DUNE: PART TWO (2024)

Of all the big releases this quarter, few can match the size and scale of the hotly anticipated Dune: Part Two, which sees Denis Villeneuve at his showiest and most action-heavy as he returns to the desert planet of Arrakis to complete his adaptation of Frank Herbert’s sprawling, totemic novel. With all the sturdy groundwork laid in the first film, Dune: Part Two shifts into a higher gear and delivers big on the genre thrills.

Within the mainstream circles there aren’t many directors that have the clout and command of their craft to combine the blockbuster scale with arthouse sensibilities. I would submit that Nolan is the most prominent figure in this field, but another that trails close behind is the prolific Villeneuve. For nearly a decade, Villeneuve has made the realm of science fiction cinema his own with Arrival (2016), Blade Runner: 2049 (2017) and, of course, Dune (2021), but for all the grand and sweeping imagery which seems to amplify with each passing release, Villeneuve skilfully never loses sight of the human touch and refuses to allow the stupefying spectacle to dwarf the drama. The first Dune movie – which can retroactively be labelled Part One – was a successful but largely leisurely affair in which Villeneuve and company managed to deftly capture the titanic, ornate quality of the late Herbert’s text while keeping the giant wow-factor moments subservient to the characters and mature political intrigue. Whilst Dune was effectively a protracted prologue, an elongated exercise in intricate, detailed world-building, this swashbuckling sequel surpasses the 2021 incarnation in stunning set-pieces and narrative urgency. The solemn, muted moments in the 2021 movie, while not entirely absent, are subdued here in favour of eye-filling spectacle – and a tremendous spectacle it is.

Much of the current appeal and the enduring adoration for Dune: Part Two can be attributed to its purely cinematic visuals coupled with some hot and savvy casting. With regards to the players, Part Two reunites much of the who’s-who cast of the first edition (Timothée Chalamet, Zendaya, Rebecca Ferguson, Stellan Skarsgård, Josh Brolin, Javier Bardem, Dave Bautista) while weaving plenty of exciting newcomers into its dense tapestry: Florence Pugh, Austin Butler, Léa Seydoux and Christopher Walken. Chalamet, complete with his ocean-blue eyes and Pre-Raphaelite features, continues to impress in his role as the aristocratic wannabe messiah – a performance which seems heavily indebted to Zeffirelli’s Jesus of Nazareth (1977) and Scorsese’s The Last Temptation of Christ (1988). Yet the most striking acting comes to us from Austin Butler as the terrifying scene-stealer Feyd. But make no mistake: the real star here is not one of flesh and blood, but rather can be found in the breathtaking and sometimes brutal desert vistas which clearly owe an incalculable debt to Lean’s masterful Lawrence of Arabia (1962). And then there are the battle sequences; barring Ridley Scott, not many directors can stage a massive battle onscreen convincingly these days, but those in Dune: Part Two rank as some of the most awesome I’ve seen in the time that I’ve been fortunate enough to critique movies, evoking Eisenstein’s flawed but fascinating Ivan the Terrible duology and Jackson’s Battle for Helm’s Deep from The Two Towers (2002). Naturally, much of the acclaim will be directed towards Villeneuve but the unsung trooper behind the curtain is cinematographer Greg Fraser.

For all its pictorial prestige, Dune: Part Two does suffer slightly from some slight rushing with regards to final act in which Chalamet’s central character’s zealous and drastic metamorphosis is translated in a way that can only be deemed rushed. Nevertheless, seldom has a piece of popular entertainment set the stage with such care and with such commendable respect for its audience. Villeneuve’s skilfully conceived and ambitious continuation of this hardcore sci-fi saga is a lavish, evocative epic of majestic proportions, chivalric and quixotic, earthly and otherworldly. This endeavour was a gamble, but one that has beautifully paid off. The directing, imaginative photography, ingenious effects and attractive ensemble all elegantly marry together in perfect harmony to elevate Herbert’s ‘unfilmable’ literary work into riveting viewing.

THE TASTE OF THINGS (2023)

Considering food plays such an integral part in our daily rituals, it’s rarely experienced much glory on the big screen and the few times it does it’s usually against a backdrop that is less than savoury. Amidst the sweat-drenched, frenetic, highly-strung and frequently profane edginess of contemporary cooking depicted on both the big and small screen, Tran Anh Hung’s culinary yarn emerges as a soft, gentle and endearing anachronism and pleasant paean. At a superficial glance, the period backdrop, whimsically naturalistic soundtrack and resplendent costuming recall the wonderful cinema of Pagnol with such intensity one can almost smell the overwhelming odour of lavender throughout.

With her florid cheeks and dark tendrils flowing from her head, Juliette Binoche is as luminous and demure as ever whilst the once lithe Benoît Magimel now swaggers across the screen with the pomposity of a prime Depardieu. In contrast to the majority of spiky and bold French films that have garnered favourability outside its own borders such as those by Julia Ducournau, Céline Sciamma or Justine Triet, The Taste of Things, adapted from Marcel Rouff’s The Life and Passion of Dodin-Bouffant, is conspicuously conservative both visually and tonally. Nevertheless, such an elegant, elegiac mood might render it all the more exportable. This isn’t a shallow romance, though it certainly finds ample success in that region; The Taste of Things is an admirable meditation on the life of an artist, their passions, their toils and how they express themselves through their work. It may not be a classic, but The Taste of Things is so rich and romantic that one cannot help but find it a soothing balm in a desert of mindless and provocative messiness.

THE ZONE OF INTEREST (2023)

No film that makes reference to the Holocaust can ever escape the shadow of Schindler’s List (1993). From the armbands to the ghettos, from forced labour to extermination camps and beyond, Schindler’s List covers the successive historical stages of the Final Solution more comprehensively than any other mainstream film had at the time, or has since. That, in part, is its great triumph but also its enduring stigma. As a stain on humanity, the Holocaust, a crime so vast in scale and heinous in nature, is far too immense and inconceivable for any motion picture, or any artistic work, to express adequately. For all that Steven Spielberg’s most ambitious and arguably most applauded film does right, the one unforgivable element is that it’s not only a film, but also a popular one.

To this end, we come to The Zone of Interest, Jonathan Glazer’s adaptation of the late Martin Amis’ novel about an outwardly placid and respectable family comprised of a man, his wife and their four children who live an enviable life of bucolic bliss. Each of their day-to-day activities, whether it be swimming in the lake or tending to lilacs in the lush garden, seem plucked from a romantic oil painting. All seems ideal until you start to wonder what the husband does for work and why those faint, muffled barks in the middle of the night sometimes sound like screams.

It’s been a decade since the enigmatic and elusive Glazer gave us his trippy Nic Roeg inspired sci-fi Under the Skin, and now he makes an exceptionally bold return with one of the most haunting and quietly nightmarish films you’ll see this year, or any year for that matter. The Zone of Interest is a chilling, razor-sharp mediation on evil or, more specifically, the banality of evil. The most harrowing, horrifying aspect of the evil depicted here in Zone is how familiar it is and, as such, it poses a frightening query: how can we recognise evil when it isn’t obvious? Can a manicured garden still be lovely if it’s literally metres away from Auschwitz? The evil in Zone of Interest is not clear-cut or comfortingly recognisable, but that uneasy, detached, impenetrable and observational style is what makes it so impactful. Fittingly, this is a cold, crisp, stark and sterile looking piece of work that eschews glamour and period fetishising.

Telling a tale about the Holocaust on film is always a dangerous path to tread. The Holocaust is the worst atrocity mankind has ever committed, a crime so reprehensible that it beggars the imagination. Men sterilised because of political beliefs, mockeries made of friendships and faiths and – the gravest of all crimes – the systematic murder of children. What is most disconcerting is how easily such things can happen. No film has fully conveyed this, and it’s debatable whether any film truly can, though many have tried. The realm of documentaries has had more success in this regard with Resnais’ Night and Fog (1955) and the masterful Shoah (1985) being, to my knowledge, the most illuminating and unsentimental. Feature films have had less luck, though some attempts have proven admirable: there was Stanley Kramer’s well-performed but unfortunately stagy Judgment at Nuremberg (1961) and, most notably, the aforementioned Schindler’s List but even these failed to reach their full potential, for it is a perilously tight rope to walk in order to reconcile and marry something like the Holocaust with the naturally commercial sensibilities of Hollywood. Glazer’s thoughtful, challenging The Zone of Interest comes as close as humanly possible to capturing the true unspeakable and nauseating horrors and does so without being gratuitous or tactless. This is an extraordinary, experimental, eerie examination of how privilege begets complicity, of the everyday domesticity and corruption of those living and working in an environment that demands the individual to be – knowingly or unknowingly – desensitised. It isn’t a satisfying, but it doesn’t seek to be nor should it be. It is a film that demands the spectator to put in the work and reflect on what they have seen. This isn’t necessarily a subtle movie, but it is startling and skilfully made.

The Zone of Interest isn’t enjoyable but it is essential and should be embraced for what it is: a singular, artistically fruitful, provocative and profoundly intellectual film but never in an insufferable or highfalutin way.

POOR THINGS (2023)

The late Alasdair Gray’s postmodern riff of the oft-filmed Frankenstein myth is translated from the written word to the cinema by Yorgos Lanthimos. The creature in Gray’s novel and Lanthimos’ adaptation is not some hulking, grotesque monstrosity with yellowish skin and lustrous flowing hair of black as described by Mary Shelley in her gothic opus, nor is it a lumbering, rough-hewn figure with bolts through its neck that Boris Karloff made indelible in the thirties. By that same token, the actual Frankenstein, the modern-day Prometheus who perversely defies the sanctity of life itself, is not the cold, callous megalomaniac made world-popular by Peter Cushing for Hammer; instead, the traditional creation here takes the form of Bella Baxter, a beautiful young feminist and erotomaniac, whilst the creator is the unsightly Godwin, who desires only to make the ideal companion. Thus, when Godwin discovers the drowned body of a young woman, he can’t believe his luck, and he decides to resurrect the poor maiden with the brain of an infant to make her a docile and domesticated partner, but his dreams are thwarted when Baxter’s creation begins to develop its own ideas.

Gray’s original literary work and, by extension, Lanthimos’ film overflows with immense possibilities and Poor Things provides an interesting and unusual reinterpretation of one of the most common and universally appealing tales in the Western canon. Weaving satire and thought-provoking allegory about class and gender dynamics, specifically the duality of male desire and women’s autonomy, Poor Things is an exquisitely written, directed and performed odyssey that, in the hands of a lesser creative team, could have ended in calamity. This critique would also be an incomplete one were I not to credit the fantastique art direction and nicely horrific music as well as the primary performances, particularly Emma Stone in her gutsiest acting yet.

Some spectators familiar with Mr. Gray’s book will lament the loss of the distinct Glaswegian backdrop, but Lanthimos’ version of Poor Things is still an anachronistic, vulgar, profane but raucous bildungsroman about a woman’s discovery of earthly pleasure, the political and the philosophical.

FILMS TO LOOK FORWARD TO IN 2024 AND BEYOND

CHALLENGERS (Luca Guadagnino)

DUNE: PART TWO (Denis Villeneuve)

EMMANUELLE (Audrey Diwan)

HORIZON: AN AMERICAN SAGA (Kevin Costner)

INSIDE OUT 2 (Kelsey Mann)

JOKER: FOLIE À DEUX (Todd Phillips)

MAXXXINE (Ti West)

MICKEY 17 (Bong Joon-ho)

NOSFERATU (Robert Eggers)

PADDINGTON IN PERU (Dougal Wilson)

THE BOY AND THE HERON (2023)

He may have retired and had more retirements and comebacks than Sinatra and Elton John combined, but anime guru Hayao Miyazaki rarely (if ever) disappoints and his latest project, which until recently promised to be his swansong, stands as perhaps his most personable and endearing. Inspired by Genzaburō Yoshino’s novel from the thirties, The Boy and the Heron (previously made under the much better title of How Do You Live?) chronicles the development of teenage student under the tutelage of his uncle after the death of his father.

If there is one aspect to Miyazaki-san, whom you will recall is the same master draughtsman behind the fantastical gems My Neighbor Totoro (1988), Princess Mononoke (1997) and Spirited Away (2001), that could be undervalued it is his standing as a dramatist. The Boy and the Heron, thankfully, showcases the anime maestro at his most dramatically potent. As a nostalgic tale of tragedy and trauma and how one deals with such things, The Boy and the Heron is a cathartic experience. It also helps that it’s beautiful to look at, boasting some of the finest fantastical imagery depicted on-screen this year.

But I say all this with one caveat. As much as it might pain one to confess: The Boy and the Heron falls short of being labelled a masterpiece. Many commentators will no doubt claim it to be such but this, I feel, is a gross result of hype and intrigue. A mighty fine film this is, but can it be mentioned in the same breath as Totoro, Mononoke or Spirted Away? No. That being said, even B-tier Miyazaki is infinitely superior to the majority of the other animated claptrap out there.

It remains to be seen where The Boy and the Heron will eventually fall on one’s list of Miyazaki favourites, but whilst I am certain that it will never be near the top there are definitely moments that take one’s breath away. For all its familiarities and flaws, this slow-moving, mature, complex little film speaks volume to the colossal legacy that Miyazaki holds within his field – one which will perhaps never be bested in my lifetime.

BEST FILMS OF THE YEAR: 2023

THE LIST

ANATOMY OF A FALL (d: Justine Triet)

BABYLON (d: Damien Chazelle)

ENYS MEN (d: Mark Jenkin)

EO (d: Jerzy Skolimowski)

THE ETERNAL DAUGHTER (d: Joanna Hogg)

KILLERS OF THE FLOWER MOON (d: Martin Scorsese)

OPPENHEIMER (d: Christopher Nolan)

PEARL (d: Ti West)

SPIDER-MAN: ACROSS THE SPIDER-VERSE (d: Joaquim Dos Santos, Kemp Powers and Justin K. Thompson)

TÁR (d: Todd Field)

Honourable Mentions: Blue Jean; Godzilla Minus One; The Peasants; Puss in Boots: The Last Wish; The Three Musketeers: D’Artagnan

MAESTRO (2023)

It is somewhat disconcerting (but no less revealing) when one’s initial, primal reaction upon seeing a film is “boy, so and so sure looks desperate for an Oscar”. I’ve just had that experience after viewing Maestro, directed by and starring Bradley Cooper.

The subject of this cinematic biography is Leonard Bernstein, the acclaimed conductor and composer responsible for such luminous scores heard in Kazan’s On the Waterfront (1954) and – more famously – both the theatrical and cinematic performances of West Side Story. In terms of presentation, Maestro displays an admirable expansion of elegance and ambition for Cooper in his twin duties as a filmmaker (this is his second directorial feature after 2018’s remake of A Star is Born) and actor. In the former he exudes the sort of one-in-a-million confidence that even esteemed veterans sometimes lack, whilst in the latter he provides an excellent imitation. Carey Mulligan is charming and poised as Felicia, Bernstein’s love, but make no mistake: Cooper is mesmeric here. Though Cooper bursts with charisma and verve, it is lamentable that the picture never penetrates to the heart of the man or the stirring, soaring compositions with which he so doggedly invested himself in. The result is a portrait (scrapbook would be a more apt description) that garrulous, visually striking and silky, yet hollow and without complexities which, in a year that has seen the release of Tár (2022), can only be deemed a disappointment.

Still, while it is awards-baity tosh of the highest calibre, Maestro is pleasurable on the senses and should prove an interesting watch for cinephiles and musos with a penchant for the romantic.

GODZILLA MINUS ONE (2023)

Ishirō Honda’s Godzilla (1954) was Japan’s major entry into the then lucrative spate of allegorical science fiction and horror films released in the aftermath of the atomic bomb. The theme of these pictures was simple but effective: science goes wrong. American products like Them! (1954), Forbidden Planet (1956), The Incredible Shrinking Man (1957) and The Fly (1958) all skirted around this timely topic. Over here in Britain about the same time we had Nigel Kneale’s Quatermass TV serials for the BBC and, later, the Quatermass films by Hammer. Of all these, however, none have enjoyed the enduring popularity as Godzilla.

Released on the cusp of the platinum jubilee for Japan’s radioactive behemoth, Godzilla Minus One marks a welcome return to form for the towering lizard with a penchant for wreaking mass havoc upon public property. Having worn so many faces (both heroic and villainous) and suffered through incalculable reboots (so much so that one would wager that Spider-Man is jealous), the titular titan as depicted here could very well be the angriest and most destructive ever shown onscreen – and that includes the original Honda’s original incarnation.

Following the rhyme and reason of Shin Godzilla (2016), albeit with considerably more appeal thanks in large part to its period setting, Godzilla Minus One focuses on the human characters and provides a spotlight on the national politics of post-war Japan. But for any that might be concerned that this comes at the expense of any monster mayhem, fret not for the action – both on land and sea – is impressively handled. So successful is this film in balancing both the story and the set-pieces that by the time the end credits started rolling, one could not help but think that this is the film Gareth Edwards wanted to make back in 2014 – and should have.

After a drought of mediocre Hollywood extravaganzas populated with dull characters who are little more than ornaments and plagued with hollow, meaningless displays of CGI, Godzilla Minus One, under the skilful hand of writer and director Takashi Yamazaki is a mini triumph for Toho. Meshing surprisingly compelling drama with colossal and calamitous spectacle, one genuinely struggles to think of another Godzilla picture that evokes the tone of Honda’s cult classic from the fifties better than Yamazaki’s effort. A treasure for fans and a fine genre film in its own right.

CHICKEN RUN: DAWN OF THE NUGGET (2023)

Waiting an unholy amount of time for a sequel seems to be the done thing nowadays. But while everyone else was busy waiting for long-overdue follow-ups to the likes of Top Gun and Avatar, I have been patiently sitting round with one thought brewing in my mind: what ever happened to Rocky and Ginger after they left Tweedy’s farm in Chicken Run (2000)? Aardman, having apparently heard my cries, have now delivered – after an eye-opening hiatus of twenty-three years – the answer to that burning question.

Following their audacious escape from Mr and Mrs Tweedy’s farm, the chickens are now living on a peaceful island and Ginger and Rocky are now parents to a chick named Molly. But, of course, the status quo is disrupted when the arrival of a new threat sees the chickens having to do the very opposite of their break-out in the first film: this time they need to break-in.

It’s with a handsome degree of delight that I announce that this is a precious picture, the sort that is seldom made these days. A huge chunk of the credit no doubt belongs to the delicate dedication and consummate care of the animators at Aardman, the charming screenplay and the quality of the voice acting. Aardman’s aptitude for creating worlds bustling with wit (both the visual and oratory kind) and enchanting tangibility is not lost here. Alas, the biggest drawback lies not in the story, the typically offbeat humour or even in the animation (which, as I’ve said here and elsewhere is in true Aardman style, superb); instead it is the lamentable absence of both Julia Sawalha and Mel Gibson from the credits. With them gone, there’s an unavoidable dent in the armour of what is otherwise a very entertaining and charming family film.