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Film: Napoleon 

I enjoyed The Last Duel, so I was quite looking forward to Napoleon despite the negative reviews. I went in happy to overlook whatever flaws took place in the narrative for some cool battle sequences. But I came away unimpressed and wanted to know a lot more about Napoleon. First flaw - you would hardly know why Napoleon is considered one of the greatest military commanders of all time by watching the film. He actually seems like a bit of a loser. Also it seemed to me he dumbfucked his way into power in the film and I can hardly believe this is historically accurate. The research on the military-political stuff felt wikipedia level deep. So fine, the film concentrates more on the Josephine love story. But does it? I feel like the majority of scenes were the two of them sitting on a couch together with glazed, confused looks interspersed with some unsexy doggystyle scenes. In this respect, it had similarities with the Last Duel. Did Scott do some research on sex in that era? Was it predominantly doggystyle that women didn't enjoy? I wonder...

The best parts are few and far between moments of self-deprecating humor - Kirby taunting Napoleon's "costume," his attempts to impress children by taking credit for burning Moscow, describing the fate of his pork chop coming to his plate, etc. But the humor bits didn't land because we weren't invested enough in the narrative.