Wow. Let’s start right there. In the age of message boards and instant reaction,”Dune” will immediately attract its fair share of detractors. Purests will say the book is better. Casual movie goers will claim it’s over hyped. But for the pure film loving enthusiasts among us, “Dune” is a cinematic feast for the ages. It’s the kind of film that only comes around once in a lifetime. A film so grand in its scope and scale that it reminds us why going to the theaters in the first place.

Like the book itself, to sit and explain the plot is a waste of time. Sure it can be distilled into a simple diatribe but it can only be experienced to understand its true nature. Imagine explaining the entire plot of “The Lord of the Rings” just based off of “The Fellowship of the Ring”. “Dune” is half a film. Half a storyline. To encompass its granduer via plot is an act of futility. It’s part one of two, so reviewing half a film is by definition difficult. I felt the same for Tarantino’s “Kill Bill”. How can I review half a story? I still did and the second film made a half a whole and completed a masterpiece. I have no reason to believe otherwise here.

What sets “Dune” apart from other films in recent memory is the experience of seeing it. The sensory overload it provides and the joy of seeing it with a group of people all simultaneously sharing in its splendor is what I love about going to the movies. It’s easy to think of “Star Wars”, as it borrows from Frank Herbert’s source material quite generously. But it’s closer to George R.R. Martin’s “Song of Ice and Fire” series. It’s dense and layered with political jockeying between multiple factions for power. I almost wish it was a series verses a film. But the big screen experience here is essential.

Christopher Nolan tried to resurrect the theater experience with “Tenet” after covid smashed the pause button on life. Ultimately it failed, burying itself within its own meta heavy, overbearing exposition, forgetting the crucial element of the audience. “Dune” not only knows its audience exists, it goes to the ends of Arrakis to ensure it gives them something truly memorable. I loved every awe inspiring moment of this film. Simultaneously experiencing why I fell in love with going to the cinemaplex in the first place and remembering all the memories I made there. “This is only the beginning.” Chani says. One can only hope.

4 out of 4 stars.

Early in the third act of Alex Garland’s horror/Sci fi hybrid “Annihilation” a containment crew member asks Lena, sometime after making contact with the mysterious entity that haunts the film, “What did it want?” To which she replies, “I don’t think it wanted anything…” and much the same could be said for the film itself.

Some three years prior, an unknown object crashes into a lighthouse somewhere in America, although it’s never specified where exactly, from which an energy field referred to as “The Shimmer” has slowly been growing. Several military units are dispatched to investigate from a facility built some miles outside it’s perimeter but all of whom vanish and are assumed dead, with the exception of one, Lena’s husband Kane (Oscar Issac). Most of their relationship is told from a series of flashbacks containing the usual marital ups and downs but with the added touch of military secrecy. Lena’s military too of course, that’s how the met, so when Kane abruptly returns, they’re both drugged and swiftly returned back to base.

Lena, now met by Dr. Ventress (Jennifer Jason Leigh) is given the proverbial rundown as her husband lies dying in a room somewhere nearby, persuaded to help investigate The Shimmer to find a way to save him. She is joined by three other female scientists and Dr. Ventress, all with “nothing left to lose.”

The second act unfolds much like many other films of its genre, with characters being picked off one by one, fighting amongst themselves once the fear induced paranoia sets in. What makes “Annihilation” unique is The Shimmer’s connection to hosts and the environment it affects. The beautiful and bizarre mutations The Shimmer provides as it simultaneously replicates and creates is visually striking and terrifying. The highest notes of the film come from its substantial ocular craftsmanship.

Not as much can be said for its character development. The film provides all the necessary ingredients for interesting a complex characters but really does with it. They exist solely to rush us towards a mind bending finish the film is all to excited to prematurely reach.

It’s hard not to picture “The Walking Dead” or even “The Last of Us”, especially when the haunted acoustic notes of the score hit while the characters walk abandoned and scarred towns. It’s an interesting choice of soundtrack instead of relying on sudden crashes of brass to induce jump scares.

“Annihilation” ultimately is a lot like The Shimmmer itself, refracting and mutating several horror and science fiction films together. A dash of John Carpenter’s “The Thing”, a touch of James Cameron’s “Aliens”… it just feels like something is left on the table, not quite realized when characters are left this unexplored. I want to know more about them so I care when they get dragged of into the dark moonlit night.

3 out 4 stars

“Families are always rising and falling in America” am I right?” This is the central ideology in Scorsese’s modern masterpiece. What makes America inherently American? And why has our obsession with the gangster genre as a nation been upheld for nearly a century?

Sourced from the excellent Hong Kong film “Infernal Affairs”, and brilliantly reimagined through the lense of Whitey Bulger’s reign of gangster terror in Boston during the 70’s in America, the film follows Billy Costigan, played feverishly by DeCaprio, who is both dichotomies of Irish life in Boston due to his poor gutter trash father and upper class mother, was forced to live two lives simultaneously growing up.

Enter Frank Costello, in one of Jack Nicholson’s most memorable roles in his modern Era. Much like Costigan, is also two fractured people. Part ultra violent gangster tryant, yet acutely intelligent mastermind. “You do well in school Collie?” Asking a young Colin Sullivan( played by Matt Damon as an adult), who nods yes, “Me too, they call that a paradox.” In a brief preamble to begin the film, Costello recruits young Colin, giving him comic books, groceries and odd jobs purely because he knows his family. “You wanna go for all that catholic sit and stand I don’t know what to do for ya.. if you want something outta life, you gotta take it…Non Servium.”

Getting into the plot in detail here would be unfair for those who haven’t experienced it, suffice it to say it’s a delicious and salacious cork screw turn events that lead to the inevitable end of almost all gangster films. It should be experienced not read.

What makes “The Departed” a truly modern masterpiece is Scorsese’s affection for film and the genre itself. His directorial vision is on full display here. The many references to other films, most notably Howard Hawke’s 1932 classic “Scarface”( note the X’s in the frame for every character who dies) and his own autuer filmography in this genre. The immense amount of detail in his direction of its characters and the fate that becomes them in the end (watch it twice, all the signs are right in front of you) makes it a movie watching delight. His mastery of the camera is one of the most unique in all of Hollywood and he shines again here. Even thirty plus years after his triumphant start, he still finds ways to stay relevant and yet familiar, like a restaurant you’ve been to a hundred times but never lets go.

“The Departed” is filled to the brim with mostly unredeemable characters. This isn’t a story of good vs evil. There is no bad guy, there is no hero. It’s a convoluted tale of convoluted people doing what’s best for them to survive by any means necessary. And by God isn’t that the story of America right from the start?

4 out of 4 stars

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To say I was exhilarated to be back in the warm embrace of my favorite art form would be an understatement. The sweet salty aromatics of overpriced popcorn permeating the air, gallon sized sodas overflowing with diabetic wonder…I was back and it felt like home. Not only that, but I was back and so was the modern master Christopher Nolan. How could this night go wrong? Impossible right? Nolan’s films are perfect to fill the magic tapestry of the big screen, huge and sprawling, action packed and intelligent, few else would be a better host for the return of the ultimate cinematic experience.

“Tenet” begins with the now standard cold open action sequence, think “The Dark Knight”, “Dunkirk” or “Inception”. Throwing the audience into an against- the-clock bullet parade, to which I still don’t fully understand why the sequence even truly matters to the plot at all beyond somehow proving our “protagonist”, ( for real, his character name is “The Protagonist” played by John David Washington) worthiness to which the parameters of this worthiness we’re never really privy to, anyways I digress. We learn though extensive exposition that someone in the future is “inverting” items, which allows for the dual reality of the past and present to be manipulated, either utilizing linear time or a reversed time flow. Trying to meticulously explain the extremely convoluted plot to you would be boring and that’s my point. That is precisely what Nolan spends 80% of his running time for the film doing. The characters spend so much time explaining the concept of the film that it feels they are talking to us, the audience, and not so much to each other, which results in no truly meaningful interactions among them. They exist only to further push the concept and action and almost nothing else. It takes an interesting idea and somehow chokes it into being dull and contrived.

It’s not all bad, per usual Nolan’s grand scale view point is beautifully crafted, the stunts are epic, and his technical prowess is unrivaled. I love that he shoots for big ideas that are challenging and he’s unafraid to be bold. But the magic of his best films is the balancing act of both the big budget blockbuster and managing to produce characters that we care about. “Tenet” only is successful in the former, with the characters feeling less like people and more like figurines on a chess board, limited only to what services the high concept ideology he so desperately wants to convey.

“Tenet” isn’t a bad film. But it is a disappointing one. This being his tenth film in twenty years, Christopher Nolan has set a high bar in filmmaking. The chinks in the armor of an illustrious career might be starting to show. I truly hope I’m wrong.

**1/2

Thanks for joining me!

Good company in a journey makes the way seem shorter. — Izaak Walton