korereviews

...but this was quite a letdown. I can't help but wonder if the poor box office of Blade Runner 2049 had something to do with the Dune we ended up with here, and I suspect the director's cut of this film will be better. That said, I think there were more fundamental problems that a re-edit won't fix.

First: the soundtrack was awful - ranged from boring to irritating and overall was very generic and bland. Usually Zimmer delivers better than this; certainly his BR 2049 score was vastly superior. By comparison, the main theme for Dune 1984 was imperious, dramatic and immediately set the mood for the film. The score for this version sounds like it could have been for any of a dozen different films.

Second: the pacing and storytelling were poorly executed, as pretty much everyone has noted. Villeneuve insisted on splitting the first book into two parts, but this first part doesn't feel like it needed to be its own film. The entire thing just feels like a preface to the film you want to be watching.

Third: the best and most interesting aspects of this film were sped over to make time for its least interesting aspects. The Harkonnens were one of the coolest elements in the film, but barely even appeared. The space guild looked amazing, but were hardly present. Ditto for the Bene gesserit. But we have endless tedious slo-mo shots of Zendaya's face and Paul's visions. Poor choice of priorities.

Overall, the main thing this film reminded me of is how awesome the 1984 David Lynch version was. It has been (I think, quite unfairly) panned over the years, but it was much more daring and creative than this version. Admittedly, it also contains some cheezy aspects that don't stand up well, but on the whole, it offers much more of what I want from sci-fi: to be transported to an evocative and alien realm.

Villeneuve's Dune is beautiful, but feels much more terrestrial than alien - almost banal at times. The buildings on Arrakis mostly reminded me of brutalist architecture from the 1960s. The "ornathopters" and battle scenes had a very "desert storm", American miltary feel to them. Nothing had a very alien ambience - except for the elements I mentioned above, which they passed over much too quickly. Ironically, Villeneve's "Arrival" was amazing for resonating with a truly skin-prickling, surreally alien vibe. It's a shame more of that didn't translate into this film. And despite being a dark and serious sort of film, Dune 2021 lacks the weight and gravitas of Dune 1984. The latter felt like an event, in a way that this new one just fails to capture.

In terms of casting and performances, the result is also mixed: all of the Harkonnen casting was great, Rampling as the bene gesserit mother is perfect, Ferguson and Isaac were solid as Paul's parents. Probably the standout character for me though was Javier Bardem as Stillgar, who was almost alone in bringing genuine presence to his character. But Chalomet as Paul fell rather flat for me. He was okay; but the protagonist of your film needs to be more than okay - he needs to have charisma. And Chalomet doesn't. He comes across more as a limp, annoying millennial. Overall, the casting of Dune 2021 offers nothing to surpass Dune 1984.

Really strange choices made here. So unlike the previous two episodes that you have to wonder if this wasn't shoe-horned into the production for some extraneous reason. What's most bizarre is why they would take a show that was working in every possible way, remove one of its best characters for an episode (which is a big deal, considering there are only 6), and suddenly do a hard shift to focus on a lady Loki who looks like a carbon copy of Jody Whittaker's Doctor Who - probably the least popular Doctor of all time. And the TVA aesthetic that made the first episodes so fantastic was largely missing too. Felt like a different show. Plus, you could see them leading up to Loki's big "revelation" so far in advance that it did kind of feel like the whole episode was a pretext for it to happen. Like it was all a woke public service announcement. (Did they bring in Chris Chibnall to write this episode...?) Sure hope the show returns to form after this!

Triple Frontier is cinematic viagra for pathetic middle-aged men. Ben Affleck can't seem to stop flaunting his mid-life crisis on screen. He might as well call his next film "I'm desperately insecure about my masculinity". And all the characters in this film are vile, unsympathetic people, motivated by greed, violence, and self-pity to do stupid and predictably disastrous things. That said, there could have been a good movie here if they hadn't tried to play them as heroes - if they had done it as a black comedy, a la Fargo, where a bunch of bad people try to pull a heist and get they fate they deserve. But they didn't. Of course. Cause it's a dick flick. So if you enjoy glorified, militaristic violence, animal cruelty and gun worship but feel reeeaaallly sad when a buff white dude takes a bullet, you'll probably love this film. Three stars are for the nice cinematography and production value.