Dune: Part Two assessment – Timothee Chalamet leads an all-star solid

 DUNE: PART TWO (12A, 166 minutes)

Rating:

Verdict: A sandy spectacular 

Dune was bursting out throughout Leicester Square on the world premiere a few weeks in the past. I’ve been to a number of grand openings there down the years, however by no means to at least one fairly as flamboyant, with fairly as a lot fanfare, inflicting a lot frenzy.

Probably not for 60 years, for the reason that heyday of The Beatles, has that patch of central London resounded with the type of noisy adoration directed (this time) on the star of the Dune movies, 28-year-old Timothee Chalamet. And at the very least there have been 4 Beatles to share the eye. The younger American star will get ‘Chalamania’, because it’s recognized, all to himself.

The larger difficulty, although, was this: would Denis Villeneuve’s epic sequel justify the razzamatazz, to not point out the funding of a complete night? Dune: Part Two lasts virtually three hours. It is even longer than the primary movie, and that appeared to go on ceaselessly.

Happily, it does. The 2021 film tackled most of the plot complexities that for years fuelled the assumption that Frank Herbert’s mighty 1965 science-fiction novel was ‘unfilmable’ (claims not precisely punctured by David Lynch’s 1984 stinker). It was terrific, however exhausting, laboriously introducing us to the inter-planetary empire Herbert imagined, and the assorted dynasties grappling for energy or just survival.

The sequel has a mercifully extra simple narrative. On the barren planet Arrakis, with most of his personal kinsfolk worn out, Paul Atreides (Chalamet) prepares to steer the beleaguered, disenfranchised Fremen tribe in opposition to his and their mortal enemies, the formidably evil House Harkonnen.

Ruled by the grotesque Baron Harkonnen (Stellan Skarsgard in a wobbly fats go well with), to whom they swear allegiance at chilling Nuremberg-style rallies, the Harkonnen owe their political and army supremacy to their management of ‘spice’ — probably the most priceless commodity on this universe, typically assumed by Dune devotees to be a metaphor for oil.

Paul’s intention is to disrupt spice manufacturing, however in contrast to our personal Just Stop Oil brigade, he must do greater than lie down on a motorway. Anyway, Arrakis does not have motorways. It’s an enormous desert, by which he should show himself to the Fremen by present process varied challenges, corresponding to sand-surfing behind a worm roughly the scale of a superyacht.

Paul has a helpful ally within the Fremen chief, Stilgar (Javier Bardem), to not point out a Fremen lover, the smouldering and exquisite Chani (Zendaya).

But there are others who distrust him. Is he a false prophet or their true ‘mahdi’, their messiah? His modesty clinches it. ‘The Mahdi is just too humble to say he’s the Mahdi,’ somebody says, approvingly, which jogged my memory strongly of the scene in The Life Of Brian, when Brian’s efforts to persuade his followers that he’s completely extraordinary backfire, on the premise that solely the true messiah would deny his divinity.

I hope Villeneuve had Monty Python in thoughts, too, as a result of there is not in any other case a lot apparent wit or enjoyable on this movie.

But it’s supremely fashionable, with a piercing Hans Zimmer rating and marvellous work by cinematographer Greig Fraser.

Mostly, the motion unfolds in delicate shades of brown and beige, as if the set designers have been informed to limit themselves to the sides of the Farrow & Ball color chart. This makes Paul’s eyes look even bluer, a bit like Peter O’Toole’s in Lawrence of Arabia. As Noel Coward famously stated at that premiere, if he’d been any prettier it may have been known as Florence of Arabia. The identical is true of Chalamet. Any extra ravishing and so they’d have needed to name it June.

But Paul is a fierce warrior at the start, who has a really gripping set-piece duel with the rising champion of the Harkonnen (a shaven-headed Austin Butler), and whose muscular magnificence pleases Princess Irulan (Florence Pugh), scheming daughter of the Emperor (Christopher Walken).

Butler, Pugh and Walken are all new additions to the solid, by the way, together with Lea Seydoux and, in a cameo, Anya Taylor-Joy. From the primary movie, Rebecca Ferguson and Charlotte Rampling additionally return. There are stars all over the place you look, in a film that’s lavish in each method, and calls for to be seen on a giant display screen.

It’s genuinely spectacular. But take sandwiches.

Red Island (12A, 117 minutes)

Rating:

Verdict: Make consider in Madagascar

This  engagingly quirky (and visually beautiful) French-language drama is ready on a French air drive base in Madagascar within the early Nineteen Seventies, the place the previous colonisers proceed to claim their management over the now-independent.

Writer-director Robin Campillo immerses us within the every day life of 1 household: the moody airman father, his flighty spouse, their marital strains and people of their associates.

But the principle focus is on their impossibly cute eight-year-old son Thomas (Charlie Vauselle), whose superhero fantasies are dropped at life in oddly beguiling little interludes as he seeks refuge from the bizarre world of grown-ups.

Red Island is in cinemas now, and likewise on Curzon Home Cinema.