the dunes movie reviews

Back in the day, the two big counterculture sci-fi novels were the libertarian-division Stranger in a Strange Land  by Robert Heinlein, which made the word “grok” a thing for many years (not so much anymore; hardly even pops up in crossword puzzles today) and Frank Herbert ’s 1965 Dune , a futuristic geopolitical allegory that was anti-corporate, pro-eco-radicalism, and Islamophilic. Why mega-producers and mega-corporations have been pursuing the ideal film adaptation of this piece of intellectual property for so many decades is a question beyond the purview of this review, but it’s an interesting one.

As a pretentious teenager in the 1970s, I didn’t read much sci-fi, even countercultural sci-fi, so Dune  missed me. When David Lynch ’s 1984 film of the novel, backed by then mega-producer Dino De Laurentiis , came out I didn’t read it either. As a pretentious twentysomething film buff, not yet professional grade, the only thing that mattered to me was that it was a Lynch picture. But for some reason—due diligence, or curiosity about how my life might have been different had I gone with Herbert and Heinlein rather than Nabokov and Genet back in the day—I read Herbert’s book recently. Yeah, the prose is clunky and the dialogue often clunkier, but I liked much of it, particularly the way it threaded its social commentary with enough scenes of action and cliff-hanging suspense to fill an old-time serial.

The new film adaptation of the book, directed by Denis Villeneuve from a script he wrote with Eric Roth and Jon Spaihts , visualizes those scenes magnificently. As many of you are aware, “Dune” is set in the very distant future, in which humanity has evolved in many scientific respects and mutated in a lot of spiritual ones. Wherever Earth was, the people in this scenario aren’t on it, and the imperial family of Atreides is, in a power play we don’t become entirely conversant with for a while, tasked with ruling the desert planet of Arrakis. Which yields something called “the spice”—that’s crude oil for you eco-allegorists in the audience—and presents multivalent perils for off-worlders (that’s Westerners for you geo-political allegorists in the audience).

To say I have not admired Villeneuve’s prior films is something of an understatement. But I can’t deny that he’s made a more-than-satisfactory movie of the book. Or, I should say, two-thirds of the book. (The filmmaker says it’s half but I believe my estimate is correct.) The opening title calls it “Dune Part 1” and while this two-and-a-half hour movie provides a bonafide epic experience, it’s not coy about connoting that there’s more to the story. Herbert’s own vision corresponds to Villeneuve’s own storytelling affinities to the extent that he apparently did not feel compelled to graft his own ideas to this work. And while Villeneuve has been and likely remains one of the most humorless filmmakers alive, the novel wasn’t a barrel of laughs either, and it’s salutary that Villeneuve honored the scant light notes in the script, which I suspect came from Roth.

Throughout, the filmmaker, working with amazing technicians including cinematographer Greig Fraser , editor Joe Walker , and production designer Patrice Vermette , manages to walk the thin line between grandeur and pomposity in between such unabashed thrill-generating sequences as the Gom Jabbar test, the spice herder rescue, the thopter-in-a-storm nail-biter, and various sandworm encounters and attacks. If you’re not a “Dune” person these listings sound like gibberish, and you will read other reviews complaining about how hard to follow this is. It’s not, if you pay attention, and the script does a good job with exposition without making it seem like EXPOSITION. Most of the time, anyway. But, by the same token, there may not be any reason for you to be interested in “Dune” if you’re not a science-fiction-movie person anyway. The novel’s influence is huge, particularly with respect to George Lucas . DESERT PLANET, people. The higher mystics in the “Dune” universe have this little thing they call “The Voice” that eventually became “Jedi Mind Tricks.” And so on.

Villeneuve’s massive cast embodies Herbert’s characters, who are generally speaking more archetypes than individuals, very well. Timothée Chalamet leans heavily on callowness in his early portrayal of Paul Atreides, and shakes it off compellingly as his character realizes his power and understands how to Follow His Destiny. Oscar Isaac is noble as Paul’s dad the Duke; Rebecca Ferguson both enigmatic and fierce as Jessica, Paul’s mother. Zendaya is an apt, a better than apt, Chani. In a deviation from Herbert’s novel, the ecologist Kynes is gender-switched, and played with intimidating force by Sharon Duncan-Brewster . And so on.

A little while back, complaining about the Warner Media deal that’s going to put “Dune” on streaming at the same time as it plays theaters, Villeneuve said the movie had been made “as a tribute to the big-screen experience.” At the time, that struck me as a pretty dumb reason to make a movie. Having seen “Dune,” I understand better what he meant, and I kind of approve. The movie is rife with cinematic allusions, mostly to pictures in the tradition of High Cinematic Spectacle. There’s “ Lawrence of Arabia ,” of course, because desert. But there’s also “ Apocalypse Now ” in the scene introducing Stellan Skarsgård ’s bald-as-an-egg Baron Harkonnen. There’s “ 2001: A Space Odyssey .” There are even arguable outliers but undeniable classics such as Hitchcock’s 1957 version of “The Man Who Knew Too Much” and Antonioni’s “Red Desert.” Hans Zimmer ’s let’s-test-those-subwoofers score evokes Christopher Nolan . (His music also nods to Maurice Jarre ’s “Lawrence” score and György Ligeti’s “Atmospheres” from “2001.”) But there are visual echoes of Nolan and of Ridley Scott as well.

These will tickle or infuriate certain cinephiles dependent on their immediate mood or general inclination. I thought them diverting. And they didn’t detract from the movie’s main brief. I’ll always love Lynch’s “Dune,” a severely compromised dream-work that (not surprising given Lynch’s own inclination) had little use for Herbert’s messaging. But Villeneuve’s movie is “Dune.”  

Opens in theaters on October 22nd, available on HBO Max the same day. This review was filed on September 3rd in conjunction with the world premiere at the Venice Film Festival.

Glenn Kenny

Glenn Kenny was the chief film critic of Premiere magazine for almost half of its existence. He has written for a host of other publications and resides in Brooklyn. Read his answers to our Movie Love Questionnaire here .

• Timothée Chalamet as Paul Atreides
• Rebecca Ferguson as Lady Jessica
• Oscar Isaac as Duke Leto Atreides
• Josh Brolin as Gurney Halleck
• Stellan Skarsgård as Baron Vladimir Harkonnen
• Dave Bautista as Beast Rabban
• Sharon Duncan-Brewster as Liet Kynes
• Stephen Henderson as Thufir Hawat
• Zendaya as Chani
• Chang Chen as Dr. Wellington Yueh
• David Dastmalchian as Piter De Vries
• Charlotte Rampling as Reverend Mother Mohiam
• Jason Momoa as Duncan Idaho
• Javier Bardem as Stilgar
• Golda Rosheuvel as Shadout Mapes
• Denis Villeneuve
• Jon Spaihts

Writer (based on the novel written by)

• Frank Herbert

Cinematographer

• Greig Fraser
• Hans Zimmer

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Directed by Martin Copping

Every small town has big secrets.

Nicholas Rice, a renowned journalist for the LA Times, returns to his hometown of 'The Dunes'. While he's there, a mysterious figure from his past re-emerges and threatens his entire existence.

Martin Copping Tim Phillipps Alexandra Davies Maria Volk Jacinta Stapleton David Ross Paterson Clyde Boraine Gregory J. Fryer Tatiana Sokolova Kate Neilson

Director Director

Martin Copping

Writer Writer

Editor editor.

Freddy Noriega

Cinematography Cinematography

Chris Ekstein

Sound Sound

James Browning

New Leaf Pictures

Alternative Titles

Kumullar, Дюны

Releases by Date

30 sep 2021, 28 apr 2023, releases by country.

84 mins   More at IMDb TMDb Report this page

Popular reviews

Review by Madfrieza ★★★½

If you like thrillers and had enough patience for The Lost Daughter , Martin Copping’s The Dunes is this year’s Aussie indy for you. 

Much like Maggie Gyllenhaal’s acclaimed directorial debut, Copping offers a slowburn exploration of grief and decades-long drama against a remote oceanside setting. Starring in his first self-penned feature, the writer/actor delivers a standout, understated performance, perfectly complimented by Tim Phillips’ chilling portrayal of a victim-turned-villain, obsessed with Copping’s Nicholas Rice. 

I don’t foresee this being wildly popular with general audiences, but The Dunes has already picked up a variety of awards nominations and wins from across the globe, and it’s just so good to see local talent getting the international accolades they deserve. 

Aussies can watch this bad boy now on Stan.

Review by nichit3 ★★★★

The cinematography on this movie is amazing. The music score goes very well with the pace of the film. The movie is a suspenseful drama that builds slowly over the course of the film. Martin does a good job portraying Nick. This movie has some twists that are unexpected. It was great seeing a cameo by Stumpy and really awesome to see Roundy. Highly recommend!

Review by ClenchedTie136 ★★★★★

It’s a great movie, well thought out plot and immersive acting. A lot of people are randomly review bombing, ignore them, this is definitely a must watch

Review by Richard Propes ★★★★½

It's worth noting up front that The Dunes is the kind of film that demands your attention. It's not one of those "sit and watch while doing the laundry" kinds of films. It's a film you need to watch and listen to if you're really going to appreciate it.

And you will.

The feature writing/directing debut from Martin Copping, who also co-stars in the film, The Dunes introduces us to Nicholas Rice (Copping), a journalist from the Los Angeles Times who has occasion to return to his Australian hometown of The Dunes when the tenant for his home mysteriously disappears leaving no signs of struggle or a break-in to be found. They and all their belongings are gone. Longing to…

Review by Theyo Theyo ½ 3

Please don't believe the high ratings. Ridiculous and terrible acting. It's so Fucking AWFUL!!!!

Don't waste your time and don't be fooled by those fake praises.

Review by David Griffiths ★★★½

A great indy crime thriller brought together by an intriguing plot and wonderful acting performances by Copping and Phillips. The Dunes also shows that Copping is a director to watch.

Review by poopdiggler ★ 1

This was one of the stupidest moves I've seen in a long time! I would beg someone to force me to watch the twilight guy version of Batman before I would watch this again.

Review by Skitch_Hybrid ½ 1

I can't remember the last time a movie sparked this level of visceral hatred in me. I hate this story. I hate the plot. I hate the ending. One could argue about its performances, production values, cinematography or direction. Maybe those are even good but I can't tell because what I hate about it, I hate with the fury of a thousand suns. Nothing could make me watch this movie again and if I could remove the experience of having seen it, I would do it without hesitation.

Review by VisualSpecs

*director* we have just got all the footage back from the shoot and it’s all too shaky! Can we do something in post to fix it!?

*editor* I have the best idea

(Movie releases) why is every shot when he lands in Australia STABILISED!!!

Review by Mitch's Movies ½ 2

Movies like this make me want to screenwrite so that the rest of the world stop laughing at Australian cinema

Review by Najib 🤌 ½

Apaan anjir

Review by thewalkindude77 ★★★

Not without its issues (pacing is a problem) but I found myself getting further drawn in as the story unfolded. Give it a chance

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It's worth noting up front that  The Dunes  is the kind of film that demands your attention. It's not one of those "sit and watch while doing the laundry" kinds of films. It's a film you need to watch and listen to if you're really going to appreciate it. 

And you will. 

The feature writing/directing debut from Martin Copping, who also co-stars in the film,  The Dunes  introduces us to Nicholas Rice (Copping), a journalist from the Los Angeles Times who has occasion to return to his Australian hometown of The Dunes when the tenant for his home mysteriously disappears leaving no signs of struggle or a break-in to be found. They and all their belongings are gone. Longing to reunite with his increasingly capacitated father, Nicholas's journey becomes even more compelling when a mysterious figure from his past shows up and threatens his existence. 

Copping was in my home state of Indiana recently as a guest at Purdue University where he gave a Q&A about his work on  The Dunes  and his work in the video games  Call of Duty: Vanguard  and  Tom Clancy's Rainbow Six: Siege.  An acclaimed voice actor, Copping has crafted quite the winning drama/thriller here that has picked up over 30 awards along its festival journey and has now been picked up by the ever more impressive indie distributor Indie Rights. 

If there's a central theme to  The Dunes,  it's dealing with what happens when we don't come to terms with and/or deal with our past. The way we get there, which I'm certainly not delving into here, is absolutely captivating and becomes even more riveting once William Night, or Nighty (Tim Phillips, Animal Kingdom ), arrives on the scene and pretty much refuses to leave it. While it may seem like you've seen this storyline a thousand times before, rest assured that Copping really pushes the envelope and the film's final 30-45 minutes or so are absolutely dynamite. 

Copping impresses as Nicholas, an intriguing soul whose story unfolds in bits and pieces and in all the right ways. Phillips is perhaps even more riveting, a constant sense of menace giving way to a myriad of other emotions and possibilities here. Phillips's work here could have easily crossed the line into caricature - it never does. 

Impressive work is also turned in by Marsha Vassilevskaia as Beccy and Alexandra Davies as Mrs. Night among others. This is a strong ensemble cast across the board. 

Original music by Antonio Tranquilino perfectly complements the film's dramatic rhythms and heightened episodes of suspense. The film's lensing captures both the beauty of its Australian locale and the often unspoken tensions between characters. 

In some ways,  The Dunes  goes where you expect it to go. Yet, Copping takes it even further and leaves us both breathless and impressed with both his vision and integrity to pull it all off. The final moments are inspired and  The Dunes  is an absolute blast to watch. 

Written by Richard Propes The Independent Critic

Review: Denis Villeneuve’s ‘Dune’ is a transporting vision, but it could use a touch more madness

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The story in “Dune” is set in motion by an ambitious, unwieldy and ill-advised transfer of power — an undertaking that extracts a terrible cost and seems doomed to end in frustration and defeat. Something similar might be said of the previous major attempts to wrest Frank Herbert’s 1965 literary colossus to the big screen, even if recent history has sometimes looked back on those failures with a forgiving smile. Alejandro Jodorowsky’s assuredly trippy, never-completed version has become a much-mythologized cinematic ruin . David Lynch’s 1984 flop, reviled by many (including Lynch himself), can still inspire spasms of admiration for its mix of narrative intransigence and visionary strangeness.

Still, to the extent that “Dune” endures, it does so on the strengths of Herbert’s extraordinarily prescient work — its echoes of a real world ravaged by oil wars, climate change and other consequences of human greed — rather than anything to do with its dubious cinematic legacy. Not least among the book’s mysteries is that it has shaped the iconography of so many classic science-fiction and fantasy films — most obviously, though not exclusively, “Star Wars” — without yielding a classic of its own. Conventional wisdom has long held that “Dune” is unfilmable , that its interlocking parables of colonial oppression, ecological disaster and messianic deliverance are too vast to be contained within the flattening parameters of the cinema screen.

The magisterially brooding new “Dune,” just unveiled at the Venice International Film Festival and slated to reach U.S. theaters and HBO Max subscribers Oct. 22, boldly seeks to reverse that prophecy. With methodical poise and seat-rattling spectacle, the French Canadian filmmaker Denis Villeneuve (who wrote the script with Jon Spaihts and Eric Roth) draws you into an astonishingly vivid, sometimes plausibly unnerving vision of the future. If those cursed earlier stabs at “Dune” were examples of what the French call a “film maudit,” this imposing new vision aspires to be the opposite: perhaps a “film Mahdi,” to reference the Arabic word often hurled at the young savior-to-be, Paul Atreides (Timothée Chalamet), as he embraces his destiny.

‘Dune: Part One’ ending explained: Where could a sequel go from here?

The new film “Dune” ends on a cliffhanger. With the second half of Frank Herbert’s classic story still to tell — not to mention all its sequels and prequels — where will the “Dune” universe go from here?

Oct. 24, 2021

The fulfillment of that destiny will have to wait; “Dune: Part One,” as it’s billed onscreen, is the first in a projected two-part adaptation, which means that any assessment of Villeneuve’s achievement must be provisional at best. For now, it’s hard to deny the excitement of feeling swept up in this movie’s great squalls of sand, spice and interplanetary intrigue, realized with a level of craft so overpowering in its dust-choked aridity that you may want to pull your mask up a little tighter in the theater. You may also feel a more qualified sense of admiration for Villeneuve’s efforts to preserve yet streamline the novel’s imaginative essence, to translate Herbert’s heady conceits and arcane nomenclature into a prestige blockbuster idiom.

Whether he succeeds — and for an impressive stretch, I think he does — his own meteoric Hollywood ascent has clearly prepared him for the assignment. This isn’t the first time Villeneuve has evinced a superb eye for the textural and chromatic nuances of sand, as the Mideast deserts of “Incendies,” the U.S.-Mexico border zones of “Sicario” and the Las Vegas ruins of “Blade Runner 2049” will attest. And like “Blade Runner 2049” and especially “Arrival,” “Dune” is an unusually philosophical speculative fiction that ponders the difficulties of language and coexistence.

As the movie opens, a superficial detente has been orchestrated between the warring royal strongholds of Atreides and Harkonnen, led respectively by the noble Duke Leto Atreides (Oscar Isaac) and the grotesque Baron Vladimir Harkonnen (a prosthetically transfigured Stellan Skarsgard). “Dune” heads will know the rest: By imperial decree, House Harkonnen must relinquish stewardship of the desert planet Arrakis, a.k.a. Dune, which is at once inhospitable to life and a much-coveted source of it. House Atreides will assume control of the planet as well as its rich concentrations of spice, a drug-like substance whose life-extending properties have made it the most prized commodity in the universe.

‘Dune’ was long considered ‘unadaptable.’ The screenwriters explain how they tackled the sci-fi classic

Heralded as the best sci-fi novel of all time, previous adaptations of Frank Herbert’s ‘Dune’ have fizzled. Now it’s Denis Villeneuve’s turn.

Aug. 24, 2021

Notably, these narrative preliminaries are laid out by Chani (Zendaya), one of the Fremen, the thick-skinned, blue-eyed Indigenous people of Arrakis. Long acclimated to the planet’s sweltering heat and deadly giant sandworms, they’ve suffered bitterly under their cruel Harkonnen overlords and have no reason to suspect the Atreides will be any different. Villeneuve’s sympathetic focus on the Fremen feels like an early declaration of principle, a promise that this “Dune” might radically reframe the story from their perspective. For much of the movie, though, Chani and her people remain fleeting presences, glimpsed only in the gauzy visions of Duke Leto’s son, Paul.

Chalamet, always good at suggesting both youthful callowness and limitless potential, proves an inspired choice for the role of a young man who is both a coddled heir and an intriguingly unknown quantity. On the Atreides’ home planet of Caladan, he is trained with avuncular affection by his father’s retainers, including the brilliant security expert Thufir Hawat (Stephen McKinley Henderson), the brawny swordmaster Duncan Idaho (Jason Momoa) and the skilled weapons teacher Gurney Halleck (Josh Brolin, not exactly the “ugly lump of a man” described in the book). Paul is also a source of pride and anxiety for the Duke, movingly played by Isaac as a leader who longs to do right by his family, his people and the Fremen, even as he suspects that House Atreides might be stepping into a carefully laid trap.

But Paul’s most important mentor is his mother, Lady Jessica (a superb Rebecca Ferguson), a member of a shadowy, oracular sisterhood known as the Bene Gesserit for whom Paul poses both a problem and a source of fascination. Led by an imperious Reverend Mother (a heavily veiled but unmistakable Charlotte Rampling), the Bene Gesserit are versed in many skills including “the Voice,” a form of mind control rendered here via menacing aural distortions that — along with the soundtrack’s low, ominous rumbles and Hans Zimmer’s pulsating score — make “Dune” a symphony for the ears as well as a feast for the eyes.

It is, admittedly, a rather monochromal feast, dryer than it is rich, notwithstanding a luscious early shot of the Arrakis dunes that brings to mind the crisped swirls of an overbaked meringue. Much of the palace intrigue plays out in muted tones and symmetrical compositions (the cinematography is by the great Greig Fraser), part of a rigorously color-controlled aesthetic that extends to Patrice Vermette’s futuro-brutalist production design and Jacqueline West’s slickly utilitarian costumes. A cold, fascist sheen seems to cling to the Atreides’ regal formations and their state-of-the-art ornithopters (like helicopters, but with blades that flutter like insect wings), all flawless design elements in a pageant of technological might and militaristic order.

Villeneuve means to subvert and disrupt that pageant, something he accomplishes in part by consciously elevating the women in this male-dominated story. Ferguson’s forceful presence in the expanded role of Lady Jessica is one example; another is the gender recasting of Liet Kynes (a striking Sharon Duncan-Brewster), Arrakis’ deeply knowledgeable planetologist. It’s Kynes who helps the Atreides adjust to their desert environs, at one point accompanying them to a spice-harvesting site where they get their terrifying first glimpse of a giant sandworm in action, its great maw swirling open like a raging quicksand vortex.

This action sequence and others are handled with masterly assurance, including several scenes of intimate combat performed with form-fitting, blood-concealing energy shields. But as ever, Villeneuve’s true talent is less in the staging of violence than in the queasy anticipation of it; he loves to linger in the looming threat of mayhem, in the tense moments before the (sand)worm turns. That gift serves him well enough in “Dune,” whose plot hinges on encroaching threats, assassination attempts and a series of devastating betrayals that send Paul and Lady Jessica fleeing into the desert where there await still more perils, possibilities and encounters with the Fremen (led by a sly Javier Bardem).

Why ‘Dune’ made these 5 key changes from Frank Herbert’s book

“Dune” director Denis Villeneuve discusses several significant departures from the sci-fi classic source material.

Oct. 21, 2021

Until the movie slams to an abrupt, unsatisfying halt halfway through the events of Herbert’s novel, there’s pleasure in watching this particular game of thrones play out, though perhaps more pleasure than depth or meaning. To call this “Dune” a remarkably lucid work is to praise it with very faint damnation. Perhaps reluctant to alienate the novices in the audience, Villeneuve has ironed out many of the novel’s convolutions, to the likely benefit of comprehension but at the expense of some rich, imaginative excess. Herbert’s more memorable flights of linguistic fancy, like “gom jabbar” and “Kwisatz Haderach,” are spoken once, with a faint air of embarrassed obligation, and seldom mentioned again. A more significant casualty is the book’s layered interiority, its skill at turning unspoken perceptions and motives into drama; the writers have managed this material without mastering it.

Lynch’s compromised version was similarly stymied and more clotted with exposition. But it also had the courage of its demented convictions, as well as a fearless commitment to feverish, pustular imagery that makes Villeneuve’s pristine filmmaking seem almost timid by comparison. Not for the first time, his craft seems to exist mainly for its own sake; it’s the hallmark of a filmmaker who’s more logistician than thinker, more technician than artist. As a visual and visceral experience, “Dune” is undeniably transporting. As a spectacle for the mind and heart, it never quite leaves Earth behind.

And perhaps that’s as it should be, at least at this early stage. With any luck, there will be more to see and much more to think about in “Dune: Part Two,” the completion of which will depend to some degree on this first movie’s fortunes. Will “Dune” conjure enough coin — the spice of the Hollywood realm — to see itself through to completion? I suspect it might, in part because I doubt Villeneuve, a filmmaker more dependable than he is interesting, has it in him to add to “Dune’s” string of memorably catastrophic failures. Dust has long been his truest cinematic habitat, and to dust may he return.

‘Dune: Part One’

Rated: PG-13, for sequences of strong violence, some disturbing images and suggestive material Running time: 2 hours, 35 minutes Playing: Starts Oct. 22 in general release and on HBO Max

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‘Dune’ Review: A Hero in the Making, on Shifting Sands

Denis Villeneuve’s adaptation is an equally sweeping and intimate take on Frank Herbert’s future-shock epic.

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‘Dune’ | Anatomy of a Scene

The director denis villeneuve narrates a combat training sequence from his film, featuring timothée chalamet and josh brolin..

My name is Denis Villeneuve and I’m the director of Dune. “Don’t stand with your back to the door!” This scene needed to serve four purposes. First, to establish the nature of the relationship between Paul Atreides and Gurney Halleck. Two, to give more insight about the context in which the Atreides will move to a new planet named Arrakis. Three, to induce the idea that Paul Atreides has been training for combat, but has never really experienced real violence. And four, to introduce the concept of the Holtzman Shields, and how they change the essence of combat. An Holtzman Shield is a technology that protects individuals or vehicles from any fast objects. Therefore, bullets or rockets are obsolete. So it means that man to man combat came back to sword fighting. The choreography between Timothée Chalamet, who plays Paul, and Josh Brolin, who plays Gurney Halleck, illustrate that each opponent is trying to distract his adversary by doing very fast moves in order to create an opportunity to insert slowly a blade inside the opponent’s shield. “Guess I’m not in the mood today.” “Mood?” “Mm.” “What’s mood to do with it? You fight when the necessity arises, no matter the mood. Now fight!” That choreography was designed by Roger Yuan. He developed the Atreides fighting style borrowing from a martial art technique developed in the ‘50s. This technique was called balintawak eskrima. It’s a style that involves blocking the opponent’s attack with both a weapon and the free hand. “I have you.” “Aye. But look down, my Lord. You’d have joined me in death. I see you found the mood.” Cinematographer Greig Fraser and I shot the fight like we will shoot a dance performance. The goal was to embrace the complexity of the movements with objective camera angles. We tried to make sure that the audience will understand the nature of this new way of fighting. “You don’t really understand the grave nature of what’s happening to us.” But more importantly, I wanted to feel that Josh Brolin’s character was caring about Paul like if he was his own son. “Can you imagine the wealth? In your eyes— I need to see it in your eyes. You never met Harkonnens before. I have. They’re not human. They’re brutal! You have to be ready.”

By Manohla Dargis

In a galaxy far, far away, a young man in a sea of sand faces a foreboding destiny. The threat of war hangs in the air. At the brink of a crisis, he navigates a feudalistic world with an evil emperor, noble houses and subjugated peoples, a tale right out of mythology and right at home in George Lucas’s brainpan. But this is “ Dune ,” baby, Frank Herbert’s science-fiction opus, which is making another run at global box-office domination even as it heads toward controversy about what it and its messianic protagonist signify.

The movie is a herculean endeavor from the director Denis Villeneuve (“Arrival”), a starry, sumptuous take on the novel’s first half. Published in 1965, Herbert’s book is a beautiful behemoth (my copy runs almost 900 pages) crowded with rulers and rebels, witches and warriors. Herbert had a lot to say — about religion, ecology, the fate of humanity — and drew from an astonishment of sources, from Greek mythology to Indigenous cultures. Inspired by government efforts to keep sand dunes at bay, he dreamed up a desert planet where water was the new petroleum. The result is a future-shock epic that reads like a cautionary tale for our environmentally ravaged world.

Villeneuve likes to work on a large scale, but has a miniaturist’s attention to fine-grained detail, which fits for a story as equally sweeping and intricate as “ Dune .” Like the novel, the movie is set thousands of years in the future and centers on Paul Atreides (Timothée Chalamet), the scion of a noble family. With his father, Duke Leto (Oscar Isaac), and his mother, Lady Jessica (Rebecca Ferguson), Paul is about to depart for his new home on a desert planet called Arrakis, a.k.a. Dune . The Duke, on orders from the Emperor, is to take charge of the planet, which is home to monstrous sandworms, enigmatic Bedouin-like inhabitants and an addictive, highly valuable resource called spice.

Much ensues. There are complicated intrigues along with sword fights, heroic deaths and many inserts of a mystery woman (Zendaya) throwing come-hither glances at the camera, a Malickian vision in flowing robes and liquid slow motion. She’s one piece of the multifaceted puzzle of Paul’s destiny, as is a mystical sisterhood (led by Charlotte Rampling in severe mistress mode) of psychic power brokers who share a collective consciousness. They’re playing the long game while the story’s most flamboyant villain, the Baron (Stellan Skarsgard), schemes and slays, floating above terrified minions and enemies like a Macy’s Thanksgiving Day balloon devised by Clive Barker.

The movie leans on a lot of exposition, partly to help guide viewers through the story’s denser thickets, but Villeneuve also uses his visuals to advance and clarify the narrative. The designs and textures of the movie’s various worlds and their inhabitants are arresting, filigreed and meaningful, with characters and their environments in sync. At times, though, Villeneuve lingers too long over his creations, as if he wanted you to check out his cool new line of dragonfly-style choppers and bleeding corpses. (This isn’t a funny movie but there are mordantly humorous flourishes, notably with the Baron, whose bald head and oily bath indicate that Villeneuve is a fan of “Apocalypse Now.”)

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By Bobby LePire | April 8, 2024

The Dunes is Martin Copping’s feature-length debut as both writer and director. The well-known voice actor produced the dramatic thriller and stars as the main character, Los Angeles Times journalist Nicholas Rice. It is set in the fictional town of The Dunes, nestled along the Mornington Peninsula of Australia. Was critical distance needed, or does the flick deliver the needed tension?

The tenant of Nicholas’s Australian home has mysteriously vanished, leaving the property manager perplexed. To unravel this enigma and reconnect with his family after a long stint in the City of Angels, Nicholas returns to The Dunes. The house bears no signs of a struggle or a break-in, but what’s even more peculiar is the absence of any trace of the tenant. All their belongings have vanished. Nicholas is eager to reunite with his father, but the elder Rice’s age and mental health lead him to ramble about long-forgotten things, creating an emotional void. This mysterious disappearance sets the stage for a thrilling journey.

“… a body is uncovered in his backyard, and William forces himself everywhere Nicholas goes.”

One night, Nicholas answers a knock at the door. Standing there is a stranger whose car battery died while he was out fishing. The man introduces himself as William (Tim Phillips) and expresses gratitude for the help. While waiting for the car to come to life, the two get to know each other over drinks. Unfortunately, they drank a little too much so Williams crashes there for the night. The next day, Nicholas is reconnecting with his first love, Beccy (Marsha Vassilevskaia), when William shows up unannounced. From there, things spiral downward for Nicholas, as a body is uncovered in his backyard, and William forces himself everywhere Nicholas goes. Are the strange happenings and William’s appearance connected, or is it all random fate and bad timing?

There’s only one way The Dunes can end, and sure enough, Copping does not cop out. Then, in the final few minutes, the filmmaker tops even that, proving that even the expected surprises can lay in wait. Obviously, no spoilers, but the last five or so minutes before the credits roll is one brilliant moment followed by another. Happily, the journey to that jaw-dropping conclusion is absorbing from the jump.

The Dunes (2024)

Directed and Written: Martin Copping

Starring: Martin Copping, Tim Phillips, Marsha Vassilevskaia, etc.

Movie score: 10/10

"…Australia has long held one of the best and most impressive filmmaking communities the world over."

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Dune First Reviews: The Breathtaking Adaptation Fans Have Been Waiting For

Critics say denis villeneuve's new take on frank herbert's classic novel is a nuanced, well-acted feast for the eyes and ears, even if it only leaves viewers wanting more..

TAGGED AS: Action , blockbuster , Film , films , movie , movies , Sci-Fi , science fiction

After decades of failed attempts and unsuccessful efforts, Frank Herbert’s Dune has been adapted into one of the most anticipated movies of the year — if not millennia. Does Denis Villeneuve ( Arrival ) finally do the classic science fiction novel(s) justice? The first reviews of his star-studded and visually epic new movie, also known as Dune: Part One , answer mostly in the affirmative. However, there’s a fairly uniform disappointment in how it ends without an ending.

Here’s what critics are saying about Dune :

Is this the Dune we’ve always wanted?

“Denis Villeneuve’s movie is the film interpretation that fans have been waiting to see for decades.” – Eric Eisenberg, Cinema Blend

“For science fiction devotees, especially those who have long-worshipped Frank Herbert’s dense tome…Villeneuve’s  Dune  is the adaptation you always dreamed of.” – Ben Travis, Empire Magazine

“[It] honors the source material in the most satisfying way possible.  Dune  2021 is a modern-day work of art.” – Jimmy O, JoBlo’s Movie Emporium

“The missing link bridging the multiplex and the arthouse… Good heavens, what a film.” – Xan Brooks, Guardian

“For all its amazing imagery and A-list stars and very cool interpretations of the nerdier aspects of Herbert’s book, this version of Dune doesn’t fully coalesce.” – Scott Collura, IGN

Will it make us forget about David Lynch’s version?

“His Dune is the opposite of Lynch’s, methodical and cerebral, set against pastels and smoke and long stretches of moodiness.” – Roger Friedman, Showbiz 411

“Denis Villeneuve hasn’t succeeded where the likes of David Lynch and Alejandro Jodorowsky have already failed, [but] his Dune is at least uniquely dispiriting.” – David Ehrlich, IndieWire

“I’ll always love Lynch’s Dune , a severely compromised dream-work that (not surprising given Lynch’s own inclination) had little use for Herbert’s messaging. But Villeneuve’s movie is   Dune .” – Glenn Kenny, RogerEbert.com

(Photo by Courtesy of Warner Bros. Pictures and Legendary Pictures)

Is it a satisfying adaptation?

“This first chapter explores a very complex and detailed story with clarity and style. More importantly, it does so without sacrificing the impressive detail of Frank Herbert’s original vision.” – Jimmy O, JoBlo’s Movie Emporium

“Denis Villeneuve and his collaborators have cracked the code with their approach… extraordinary in its ability to directly translate the source material across mediums without compromise.” – Eric Eisenberg, Cinema Blend

“A more significant casualty is the book’s layered interiority, its skill at turning unspoken perceptions and motives into drama; the writers have managed this material without mastering it.” – Justin Chang, Los Angeles Times

“If anything falls short of Herbert’s particular vision it’s the movie’s sandworms.” – Leah Greenblatt, Entertainment Weekly

Is it OK if you haven’t read the book?

“Thankfully, Dune isn’t particularly hard to follow.” – Rodrigo Perez, The Playlist

“Though there’s plenty to establish, Villeneuve makes surprisingly light work of it all…  Dune  is never as formidable as it threatens to be.” – Ben Travis, Empire Magazine

“The script does a good job with exposition without making it seem like EXPOSITION… but by the same token, there may not be any reason for you to be interested in Dune if you’re not a science-fiction-movie person anyway.” – Glenn Kenny, RogerEbert.com

“It’s not a film that requires any familiarity with the source material… Stretches in the early parts of  Dune  are a layman’s terms guide to Herbert’s incredibly intricate and uniquely realized universe.” – Adam Solomons, AwardsWatch

“If you come in not knowing the difference between a Holtzman shield and a hole in the floor, it’s a longer walk.” – Leah Greenblatt, Entertainment Weekly

“We don’t really learn much about individual characters in the film, making it hard to grasp or care about the stakes of the story.” – Richard Lawson, Vanity Fair

(Photo by Chiabella James/©Warner Bros. Entertainment Inc.)

How is Denis Villeneuve as director?

“Villeneuve’s true talent is less in the staging of violence than in the queasy anticipation of it… That gift serves him well enough in Dune .” – Justin Chang, Los Angeles Times

“Those who find Villeneuve to be a self-serious, humorless, and pretentious bore likely won’t be changing their minds anytime soon after Dune , but that just might be their loss.” – Rodrigo Perez, The Playlist

“To say I have not admired Villeneuve’s prior films is something of an understatement. But I can’t deny that he’s made a more-than-satisfactory movie of the book.” – Glenn Kenny, RogerEbert.com

“The unforgiving starkness will unsettle even some of Villeneuve’s greatest fans.” – Donald Clarke, Irish Times

“For all of Villeneuve’s awe-inducing vision, he loses sight of why Frank Herbert’s foundational sci-fi opus is worthy of this epic spectacle in the first place.” – David Ehrlich, IndieWire

“He’s an overloader, and only the keenest and most urgent of scripts can survive beneath that weight. Dune , unfortunately, is not one of those.” – Richard Lawson, Vanity Fair

How does it compare to his other work?

“It’s an arthouse blockbuster in the vein of his Blade Runner 2049 , but even less concerned with commercial appeal, which is admirably bold.” – Rodrigo Perez, The Playlist

“Much like the haunting  Blade Runner 2049 , the director has taken the time to explore numerous characters without sacrificing the main story and themes.” – Jimmy O, JoBlo’s Movie Emporium

“Like Blade Runner 2049 and especially Arrival , Dune is another unusually philosophical speculative fiction that ponders the difficulties of language and coexistence.” – Justin Chang, Los Angeles Times

“If you loved Arrival and Blade Runner 2049 , then Dune is perhaps Denis Villeneuve at his Villeneuviest.” – Richard Trenholm, CNET

Is it reminiscent of anything else?

“Think of it as Game of Thrones in space or Star Wars if it never got off Tatooine.” – Steve Pond, The Wrap

“Impressively ambitious in scale, like Villeneuve mashing up the worlds of Star Wars and Game of Thrones .” – Brian Truitt, USA Today

“Arguably [many of its elements are] all things that Star Wars features too, but just much more dense, sophisticated, and less child-like.” – Rodrigo Perez, The Playlist

“ Dune feels most reminiscent of The Lord Of The Rings: The Fellowship Of The Ring .” – Ben Travis, Empire Magazine

“Much like the semi-recent classic Peter Jackson’s The Fellowship of the Rings in the LOTR trilogy, this is only the beginning of the story… [and] Denis Villeneuve has created one of the best fantasy feature since Peter Jackson’s journey into Middle Earth.” – Jimmy O, JoBlo’s Movie Emporium

“Historical comparisons are of no use. None of us has been anywhere like this before. They can put that on the poster.” – Donald Clarke, Irish Times

“It sets a new standard for modern sci-fi epics.” – Germain Lussier, io9.com

Is there enough action for mainstream audiences?

“ Dune  is consistently gripping and plot driven.” – Adam Solomons, AwardsWatch

“Even though it may be a slow burn, the action set pieces do not disappoint, neither does the filmmaker sacrifice the subtle themes and ideas explored throughout.” – Jimmy O, JoBlo’s Movie Emporium

“The pacing is perfect. Villeneuve makes you wait  just  long enough, so when the action moves to Arrakis you’re just as eager to venture into the desert as Paul.” – Ben Travis, Empire Magazine

“This version of Dune sometimes feels as if it aims to impress you more than entertain you… but it’s also a formidable cinematic accomplishment.” – Steve Pond, The Wrap

“It feels like a drag in its back half.” – Scott Collura, IGN

How are the visuals?

“Cinematographer Grieg Fraser has outdone himself from frame to frame, set piece to set piece, creating jaw dropping pieces of art that are impressionistic, sensational, and other worldly.” – Roger Friedman, Showbiz 411

“It’s all a feast for the eyes. The visuals are mind-blowing.” – Jimmy O, JoBlo’s Movie Emporium

“Aesthetically, Dune is pretty damn monumental and enveloping, and for audiences that potentially may find the plot confusing, the film still works on a deeply experiential, visceral level.” – Rodrigo Perez, The Playlist

“The sense of scale conjured up is, from moment to moment, frequently astonishing.” – Ben Travis, Empire Magazine

“ Dune looks great, but outside of the fantastical design, the muted palette borders on drab.” – Richard Trenholm, CNET

And how does it sound?

“ Dune [is] a symphony for the ears as well as a feast for the eyes.” – Justin Chang, Los Angeles Times

“ Dune  is also an auditory journey, not only featuring enveloping sound editing, but one of the best scores Hans Zimmer has ever composed.” – Eric Eisenberg, Cinema Blend

“The visual vastness is matched by a  Hans Zimmer  score that is, to use a technical term, full-Zimmer.” – Ben Travis, Empire Magazine

“Composer Hans Zimmer inspires great awe with a booming score, but not one  BRAAAM  in sight, thankfully.” – Rodrigo Perez, The Playlist

  What is the overall experience like?

“As a visual and visceral experience, Dune is undeniably transporting. As a spectacle for the mind and heart, it never quite leaves Earth behind.” – Justin Chang, Los Angeles Times

“ Dune is certainly capable of transporting us to its alien landscapes via its many technical achievements… There is no detail spared in immersing us in this fantastical world.” – Scott Collura, IGN

“You feel like you’re looking into a window across space and time… The line between fiction and reality fades from your mind, and it’s breathtaking.” – Eric Eisenberg, Cinema Blend

“Villeneuve’s  Dune  is the sandworm exploding out from the darkness below. It is a film of such literal and emotional largeness that it overwhelms the senses.” – Clarisse Loughrey, Independent

How are the performances?

“Chalamet confirms on a grand scale what arthouse audiences have long known about his charisma.” – David Crow, Den of Geek

“Timothee Chalamet once again gives another exceptional performance.” – Jimmy O, JoBlo’s Movie Emporium

“Among the uniformly excellent performances, Timothée Chalamet holds his own in his first blockbuster leading role.” – Ben Travis, Empire Magazine

“Chalamet, playing it earnestly and effectively, is perfectly cast here, and both Ferguson and Isaac are excellent, as is Skarsgård.” – Pete Hammond, Deadline

“Everyone flawlessly gets at the core of who they are playing. Timothee Chalamet, Rebecca Ferguson and Oscar Isaac are the triumvirate that lead the cast, and they are all phenomenal.” – Eric Eisenberg, Cinema Blend

“Momoa, in particular, bringing a swagger and excitement beyond anything we’ve seen from him before.” – Germain Lussier, io9.com

“The actors here all give good, serious performances, but in a sense it isn’t an actor’s film, because they are playing archetypes.” – Catherine Bray, Film of the Week

“No one has much time to distinguish themselves, all functioning as mere fleshy cogs in Villeneuve’s churning machine.” – Richard Lawson, Vanity Fair

Is it a fun movie?

“The script benefits from injecting occasional bits of humor into the universe-shaping events of the film.” – Scott Collura, IGN

“ Dune  is so aesthetically rich and monolithic that a few brief, misguided stabs at Marvel-style humor early on feel almost like blasphemy.” – Leah Greenblatt, Entertainment Weekly

“If what you love most about Marvel is the quips, you might not like Dune very much…it is deadly serious…a relief I hadn’t realized I needed.” – Catherine Bray, Film of the Week

“While Villeneuve has been and likely remains one of the most humorless filmmakers alive, the novel wasn’t a barrel of laughs either, and it’s salutary that Villeneuve honored the scant light notes in the script.” – Glenn Kenny, RogerEbert.com

“ Dune  lumbers with such aloof, uninviting self-seriousness that it’s hard to love, hard to even celebrate as an assured piece of tentpole authorship.” – Richard Lawson, Vanity Fair

“My only grievance is that hardly anyone in this film ever smiles…everyone in Dune is grimly serious. You kind of wish someone would shake Paul’s hand with a joy buzzer.” – Roger Friedman, Showbiz 411

Does it feel unfinished?

“The film is ultimately a long and overwrought prologue — a prelude to action rather than its own autonomous story.” – Richard Lawson, Vanity Fair

“The real meal doesn’t really begin until Part Two , and that’s probably one of the minor disappointments of its inconclusive finale.” – Rodrigo Perez, The Playlist

“It does wind up feeling incomplete… like the serving of a decadent and delicious appetizer that comes out while the epic entrée to come is still braising in the kitchen.” – Eric Eisenberg, Cinema Blend

“It feels so completely sure of itself and so legitimately stunning, that it’s a huge shame that the next chapter is in fact subject to the whims of the marketplace… Surely, there has to be more.” – Catherine Bray, Film of the Week

“To be left dangling without Dune: Part Two would be a particular heartbreak. Here’s hoping we won’t only be seeing it in our dreams.” – Ben Travis, Empire Magazine

Is it difficult to assess this first chapter on its own?

“It will require reassessment when the rest of the director’s vision is revealed – and if there is a movie god, we’ll see that happen sooner rather than later.” – Eric Eisenberg, Cinema Blend

“What could happen in the future isn’t something you can think about when critiquing a movie though. There’s this movie, this story, and if it doesn’t work on its own, that would problem. It’s not a problem here.” – Germain Lussier, io9.com

Dune is in theaters and on HBO Max on October 22, 2021.

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'Dune': A sweeping, spectacular spice-opera — half of one, anyway

Glen Weldon

Paul (Timothee Chalamet) and the Bene Gesserit Reverend Mother (Charlotte Rampling) regard each other warily in DUNE. Warner Bros. hide caption

Paul (Timothee Chalamet) and the Bene Gesserit Reverend Mother (Charlotte Rampling) regard each other warily in DUNE.

Most of us who've read Frank Herbert's 1965 novel Dune have experienced it in the form of mass-market paperbacks so thick and dense they could double as wheel chocks for a Cessna. If you've made it all the way through even once, the spine on your personal copy will have been battered into submission such that it takes on the appearance of the Bonneville salt flats — rough, faded, riddled with spidery cracks.

This has less to do with any degree of ardor you may or may not have brought to your experience of reading the book, and everything to do with the sheer number of times you found yourself shuttling back and forth and back again between your current place in the proceedings and Herbert's extensive glossary in the back.

The world of Herbert's novel is made up of many worlds, many ruling galactic Houses, many competing infrastructural interests working to seize power through means both overt and skullduggerous, to say nothing of the thousands of years of interstellar intrigue and bloodshed that take place before the book opens.

And , of course , all of those planets, Houses, institutions and historical events have names — names that Herbert drops often and with a kind of blithe ferocity. Those drops soon become a firehose-torrent of exotic names, italicized terms and inscrutable acronyms. (" CHOAM!!?? " I distinctly recall 10-year-old me thinking to himself in dismay, before resigning himself to yet another trip to the back of the book. "I was really making headway there for second, then boom: goddamn CHOAM .")

CHOAM stands for Combine Honnette Ober Advancer Mercantiles, by the way. I sense your relieved comprehension; you may now go about your day.

That density of reference and cross-reference is, of course, a contributing factor to the novel's enduring appeal — the sense that Herbert did the hard work to fully imagine both his characters and the forces that shape them, and place them into the deeply stratified society of the worlds he depicts. It's also a major reason why efforts to adapt the novel, and its sequels, have confounded directors from Alejandro Jodorowsky (whose aborted attempt is the subject of the excellent, if unimaginatively named, documentary Jodorowsky's Dune ), to David Lynch ( who actually made a deeply idiosyncratic and profoundly muddled film version in 1984 ), to John Harrison's straightforward yet undercooked 2000 Sci-Fi Channel miniseries.

Spice World (2021)

Any successful adaptation of Dune must strike a fine balance, nodding toward Herbert's densely interwoven galactic network of competing and overlapping interests without letting all those voices subsume the surprisingly clear, even archetypal, reluctant-hero narrative at the work's center.

Any adaption attempted today must also deal with something no previous version has had to address as directly: our growing, long-overdue contemporary cultural skepticism towards Chosen One narratives, particularly those of the White Savior variety.

Movie Interviews

Doomed 'dune' was generations ahead of its time.

Make no mistake: Dune is a Chosen One narrative writ galactic — a White Savior story on an epic, sweeping scale. Paul Atreides (Timothée Chalamet, who spends much of the first hour or so of the film brooding Byronically in long frock coats on windswept promontories overlooking the sea) has been genetically engineered to be a leader known as the kwisatz haderach. (Yep, an italicized term already, in the first sentence of the premise description; if that concerns you at all, this movie will not be your jam.)

His father, Duke Leto Atreides (Oscar Isaac), and his mother, Lady Jessica (Rebecca Ferguson), have been tasked with taking over the desert planet Arrakis (aka Dune, keep up), the sole source of a mind-altering spice that makes interstellar travel possible. They are taking the planet over from the vile Harkonnens, a House led by an evil Baron named, it may not surprise you to learn, Vladimir (Stellan Skarsgard, getting a second use out of his Mamma Mia! Here We Go Again fat suit). During its reign over Arrakis, the House has cruelly dealt with the planet's indigenous population, known as the Fremen — humans perfectly adapted to harsh desert life.

Paul keeps having gauzy, prophetic dreams featuring a Fremen named Chani (Zendaya) that director Denis Villeneuve shoots as if they're the world's most arid Dior commercials. Over the course of the film, young Paul starts to come into his power, reluctantly realizing that he may in fact be the subject of not one but two prophecies — the powerful kwisatch haderach forseen by the shadowy space-witches known as the Bene Gesserit, and the religious savior called the Mahdi by the Fremen.

It will be useful, at this point, to divide this review into two parts, aimed at two different audiences. First up:

If you know nothing about Dune — you haven't read the books or seen any previous adaptation:

Hello! You, who don't know a Sardaukar from a Shai-hulud , who couldn't pick the Shadout Mapes out of lineup of Shadouts, are in for a treat. Villeneuve has made a grand, epic film that features the kind of action and spectacle you're likely expecting — but he hasn't let the sheer staggering scope of the endeavor sway him from his penchant for moody introspection. As he did in Arrival and Blade Runner 2049 , he works in the genre of science fiction but lets his camera linger on his characters' expressions and body language, grounding viewers in the realm of human emotion even as massive spaceships explode and giant sandworms roar behind them.

His screenplay distills Herbert's hilariously dense network of galactic institutions down to the major players. You'll miss some nuance, maybe, but that's why God made wikis for you to consult on the way home from the theater. The film also, importantly, contemporizes the book's stilted dialogue, and in so doing willingly trades any sense of mythic portentousness for something looser and more alive.

You'll catch visual shout-outs to Apocalypse Now and Lawrence of Arabia , among many other films, and Greig Fraser's cinematography will dazzle you with its sense of immensity and emptiness. You'll think the film drags a bit in the middle, and that it ends on a weirdly anti-climactic note, and you'll wonder why the promotional material featured Zendaya so much, when she gets only a handful of lines at the very end. You'll be very right on all scores — this is only the first half of the story, after all.

Okay, that's done. Now for the rest of you.

PG-13: Risky Reads

Reading 'dune,' my junior-high survival guide, if you've done dune — you've read a book or six, and/or know and love david lynch's hot mess of a film from 1984:.

First and most important thing you should know: The film ends soon after Paul first meets up with Sietch Tabr.

Knowing that bit of information will save you a lot of concern and confusion, trust me. If you know the story in full, you'll watch each scene unfold, idly (and later on, not-so-idly) wondering how far this massive, stately ocean-liner of a film can possibly get before ending. That's because Villeneuve's pacing is never anything less than even and deliberate — you'll feel each story beat landing, one after the other, in unhurried succession.

You will likely admire the efficiency with which the screenplay trots out this or that bit of Herbertian lore. And while Villeneuve's judiciously steady, even-keel approach may make you may miss Lynch's idiosyncratic, subconscious, quasi-Jungian riffing on the source text ("The toooooooth!") , you certainly won't miss the 1984 film's relentless, inescapable voiceover.

Knowing in advance exactly where Villeneuve chooses to end Dune: Part One will help you relax into the storytelling and the spectacle of the thing. Yes, you'll maybe wince at those moments when the score busts out a call-to-prayer as Paul performs some quasi-mystical feat — a choice that seems at once unearned and on the nose. And even a filmmaker as drawn to emotional nuance as Villeneuve could do much to turn the book's villain — the cartoonishly eeeeevil Baron Harkonnen — into anything but the one-note baddie he is.

But in moments big (a sandworm attack) and small (a quiet conversation between Isaac's melancholy Duke and Chalamet's sullen Paul), Dune plays itself out with an assured confidence that encourages you to settle in for the long (2 hours and 35 minutes!) haul — and eagerly (!) await Part Two.

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Dune Reviews

With a tone and narrative that feels like a melting pot of some of the most beloved franchises in popular culture, it is not far-fetched to think that Dune could become the next big thing.

Full Review | Original Score: 4/5 | Jul 15, 2024

The “Dune” series has long been considered a landmark of science fiction. Fortunately, Denis Villeneuve’s astute direction in laying the right foundations only shows his respect for Frank Herbert’s work.

Full Review | Original Score: A- | Jul 4, 2024

While Villeneuve's version makes more of an effort than Lynch's to explore some of Dune's meatier themes, like colonization, it fails to nail the environmental ideas.

Full Review | Original Score: B+ | Jun 3, 2024

Villeneuve’s “Dune” is the cinematic equivalent of a meditation garden: gorgeous to watch with its characters’ polished skin, smooth stonelike spaceships, sand enveloped landscapes, sunlight

Full Review | Mar 24, 2024

It would be enough of a cinematic experience with just the visuals, but the technical elements within the sound are award-worthy.

Full Review | Original Score: A+ | Mar 1, 2024

Few movies showcase this scale, and once again, Villeneuve proves himself one of the best filmmakers alive. However, some early pacing issues and the two-part nature make Dune feel somewhat incomplete.

Full Review | Original Score: 8/10 | Mar 1, 2024

Dune’s first half lived up to the hype as a mix of political intrigue, sci-fi storytelling and a large selection of really interesting characters, all with great visuals and sound design to match.

Full Review | Original Score: 5/5 | Feb 26, 2024

There are even moments that surpass the novel, especially the relationship between Leto and Paul, mainly due to a heartfelt speech from Oscar Isaac...

Full Review | Feb 24, 2024

Director Denis Villeneuve never misses and succeeds again in this adaptation with incredible performances especially from Timothee Chalamet and Rebecca Ferguson.

Full Review | Original Score: 5/5 | Oct 11, 2023

The end result is a movie worthy of the source material.

Full Review | Original Score: 3.5/4 | Aug 10, 2023

an incredibly well-crafted adaptation that's faithful to the source material while also breathing new life into it, and an immersive, epic cinematic journey that will absolutely leave you aching for more.

Full Review | Original Score: 4/5 | Aug 8, 2023

Villeneuve’s Dune: Part One is a worthy addition to the collection, besting the Lynch film in certain ways but still flummoxed and frustrated by the source material’s conversation-heavy downside.

Full Review | Jul 28, 2023

Dune is a masterful sci-fi blockbuster that is going to please the majority of its audience. The visuals are crying out to be seen on the biggest screen possible, easily becoming the movies standout.

Full Review | Original Score: 4/5 | Jul 27, 2023

A true cinematic treasure that will be cherished for decades to come & gave me the same feeling that I got watching A New Hope for the first time. This is Epic to the highest of standards & I need more right now.

Full Review | Original Score: A+ | Jul 26, 2023

The talented cast is in service of spectacle, doing little more than providing the expositional sutures that connect one elaborate set piece to the next.

Full Review | Jul 26, 2023

Dune sets the new standard for epic cinema with eyegamic visuals, powerful sound design and score, and a compelling story surrounded by an absolutely massive scale. Denis Villeneuve adds yet another audiovisual masterpiece to his filmography.

Full Review | Original Score: A- | Jul 25, 2023

Dune is so engaged in getting the plot right and building an appropriate world that it doesn’t have time to let its characters bond or develop a real connection.

Full Review | Jul 24, 2023

Villeneuve can build spectacle and innovative tales because we have seen him do it before, but his rendition of Dune isn’t one of them.

Full Review | Original Score: C | Jul 21, 2023

Laced with complex politics, interesting themes on religion, gender, imperialism, and environmentalism; this has just about everything a fantasy/sci-fi fan could want.

Full Review | Jul 19, 2023

Denis Villeneuve’s Dune is simply epic in every sense of the word, from the acting and action sequences, to the score from Oscar-winning composer Hans Zimmer. The grandeur of the film is accentuated by captivating shots and landscapes

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‘Harvest’ Review: Athina Rachel Tsangari Sublimates Her Voice in Gorgeous, Overlong Period Fable

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The announcement of a third feature, “Harvest,” world premiering at Venice, nine years on from “Chevalier,” was cause for genuine excitement among Tsangari heads. Forays into a TV miniseries (“Trigonometry” in 2020) and regular producing gigs have been no substitute for a feature film brewed in her singular mind palace. So, how does “Harvest” stack up? Related Stories ‘Smile 2’ Trailer: Naomi Scott Is a Pop Singer Spiraling Out of Control in Horror Sequel BFI London Film Festival Announces Screen Talks with Sean Baker, Denis Villeneuve, Steve McQueen, and More

At first glance, it seems like Tsangari has totally switched things up. Her first literary adaptation (both previous films were her original ideas) plunges us into the world dreamed up by novelist Jim Crace. In an unspecified village in the wilds of Scotland on the cusp of industrial change, Walter Thirsk (Caleb Landry-Jones) is in love with land. He forages bugs from trees, then skinny-dips in a deserted lake. On returning to his village, he finds it is on fire.

As with many of the dramatic events in “Harvest” the medium is the message with imagery that further burnishes the reputation of rising DP star Sean Price Williams. Having first captured the serenity of this place through Walter’s solo revelry, now he captures its ashy filth and danger. This is a film with a comprehensive visual grammar that does not settle for one viewpoint of its absorbing setting. A sense of the charming creativity of living so close to the land is felt when a young girl paints her face using the yellow of a buttercup — she is vying to be crowned “Gleaning Queen.” 

In this remote place, Walter is an outsider among outsiders. He is distrusted by most of the villagers, save lover Kitty (Rosy McEwen) because of his friendship with Master Kent (Harry Melling), another soft man but the closest thing to an authority figure here. Walter’s mother was Master Kent’s milk nurse and they shared childhoods. Adulthood has united them in another way, for they are now both widowers and grief clings to the edges of their respective solitudes. 

They are both out-of-step with the herd when three strangers are found by the lake and the villagers descend — locking the two men in the pillory and shaving the head of the woman. Master Kent does not know how to use the pillory key and hesitates, nervously. Melling oozes the quiet desperation of a boy in over his head, complicating and enriching his character’s objective position of power. 

Head shaved, Beldam is let go. With her friends in the pillory, she does not go far. Walter often spots her running hither and thither, seeming free in contrast with the increasingly preoccupied villagers for a harbinger of change has arrived in the form of the map-maker Quill (Arinzé Kene).

The plot is very much not the point of “Harvest,” and a deliberate vagueness surrounds key events. Later, a man dies, and who’s to say whether it was from murder, suicide or exposure to the elements. We see through Walter’s eyes, who is rarely around when key things happen and frequently unsure of how he can intervene for the better. “Some hero you are, Walter Thirsk,” bellows the man with the leg wound, with contempt. His point stands, although the film treats Walter’s relative ineffectiveness softly, as it does Master Kent’s. There is a sweetness to Tsangari’s depiction of men who technically have power but are too hesitant to make it count. 

Despite its intentionality, the vagueness of the plot stretched across 130 minutes becomes testing. There is an underwritten aspect to the way that racial tensions are presented, alternately ignored and hinted at without a cohesive perspective. Although made up of many mesmerizing moving parts, “Harvest” ends up as feeling less than the sum of these. There are sparks of what makes an Athina Rachel Tsangari film great within this impressionistic period fable, even if — unlike the fires that bookend the film — it never fully takes the blaze.

“Harvest” world premiered at the 2024 Venice Film Festival . It is currently seeking U.S. distribution.

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‘happyend’ review: high school becomes a microcosm of surveillance-state oppression in affecting near-future drama.

In Neo Sora's narrative feature debut, the threat of natural disaster and citizen unrest provides justification for incursions into personal freedoms by the Japanese government and education authorities.

By David Rooney

David Rooney

Chief Film Critic

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Tilda swinton, julianne moore dazzle in venice as pedro almodóvar's 'the room next door' earns 17-minute standing ovation, ai, netflix in focus for venice head alberto barbera, tarak ben ammar in thr roma roundtable.

Keeping his focus tight on five inseparable friends plus one influential outsider to the group, the filmmaker effectively views their acts of individual and collective resistance, in the shadow of a government leaning toward totalitarianism and a climate in which the threat of natural disaster is constant.

Cellphone earthquake alerts have become a regular part of life, prompting the prime minister to announce expanded government power in cases of emergency. This reveals itself notably when protest movements form and police crackdowns turn violent.

All this is background canvas, however, for a delicate portrait of late adolescence, suspended between pleasurable distractions and creeping anxieties about what comes next. At the center are two lifelong friends whose contrasting responses to the darkening mood around them, both at school and in the national political arena, expose differences of which neither had previously been aware.

Close since childhood, Yuta (Hayao Kurihara) and Kou (Yukito Hidaki) are talented amateur DJs, aspiring to careers at the mixing deck. Their easy, uncomplicated bond extends to a posse that also includes Tomu (Arazi), Ming (Shina Peng) and Ata-chan (Yuta Hayashi), whose renegade sense of style can be gleaned from the billowing skirt he pairs with his uniform of a white shirt and a black blazer. 

Police are summoned, prompting an outburst from student activist Fumi (Kilala Inori) about cops being “bureaucrats with weapons,” serving only to protect the country’s wealth. Kou is the main suspect, more by virtue of his being from a Korean family than anything else; the principal, who refers to the car vandalism as “terrorism,” threatens to withhold Kou’s college recommendation. But with no proof, disciplinary measures take a different course.

The principal has an elaborate new security system installed with facial-recognition technology cameras positioned throughout the school, allowing for miscreant students to be identified and slapped with demerit points. At first, it’s treated like a joke, with Ata-chan getting a round of applause when he swiftly racks up ten points for making obscene gestures at a camera.

The graduating class finds their simpatico homeroom teacher replaced by a humorless, by-the-book type, and the Music Research Club is deemed a fire hazard and shut down, the electronic equipment locked away in a storeroom.

A substantial earthquake, which further damages the car, prompts the prime minister to put an emergency decree into effect, claiming that natural disasters increase crime rates. Fumi encourages Kou to join her at the resulting street protests. The ripple effect of alarm and paranoia brings out neighborhood watch groups to patrol the streets at night.

The situation at school becomes more incendiary when a military instructor is brought in to teach self-defense and, in another example of casual racism, all non-Japanese nationals are excluded “for security reasons.” Fumi leads the pushback, her actions yielding results and prompting defiance in others — most amusingly seen in Ata-chan’s graduation outfit. But when Yuta speaks up, his courage comes at a price.

Sora strikes an expert tonal balance between the bittersweet, elegiac qualities of the end-of-school drama, with compassionate observation of the maturation process, and the volatile microcosm of an education institution that becomes like a prison, pointing to broader political implications in the outside world. The movie never loses sight of the personal, involving us from the start in the experiences of Yuta, Kou and their friends, while bringing a light yet lingering touch to larger fears affecting all of us.

DP Bill Kirstein, who also shot Sora’s Opus , has an elegant eye for composition, finding poetry in the stark urban landscapes of a fictional Tokyo ( Happyend was shot mostly in Kobe). Composer Lia Ouyang Rusli’s score complements that visual grace while also capturing the characters’ youthful energy in techno interludes. The young actors, almost all newcomers, are naturals in a sure-footed movie that is set in the future but fully plugged into global political anxieties of the present.

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‘Wolfs’ Review: George Clooney and Brad Pitt Are Rival Fixers in a Winning Action Comedy Spiked With Movie-Star Chemistry

The two actors go at each other in Jon Watts's likable throwaway caper, which plays like an exercise in movie-star nostalgia.

By Owen Gleiberman

Owen Gleiberman

Chief Film Critic

• ‘The Room Next Door’ Review: Tilda Swinton Gives a Monumental Performance as a Woman Confronting Death in Pedro Almodóvar’s First English-Language Drama 23 hours ago
• ‘Wolfs’ Review: George Clooney and Brad Pitt Are Rival Fixers in a Winning Action Comedy Spiked With Movie-Star Chemistry 2 days ago
• ‘The Brutalist’ Review: Director Brady Corbet Breaks Through in His Third Feature, an Engrossing Epic Starring Adrien Brody as a Visionary Architect 2 days ago

The movie-stars-are-over era has been overstated. If audiences are now drawn to movies not for stars but for franchise concepts, I’m not sure how to fit the career of Timothée Chalamet into that; Emma Stone and Zendaya would also like a word. That said, when you watch George Clooney and Brad Pitt in “ Wolfs ,” a clever, airy, winningly light-fingered and debonair action comedy about two rival fixers who have to learn to work together, you’d be forgiven for describing the sensation you feel as movie-star nostalgia.

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“Wolfs” opens in a deluxe penthouse hotel suite in New York, where Margaret (Amy Ryan), a district attorney, is in a distraught panic. There’s a young man, seemingly dead, lying next to the bed in his underwear, with smashed glass all around him. What happened? She picked him up in the hotel bar, they came to the room, and he was jumping up and down on the bed when he accidentally fell and smashed through a glass table. File it under “shit happens.” To avoid a big mess, Margaret calls a number she has had in her contacts but has never used. It’s the number of a fixer, played by Clooney, who immediately starts telling her what to do on the phone, exuding the dry authority of … Michael Clayton.

Neither of the two men is ever named. Clooney’s character, referred to in the credits simply as “Margaret’s man,” is a figure of Swiss-watch precision and time-tested methods, all driven by the conviction that no one else can do what he does. But the arrival of Pitt, known only as “Pam’s man,” throws a monkey wrench into that. Clooney looks at Pitt as if he were a pretender, a mere amateur in the fixer game, but, in fact, both are experts at … well, fixing.

The spark plug of “Wolfs,” as written and directed by Jon Watts (who directed all three of the Tom Holland “Spider-Man” films), is the nonstop stream of hostility and one-upmanship that passes between Clooney and Pitt like something out of an acid screwball comedy. It’s not just that the two characters don’t like each other. Each is invested in his own superiority — the special finesse of his skills. And so their back-and-forth isn’t just about the putdowns. It’s a kind of lethal contest to see who has the most fixer zen.

Clooney and Pitt had this kind of chemistry before, in “Ocean’s Eleven,” where it was in the very detachment of their banter that they found a bond. In “Wolfs,” Clooney and Pitt revel in the crack timing, in the I-truly-do-not-like-you obscene banter, that makes even the most casual insult take wing. As the movie goes on, these two will learn to work together, but the film’s anti-grammatical title is saying that each one is a lone wolf. They have no desire to mesh like wolves . The joke, of course, is that from their stylish leather jackets to their secret Mr. Big to their reading glasses, they’re kind of the same man.

Clooney’s character knows a trick or two about how to hoist a body onto a hotel cart, and for a while, as the two take the elevator down to the parking garage, where they stow the body in the trunk of Clooney’s car, the movie is all gambits and procedure, sort of like an improvised “Ocean’s Duet.” But it pivots and turns into a different sort of movie (I feel compelled to issue a spoiler alert, though this happens fairly early on) after the corpse…refuses to lie still.

“Wolfs” turns into one of those buddy movies with a flaked-out wild card of a third wheel. Austin Abrams, from “Euphoria” and “The Walking Dead,” plays the aforementioned dude in his underwear, known only as “kid.” He turns out to be a likably jabbering space case, like Timothée Chalamet infused with the spirit of the young Sam Rockwell. (At one point he has to wear a dress as a shirt, which is very Chalamet.) The key complication is that the kid was carrying four bricks of heroin in his backpack worth $250,000. How did he get them? He was doing a friend a favor, but the bottom line is that the fixers need to find out where those drug parcels came from and return them.

Coming out of the first showing of “Wolfs” at the Venice Film Festival, a friend asked me if I tend to take a movie like this one, which will probably be streamed on Apple much more than it will be seen in movie theaters, and rate it on a made-for-streaming curve. The answer is no, though it’s a good question, and you certainly could rate it both ways. Next to the vast majority of made-for-streaming fodder, “Wolfs” looks the essence of a classy, witty, stylish entertainment. It looks downright old-fashioned (in a good way). But as a movie , which will indeed play in theaters, it is, in the end, a well-made throwaway, no more and no less. The buddy movie is always, on some level, a platonic love story, but in this case by the time Clooney and Pitt locate their bond, they’ve come close to erasing the premise of the movie: that the key to a fixer is that he can’t afford to have a heart. These two never lose their cool, but by the end you feel like they’ve put on sheep’s clothing.

Reviewed at Venice Film Festival (Out of competition), Sept. 1, 2024. MPA rating: R. Running time: 108 MIN.

• Production: A Columbia Pictures, Apple release of an Apple Original Films, Plan B, Freshman Year, Smokehouse Pictures production. Producers: Jon Watts, Dianne McGunigle, Grant Heslov, George Clooney, Brad Pitt, Dede Gardner, Jeremy Kleiner. Executive producer: Michael Beugg.
• Crew: Director, screenplay: Jon Watts. Camera: Larkin Seiple. Editor: Andrew Weisblum. Music: Theodore Shapiro.
• With: George Clooney, Brad Pitt, Amy Ryan, Austin Abrams, Pooma Jagannathan, Richard Kind, Zlatko Burić.

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Is Venice’s The Brutalist This Year’s Surprise Awards Season Contender?

There are movies that get an audience hyped, and then there are 215-minute-long movies that manage to get an audience so hyped that, during the intermission, as a countdown clock ticks away to the start of the second half, everyone is loudly chanting: Five, four, three, two… one!

The first half of Brady Corbet’s The Brutalist should go down as the most electrifying cinematic experience at this year’s Venice Film Festival . It traces the journey of Hungarian Jewish architect László Tóth (Adrien Brody), who, after being freed from a concentration camp, travels to America to begin a new life, living at first in poverty before receiving a commission from an enigmatic property tycoon (Guy Pearce) to build a monumental community center in rural Pennsylvania. At the same time, he works away with his lawyers to secure the necessary immigration papers for his wife, Erzsébet (Felicity Jones), and niece Zsofia (Raffey Cassidy) to join him—all the while navigating a growing addiction to heroin and the rising tides of antisemitism. Sequences capturing the sounds and textures of industrial America—the clang of steel girders, the roar of a smelting furnace—drew audible gasps in the theater, while during its quieter moments, you could have heard a pin drop.

It’s utterly gripping and earns every minute of its runtime, in part thanks to a trio of knockout performances from Brody, Jones, and Pearce. It’s hard not to be reminded of Brody’s Oscar-winning turn in The Pianist with the actor’s bristling portrayal of suffering and resilience, while Jones expertly captures a woman whose outward charm and fierce intelligence camouflage her righteous fury at the injustices imposed upon them in America. (There’s a stunning scene where she confronts the wealthy family that has served as their patrons for the destruction they’ve wrought upon their family, Jones’s roiling anger finally bursting forth.) But it’s Pearce who comes close to stealing the entire show as the preening, mustachioed mogul Harrison Lee van Buren. At first, he provides moments of comic relief with his smooth-talking overtures to Tóth—“I find you very intellectually stimulating,” he repeats over various dinner parties, a line that will take on a chilling resonance by the film’s end—before revealing himself as a monstrous embodiment of brutality and greed. Let’s just say that the race for best supporting actor at next year’s Oscars already has a frontrunner.

The technical work here is equally powerful. The film was shot by Lol Crawley entirely in VistaVision (the vibrant, richly textured film stock beloved by Alfred Hitchcock), and screened in 70mm on a film projector last night, making for a sumptuous visual experience. An opening sequence that follows Tóth through the dank underbelly of a trans-Atlantic steamer ship, then out into the wide open sky—before, eventually, a shaky hand-held camera lands on the Statue of Liberty, seen upside down—is thrilling. The fact this film was made on what was likely a tiny budget boggles the mind: the scale of it is immense, and the sets for the mausoleum-like architectural marvel at the center of its novelistic narrative are astonishing. A soundtrack by the avant-garde musician Daniel Blumberg, who previously scored 2020’s The World to Come (directed by Mona Fastvold, Corbet’s wife and a co-writer on The Brutalist), swerves elegantly from tinkling jazz horns and piano to bellowing, cinema-shaking blasts of brass and drums that evoke the tumult of Tóth’s inner world.

Sure, The Brutalist is not without its flaws, and it doesn’t quite stick the landing. The ending leans a little too ambiguous, with a disappointing lack of resolution for Jones and Pearce’s characters, and a whiplash-inducing jump three decades ahead to an epilogue that—while impressively stylish—leaves the viewer feeling a little disorientated, and pulled out of the haunting atmosphere of everything that came before it. (Though, on the subject of style: whoever designed the delicious, Bauhaus-inspired opening and end credits deserves a special mention.) The Brutalist may bite off a little more than it can chew, but what a pleasure it is to see a filmmaker swing for the fences and—for the vast majority of the film’s running time—hit home run after home run.

After getting back to my hotel last night, I was curious to see whether The Brutalist was on any awards pundits’ radars, but, trawling through both the trades and the blogs, it was nowhere to be found. Expect that to change immediately. For one, it’s Academy catnip: the story of an immigrant reconciling the contradictions of the American dream, with dazzling performances from a number of previously nominated (and often undersung) acting talents, and some of the most brilliant and inventive production design I’ve seen in any film this year, courtesy of Judy Becker. (And some very good accent work, too.)

It even has contemporary resonances under its belt, what with immigration policy being a hot-button issue in the Trump campaign’s attacks against Kamala Harris, and the film’s (somewhat vague) stance on Zionism and the alluring promise of Israel as a land of salvation for Jewish people facing oppression and discrimination in America. So too does the troubled relationship between Tóth and van Buren serve subtly as a wider indictment of the relationship between capitalism and the arts, foreshadowing a world in which creatives are censored by the political whims of their patrons, and families that wreak enormous, wilful devastation can launder their image by putting their name above museum halls.

But what makes The Brutalist a genuine awards contender—in my eyes, anyway—is its staggering ambition. Eavesdropping on the chatter while leaving the screening room last night, the general consensus seemed to be, They don’t make movies like this anymore . (Well, it seems they do: Corbet just made one.) While the film does take its cues from the classics—it’s a little bit Werner Herzog’s Fitzcarraldo, by way of Ayn Rand—what it most brought to mind was Paul Thomas Anderson’s There Will Be Blood with its epic sweep, ominous atmosphere, towering performances, and unflinching window into the dark, putrid heart of a very American strain of unchecked avarice.

Still, I appreciate the sentiment, and in some ways, they don’t often make movies like this anymore. Not only in in terms of scale, but also its intriguing moral ambiguity. If there’s one running theme throughout this year’s Venice Film Festival—from the murky sexual politics of Babygirl, to the meta take on celebrity offered by Angelina Jolie in Maria —it’s that filmmakers shouldn’t be afraid to challenge the prevailing social mores of our time…or, at least, to complicate them. Brody’s architect tries to make sense of the world through the tidy metaphor offered by modernist architecture, but the cruelty and capriciousness of the balances of power that dictate his life will never grant him that luxury. In a way, the notion justifies the movie’s weaker moments: Tóth’s creative vision may be flawless and pure, but the vagaries of human existence are anything but.

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I haven't read the William S. Burroughs novel that Queer is adapted from, but if you told me Luca Guadagnino had gutted it and started from scratch, I'd believe you. His latest movie seems to me to be in clear conversation with his previous work, as if the sensibilities of his four previous features were combined in one movie . It's an enigmatic experience that I desperately want to spend this space interpreting. But I will refrain from going into too much detail and just offer up the lens I saw it through.

In 1950s Mexico City, American expat William Lee ( Daniel Craig ) cruises for young men to sleep with. There is a method to sussing out a willing partner, and for Lee, that means keeping verbal communication to a minimum. If he's talking, as with the freckled Jewish boy in the opening scene, things aren't going too well. But we see what it looks like when he succeeds, and his reaching for a man's necklace in feigned curiosity is met with a hand sliding up his thigh.

Daniel Craig Does Some Career-Best Work In Queer

The movie's real theme is buried in his performance.

This makes fellow American Eugene Allerton (Drew Starkey) particularly vexing. Their eyes meet across, ahem, a cockfight, and they seem to connect. When they talk, things are friendly, even flirty. But he seems pretty friendly with another woman, too. Not knowing seems painful for Lee. His lust manifests physically as a kind of desperation , almost like an illness. Joe (Jason Schwartzman), Lee's friend and brother-in-arms of sorts, reminds him he can always ask , but that would seem to ruin whatever he's really after.

Though Lee appears to live openly, self-loathing courses beneath Craig's performance (among his career best), occasionally peeking out in dialogue. And something about Gene makes him the ultimate fix.

Form and content are subtly in step in these early scenes. While daylight is stark and demystifying, the world around these characters gets slightly unreal at night, tinted with dreamy blues and violets. Our attunement to the physical body is heightened as well, in classic Guadagnino fashion. Starkey is almost always artfully composed, but Craig alternates from suave and collected to a sweaty mess with sunken eyes. The more Lee strikes out, the worse he looks, but the healing intimacy of a successful evening bleeds over into the cinematography.

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To tread into the realm of meaning, this oscillation in Lee's physical state is crucial to understanding his relationship with his homosexuality . He struggles with drug use, but this is less a direct explanation of his behavior than a way of getting us to conflate queerness and addiction, the way I believe this character does. Though Lee appears to live openly, self-loathing courses beneath Craig's performance (among his best), occasionally peeking out in dialogue. And something about Gene makes him the ultimate fix.

Queer Gets More & More Surreal As It Goes

Including the trippiest imagery of luca guadagnino's career.

He brings up, initially in passing, what he's read about a drug called yage, discovered in the South American rain forest. It supposedly enhances one's natural telepathic ability; the Soviets have been testing it out in mind control experiments. Lee's interest in yage becomes an increasingly important part of Queer , though exactly why he's after it is, for a long time, unclear. He would like a stronger hold on Gene, who is fickle with his attention. Would telepathy help him do that? Would mind control?

I greatly admire what Guadagino and his collaborators have accomplished with this film. It's as rewarding as it is challenging.

Guadagnino makes this a subject of constant interpretation. As yage becomes a greater focus, Queer leans into surreal imagery, specifically through dreams . The images the movie conjures are among the most striking of the director's filmography, often channeling the visceral physicality of Suspiria and Bones and All . In these dreams are the keys to Lee's psyche, and I'd recommend doing the work of unpacking them early, if just to flex that muscle. You will need it warmed up by the time Queer comes to an end.

I greatly admire what Guadagino and his collaborators have accomplished with this film. It's as rewarding as it is challenging; it's possible that, with time, I will come to like it even more. I believe it's ultimately about self-acceptance, or, more accurately, the transcendence of one's self-denial. That is by no means the only reading available, though, and I very much look forward to seeing what shapes Queer takes when others do the work of untangling it.

Queer premiered at the Venice Film Festival. The film is 135 minutes long and not yet rated.

An American expat in 1950s Mexico City, struggling with isolation and the remnants of his past, becomes infatuated with a younger man, sparking an intense and obsessive relationship.

• Anchored by some career-best work from Daniel Craig
• Surreal imagery that is captivating and visceral
• Form & content in lockstep
• Challenges the audience by withholding easy answers