Dune

 Year of Release:  2021

Director:  Denis Villeneuve

Screenplay:  Jon Spaihts, Denis Villeneuve and Eric Roth, based on the novel Dune by Frank Herbert

Starring:  Timothée Chalamet, Rebecca Ferguson, Oscar Isaac, Josh Brolin, Stellan Skarsgård, Dave Bautista, Zendaya, Chang Chen, Sharon Duncan-Brewster, Charlotte Rampling, Jason Momoa, Javier Bardem

Running Time:  156 minutes

Genre:  Science-fiction

In the far future, the most valuable substance in the universe is the "Spice" which makes interstellar travel possible.  The only place where Spice can be found is on the desert planet Arrakis (nicknamed "Dune").  for the past 80 years, the brutal House Harkonnen have held the monopoly on Spice mining on Arrakis.  The Emperor Shaddam IV transfers the rights to Arrakis to the Harkonnen's arch-rivals, the noble House Atreides.  Despite his suspicions, Duke Leto Atreides (Isaac) accepts the assignment.  Meanwhile, his son Paul (Chalamet) has been having strange, mystical dreams of Arrakis, and is on his way to his own destiny.

Franks Herbert's classic 1965 science-fiction novel Dune has baffled and stymied many a filmmaker to the extent that it has been considered "unfilmable".  Cult Chilean director Alejandro Jodorowsky planned an adaptation starring Salvador Dalí, Orson Welles, Gloria Swanson and Mick Jagger, with production design by H. R. Giger and comics artist Jean Girard (Moebius), and music by Pink Floyd, was aborted due to the planned 14 hour running time and rapidly ballooning budget.  Ridley Scott planned an adaptation, but abandoned it in favour of Blade Runner (1982).  David Lynch finally brought the novel to the screen with Dune (1984), which has had what politely could be termed a mixed reception from critics and fans, although personally I enjoyed it.  The Sci-Fi channel made a three part miniseries based on the book in 2000.    The problem for filmmakers for the book is that it is long, complex and sprawling with a complicated backstory, that is portrayed in the book through footnotes and appendices, but is difficult to portray on screen.  The first thing to be aware of with Denis Villeneuve's film is that it is properly titled Dune: Part One, and it only adapts the first half of the novel, which means that it just stops with no conclusion,  whether or not we get a Part Two depends (at the time of this writing) as to how well this does commercially. This is really a kind of mainstream art film.  It looks beautiful, with Arrakis ranging from bleached vistas, to red-gold deserts, riddled with deadly sandworms, mouths bristling with delicate, filament-like teeth; the chilly grey, Northern landscapes of the Atreides' homeward of Caladan, and the shadowy world of Geidi Prime, home of the Harkonnens, lit boy shafts of light slicing through the gloom.  Denis Villeneuve is a master of beautiful science-fiction, sometimes focussing on visual splendour at the expense of character.  The film creates this richly detailed imaginative universe, with some spectacular action scenes.  This also has some great performances, with Timothée Chalamet in particular impressive as Paul moving from sulky teen to courageous warrior, and Rebecca Ferguson as Paul's mother, Lady Jessica, a member of the mystical Bene Gesserit order, who breaks the most sacred rules of her order for love.  As it stands, this is probably the best possible adaptation of Herbert's prose in to film, if the second part gets made, it could be one of the highpoint of science-fiction in cinema.   

Rebecca Ferguson, Zendaya, Javier Bardem and Timothée Chalamet in Dune

The Man Who Killed Don Quixote

 Year of Release:  2018

Director:  Terry Gilliam

Screenplay:  Terry Gilliam and Tony Girsoni, based on the novel Don Quixote by Miguel de Cervantes

Starring:  Adam Driver, Jonathan Pryce, Stellan Skarsgård, Olga Kurylenko

Running Time:  132 minutes

Genre:  Action-adventure, comedy

Toby (Driver) is a disillusioned director who is in Spain shooting a commercial based on the story of Don Quixote, he also happens to be near the location of his student film, The Man Who Killed Don Quixote, which he made with non-professional actors ten years previously.  Toby runs into his star, a cobbler, Javier (Pryce), who now believes that he really is Don Quixote, and that Toby is his loyal squire, Sancho Panza.  Javier drags Toby off in search of adventure.

This film has become almost notorious, due to how long it has been in the works.  Gilliam had been attempting to make a film based on Miguel de Cervantes' 17th century novel Don Quixote, since about 1990, and there have been several aborted attempts to film The Man Who Killed Don Quixote, one of which has been immortalised in the 2002 documentary film Lost in La Mancha, so Gilliam deserves some credit just for getting the thing made.  Is the finished film worth waiting nearly 30 years for?  No.  Is it a good film and worth seeing?  Yes.  This features both the good and the bad of Terry Gilliam's work.  It is sprawling, overlong, uneven and indulgent.  It is also ambitious and imaginative.  When it is good, and it is good very often, then it is truly wonderful.  At it's worse, it's just a mess but, despite it's generous running time, it's never dull.  It's also surprisingly dark.  Adam Driver is good as a pretty unlikeable character, and Jonathan Pryce is great as the frail but noble Don Quixote who becomes almost admirable in his romantic delusion.  Stellan Skarsgård is good as ever as Toby's formidable Boss, and Olga Kurylenko is very good, if underused, as the Boss' seductive wife, Jacqui.  The film covers some very familiar Gilliam territory:  The individual versus society, dreams versus reality, and the nature of sanity or insanity.  The film looks fantastic throughout with some striking locations and set pieces.  When looking at Terry Gilliam's career, it is easy to see why Quixote holds such an attraction for him, and he is to be admired for succeeding in his quest to get this film made.

It is not a perfect film, and it may not be the masterpiece that Gilliam fans may have hoped for, but it is a flawed, enjoyable, eccentric work touched by moments of genius, and I will take that over the bland, committee led franchise fare that seems to make up a lot of modern movies any day of the week.  

Adam Driver and Jonathan Pryce ride out in The Man Who Killed Don Quixote

        

The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo (2011)

Year:  2011
Director:  David Fincher
Screenplay:  Steven Zaillian, based on the novel The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo by Stieg Larsson
Starring:  Daniel Craig, Rooney Mara, Christopher Plummer, Stellan Skarsgard, Steven Berkoff, Robin Wright, Yorick van Wageningen, Joley Richardson
Running Time:  158 minutes
Genre:  Thriller, crime, drama, mystery

This is the English language film adaptation of the best-selling novel by Steig Larsson, which was first published in 2005, and was already the subject of a 2009 Swedish film.

Disgraced journalist Mikael Blomkvist (Craig) is hired by Henrik Vanger (Plummer) the wealthy, elderly patriarch of a large and powerful family, ostensibly to write his biography, but in reality to investigate the murder of his beloved neice, who disappeared almost forty years previously.  Vanger is convinced that one of the family killed her.  As he investigates, Blomkvist enlists the help of troubled computer hacker Lisbeth Salander (Mara).  Together the two begin to discover some shocking secrets about the Vanger family.  Secrets that some would kill to keep hidden.

This is a very faithful adaptation of the novel.  Visually it is very impressive, with the bleak, wintery landscapes giving the film an almost dreamlike atmosphere.  The cast are uniformly brilliant, with Rooney Mara exceptional in the difficult role of Lisbeth Salander, who is already one of the most memorable characters in modern popular fiction.  The film also manages to condense a complex and long novel into a coherent film.  The film retains the Swedish setting of the original novel, but all the dialogue is English language, with the cast basically speaking in Swedish accents, which seems slightly bizarre.  Also the film moves at a fairly sedate pace, although there are sudden bursts of violence, a couple of which are genuinely shocking and disturbing.  

However, it is a fierce and powerful piece of work, with a superb visual sense and would be worth watching just for Rooney Mara's performance alone.

Rooney Mara is The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo

Melancholia

Year:  2011
Director:  Lars von Trier
Screenplay:  Lars von Trier
Starring:  Kirsten Dunst, Charlotte Gainsbourg, Alexander Skarsgard, Keifer Sutherland, Stellan Skarsgard, Charlotte Rampling, John Hurt, Udo Kier
Running Time:  135 minutes
Genre:  Drama, science-fiction, apocalyptic

It's the end of the world as we know it in the latest laugh filled romp from controversial Danish director Lars von Trier.  Justine (Dunst) and her new husband Michael (Alexander Skarsgard) turn up two hours late to their own wedding reception, held at the lavish country house owned by Justine's sister Claire (Gainsbourg) and her wealthy astronomer husband John (Sutherland).  At the reception, Justine, who suffers from manic depression, alienates her friends, family and her employer with her increasingly erratic behaviour.  In addition, a large rogue planet called Melancholia, which had been hidden behind the Sun is scheduled to pass by (or more likely to collide with) Earth in fve days time.

The film is told in two parts, the first, "Justine", deals with the disasterous wedding reception and plays like a savage dark comedy, while the second, "Claire", deals with the characters preparing for the approach of Melancholia and is an intense chamber drama.  It's fair to say, that while the film belongs squarely in the field of apocalyptic science-fiction and the main plot of an object about to collide with and destroy the Earth has been done many times before, this is very far removed from the action-adventure thrills of conventional science-fiction cinema.  This slow-moving, somber movie even pulls the rug out from the audience by denying us even the suspense of wondering whether or not the planet is going to collide with Earth.  It opens with a series of surreally beautiful slow-motion images depicting Earth's destruction by Melancholia (von Trier said that he did not want the audience in suspense for the wrong reasons)   

Lars von Trier is one of the most controversial directors working today and tends to strongly polarise his audience.  In the press conference for Melancholia at the 2011 Cannes Film Festival he managed to alienate almost everyone by saying that he admired Hitler and the Nazis.  However he later apologised and claimed that he didn't mean it and it was just a joke.  Aside from his idiotic comments at the press conference, it's harder to ignore the fact that in Lars von Trier films the women, his lead characters are usually women, tend to have misery upon misery heaped upon them until they achieve some kind of transcendence at the end.  However, he is a talented film-maker and this movie is probably the most stunning and visually impressive of his career.  There is more than a hint here of the influence of the great Russian director Andrei Tarkovsky who did his own apocalypse film with The Sacrifice (1986).

The acting, as usual with von Trier films, is spectacular with Kirsten Dunst giving a career best perfomance as the unhappy Justine, a character who is never particularly likeable but is never entirely unsympathetic and she gets good support from Charlotte Gainsbourg as the stressed, but level-headed, Claire.  Also the unrelenting misery is leavened by a streak of welcome dark humour.  

Fans of slow and depressing science-fiction drama won't want to miss it.

Kirsten Dunst is electric in Melancholia

Thor

Year: 2011
Director: Kenneth Branagh
Screenplay: Ashley Edward Miller, Zack Stentz and Don Payne, based on the comic-book series Thor created by Stan Lee, Larry Lieber and Jack Kirby
Starring: Chris Hemsworth, Natalie Portman, Tom Hiddleston, Stellan Skarsgard, Colm Feore, Ray Stevenson, Idris Elba, Kat Dennings, Rene Russo, Anthony Hopkins
Running Time: 114 minutes
Genre: Superhero, action, fantasy

Summary: Thor (Hemsworth), God of Thunder, is banished from Asgard to Earth by his father Odin (Hopkins), King of the Gods, for attacking the Frost Giants of Jotunheim, long standing enemies of the Gods.
Arriving in present-day New Mexico, Thor is discovered by scientist Jane Foster (Portman), her assistant Darcy Lewis (Dennings) and mentor Dr. Erik Selvig (Skarsgard). Stripped of his powers and ability to use his magical hammer Mjolnir, Thor has to come to terms with his new mortal existence, as well as a sinister agency known as S.H.I.E.L.D. who are taking a strong interest in him.
Meanwhile, in Asgard, the plotting of Thor's treacherous brother Loki (Hiddelston) threatens more than one world with complete destruction.

Opinions: This movie is based on the popular Marvel comic-book series and differs from a lot of the more recent superhero movies by throwing in some sword-and-sorcery action into the mix.
Thor was the God of Thunder in Norse mythology, whose name is referenced in, among other things, the day of the week Thursday ("Thor's Day"). Needless to say, the film has very little connection to Norse legend.
Kenneth Branagh is best known as a director for his Shakesperean adaptations, and is certainly not a name that springs to mind in connection with a massive multi million dollar special effects 3-D superhero movie, but he does very well. A fan of the comic, Branagh obviously has a lot of understanding of the material. He balances the drama and humour very well and also handles the special effects and action scenes brilliantly, making the action scenes tight and effective so that they are exciting and comprehensible rather than being an explosion of confusing pyrotechnics that just ends up being dull. The film is released in 3-D, and I personally am not a fan of 3-D in general (although there are exceptions), but it is done well here and it helps to invest both the golden city of Asgard and the frozen wastes of Jotunheim with a genuine sense of wonder. The special effects are really spectacular throughout.
The cast do well with their roles. In the lead Chris Hemsworth is charismatic, if too clean-cut to be a Norse warrior-god. Natalie Portman provides the film with it's emotional heart. Stellan Skarsgard is also very impressive as the skeptical scientist. The comic's co-creator Stan Lee has his customary cameo as a truck driver.
Blending culture-clash comedy, family drama and intrigue and comic-book superheroics this is a pretty packed film. In contrast with many recent superhero movies, such as The Dark Knight (2008), this doesn't try to make the material dark or gritty, it is unashamedly action-packed, fantasy adventure, and none the worse for that.
By the way, keep watching until the end of the closing credits for an additional scene.



Chris Hemsworth and Anthony Hopkins in Thor

Angels & Demons

Year: 2009
Director: Ron Howard
Screenplay: David Koepp and Akiva Goldsmith, based on the novel by Dan Brown
Starring: Tom Hanks, Ewan McGregor, Ayelet Zurer, Stellan Skarsgard, Pierfrancesco Favino, Nikolaj Lie Kaas and Armin Mueller-Stahl
Running Time: 146 minutes
Genre: Thriller, mystery, adventure

Summary: In the Vatican City, the Pope has just died and the College of Cardinals prepare for the papal conclave to vote a successor. However the four 'preferiti' (the most likely candidates to be elected Pope) are kidnapped before the conclave enters seclusion. Additionally a vial of antimatter is stolen from the Large Hadron Collider at the European Organisation for Nuclear Research (CERN) in Switzerland. The kidnappers reveal themselves to be members of a secret society known as the Illuminati and threaten to kill one cardinal every hour and at midnight to use the highly explosive antimatter to destroy the Vatican City. The Vatican call in well-known symbologist Robert Langdon (Hanks) and Vittoria Vetra (Zurer) from CERN to solve the Illuminati's coded threats, save the prefereti and find the stolen antimatter.

Opinions: This movie was based on the bestselling novel by Dan Brown first published in 2000. The film is a sequel to the hit 2006 movie The Da Vinci Code, which was also based on a Dan Brown book. Incidentally, although the film is a sequel to the film of The Da Vinci Code, the novel of The Da Vinci Code is a sequel to the Angels & Demons novel. This film provides more running around an exotic location, deciphering ancient codes. It's a fun, slickly made thriller which improves on the film of The Da Vinci Code by tightening up the pace, although as with the earlier film the pace does suffer from the necessity to stop and explain the plot and background, which is much easier done in print than on film. However the short time frame and strong threat mean that the tension is always there. Howard directs with a sure hand and manages to get a lot of mileage out of the Vatican and Rome locations. Tom Hanks puts in his usual solid perfomance, reprising his role from The Da Vinci Code and Israeli actress Ayelet Zurer is engaging as the female lead. Ewan McGregor appears as a Northern Irish priest and doesn't manage to maintain his accent for the whole movie. As with the earlier film, there was some controversy due to the religious elements but the film is neither anti-religious or anti-Catholic. As with the earlier film, while you're watching it you do get the impression that you might be learning something from it but it is improtant not to put too much faith in the film's accuracy in either religious or historical matters.