Archive for the ‘Denis Villeneuve’ Category
In the Shadows of Arrakis
Dune Part Two
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Director: Denis Villeneuve
Cast: Timothee Chalamet, Zendaya, Rebecca Ferguson, Charlotte Rampling, Christopher Walken, Javier Bardem, Stellan Skarsgard, Austin Butler, Florence Pugh, Josh Brolin, Dave Bautista, Lea Seydoux, Souhella Yacoub
Running time: 2 hours 46 minutes
Film Rating: 9 out of 10
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Gathering an ensemble cast of exceptionally talented actors and then throwing in the hottest stars of the 2020’s, Dune Part Two is almost symbolic of the old guard of actors handing the mantel to the new hugely talented tribe of hot young stars from Zendaya to Timothee Chalamet, from Florence Pugh to Austin Butler.
![](https://www.davidrwalker.co.za/wp-content/uploads/2024/03/dune_part_two-Zendaya-240x300.jpg)
Paul Atreides after suffering the defeat of his royal house in Dune Part 1, hides with the fremen people in Arrakis with his mother Lady Jessica, played by Rebecca Ferguson, as they battle a Harkonnen ambush who are desperate to annihilate the Fremen and take over the lucrative spice mining of the desert planet.
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As Lady Jessica goes through the process of transforming into the Reverend Mother, she drinks from the Water of Life which is a process fatal to men. While Lady Jessica is secretly manipulating her son to grasp complete power, Paul is distracted by his love affair with Chani played by Zendaya.
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Meanwhile in the House of Harkonnen, the Baron wonderfully played with a gloating evil by Stellan Skarsgard gives full power to his younger psychotic nephew Feyd-Rautha a viciously appropriate performance by Oscar nominee Austin Butler (Elvis), who shines in the spectacularly shot gladiator scenes in the bizarre celebrations of his birthday.
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Dune Part Two is slow moving in the first part of the film especially with Atreides acclimatizing to the ways of the desert bound Fremen tribes, but once Austin Butler appears in the film as the hero’s demonic nemesis then the pace of the film increases exponentially.
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The Emperor Shaddam IV regally played by Oscar winner Christopher Walken and his daughter the princess Irulan Corrino played by Florence Pugh are lured into a trap to come to Arrakis then Paul Atreides decides to meet his destiny as he takes on the Harkonnen and their boss The Emperor while discovering a genealogical secret that bounds his mother to the malignant portentous Baron Harkonnen.
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The second half of Dune Part Two is where Denis Villeneuve excels as a director as he creates these epic battle sequences involving the spice worms, the clash of the royal galactic houses and a fight to the death by the carries of two of the most vital bloodlines in Dune, Paul Atreides and Feyd-Rautha Harkonnen, both virile young men in their prime ready to defend their houses and seek a match that will fortify their power.
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The supporting cast of Dune Part Two is superb ranging from Charlotte Rampling to Javier Bardem, from Bond girl Lea Seydoux (No Time to Die) to Josh Brolin, but as a cinematic epic, this film is a mesmerizing tale of retribution, power and the abandonment of the indigenous population for a greater self-enrichment by those more powerful and affluent.
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Adding a pulsating score by Hans Zimmer and gorgeously lit cinematography by Greig Fraser as he clearly delineates the differences between the Fremen and the people of the South, between the Harkonnen, vicious and abundant and the wealthy Emperor and his beautiful daughter Princess Irulan Corrino, Dune Part Two is the first major cinematic event of 2024 and is highly recommended viewing.
If you love science fiction, then this film must be seen on the biggest screen possible. It truly is magnificent and visually alluring, complete with superior production design especially in the brutal Harkonnen gladiator scenes.
Dune Part Two gets a film rating of 9 out of 10 and does perfect justice to the novels by Frank Herbert. Blade Runner 2049 director Denis Villeneuve achieves the majestic and creates an allegorical tale set in the shadows of Arrakis about neo-colonization, revenge and rivalry, while showcasing how vulnerable men can be when absolute power is their wily seducer.
Fall of the House Atreides
Dune
![](http://www.davidrwalker.co.za/wp-content/uploads/2021/10/dune_ver16.jpg)
Director: Denis Villeneuve
Cast: Timothee Chalamet, Oscar Isaac, Rebecca Ferguson, Jason Momoa, Charlotte Rampling, Zendaya, Josh Brolin, Javier Bardem, Stellan Skarsgard, Dave Bautista, David Dastmalchian, Sharon Duncan-Brewster
Running Time: 2 hours and 35 minutes
Film Rating: 8.5 out of 10
After its impressive premiere at the 2021 Venice Film Festival, Blade Runner 2049 director Denis Villeneuve’s eagerly anticipated Dune has finally arrived on Commercial cinema screens globally.
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Unlike David Lynch’s equally ground breaking film version of Dune back in 1984, this absolutely superb version of Dune is a film for the 2020’s – a vision of the future quite attuned with the current state of the geopolitical world.
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Assembling an unbelievably fantastic cast including Oscar nominee Timothee Chalamet (Call Me By Your Name) as the pivotal hero Paul Atreides, there is also Oscar winner Javier Bardem (No Country for Old Men), Oscar nominee Josh Brolin (Milk) and Oscar nominee Charlotte Rampling (45 Years) rounding off a truly international and talented cast.
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To add some much required muscle there is Jason Momoa (Aquaman) as Duncan Idaho and Dave Bautista (Spectre) as Beast Rabban Harkonnen nephew to the brutal and slimy Baron Vladimir Harkonnnen superbly played by Stellan Skarsgard, who is hell bent on destroying the House Atreides, headed by the pompous Duke Leto Atreides played by Oscar Isaac (A Most Violent Year, Star Wars Episode VIII – The Last Jedi).
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On every level, visually and technically, Dune is a truly ground breaking cinematic achievement, a carefully constructed allegorical tale on the fall of colonialism, the collapse of a nobility and more significantly the journey a young heir has to take, from boyhood into manhood.
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Dune is equally an astute comment on paternity, the expectations brought onto sons by arrogant fathers, the brittle strength of masculinity, which is often a combination of skill, strength and ingenuity and the complex relationship between mothers and sons, as betrayed in the pivotal scenes between Paul Atreides and Lady Jessica Atreides, beautifully played by Timothee Chalamet and Rebecca Ferguson.
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Visually Dune is an epic, a science fiction story about the fall of the House Atreides, but at its emotional centre is the unique character growth of Paul Atreides, wonderfully played by Timothee Chalamet, who at times does get overshadowed by the grandeur of Denis Villeneuve’s vision of this Science Fiction epic.
Based on the acclaimed series of novels by Frank Herbert, Dune fans will not be disappointed at this brilliant reimagining on the big screen. Dune is both a comment on fragile power structures as it is on the effects of climate change, Dune is at once insightful and incredible, remarkable and respectful.
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In a pivotal scene and key to the whole film is the remarkable scene between the young Paul Atreides and the Reverend Mother Mohiam expertly played with an austere aloofness by the commanding Charlotte Rampling, whereby the young heir is tested on his capacity for fear, endurance and leadership?
The Reverend Mother promptly tells Paul’s mother Lady Jessica Atreides exceptionally well played by Rebecca Ferguson (Mission Impossible: Fallout, The Greatest Showman), that she was told only to give birth to daughters, because a son would challenge the intergalactic order.
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Dune should be a front runner for Best Picture at the 2022 Oscars, Best Production Design, Best Visual Effects, Best Cinematography, Best Costume Design and Best Original Score.
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Director Denis Villeneuve has outdone himself in his brilliant film about the epic fall of the House Atreides and done justice to the legions of Dune fans globally. From the colour palettes, to the amazing costumes, to the visual and sound effects, Dune is next level entertainment, a film to savour on the big screen, impressive, spell bounding and legendary.
Dune gets a film rating of 8.5 out of 10 and is absolutely a testament to the new decade of the 2020’s, a political society that has been revolutionized, whereby humanity’s existence is fragile purely because they ignored the yearnings of a planet that refused to be mined, colonised and mistreated.
Dune is highly recommended viewing, a visual feast about nobility, patriarchy and greed.
Replicants Rising
Blade Runner 2049
Director: Denis Villeneuve
Cast: Ryan Gosling, Harrison Ford, Robin Wright, Jared Leto, Dave Bautista, Ana de Armas, David Dastmalchian, Edward James Olmos, Barkhad Abdi, Sylvia Hoeks, Tomas Lemarquis, Mackenzie Davis, Sean Young, Hiam Abbass
When Ridley Scott’s original Blade Runner appeared on cinema screens in 1982 it was hailed as a visionary science fiction film about replicants in Los Angeles in 2019.
The film developed an instant cult following and become a prime example of Post Modern Film Noir, with its blend of 1940’s costumes coupled with a dystopian future of a vast city laid bare by global warming and sinister corporations filled with surreal images of a multi-national world overtaken by replicant animals and a rapidly depleting human population most of whom had gone off world to the colonies in outer space.
Thirty five years later, there is finally a sequel, the highly anticipated Blade Runner 2049 featuring Ryan Gosling as K and veteran actor Harrison Ford reprising his role as Deckard.
Directed by French Canadian Denis Villeneuve, who brought cinema lovers his excellent impressionistic films Arrival and Sicario, this is by far his best and most ambitious film yet.
With Blade Runner 2049 he had a lot of visionary expectations to live up to and with the able assistance of Oscar nominee cinematographer Roger Deakins, Blade Runner 2049 is a visual feast, a mind blowing and sophisticated contemplation on the nature of what humanity is, of what fabricated genealogy is and more significantly where our species are heading in a future increasingly popularized with invasive technology. Artificial intelligence, virtual reality, augmented operating systems to name a few.
If contemporary audiences are expecting a straight forward sci-fi sequel then don’t watch Blade Runner 2049. It’s advisable to watch the first film so that you as a viewer can understand all the cinematic references to the original that Villeneuve densely packs into this version along with some stand out performances particularly by Harrison Ford as the older Deckard as he appears exiled in an abandoned casino in a vacated Las Vegas to Dutch actress Sylvia Hoeks as the uber-cool yet vicious replicant Luv along with Robin Wright as K’s LAPD hard-drinking superior Lieutenant Joshi. Cuban actress Ana de Armas (War Dogs) also stars as a virtual projection of K’s love interest Joi to compensate for his increasing alienation in this post-apocalyptic landscape.
What is most captivating about Blade Runner 2049 is the subliminal images and the dexterous use of colour filters particularly in the chic scenes with new arch villain Niander Wallace played with a psychopathic God complex by Oscar winner Jared Leto (Dallas Buyer’s Club).
The ratcheting up of the pace in Blade Runner 2049 is remarkable especially in the film’s second half elegantly assisted by a phenomenal original score by Hans Zimmer and Benjamin Wallfisch.
To tell audiences anything else about Blade Runner 2049, would be to reveal vital spoiler alerts and sinister plot twists.
Blade Runner 2049 is fantastic cinema on an epic, visionary scale and its magnitude would be lost if viewers saw the film on anything smaller than a massive screen complete with surround sound.
Blade Runner 2049 is superb viewing and gets a film rating of 9 out of 10.
A ravishing tour-de-force in post-modern semiotic brilliance, this film is not to be missed by those that loved the original Blade Runner.
The Universal Language
Arrival
Director: Denis Villeneuve
Cast: Amy Adams, Jeremy Renner, Forest Whitaker, Michael Stulbarg, Mark O’Brien, Tzi Ma
With a screenplay by Eric Heisserer based on the story “Story of Your Life” written by Ted Chiang, French Canadian director Denis Villeneuve’s latest film Arrival gives Oscar nominee Amy Adams (American Hustle, The Master, Doubt) full scope to flex her truly extraordinary acting abilities.
Adams plays a Linguistics expert Dr. Louise Banks who is enlisted by the US army, when an alien space craft lands in Montana. However as Arrival gains momentum, it appears that there are 11 other similar alien space crafts that have landed unexpectedly in places throughout the world from The Sudan to Venezuela.
Banks is joined by Ian Donnelly played by Oscar nominee Jeremy Renner (The Hurt Locker, The Town) as they become the proverbial couple who must make first contact with the aliens and decipher their complicated circular means of communication and ultimately discover what their true purpose is on earth? Are they friendly aliens or have they come to annihilate earth?
As other nations around the world become increasingly hostile to the foreign ships in their territories, mainly China and the American military is becoming more trigger happy that the aliens which take the form of giant squid have malignant intentions, Banks and Donnelly must race against time to establish a pattern of communication to discover their real intention.
Skilfully shot and mostly done in a murky light, cinematographer Bradford Young photographs Arrival very dimly at first but soon as the narrative progresses, the film becomes brighter and more explanatory.
What really makes Arrival so distinctive a film, especially about the possibility of contact with alien life forms is the skillful direction of Villeneuve who portrays the contacts between Banks and the aliens in a non-linear form.
Secondly, it is Amy Adams superb performance as Dr Louise Banks who is desperate to not only save humanity but forge a future for herself beyond this supernatural event. Adams is brilliant in this role and most of the screen time is taken up with her contradicted thoughts and emotional turmoil as the mental toll of what she is trying to achieve is distinguishable in every frame.
Whilst the rest of the cast including Renner and Oscar winner Forest Whitaker (The Last King of Scotland) playing Colonel Weber along with character actor Michael Stulbarg as Agent Halpern all inhabit peripheral roles, it is Amy Adams’s performance which makes Arrival so absorbing to watch.
Visually the film is dark and almost perplexing but director Villeneuve handles the subject matter of first contact so elegantly that for moments, audiences will forget they are watching a sci-fi film.
Arrival is an extraordinary film with many intuitive moments much like the Universal Language that Dr Louise Banks discovers and ultimately ends on a poignant note, without resorting to corny or special effects laden farce. Arrival is a cinematic treat exploring how we as human beings assimilate language, despite there being so many different variations. Highly recommend viewing.
Trapped in Suburbia
Prisoners
Director: Denis Villeneuve
Cast: Hugh Jackman, Jake Gyllenhaal, Maria Bello, Terrence Howard, Viola Davis, Paul Dano, David Dastmalchian
French Canadian director of Foreign language film nominee Incendies Denis Villeneuve weaves a web of intrigue in the deeply disturbing suburban thriller Prisoners extracting a brilliant performance by his two central male leads, Oscar Nominees Hugh Jackman (Les Miserables) and Jake Gyllenhaal (Brokeback Mountain) set in a wintry landscape of Pennsylvania.
Prisoners bleak story revolves around two average American families (the Dovers and the Birches) whose daughters are best friends and after a relaxing Thanksgiving lunch, the girls are playing in the street where they are snatched in mysterious circumstances. The parents of the missing girls Keller Dover and his wife Grace played by Hugh Jackman and Maria Bello and the Birches played by Terrence Howard (Dead Man Down) and Viola Davis (Doubt, The Help) are naturally beside themselves with grief and worry.
In steps the local police Detective Loki, a superb performance by Jake Gyllenhaal who goes on a desperate mission to unravel the mystery of these vanished children, uncovering a whole web of secrets in the closely knitted Pennsylvanian community. The first suspect is the shy Alex Jones, wonderfully played by Paul Dano (Ruby Sparks, There will be Blood) who was parked in a RV that the abducted girls were playing on moments before they went missing, but upon questioning turns out to have a seemingly limited intelligence, covering up an even darker secret.
To complicate the investigation even further the fathers of the missing girls Keller Dover and Franklin Birch capture the scared Alex Jones soon after he is released from police custody and then start torturing him as a prisoner in an abandoned apartment convinced that he knows what happened to the little girls. Detective Loki is meanwhile hot on the trial of another suspect Bob Taylor played by David Dastmalchian, who has a penchant for buying children’s clothes at the local Valuemart.
Prisoners is a disturbing tale of how far a father will go to find his lost daughter and the also the ramifications that an abduction can have on a small town community. This is a disturbing film, slightly depressing as most of it is shot against a slate grey sky of an approaching Pennsylvania winter, but fortunately director Villeneuve has assembled a top notch cast including Oscar winner Melissa Leo (The Fighter) as Alex Jones’s mysterious aunt Holly Jones.
Viewers have to concentrate in this film as the narrative drops clues all the time about who the real culprit is and as the tension mounts a disturbing twist is revealed whereby the hunter becomes the prey, an analogy first introduced in the opening shot when the ultra prepared and slightly neurotic Keller Dover, a wonderfully different performance by Hugh Jackman is teaching his teenage son Ralph how to hunt deer.
Prisoners only crime is that the riveting, yet gap filled narrative could have been more tightly written by screenwriter Aaron Guzikowski and certain scenes definitely required some crisp editing to make the emotional resonance of the film more astounding.
Prisoners runs for 153 minutes which is fairly long for a suspense drama about child abduction in a murky and seemingly soulless American suburbia. If film goers enjoyed the Oscar winning Mystic River then Prisoners is that type of film although not as good. Disturbing, compelling and scary, Prisoners will take viewers into a maze of intrigue…
2010 Toronto Film Festival
2010 Toronto International Film Festival Winners
Toronto International Film Festival (TIFF) takes place every year in September in Toronto, Canada.
Films which premiere at Toronto are often nominated for Academy Awards the following year.
TIFF does not hand out individual prizes for Best Actor or Actress but focuses on amongst others the following awards:
People’s Choice Award & Best Canadian Feature Film
Opening Night Film: Score, A Hockey Musical directed by Michael McGowan starring Nelly Furtado, Olivia Newton-John, Stephen McHattie & Noah Reid
People Choice Award: The King’s Speech directed by Tom Hooper starring Colin Firth, Helena Bonham Carter, Geoffrey Rush, Guy Pierce, Derek Jacobi, Jennifer Ehle
Best Canadian Feature Film: Incendies directed by Denis Villeneuve starring Mustafa Kamel, Mélissa Désormeaux-Poulin & Maxim Gaudette
Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2010_Toronto_International_Film_Festival