Dune: Part Two (2024)

Director: Denis Villeneuve

Cast: Timothée Chalamet, Rebecca Ferguson, Zendaya, Austin Butler

Have I Seen it Before: In as much as I’ve read the novel and seen all of Dune (1984) I’ve been through all of the story beats, but no. I worry I missed it on IMAX…

Did I Like It: Somewhere between seeing the movie and writing this review, someone asked me what I thought of the movie, and I said “it was more of part one.” That seems reductive, but it is meant in a positive way. The scale is epic, the movie is not weighed down by a too much*, and the performances are uniformly pretty great, even in the context of a story where one might have been forgiven (I refer again to the David Lynch original) for appearing to be slightly embarrassed by the whole affair.

As with most adaptations, the more interesting parts are where the filmmaker decides to make things different. In the novel Chani (Zendaya) is shunted aside almost glibly (you might disagree with that interpretation) but the film goes out of its way to give her agency and a measure of righteous rage. Those decisions aptly introduces the idea that the Muad’Dib (Chalamet) might be just another villain in the piece.

Maybe he’s a well-meaning villain, but I’ll just have to read further into Herbert’s saga to make that final decision. That is ultimately the best thing I can say about the movie. It might be more of the same, and lose a bit of its surprising qualities in the process, but any movie that would make me want to continue with such a densely packed series of novels clearly has something going for it.

*It’s probably impossible to completely shed all of the silly exposition when one is adapting Herbert’s novel.

Dune (2021)

Director: Denis Villeneuve

Cast: Timothée Chalamet, Rebecca Ferguson, Oscar Isaac, Josh Brolin

Have I Seen it Before: Never. See my remarks about my boneheaded Dune-related decisions in my review of David Lynch’s Dune (1984).

Did I Like It: It’s going to be difficult to find something to say about this film that isn’t immediately clear from being exposed to any piece of information about the film. It is a sumptuous production, being a nearly perfect fusion of modern special effects and epic filmmaking of old. The performances are finely tuned, with excellent performers managing to inhabit a space opera with not a single one of them looking embarrassed that they are taking place in the proceedings. Preceding decades may have been filled with varying degrees of false starts, but this is unequivocally the best possible adaptation of Frank Herbert’s novel. It is all made more impressive by the fact that Villeneuve and company had to accept that they only had the resources to tell half of the story (to say nothing of the larger tale of Paul Atreides (Chalamet) and his heirs) with no guarantee that the film would catch on with audiences to necessitate the rest of the story going before cameras. It’s not a fair example, but the makers of Battlefield Earth (2000) made the same gambit and had it blow up in their face. This film had to be good, and it shows.

Had we been left with only this film, it might have been a supremely unsatisfying experience. What’s more, in stark contrast to David Lynch’s version of the story, much is left unexplained. I’m honestly surprised that the film did as well as it did, as the uninitiated might have found some of this inscrutable. Against all odds, I’m really glad that I read the book first. Take that to mean what you will.

Doctor Sleep (2019)

Director: Mike Flanagan

Cast: Ewan McGregor, Rebecca Ferguson, Kyleigh Curran, Cliff Curtis

Have I Seen it Before: Aside from wondering how much play they’re going to get out of the (computer generated?) recreated sets of The Shining (1980), but it certainly seems like Warner Bros. is going to get they’re money’s worth out of the effort.

Did I Like It: Sure.

I can’t help but think back to 2010: The Year We Made Contact (1984). Is there a need to make a sequel to a Kubrick film? Almost entirely not, and yet the foundation that Kubrick leaves us with is enough to make a pretty watchable movie.

And while Flanagan’s film has its flaws (it drags in the middle, and leaves perhaps one too many plot holes that aren’t helped by acknowledging that they exist), there’s more than enough to like. 

Do we give this film credit when a lot of what works about the movie is directly from the original? Yes, because for the most part elements from the first film are taken with some degree of restraint, and almost always in service of the story. I probably could have gone without the use of either the main title from the original film or “Midnight, The Stars, and You” in the opening and the closing of the film, as that moves the proceedings a little disappointingly into the territory of fan film, but it can be forgiven. The fan service could have been a lot worse.

Like with that earlier unnecessary but ultimately likable Kubrick sequel, the performances elevate. McGregor extends the sad, unformed wonder of Danny from the original to an adult with sadness metastasized. His arc toward hope (even if it means his physical doom) fuels the movie. Ferguson dances between the hypnotic and threatening qualities that the story demands with enough versatility that for much of the run time I didn’t recognize her as an actress I had seen in films before. Curran could have easily veered into too-precocious for her own good, but manages to be believable in a role that other films (including the original) would have relegated to a mystified mute. Carl Lumbly is so good as Hallorann that there were several moments I wondered if they had used some manner of computer trickery to bring Scatman Crothers back from the dead.

Will Doctor Sleep equal its predecessor? I can’t imagine it will, but it did manage to be watchable and not embarrass itself. That’s all I needed it to be.

Mission: Impossible -- Fallout (2018)

Director: Christopher McQuarrie

Cast: Tom Cruise, Henry Cavill*, Ving Rhames, Rebecca Ferguson

Have I Seen it Before: Certainly.

Did I Like It: I was a little down on Mission: Impossible - Rogue Nation (2015) as by that fifth entry in the series, the sameness that plagued the television series was starting to just bubble to the surface. The prospect of the series now settling into a regular cast and a regular director only increased the fear that said sameness would be the order of the day for the foreseeable future.

I’m happy to report that it appears McQuarrie may be just getting warmed up, but at the moment, he is content to make subtle changes to the tried and true format. Giving Hunt and company recurring heavy (Sean Harris) at first blush feels like more descending into monotony, but for this series it is a breath of fresh air. 

Up until this point, Hunt has been presented as an unassailable movie spy. Here, it’s sort of delightful, a measure more realistic, and includes an added dimension of suspense into the final set piece that it appears Hunt has no clue how to fly a helicopter, but must do so anyway. One might spend some spell of time after seeing the film wondering how Hunt could have been in the line of work that he was for as long as he had and not get more expert in the operation of various types of vehicles, but that time would be ill spent, and I don’t recommend it.

Even if the promise of these new elements reverts back to the mean while McQuarrie is at the helm, the hand at the wheel is steady enough that I will still enjoy entries in this series, even if they don’t continue to try and surprise.

*Will it ever be possible to look at Cavill’s mustache in this film and not revel in the reality that it is pointedly one thing that made Justice League (2017) a bizarre, unlovable Frankenstein’s Monster of a film? I think not.

Mission: Impossible -- Rogue Nation (2015)

Director: Christopher McQuarrie

Cast: Tom Cruise, Jeremy Renner, Simon Pegg, Rebecca Ferguson

Have I Seen it Before: Oddly enough, I think this is one film in the series that I somehow missed in the theater, thus I’m remembering it the least upon this screening.

Did I Like It: Yeah…

On that note, I’ve come to some conclusions about the Mission: Impossible series as a whole. Like the television series that begat it, the movies suffer ever so slightly when watched in succession. The format is relatively unchanging, especially after the series fell under the auspices of J.J. Abrams and his company, Bad Robot effective with Mission: Impossible III (2006). There is little variation in these films. Sure, the ubiquitous “your mission, should you choose to accept it” scene in this film harkens back to its televised analog roots, before pulling the rug out from under us and enveloping super spy Ethan Hunt (Cruise) into a web of villainy before the first reel is over. That’s refreshing and does its level headed best to renew interest in this new story.

From there, however, that twist doesn’t hold up. It gives way to yet another survey of internal difficulties in the CIA that Hunt will nullify with his brazenness. What’s more, the proceedings have continued to grow a little pat in other ways. There are masks. Tom Cruise dangles from improbable heights. Ving Rhames shows up. There’s a throwaway reference to the first film that floats in the air for an instant before evaporating just as quickly as it arrived. Incidentally, those scant references are usually my favorite part of one of these movies, Cruise conscientiously defying the forces of gravity be damned.

All of that isn’t even meant as a criticism of this film or the series as a whole, really. This film, too, is a pleasant way to spend two hours. It may be better to do so every couple of years and then not think too much about it afterwards.

At the time of this writing, McQuarrie is hard at work on the seventh and eighth film in the series, his third and fourth. This series once was a showcase for great (or in some cases, potentially great) directors to play around in a tried and true genre. Now that McQuarrie is here to stay, let’s hope he gets bored and decides to throw us a few more curveballs in the process.