making surfaces shine.

Although masterful battle scenes abound, at the core of the film is Napoleon's mercurial fascination with Josephine. Kirby is sublimely layered, while Phoenix is creepily unhinged. It’s a portrayal of a relationship unlike any you’ve ever seen.

A huge display of pageantry on the battlefield and human squalor in the bedroom. Magnificent to look at, Vanessa Kirby shines as the manipulative Josephine, Joaquin Phoenix mumbles and murmurs as the lead.

A deeply flawed work filled with flashes of brilliance surrounded by poorly paced and half baked connective tissue that never really allows its stronger impulses to blossom.