The Abyss 4K: or, how I learned to stop worrying and love the 4K

I received my 4K copy of The Abyss a few weeks back. With all the noise regards James Cameron enlisting AI to produce the new 4K masters for his films Aliens, The Abyss and True Lies, I was rather  trepidatious watching it; after all, this was one of my favourite films, certainly my favourite James Cameron film, and having waited so many years for a release of this film on home video…

A little history might help here, because for some of us this is a very special title. The Abyss was released back in 1989, and got home video releases as one might expect, originally on VHS and laserdisc (the former in 4.3 pan and scan, and later in widescreen) and then on non-anamorphic DVD, in early 2000. At the time, the DVD was  pretty much cutting-edge, with the two versions of the film (theatrical and Special Edition) via seamless branching and a massive amount of extras on a second disc. But times move on, and left that DVD far behind, with changing screen technology (we were mostly all watching CRTs back then) and advancing disc formats (Blu-ray and later even that being superseded by 4K), and during all that time, for The Abyss…nothing, nada. My multi-region DVD player with its transformer the size of a brick was consigned to the garage, and I only ever played that 2000 DVD on a cheap player very rarely, if ever, as it looked increasingly horrible as my screens improved- I can only imagine the horror of trying to watch it on a 55″ OLED.

So anyway, I watched the film on this shiny new 4K disc that we aren’t allowed to buy in the UK (that’s another story…) and was immediately relieved to see that The Abyss looks pretty good for a 1989 movie. Actually, it looks maybe TOO good for a 1989 picture- there’s a slightly ‘uncanny valley’ look to the film, like its a modern film shot on digital. Its lost some of the rough, grainy look that the film used to have (albeit a lot of that is likely my recollections of it on VHS). Its a little strange at first but I soon got accustomed to it. Detail and definition is very high- in some respects, this is possibly the best the film has ever looked (but then again, I can well recall the horrible colour-blooming of the reds in the Montana sequence at the beginning of the film and the murky blues of the sub exteriors in the VHS days, so my perspective may differ from many). I thought that on the whole the film looks pretty great on the 4K disc. There’s been some marked colour-timing changes, moving away from the deep blues that dominated the film before… its more of a steely-blue tone veering towards teal but not dominated by it. I know some people are less enthused by the films treatment than I, but I think its pretty strong indeed and am very pleased with it I still have a pinch-me moment when I see the film on my shelf- I mean, this is The Abyss, after all these years.

And the film still holds up. Its always been one of my favourite films, since I saw it in 1989. Its not perfect, but I just like the premise (if you’re going to borrow, borrow from the best- in this case The Day the Earth Stood Still and Close Encounters of the Third Kind) and how brilliantly its been executed (the underwater sets and filming is just extraordinary, especially today when films so often shoot dry for wet). I thoroughly enjoyed watching the film again, indeed so carried along with it that I stopped being distracted by how it looked just so different to how I remembered, and just enjoyed the film.  The acting (the film has a fantastic three leads) is a joy, the music is fine, the art direction brilliant. The miniature effects work looks as amazing as ever, hardly aged at all (maybe better than some of that CGI in Titanic even?).

Still cringe at some of that dialogue though (never Cameron’s strong point).

Dune: Part Two review gets a part two

I’ve been mulling over Dune: Part Two over the past few weeks- I hesitated over writing this particular post because I’d originally intended to go see the film again but circumstances as usual got in the way of that (and indeed in the way of writing any posts here of late). I suppose I could wait for the film to arrive in our homes but I suspect that its arrival on 4K disc may be later than many hope (some folks are quoting May release dates but that seems a bit early).

The funny thing is, Dune: Part Two has gotten me thinking of Tolkien fans, and Peter Jackson’s LOTR trilogy. The LOTR films were widely popular and hugely successful, admired by public and critics equally. They are great films, certainly better films than anyone had a right to hope for. I grew up part of that generation that thought that the book was unfilmable, and films such as Willow, Hawk the Slayer and Krull only seemed to prove it.  They may have been enjoyable fantasy films, but they were widely perceived as hardly something to take seriously – and readers did take Tolkien’s book very seriously. But it was a different time, back then in the 1970s and 1980s,  living in a world where we had limits- it feels these days like technology means anything is possible, they could make any book into a film now, the limits have gone even if the skills of the film-makers themselves haven’t scaled up with that tech. But when I was growing up it was clear LOTR just couldn’t be done without editing the book down into a pale shadow of itself- I remember reading in Starburst magazine of John Boorman trying to make it (he would make Excalibur instead) and remember being horrified by Ralph Bakshi’s ghastly animated version that only told half of the story.

Beyond the impossibly complicated logistics of bringing Tolkien’s epic canvas to the screen, there is also the issue of its complex lore- the detail and thought behind the page and woven within it (and all those appendices!) It isn’t ‘just’ a simple good versus evil adventure yarn.  The films may have succeeded beyond most people’s expectations, but Tolkien purists can be very dismissive of them, and I understand that Tolkien’s son, Christopher Tolkien, really didn’t like the films at all.  I suppose Christopher Tolkien and the Tolkien purists who so disliked the LOTR films are outliers though-  many of the people who had read the book also loved the film, as did millions who had never read the book nor ever would.

For my part, I have always had a strange relationship with the LOTR films- I liked them, was impressed by them artistically and in awe of the sheer audacity of their scale and of them being made back to back. Not only did they make theatrical versions that worked, they even pulled off making extended editions that were arguably superior.  I bought the films on DVD, Blu-ray and 4K, have the standard and extended soundtrack editions that came out (even bought the book ABOUT the music that came with yet ANOTHER compact disc). But I never really fell in love with the films, never considered them in any of my top ten lists over the years. Even to me this seemed odd. Yes I enjoy them whenever I watch them, particularly Fellowship of the Ring, which is all sorts of perfect and the best of the three. But I never fell in love with them- admiration , not adoration. They are not bad films, you understand,  I’m not suggesting that at all. Is it because I read the book first and there’s always this other voice in my head, judging the films as adaptation as much as films on their own terms?

Which brings me to Villeneuve’s Dune films. Again, clearly not bad films- they look amazing, and are certainly sincere in adaptation, and Villeneuve is clearly one of the very best directors working today. Considering where Hollywood has been of late with regards its popcorn blockbusters, its amazing how the Dune films have turned out as well as they have.

But I don’t love them. There’s just… something wrong. And I think, like with regards those Tolkien purists, its because I read the book all those years ago and loved it so much. The pictures in my head will always be different to what is on the screen. Sometimes Villeneuve’s images are superior to whatever I imagined, sometimes less so- I think its just that in my head, the book was stranger. The story takes place 20,000 years in the future, a future so far off that all the technology in it seems like magic, and the characters while human are almost as alien as anything in the Star Wars cantina.  In Villeneuve’s Dune, things often seem so… grounded, ordinary, relatable.

Well, of course it has to be relatable, it has to work with mainstream audiences not just hardcore sci-fi nerds who’ve been reading this stuff for decades. Its a decision that Jackson also made with his LOTR films, making buildings, costumes etc look grounded in the Viking-era or Medieval times in terms of ‘look’. Its just that in Villeneuve’s Dune, Arrakis seems so….

Ordinary? That might not be the right word here. But Arrakis does not feel as alien as I think it should (sure, giant sandworms not withstanding). I hoped for bigger space, stranger sounds, alien stars in a night sky of bizarre moons, a sense of somewhere unique and strange, the sheer distance of those 20,000- years and being on some impossibly distant world. The heat- I just never feel sense of the heat. Arrakis is deadly, but it never feels as hot as it purports to be. Dry and dusty, sure, but where’s the sweat, the scorched skin? Its a case of criticizing a film for what it isn’t, rather than what it is. Which is not at all fair and also possibly extremely  pointless.

But both Dune films also remind me of the worst failings of Christopher Nolan; darling of the cinematic firmament as he is, it might seem foolish of me to have something negative to say about Nolan at all.  But as I have noted before, his films always leave me cold and I just have such a similar feeling with the Dune films. I don’t FEEL anything. I don’t feel like I know any of the characters at all, any empathy with Paul or anyone, really, in the Dune films. Its like I’m coolly watching events unfold, and as technically profound as they may be, I just don’t feel involved in any of it. The Harkonnen attack on the Atreides in Part One looks impressive but I don’t feel any of the horror, the terror of it, that I should, and at the end of Part Two I don’t feel a cathartic sense of satisfaction with Paul’s victory, it doesn’t excite me (that last battle is also bloody short and anti climactic, the Fremen suddenly supermen and the Sardaukar suddenly weak and easily beaten). Maybe its Hans Zimmer’s music not working the way it might- most people seem fine with it but its curious that Zimmer composed scores for so many Nolan films too. Its gotten to the point now that Zimmer’s music has become so… generic? Which comes back to that nagging feeling I have that everything looks so ordinary- impressive, sure, but… you know, some of Lynch’s film, for all its own faults, some of its art direction at least looked more strange and unworldly, and the same applies to the music, maybe. I’m not suggesting that Villeneuve’s films needed a rock score or anything, but maybe more something that sounded more strange.  Like how strange Jerry Goldsmith’s score sounded for Alien. How exotic Vangelis’ score for Blade Runner seemed.

Is it a frustration born of knowing about the Butlerian Jihad that the films never refer to, or why there are Mentats, or what they are or what they do, or why there are no A.I. computers, or knowing details of the Spacing Guild and its navigators folding space, their dependence for Spice that drives everything we see happening in the Dune films. Its clear that Villeneuve was avoiding going the ‘info dump’ route that David Lynch felt compelled to in his own Dune film, but I do feel Villeneuve’s film suffers because of it. Again I think back on the LOTR films, and just how masterful and delicate all of the exposition in Fellowship of the Ring really was, how natural it was to the narrative. The sense of a backstory, of a mythology explaining the world we see.

Villeneuve’s Dune films come so close… but they just don’t click properly, not for me. Not quite the masterpiece everyone is telling me it is. Maybe the third one will prove the charm. Or maybe rewatching both Part One and Part Two at home in a few months time, it will finally work for me the way its seems that it does for others.

Panic in Year Zero! – A hell of a vacation

Panic in Year Zero!, 1962, Dir. Ray Milland, 93 mins, Talking Pictures TV (SD)

Fortuitous timing at the Apocalypse- the Baldwin family elect for an early 4 a.m. start to their vacation, embarking on a camping holiday when just a few hours later nuclear death rains down on Los Angeles, their home, relatives and freinds wiped out under a gigantic mushroom cloud as America falls under attack. Harry ( Ray Milland) instantly realises the implications for what is to follow, vowing to keep his family safe as civilisation begins to break down. Refill the gas tank, stock up with provisions and get out to that isolated camping hideaway pronto. Then listen to the radio for news updates  of how that nuclear war is going…

I was pleasantly surprised by this – I’d expected some silly, ‘sixties sci-fi b-movie flick, survivors battling radioactive mutants transformed by atomic fallout, but its actually very grounded and fairly realistic. I was doubly surprised to see Ray Milland credited as director when the end-credits came up (unlike most films of its period, this film has a ‘cold’ opening with pretty much just a title card). Considering the obvious budget and time constraints this film likely had, Milland manages both a competent performance in the starring role as well directorial duties.  Released back in those heady Cold Wars days of 1962 when the political fraternity and its military often suggested that Atomic War was survivable (contrary to what films like Stanley Kramer’s cautionary 1959 tale On the Beach would have it), this film dared to ask what that word ‘survival’ actually meant. The first casualty of war is good old American decency and humanity, it seems- an alarming revelation for audiences at the time, perhaps. “…keep your gun handy,” a doctor warns Harry when the war seems to be drawing to a close, “Our country is still full of thieving, murdering ‘patriots’.”

Harry is a realist albeit always a reluctant one, and by the end of the film he is horrified at the decisions he has been forced to make, and acts that he has done, to ensure his family’s safety. It doesn’t entirely go to plan- his daughter Karen (Mary Mitchel) is caught and raped by roaming thugs, and when Harry and son Rick (Frankie Avalon!) track the culprits down to a farmstead, Harry shoots them dead, pretty much in cold blood. The Baldwins then look around the farmstead and discover a female captive in a bedroom (hinting at the possible fate for Karen had she not gotten free?); Marilyn (Jean Freeman) who has been gangraped by the men. Harry only reluctantly allows her to join them back in their hideaway- one suspects he would have just left her there had he not gotten Rick pleading her case.

That last paragraph would probably lead one to think this film is more adult and serious than it really is- its skirting some issues and suggestive of darker themes, but there’s limits how far a low-budget drive-in movie can really be, and really, that’s all this is. An AIP picture, it resembles those Roger Corman flicks in scale and quality; low-rent cinema, sure, but punching above its weight.  Indeed, one could argue its budget limitations work to its advantage; by keeping everything centred around the Baldwin family and using radio reports etc to refer to what’s going on in the ‘outside world’ it enables the audience to imagine what’s going on  beyond what is shown onscreen.

Possibly the clearest indication of the film’s budget limitations is the ending- it just stops all of a sudden, as if the money and time ran out and they had to leave a scripted coda undone. It kind of works, and funnily enough feels almost modern, ending as if its teasing a second film. Maybe it was ahead of its time- these days so many films seem to end that way.

Nomadland: Aimless drifting & returning

Nomadland (2020), Dir. Chloe Zhao, 107 mins, HD (Film Four)

There’s a semi-documentary feel to Nomadland, a rather aimless, camera-on-the-fly, ad-libbed tendency, which is absolutely deliberate because it is, essentially, indeed just that. The plot is pretty vague. Most of the people we see onscreen are not actors; they are real-life nomads, lost, disenfranchised Americans wandering across breathtakingly wide landscapes of the American West in their vans or motorhomes.  There is almost a sense of an alternate America, this glimpse of a hidden world of those souls that Corporate America and the ‘Western Way’ left behind, or failed. Curiously, it brought to mind the disenfranchised Americans of John Carpenters They Live.

Frances McDormand plays Fern, a sixty-plus year old woman who has lost everything in the recession and lives in her van, on the road,  meeting, befriending and learning from other nomads. The film plays the trick of returning to the beginning at its end, a kind of aimless loop that reinforces the sense of life out of balance and without purpose. Unsurprisingly this frustrates some; used to a conventional narrative with a beginning, middle and end usually spread over a five-act structure, viewers can struggle watching a film in which, essentially, nothing happens, and little changes, the main character not really growing, just existing, arguably ending the film just as she’d begun it. We’re naturally accustomed to character arcs, and growth- I’m reminded here of Fill ‘Er Up With Super, that 1970s French road movie in which its characters likewise end pretty much as they have begun, having not learned or grown from their experiences, and how that film mildly frustrates because of it.

Okay, its not quite true that Fern doesn’t learn or grow, but its true that she ends up returning to where she began, and the ghost of her old life that still haunts her. One wonders if her return to the failed, deserted town and her decaying home is destined to be an annual pilgrimage. She has learned, and she has grown, but she cannot leave that past life behind. Its almost as if she has died and her body hasn’t caught up with the fact yet. She is given opportunity to put down new roots, start a new life, but she refuses, too tied to that lost life.

Its an interesting and very absorbing film; possibly self-indulgent. I’m not entirely sure the episodic nature really works, that the various threads really tie together. But maybe that’s perfect- these are nomads, people without roots, so its possibly poetic irony that the film itself ultimately feels the same way.

I’m awfully late coming to this film- it won the 2021  Academy Awards for Best Picture, Best Actress and Best Director, so it clearly struck a chord at the time (or was it just the pangs of guilt stirred in millionaire Academy members looking for a cause to celebrate then forget?).  I’d be interested to know how well-remembered and regarded the film is in ten, twenty years, or if it was just another Hollywood passing fancy. McDormand, as usual, is pretty damn fine. I wasn’t quite so enamoured by David Stratham, one of the few other genuine actors in this film because, for all his talent, he seemed to be just an actor playing a role, thrown into sharp relief by all those real-life nomads where you could see the reality in their faces, their eyes, and in their voices. Maybe this film should indeed have been a documentary.

The Beekeeper: Not meant to bee

The Beekeeper (2024), Dir. David Ayer, 105 mins, Sky Cinema

This one, well, this one left me pretty angry. I think its the laziness that hurts the worst; its like no-one is really trying, which is surely the worst sin of all for a film. The script is predictable, horribly derivative of the John Wick and The Equaliser films. The acting is awful, some of the worst ‘performances’ I’ve ever seen, and even the likes of Statham and Jeremy Irons are just phoning it in. As for the stunts/action scenes, usually the core selling-point for films like this, they are incredibly boring and often utterly ridiculous in how they defy basic physics.

Lets just pause for a moment to consider the horrible story and its mountain of convenient clichés. Elderly lady Eloise Parker(Phylicia Rashad) is the victim of an internet scam that robs her of her life savings, She also JUST HAPPENS to be a treasurer of a charity so at the same time is robbed of its $2 million fund. She kills herself from guilt and shame. But Eloise JUST HAPPENS to have recently befriended Adam Clay (Jason Statham) who is not only a genuine Beekeeper but also a retired Government assassin where the term ‘Beekeeper’ is a euphemism for… well, you remember how criminals cowered in John Wick at mention of ‘the Bogeyman’? Well, ‘the Beekeeper’ is the same thing: in Government Black Ops circles, its like the very definition of a Terminator Killing Machine. And we’ve got a very pissed-off Beekeeper here.

Eloise also JUST HAPPENS to be the mother of an FBI agent, Verona Parker (Emmy Raver-Lampman). Possibly the most unconvincing FBI agent ever portrayed on film, Verona trails behind Clay while he goes on a wild storm of righteous murder. Weirdly, Clay seems more upset by Eloise’s death than Verona is- you’d hardly think it was her own mother who’d been scammed and had killed herself, its just like another day at the office (bad acting or a terrible script, you decide- would her boss even let her handle the case? Am I overthinking things?).  Anyway, an army of armoured thugs is killed and the scam centre blown up by Clay and the trail of clues is followed  to its boss, a young punk who JUST HAPPENS to be the son of the President of the United States, whose election campaign was funded by her son’s scam money- so Clay’s hunt for the bad guys leads pretty high up. He’s facing off against the CIA, the FBI, an active Beekeeper, the Presidents security, an army of the best hired thugs dirty money can buy and clearly none of them stand a chance.

Its bad. Its worse than that plot summary sounds, because in execution its more ham-fisted than that summary might suggest. Nothing works. There is no internal logic, nothing makes sense, the mythology of Government operatives and Beecaves (as opposed to Batcaves) of endless munitions, and smooth-criminal scam artists so ridiculous its more farce than thriller.

One watches a film like this, you suddenly gain a better understanding of how good those John Wick films are, and wonder just how in the world something so bad could ever get greenlit. I mean, really, how does that happen? Mind-boggling, really.

Avoid at all costs folks, your time if far too valuable to be wasted on rubbish like this. And yet I hear they intend to make a trilogy of these films -sometimes I feel like abandoning all hope. Bee afraid. Bee very afraid.

Past Lives: What if…?

Past Lives (2023), Dir. Celine Song,  105 mins, Netflix

This is an early contender for one of the films of the year;  its a quiet, gentle, understated film. I had the impression watching it that every shot meant something; the way the camera would pan across the scene, or the silences between characters. There is a subtlety to the film that feels quite unusual; in some ways it reminded me of Alan Rudolph’s films. Ostensibly a romance (at least that’s how it seems to be sold), its more a film that ponders life choices, and chance, and how one can look back and consider roads not taken; what might have been.

In Korea, two children, Na Young, and Hae Sung, a boy and girl, are school mates and good friends, often walking together from school. Unfortunately Na Young’s family are emigrating to Canada so they say goodbye. Twelve years later, Hae Sung, still living in Korea, manages to get in contact with Na Young (now named Nora) over social media. They rekindle their friendship and keep in touch, but after awhile Nora begins to worry that Hae Sung is proving too much of a distraction, possibly harming her career prospects that are pressing for more attention. She asks for a pause and Hae Sung agrees, reluctantly. Another twelve years pass: Nora is now living in New York, working as a writer and married to Arthur. She has arranged with Hae Sung, now a successful engineer, to visit her in New York. The first time they have physically been together in some twenty-four years, they spend a few days together as Nora shows her old friend the sights. There is clearly a bond between them since childhood, and a feeling that their lives would have been very different if Nora’s family had stayed in Korea. They consider paths not taken and what might have been, and where their relationship may go in the future.

I loved this film- it was an absolute delight. Its got a fine cast, a script that knows when to use dialogue and when to let the silence talk, and just let the camera linger, and some lovely music,  a sparse and delicate score that supports the film so well its like another character.

It seems to me that Hae Sung represents to Nora her old life in Korea, and the natural pull of that as she cements her new life in a Western world. Its not that she ever feels tempted to leave her husband for Hae Sung, but more that her friend represents a link to her childhood, and that other world her family left behind. Related to this, its clear that Arthur, as an American, feels that there is a part of Nora that he cannot share or understand (“you dream in a language I can’t understand. It’s like there’s this whole place inside you I can’t go.” Arthur tells her), and admits to feeling a little threatened by Hae Sung’s arrival in New York. Hae Sung, meanwhile, is clearly in love with Nora, besotted by her from childhood, but he understands that she has a new life . There is a natural expectation that Nora and Hae-Sung are just ‘meant to be’ and that the film will eventually bring them together but that would be too easy. This isn’t that movie.

There is a lovely moment when Nora and Hae Sung consider a (frequently mentioned, during the film)  Korean tradition of kindred souls and the idea that people are born and reborn to meet again and again,. Hae Sung asks her “What if this is a past life as well, and we are already something else to each other in our next life? Who do you think we are then?” Its a painfully sad moment of close friends/kindred souls parting perhaps forever, and tenderly handled by the director and actors.

This is one of those films in which little really seems to happen or even needs to happen, the viewer can just soak up the lovely visuals (New York has seldom looked so magical) and the emotion in most every scene. There’s no big explosions or action, spandex-clad superheroes. Its just a film about ordinary people. How refreshing, and heartily recommended for a Netflix night in (I enjoyed this so much I’ll be getting the Blu-ray later).

Dune Part Two: End of the story? Not a chance.

Dune: Part Two (2024), Dir. Denis Villeneuve, 166 mins, Cinema

This probably won’t be my final review, just a few initial thoughts.

The biggest thing that bugged me about Dune: Part One was its ending. On the one hand, it was obviously going to be a non-ending because it was only half of the story (well, more on THAT in a moment), but the problem for me was just where and how Denis chose to end it. So the advantage that Dune: Part Two has is that it is the last half of the story, so has a built-in, satisfactory conclusion baked into it right from the book.  Well, time to slap dear old Denis on the wrist for being naughty here because he’s pulled the rug from under my expectations and done the same trick again. Most viewers are likely happy enough with how this film ends but I have to just say what I feel: wtf? He’s done it again! I wasn’t so aghast at the ending of The Empire Strikes Back (which this one felt like), but that was because I knew Star Wars was a nine-part saga. I thought Denis was making Dune.

Turns out he’s been making a trilogy after all, and on the one hand, I think its a sleight of genius considering where the narrative is going, but on the other, well, what happened to the good old days when films had proper endings? Is it a lost art? Damn it, the one thing I expected from Dune: Part Two was a decent ending…

Dune Part One, Two and Three will be a hell of a trilogy. It’ll be a fantastic, thoughtful examination of politics and religion through a science-fiction lens that will be marvelled and examined for decades after. It may well be regarded as one of the seminal genre films of all time, considered as a (seven? Eight-hour?) whole. But we’re not there yet. We’re still a film away.  I applaud the audacity, if this is what he always secretly intended (and it seems to be, considering the weaknesses of his Dune film’s are intrinsically related to them being part of the larger canvas he’s working with- he’s not making Dune, he never was- he’s making Dune and Dune Messiah, over three films). It’ll be fantastic, as a whole. Its just annoying when we have to watch them as seperate films, a work-in-progress.

So anyway, that’s my initial gripe out of the way:  I really didn’t appreciate the ending. I cannot believe I’m writing the same thing about this film that I did about the first one. Its funny how a film manages to approach the three-hour mark, over five and a half hours together between Parts One and Two, and yet still manages to repeat David Lynch’s mistake in making  the big final battle seem something rushed. I wouldn’t mind, but his pacing and editorial choices elsewhere -like spending the first hour of this film showing Paul learning the Fremen ways- suggests things he could have dropped, while the lack of any appearance of the Spacing Guild (a glaring oversight) and very minor involvement of the Emperor (Christopher Walken so wasted they could have cast just about anyone) seems… well, problematic. We never saw a Guild Navigator, nor really a Heighliner, other than very briefly, almost as an aside in the first film. But the fact that he ends the film with shots that specifically tease and presumably lead into whatever happens next…

We’re watching a serial. This really is Star Wars for adults.

Well, I hate to sound overly negative when I did enjoy the film and marvelled at so much that it got right. On the whole, its marvellous, huge, cinematic film-making, The cast is very good, the sets, the art direction, the visual effects,  the music. I thought they actually went further with depicting the religious extremism/mania than I thought they would dare, and I appreciated how they brought the Bene Gesserit into the forefront of the narrative, regards how the Sisterhood manipulated prophecy and religion as a method of control and consolidation/exercise of power. I thought Paul’s eventual relenting to the nightmare he wanted to avoid “lead them to Paradise!” was actually quite powerful, and scary.

There is a lot of good in Dune: Part Two. So much so I’m tempted to go see it again at the cinema, repeat viewings something I never do anymore. So there is a lot of good in Dune: Part Two and I doubt we’ll see a better genre film in 2024. But… but,…

A few more gripes. We go the Emperors planet; we only see a garden. No establishing shot of the planet. No view of his palace or city.  We never really even see a starfield, with space ships (what kind of science-fiction epic is that?), or as noted any further examination of a Heighliner, what they do.  We never see a Guild Navigator or what they do.  For all the importance of Spice, we never ‘see’ what it is used for or how. The Great Houses are practically reduced to dots in the sky over Arrakis. Denis is focused on the intimate. He allows us graphic details of spice harvesters and sandworms probably because he has to, but refuses to show us the Galactic scale or colour of this distant future.

Of course, he doesn’t have to show us anything of all that because he’s got a third film to do it in. He hasn’t ended anything in Dune: Part Two. In a way, he’s just like how Paul is at the end of this film- he’s only just beginning…

Spaceman: Far out, man…

Spaceman (2024), Dir. Johan Renck, 107 mins, Netflix

Imagine a 1970s Eastern-European arthouse science fiction movie, but made with bang-up-to-date 2024 production technology, like some badass Hollywood movie with pretentious aspirations of Greatness, and you’ve got Spaceman.

But I liked it. I really liked it.

I shouldn’t have, really. But I did. Maybe I’m predisposed to, after all, I like Arrival, Annihilation, Ad Astra, and that’s what this film reminded me of; films that evoke the strange, ambiguous, intellectual kind of 1970s science fiction that I grew up with. Sure, utterly daft and nowhere near as smart as it thinks it is really, but nonetheless so endearing with it.  Its also got a magnificent Max Richter score that sounds like a 1970s prog-rock album, as if Richter had been asked by director Renck to imagine a modern remix album of Radio Workshop and Tomita (and for all I know, he probably did). Its a film that looks great, sounds heavenly, and is just so 1972-era bonkers one can’t help but be captivated by its utter madness. Either that or reach for the remote after about twenty minutes…

Czech astronaut Jakub Procházka (Adam Sadler) is on a year-long solo mission to Jupiter and back, to rendezvous with and investigate/record an interstellar visitor, a celestial anomaly that looks like a glowing cloud of energy. It entered the outer part of the solar system some four years ago and will be soon passing back out into interstellar space. In taking on this dangerous mission, Jakub has left behind his young wife Lenka (Carey Mulligan) who is pregnant and resentful of always being second to Jakub’s ambitions.

Jakub’s ship always seem to be on the edge of falling apart, mirroring his own increasingly fragile mental state as its various systems threaten to break down. His stress is intensified by Lenka failing to answer his calls or contact him and his mission controllers are evasive when Jakub asks after her. As Jakub’s ship enters the Jovian system and approaches the strange anomaly, he discovers an alien presence on his ship- a giant alien spider that communicates with him telepathically.  Has Jakub finally gone mad? Can he trust his senses? What follows is a strange adventure in which Jakub and the alien (or imaginary) spider have philosophical conversations about the nature of love, existence, life and death and the nature of the universe.

I rather think its exactly the sort of story perfectly suited to a Japanese Anime; certainly not a $40 million Netflix movie that is sure to confound many and bore others senseless. But for its target audience, i.e. me, its a great surprise treat. Its exactly the kind of science fiction movie Terrence Malick would make. The ending, for anyone who gets that far, is the kind of daft 2001/Star Trek:TMP highbrow metaphysical nonsense that will get some of us jumping up and down with joy at the dizzying nostalgia of such crazy sci-fi endings while our partners look at us as if we’ve lost our minds. Oh how I missed such nuts stuff as this.

We really don’t get this kind of thing anymore. Okay, that might be a good thing.  But I really did enjoy this. Its nonsense but so refreshing in a strange kind of way and for me it kicks Interstellar into Disney’s Black Hole. Far out, man. Its far out.

Dune again

I am endlessly torn on Villeneuve’s Dune Part One. He’s possibly my favourite working director, made a brilliant sequel to my beloved Blade Runner, and has somehow been given the chance to finally do Dune right, over two films, with a great cast and huge budget.

But something doesn’t quite work. Maybe it will finally click with Part Two, and one day seeing the films as one big story that does the book justice. I’m one of those hugely frustrated at where he chose to end Part One, feeling that its the worst possible ending he could have chosen. I struggle with it whenever I have returned to the film. Every time I watch the film (which isn’t as often as you’d think or I’d have expected) I ask myself “what the hell were they thinking?”

David Lynch’s Dune is a misfire. Its a painful lesson in not squeezing all of the book into one movie. But it does such a lot of things very right- the prologue, setting the story up, the Great Houses, the planets, its brilliant shorthand. If only they could have managed to pull a similar trick with its last hour (had it been a three-hour film, I think the film might have worked very well indeed). And the sets, the art direction- glorious. I think it casts a big shadow over Villeneuve’s film because his film… well, that brutalist ‘look’, the dour cinematography… it should be big, huge, spectacular, wildly colourful, Dune is set so far into a future so alien to us it should be like a Giger painting but with every colour of the rainbow. Kubrick in the land of Oz.

Well, okay maybe not that far, but you know what I mean. Its an aesthetic choice of Villeneuve’s that I regret, and whenever I watch Dune Part One and they are on Arrakis I marvel at how I just don’t feel the heat. It never feels ‘hot’; there’s no blinding light from dazzling sun or massive heat shimmers over the desert, sweat pouring off faces, eyes dazzled, folks collapsing from sunstroke/exhaustion. In contrast, I imagine seeing Paul out at night in Arrakeen under a blue-night sky, bright silver moonlight, cool sand… maybe with his father discussing the tension of their predicament, then jump-cutting to blinding, dazzling light, noise and heat as they go out in the Ornithopter to see their first worm. You know the desert scenes in Lawrence of Arabia, how you can feel the heat? I don’t think Villeneuve captured that. Characters mention things like ‘you can’t stay outside here’ or ‘we have to get inside’ but I don’t think its visualised, put across sufficiently. Maybe that’s nit-picking, but its telling that even on the 4K disc they dial down the HDR completely; its clearly by choice how Arrakis looks.

I don’t think the music really helps either, its okay but… I think Dune needs something big, symphonic, romantic and strange  like Goldsmith or Horner or Vangelis. I know, I know, they are all gone now but it just needs an aural character, soul, not such typical Zimmer muzak/ sound design. Some of the music-spotting… for instance, it annoys me when Paul is taking the test with the gom jabbar and his hand is in the box and suddenly that music cue drops in with that wailing woman like its some kind of super-hero ‘ta-da!’ moment. Pulls me out of the film every time.  I almost prefer the Toto score, at least it gives Lynch’s film a fairly unique identity. Its funny how only today can they really pull off the visual effects to bring Herbert’s novel to life  but at the same time they have lost the musical talent and style/substance that films used to have which could have elevated this film. Star Trek: The Motion Picture is a largely broken film but my God that score it has, still lifts it up to some other level.

I’ll see Dune Part Two on Monday. I’ll see if that fixes things or not (I’m avoiding all reviews etc) but… I guess what I’m saying in a long-winded way is, I don’t LOVE Dune Part One and I should. Its one of my favourite sci-fi novels so the film should be right up my street, and yes it does so many things right but there’s just something missing. Maybe I’ll find it in Part Two and it’ll finally be one huge sci-fi masterpiece, and come the summer or winter with both films on 4K it’ll be an epic night in. We’ll see.