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Dune

100 Movies of 2021

Dune

2021

Denis Villeneuve

Timothée Chalamet, Rebecca Ferguson, Oscar Isaac, Josh Brolin ...

7.2

46,315

Sci-Fi. Adventure. Drama Year 10,191. The human beings have spread out and colonized planets throughout the universe. Young Paul Atreides, a brilliant and gifted young man born into a great destiny beyond his understanding, must travel to the most dangerous planet in the universe, Arrakis, to ensure the future of his family and his people. As malevolent forces explode into conflict over the planet's exclusive supply of the most precious resource in existence-a ... [+]

	Media	Author	Review
		Owen Gleiberman Variety	"Denis Villeneuve's adaptation has a majestic vastness, and most of it actually makes sense, but it's an act of world-building that runs out of storytelling steam."
		Xan Brooks The Guardian	"Dune reminds us what a Hollywood blockbuster can be. (...) Dune is dense, moody and quite often sublime – the missing link bridging the multiplex and the arthouse (...) Rating: ★★★★★ (out of 5)"
		Robbie Collin Telegraph	"[It] is science-fiction at its most majestic, unsettling and enveloping. Watching it feels like wandering through some enormous, otherworldly structure built in honour of higher powers you’ve never heard of (...) Rating: ★★★★★ (out of 5)"
		Ben Travis Empire	"This is blockbuster filmmaking in the Christopher Nolan mould — smart, propulsive, and really big (...) we have more proof that Denis Villeneuve is a masterful filmmaker, particularly in science-fiction (...) Rating: ★★★★★ (out of 5)"
		David Rooney The Hollywood Reporter	"At least gets closer to the elusive goal than its predecessors (...) What the film doesn’t do is shape Herbert’s intricate world-building into satisfyingly digestible form."
		Justin Chang Los Angeles Times	"Villeneuve draws you into an astonishingly vivid, sometimes plausibly unnerving vision of the future (...) As a visual and visceral experience, “Dune” is undeniably transporting"
		Clarisse Loughrey The Independent	"Spectacular sci-fi adaptation is this generation’s Lord of the Rings trilogy (...) Denis Villeneuve’s film is of such literal and emotional largeness that it overwhelms the senses (...) Rating: ★★★★★ (over 5)"
		David Ehrlich IndieWire	"A Massive Disappointment (...) No story could ever hope to support the enormity of what Villeneuve tries to build over the course of these interminable 155 minutes (...) [it's] like an overture that’s stretched for the duration of an entire opera"
		Glenn Kenny rogerebert.com	"I’ll always love Lynch’s “Dune,” a severely compromised dream-work that (not surprising given Lynch’s own inclination) had little use for Herbert’s messaging. But Villeneuve’s movie is “Dune' (...) Rating: ★★★½ (out of 4)"
		Richard Lawson Vanity Fair	"In all its marvel, Dune forgets to do basic things like give us someone or something to root for, or feel for (...) it’s all just a bunch of pretty shots of sand and fire and lavish costumery"
		Leah Greenblatt Entertainment Weekly	"A sensory experience so opulent and overwhelming it begs to be seen big, or not at all (...) If you're already knee-deep in Herbert mythology, you'll thrill to every whispered word"
		Brian Truitt USA Today	While the film has a lot going for it, including a pretty stellar cast (...) it's lacking in character development (...) Even with its imperfections, “Dune” as an experience is awesome (...) Rating: ★★½ (out of 4)"
		Rodrigo Perez The Playlist	"It’s an arthouse blockbuster in the vein of 'Blade Runner 2049,' but even less concerned with commercial appeal, which is admirably bold. Brooding and hypnotic, though packed with tension, kinetic danger, and action"
		David Crow Den of Geek	"A Sci-Fi Legend Is Born (...) Denis Villeneuve’s adaptation of Dune is an astonishing, immersive experience."
		Kevin Maher The Times	"When Villeneuve announced recently that this was a movie that demanded to be seen in the cinema, he wasn’t exaggerating. What he didn’t reveal, however, was that Dune is also kind of boring (...) Rating: ★★ (out of 5)"
		Steve Pond The Wrap	"'Dune' is both dazzling and frustrating, often spectacular and often slow. It’s huge and loud and impressive but it can also be humorless and bleak (...) A tour de force on every technical level"
		Stephanie Zacharek Time	"'Dune' is sluggish in places—my eyes glazed over during one or two or maybe three of the battle scenes—but Villeneuve’s conviction counts for a lot"
		Michael O'Sullivan The Washington Post	"'Dune' is somehow almost purely pleasurable, and rarely tedious, despite its gargantuan running time and minor imperfections (…) Rating: ★★★ (out of 4)"
		Manohla Dargis The New York Times	"The movie’s spectacular scale combined with Herbert’s complex mythmaking also creates a not entirely productive tension between stasis and movement"
		K. Austin Collins Rolling Stone	"Its flaws cannot derail the most compelling mark in the movie’s favor: the pleasure of a big, somewhat silly blockbuster"
		Dana Stevens Slate	"This film is a curiously paradoxical achievement: a visual and aural marvel that is also a crashing bore."
		Charlotte O'Sullivan London Evening Standard	"I was gripped, throughout, and I definitely want there to be a Part 2 (…) Rating: ★★★★ (out of 5)"
		Michael Phillips Chicago Tribune	"Steadily, 'Dune' accumulates its gallery of amazements, with some genuine suspense in key sequences (…) Rating: ★★★ (out of 4)"
		Tim Grierson Screendaily	"While there are certainly limitations to Villeneuve’s self-important style, it’s hard not to be swayed by the bravura sweep of the proceedings"
		David Katz The Film Stage	"A bombastic, Impersonal Imperial Space Tragedy (...) For all [Villeneuve's] skill and talent, his deftness and subtlety, he acts as just a translator for Herbert’s largely uncompromised original vision"
		Scott Collura IGN	"Dune is a gorgeous but imperfect epic, a technical wonder that spends too much time setting up a third act that never comes (...) Rating: ★★★½ (out of 5)"
		Marshall Shaffer SlashFilm	"Denis Villeneuve delivers On sensational And spiritual spectable (...) 'Dune' manufactures the magic of movies where the dreams can be as big as the screens that display them"
		Ian Sandwell Digital Spy	"An ambitious, yet frustrating, adaptation (...) while it's commendable that Villeneuve has given the world time to breathe on screen, it does affect the pacing (...) Rating: ★★★ (out of 5)"
		Richard Roeper Chicago Sun-Times	"Denis Villeneuve is a master at creating mind-boggling futuristic worlds, and he tops himself with the overwhelmingly striking imagery in 'Dune' (…) Rating: ★★★ (out of 4)"
		Phil de Semlyen Time Out	"Not everyone will get along with the levels of patience Villeneuve demands, but those who do will be rewarded with precise storytelling, visual fireworks and some god-level world-building (…) Rating: ★★★★ (out of 5)"
		Peter Travers ABC News	"'Dune' is definitely a 'Part 1' with no 'Part 2' on the horizon just yet. Frustrating? You bet. But Villeneuve, pouring stamina and soul into his passion project, keeps us hanging on"
		Kurt Halfyard Screen Anarchy	"'Dune' is that 3rd or 4th draft of an idea that loses the thing that made one passionate for the idea in the first place; by polishing the damned thing to death"
		Donald Clarke Irish Times	"A beautifully designed machine that, for all its elegant clockwork, fails to deliver much that connects with the soul"

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