Dune (2021)

There’s a moment in Denis Villeneuve’s long-anticipated Dune that will take your breath away. However, I can’t tell you what that moment is – not because it’d be a spoiler to do so, but because there are so many of these moments in Dune that it’s impossible to predict which one will do it for you. It isn’t likely to be the next Star Wars as its marketing declares, but Dune is majestic in its enormity, and even with its simultaneous release on HBO Max it demands to be seen in the largest, loudest auditorium available. 

Paul Atreides (Timothée Chalamet) reckons with his destiny as an ersatz “chosen one” when his father, Duke Leto of House Atreides (Oscar Isaac), is assigned custody of the unforgiving desert world Arrakis – a planet populated by colossal sandworms, the native Fremen people, and the hallucinogenic drug known as spice. While Paul and his mother Lady Jessica (Rebecca Ferguson) study his prophetic dreams, the corpulent Baron Harkonnen (Stellan Skarsgård) schemes against House Atreides in his quest to retake Arrakis. 

 

These are only some of the things that happen in Dune, and there are so many more characters who don’t fit into a brief plot synopsis. The scope of the film is compounded by the fact that Villeneuve is consciously adapting only half of Frank Herbert’s dense 600-page novel, with a fairly logical if abrupt breaking point midway through the story. I say “abrupt” only because by that point Dune is so resolutely in its groove and the audience is well and truly vibing with the film that any stopping point would feel jarring; put another way, I would have been just as content to see another two hours and thirty-six minutes. It’s not that the movie is unsatisfying, but rather that it’s too satisfying to stop, like a theme park dark ride you don’t want to get off.

 

Perhaps appropriate for a movie set largely on a desert planet, Denis Villeneuve is on a real hot streak. I haven’t seen his 2013 Enemy yet, but every other film since that year – Prisoners, Sicario, Arrival, and Blade Runner 2049 – has been a winner. Particularly in the latter two, both science fiction films, Villeneuve is finding his niche: speculative futures of overwhelmingly immense scale, where humanity is both dwarfed and magnified in the shadow of the profound. Amy Adams had to reckon with an expanding sense of the cosmos in Arrival, while Blade Runner 2049 was Ryan Gosling’s confrontation with his own ebbing humanity in a foreboding neon cityscape. Here, in the year 10191, everything is enormous – the worms, the spacecraft, the political maneuvering, and the veritable heft of destiny (manufactured or genuine) – and no filmmaker is better equipped than Villeneuve to carry those weights.

 

An IMAX screen so perfectly befits the size of Dune, but its speaker system is perhaps even better suited for the task. Throughout the film your bones will rattle, thanks to Hans Zimmer, who turns in the Hans Zimmer-iest score imaginable. (Equally Zimmer is the sprawling release of the score, which spans three albums and nearly five hours of orchestration.) It’s atonal, lingering, and eclectic, perhaps the only film score in recent memory to include both an electric guitar, bagpipes, and a didgeridoo. The bass shakes to the point where it’s unclear whether you’re hearing a spaceship in flight or Hans Zimmer in action; either way, the sound design is so meticulous and acute that it becomes a character in and of itself. See also the moments when Paul and his mother use “the voice,” a kind of Jedi mind trick that erases free will; the first time we heard “the voice,” its bass shattering eardrums before the words make it to our auditory canals, everyone in my theater sat up a little straighter.

 

I think diehard fans of the novel will enjoy what Villeneuve has built, and it seems that more casual filmgoers are digging it, too. I came to Dune from the unique position of having just read the book – or, at least, half of it; I had wanted to finish the novel entire before seeing the movie, but as it stood I got within twenty pages of the film’s chosen ending. (I promise I’ll finish before Dune Part II, the sequel which seems inevitable now.) In the process of translation, some of the characters got flattened, particularly and disappointingly the Duke himself. Duke Leto is a terrific character in the novel, torn between his duty, political machinations beyond his control, and his personal loyalty to his bloodline; he’s heroic, chivalric, and gracious, but the film seems content to let Oscar Isaac’s natural charisma do most of the character work. Conversely, Timothée Chalamet’s Paul is more human and accessible than the novel’s distant and aloof protagonist, perhaps because of his increased self-consciousness of his place as the manufactured messiah of Arrakis. 

 

Instead of diving deep into the characters, it seems that Villeneuve has gone the more unconventional route of letting his visual design do the character work. There are some lines about backstory, and there’s a clever narrative device in the form of Paul’s talking schoolbooks, but largely Villeneuve lets the images do the talking. It’s a mode of storytelling that seems to have fallen out of favor of late, trusting your set designers and cinematographer to do their job well. The Harkonnens are the villains because of their unfathomable ugliness, their unlit home and grotesque bodies belying the depravity of their souls; save for his distinctive voice, it’s almost impossible to recognize Stellan Skarsgård beneath the mass of flesh that is Baron Vladimir. Likewise, the Atreides are the heroes because of how gosh-darn pretty they are, warm and human. They’re also the only ones who seem to be having any fun, especially Jason Momoa as the swashbuckling (and brilliantly named) Duncan Idaho, about whom I would surely watch a miniseries or two. 

 

Dune is a movie into which you can easily sink, like a hot bath or a deep hill of shifting sand (both of which figure prominently in striking images within the film). It’s as much an atmosphere as a narrative, like the moodier bits of Blade Runner 2049 dialed up to eleven. Most importantly, Dune is like a dream, as in the best cinema can be, from which one does not want to awaken. Maybe it’s a little obtuse, maybe it’s bigger and more ambitious than it ought to be, but Denis Villeneuve has earned the right to make idiosyncratic science fiction. Dune is an event, a kind of heraldic “welcome back” moment for moviegoers who may have forgotten (as indeed I did) what kind of narrative spectacle best belongs in the cinema. 

 

Dune is rated PG-13 for “sequences of strong violence, some disturbing images, and suggestive material.” Directed by Denis Villeneuve. Written by Jon Spaihts, Denis Villeneuve, and Eric Roth. Based on the novel by Frank Herbert. Starring Timothée Chalamet, Rebecca Ferguson, Oscar Isaac, Josh Brolin, Stellan Skarsgård, Dave Bautista, Zendaya, Charlotte Rampling, Jason Momoa, and Javier Bardem.

mother! (2017)

I can honestly say that after Black Swan (which I listed on my Personal Canon as a film that influenced the way I approach movies), I was ready to follow Darren Aronofsky anywhere, even through the strange exhibit that was Noah, diverting if peculiar in its biblical revisionism. With mother!, however, a film that sacrifices signification for surreal spectacle, writer/director Aronofsky has transparently lost the plot.

In many ways, mother! most resembles Eraserhead by way of Rosemary’s Baby, a nightmarish portrait of a young woman (Jennifer Lawrence) and her older writer’s-blocked husband (Javier Bardem), whose pastoral life restoring a home is interrupted by the arrival of two strangers (Ed Harris and Michelle Pfeiffer) who bring with them a litany of family strife, consumption, and destruction.

mother! is perhaps the most infuriating film I can recall seeing in a very long time, and I say that as a person who very much appreciates a film that asks its audience to perform leaps of analytical reading. I like a film that makes me think, and there are few passions in my life more ardent than the work of interpretation, of thoughtful analysis, and of cinematic cryptography, but I have never wanted to throw something at a screen more than I did during mother!. There were more than a few moments when I wanted to walk away from the film – something I almost never do because of my abiding devotion to the sacredness of narrative – though it would seem that Aronofsky does not share that same investment in storytelling. mother! is catastrophically ghastly, maddening for its steadfast refusal to give the audience anything to which we can cling when the film verges, as it is wont to do, between poles of frustrating uncertainty and chaotic turmoil.

In a film where the characters are not named, even in the end credits, we have to grasp onto the performers to give the characters some kind of identity. Javier Bardem is captivating, though perhaps the word should be used in the sense of “abducting,” as the film more closely resembles a hostage situation than a moviegoing experience. One hires Bardem for his ability to turn a smile into menace without adjusting a muscle on his face, and on this count he excels as the husband (“Him,” in the credits). He’s scary, and he’s emotionally abusive, but I need more from a film than watching Jennifer Lawrence in perpetual terror for two hours. Her acting in mother! is first-rate, and she’s a perfect audience surrogate as she too faces bewilderment over the myriad of home invasions she suffers. She’s clearly terrified, but at no point did I feel that same fear. I felt angry – furious, even – at the way the film left me at the door without bothering to address the nonsense “logic” governing the whole thing.

Perhaps this is Aronofsky’s whole point, that we are, like Lawrence, thrown into a world that refuses to make sense, that tortures us to the point of despair. I did not, however, have the opportunity to despair because the sensory overload in the film transgresses far beyond human registers into the point of feeling naught but numb. Furthermore, there are things in this movie that are just vile, that would cross the rubicon of the palatable if for one second we had any emotional involvement beyond its appearance as the latest in an inventory of tasteless violence. Aronofsky peppers the film with halfhearted biblical allusions, as if applying Burroughs’s cut-up technique to the book of Genesis. (A riff on Cain & Abel approaches some interesting ground, especially as Aronofsky tips his hand that he’s going for the story of the first murder, but it flies off the rails once the film and its characters appear to have forgotten that it had happened.) If the film is an Old Testament allegory, though, what are Mother Mary and talk of forgiveness doing in the midst of all this? Noah had a similarly loosey-goosey take on textual fidelity, but at least that film had the good sense to throw in rock monsters to keep us engaged. In their place, mother! walks instead through a first-person videogame of destruction, wanton lasciviousness, religious zealotry, and the devastation of a war zone without bothering to clue us into the point of it all.

And if pointlessness is the point, if the object of the game is to obfuscate the message with colliding allegories, isn’t there a way to do that without nauseating your audience to the point of disconnection? I cannot oversell how frustratingly vile this film is, how fiercely irritating it becomes when it, like its houseguests, overstays its welcome and refuses even to gesture at what it’s trying to accomplish. It abuses us and taunts us with our unwillingness to leave. mother! undercooks its plot, overloads its allegory, and assaults the senses until anyone who cared has long since checked out. Aronofsky then slams on the gas in the film’s final minutes, recognizing he’s almost out of time and accelerating past the event horizon of the point I presume he’s trying to make – that people are terrible and God is an abusive, aloof narcissist. mother! leaves its audience with more sound and fury than its narrative could signify, but mostly I’m just left with fury – empathic fury at first, but ultimately just fury at being suckered into a two-hour vanity project that tells us only that Aronofsky is infatuated with Lawrence and with seeing her suffer while wearing translucent blousy nightwear. And if sadism is your thing, mother! is a rip-roaring good time. I, on the other hand, find it grotesque and infuriating.

mother! is rated R for “strong disturbing violent content, some sexuality, nudity, and language.” Written and directed by Darren Aronofsky. Starring Jennifer Lawrence, Javier Bardem, Ed Harris, and Michelle Pfeiffer.

Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Men Tell No Tales (2017)

Here’s the thing about Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Men Tell No Tales: for all that critics have contorted themselves to work the film’s subtitle into some kind of indictment of whether this particular tale should have been told, it is for all intents and purposes Pirates of the Caribbean 5, resurrecting plotlines from past films and trotting them out again for more high-seas adventure. So if you’re already weary of Captain Jack Sparrow and his ilk, this one won’t win you over. For those of us dyed-in-the-wool landlubbers, though, it’s more of the same good fun.

Captain Jack Sparrow (Johnny Depp) is down on his luck when he learns that the ghostly pirate Captain Salazar (Javier Bardem) is coming for him and the rest of the pirates on the seas, including the lucre-laden Hector Barbossa (Geoffrey Rush). Meanwhile, Henry Turner (Brenton Thwaites) needs Jack’s help to seek out the Trident of Poseidon to free his father Will Turner (Orlando Bloom) from the curse of the Flying Dutchman, while horologist Carina Smyth (Kaya Scodelario) knows how to read the map to find it.

I was struck by how many parts of Dead Men felt familiar, almost like clues along a treasure map that loyal fans know how to read. I first caught it when I noticed that the romantic theme from At World’s End was repurposed for an action cue involving Henry Turner; I chalked it up to new composer Geoff Zanelli slyly remastering Hans Zimmer’s superlative earlier score, but then the similarities really started manifesting. There’s a curse, and Jack’s responsible; there’s a mystical artifact buried on an island to which the compass points; there’s a witch and a crew of inhuman pirates with a decaying ship; we’ve got a chase through cobblestone streets and an execution sequence that doesn’t quite go as planned; and there’s a well-intentioned pretty boy paired off with an unconventional woman. I would go so far as to hazard a guess that every scene in Dead Men involves a callback to another moment in the franchise.

What I can’t determine, doubtless because I am too uncritical a critic in my appreciation for a film series that’s been a favorite for nearly half my life, is whether this is for better or worse. Put another way, I’m not sure if the franchise has run out of ideas or if the crew of Dead Men, like Roald Dahl on You Only Live Twice (itself a fifth film in a franchise), have taken stock of the preceding films and attempted to canonize the rules and tropes that govern such a movie, for there does seem to be a sense that Dead Men is going back to square one for a kind of velvety-soft reboot and revivification. I did not, however, feel that On Stranger Tides strayed too far from the Pirates brand and indeed appreciated the new corner it carved out in the universe. Dead Men does, then, feel a bit like playing it safe, not unlike the ship at the film’s climax which risks falling into an immense cavern (though I never perceived that metaphorical cavern).

What Dead Men does contribute is a deeper sense of the mythology of the universe, just ahead of what might be an extension of the franchise (and yes, the post-credits scene is, as ever in these movies, pivotal). We’ve got flashbacks and “secret origins” and retroactive continuity vis-à-vis the curse of the Dutchman, as well as an expanded family tree that Geoffrey Rush has compared (spoilers in the link) to a Dickens novel, an assessment with which I’d have to agree; Dead Men feels very much like “the next chapter,” perhaps more than On Stranger Tides did.

But for all the critical hemming and hawing over whether this is a fresh or stale “next chapter,” I have to say that it’s a fun one, and I think one’s overall take on this Pirates film has very much to do with the degree to which one has ever enjoyed a Pirates film. As before, you’ve got spooky villains with quirky gimmicks, which are animated with grisly compelling detail, and you’ve got the trademark Pirates brand of humor on display, from an uproarious bank heist that goes awry in the strangest way to hilarious confusion over the precise meaning of the word “horologist.” But there are no false notes, no moments where one might tweet out #NotMyPirates. There’s continuity here, not unlike the devoted patience one affords the Marvel Cinematic Universe, which is thrice as long.

In short, dead men tell no tales, but franchise newcomers Joachim Rønning and Espen Sandberg have directed a safe yet entertaining one that makes me equally, not less, enthusiastic about the prospect of a sixth Pirates film. (Remember, Penelope Cruz’s Angelica is still out there somewhere...) Dead Men is a useful primer on what the Pirates franchise has done, and here’s hoping that a sixth will demonstrate what it can do.

Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Men Tell No Tales is rated PG-13 for “sequences of adventure violence, and some suggestive content.” Directed by Joachim Rønning and Espen Sandberg. Written by Jeff Nathanson and Terry Rossio. Starring Johnny Depp, Javier Bardem, Geoffrey Rush, Brenton Thwaites, and Kaya Scodelario.

Skyfall (2012)

One of my favorite narrative devices is Chekhov’s Gun – that plot element that is introduced solely because it’s going to pay off later.  If you see a gun, you know it’s going to be fired (or used in some other meaningful way).  Skyfall, the 23rd James Bond film, is littered with many such rewarding moments, leading me to label it “Chekhov’s Bond.”

And oh, is that a good thing.  Skyfall is one of the best Bond films in recent memory, even surpassing Casino Royale in several important ways.

After a brush with death in a fantastic pre-credits sequence, James Bond (Daniel Craig) is called back into active service when a series of intelligence attacks puts the life of M (Judi Dench) in danger.  It’s up to 007 to stop Raoul Silva (Javier Bardem) and find out just why he wants M dead – fortunately, Bond has the help of quartermaster “Q” (Ben Whishaw) and slinky secret agent Eve (Naomie Harris).

Since Daniel Craig was cast as the sixth (official) Bond, Skyfall is the film for which we’ve been waiting.  Sure, Casino Royale was breathtakingly realistic in its prequel treatment of the iconic superspy, but its plausibility lacked a certain Bond-iness.  No Q, no one-liners to speak of, and no martinis:  Skyfall restores all of these to the Bond mythos and, without spoiling anything, sets up an exciting fresh-but-familiar direction for the franchise. 

There is much about Skyfall that feels familiar.  There are nods to bygone Bonds – Goldfinger’s Aston Martin appears, the explosion at MI6 recalls The World Is Not Enough, and there’s a cryptic allusion to Jaws – but these feel organic rather than forced, acknowledging the long legacy of the series on this, its fiftieth anniversary (Dr. No debuted in 1962).  Yet these references are not what makes Skyfall such a return to form; rather, there’s a sense that this is, finally, a Bond movie and not a Bond prequel.  Silva is more a Bond villain than Le Chiffre or Dominic Greene, the return of Q’s gadgetry is unexpectedly welcome, and when Craig adjusts his cufflinks after a spectacular action sequence he brings to life a Bond worthy at last to stand beside Connery and Brosnan.

Craig isn’t the only one doing a marvelous job here.  Though Bond films haven’t always been renowned for their spot-on acting, Skyfall is filled with talented stars who are as compelling as anything this side of the Oscar season.  Craig maintains the gravitas established in the last two films but cuts loose enough to bring that Bond sense of humor to bear, wisecracking in the middle of an interrogation and punning his way through a final confrontation.  And Bardem is a suitably creepy foe, his blond locks and impeccable scheme distinguishing him from his “other” villainous role in No Country for Old Men.  Whishaw and Harris too are welcome additions to the series, with their roles set up for future appearances.

Let’s not forget Ralph Fiennes and Albert Finney, who play a government official and a helpful groundskeeper, respectively; they’re two reliable actors with long pedigrees, and they add that likely air of dignity they always bring.  But the “breakout” star of Skyfall is Judi Dench, in her seventh outing as M – “outing” being the operative word there, since she gets to step out of the office quite a bit, even more than she did as the hostage in The World Is Not Enough.  Dench gets plenty to do here, lending a hand in a few action sequences and layering emotional depth onto what has usually been a stuffy desk job.  While her talent comes as no surprise, we’re blessed that Skyfall takes full advantage of it.

Director Sam Mendes was perhaps an unlikely choice to helm a Bond film, known more for his introspective American Beauty than anything else.  He brings that same interiority to bear on Skyfall, but he does it without sacrificing any of the big-budget spectacle we’ve come to expect from 007.  Two separate train sequences, a great chase scene in the middle of London’s busiest tube station, and a thrilling shoot-out in a decaying British manor – Skyfall has enough major action pieces to tick off the boxes and more.  Mendes is surprisingly deft with these, controlling our perspective without resorting to any shaky-cam shenanigans.  These are smart, stable action sequences, reminding me once more how much I’d like a Christopher Nolan Bond movie (but then that’s me getting distracted).

Skyfall loses none of the Craig era’s approach toward relevance; Silva’s plot recalls Wikileaks and the worst of chickens coming home to roost, while M’s response is a reminder of how much the world has changed in the last decade (a wry wink, perhaps, to the satellite laser of death from 2002’s Die Another Day).  But Skyfall also emphasizes how much Bond still matters; there’s a very interesting comparison to be made here with The Dark Knight Rises, in that both took their heroes back to Square One to remind them that their true strength lies in their beginnings. 

With a return to form to match Bond’s revisiting of his roots, Skyfall is a great reminder that the sky (at least, post-Quantum of Solace) isn’t falling – rather, it’s the limit.  Whenever we see “Bond 24,” it’s already primed for greatness.

Skyfall is rated PG-13 “for intense violent sequences throughout, some sexuality, language and smoking.”  It being a Bond film, there are many action sequences, plenty of gunfire, and bloody consequences thereof.  Bond also seduces several women, though no nudity is seen.  An F-bomb, a few cigarettes, and several cocktails (including that famous martini) are included, as well.  Ultimately, Skyfall is no less appropriate than any other Bond film.

Stay tuned for Wednesday’s review of Steven Spielberg’s Lincoln, followed by a Thanksgiving surprise!  (P.S. – I’m aware this is the first Bond Film reviewed on this site – don’t worry, that’s an oversight that will be corrected before long...)