Dune Is Pretty Good. But Just Pretty Good.

Dune is pretty good. It has everything that makes a movie good. Good actors. Good sets. Good design. Good camera work. Good tone. Good writing. Everything is good. But it leaves a lot riding on the sequel to complete itself.

Denis Villeneuve is one of the few directors going that gets his movies automatically onto my radar regardless of the movie. Dune wasn’t high on my radar when I first heard about it but when I heard he was directing then I got on board. He doesn’t make bad movies.

I feel like he just asked a bunch of people to be in the movie and they agreed because he’s Denis Villeneuve and its Dune. You’re going to recognize just about every face in the movie, even if you don’t know their names. I don’t think there’s really a “no name” actor in this movie in any kind of starring role. It’s really quite impressive.

Cinematically the movie is shot excellently with big, wide shots to give you scale and size and weight and make this world feel large, lived in and old. There’s excellent use of light or the absence of it to move your focus around the screen to keep your attention. Every shot is deliberate and included for a reason. It’s real in the way a war movie would feel real from the big details to the small ones.

There’s something very 1980’s Star Wars-y to the design. Everything is a little bit dirty. We’re in the super far space future but you get that industrial bend to the way the spacecrafts are designed, the type of weaponry used and the architecture of buildings.

The plot is more of a Game of Thrones however: warring factions that want supremacy, different families vying for the emperor’s favour and power, betrayals and prophecy and stuff. We follow along with a Chosen One character that’s got a bit of a Gary Stu situation going on. This is where it’ll start to lose the audience.

I was pretty confused through the first hour but started to piece things back together as the movie went along. Give it the extra half hour, go full Lord Of The Rings. Explain everything so I can follow along a bit more. I normally complain about long movies, but that’s when they’re unnecessarily long and the pacing is ruined.

I’m still not totally 100% sure of everything that happened but at least I think that I think that I think I know what certain plot points, dialogue and whatnot all meant. I’m tempted to click on one of those extreme clickbait “EVERYTHING IN DUNE SPOILED AND EXPLAINED!” videos but I’ve held off so far.

On a re-watch the blanks would fill in, and probably even more so after Part Two. Oh, yeah this is a Part One movie. No idea when Part Two comes out other than it’s in development right now but they haven’t started shooting, so I guess it’ll be like 2024.

The Part One-ness of the movie might be the biggest drawback. The Fellowship Of The Ring feels like the movie is a contained story with a proper ending inside a larger story. Dune feels as if it ends on a mid-season cliffhanger like a TV show going into its Christmas break. Or more like Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part One, where it very much ends in a way that feels like “Insert Disc 2” should appear on screen instead of end credits.

I don’t think it transcends over as must see cinema, yet. It’s a movie made for fans of the book, sci-fi nerds and cinephiles. My dad would be confused and bored while my mom would probably have as much grasp as I do – probably more. I know a few friends that would dig this and a few that would be bored stupid.

I liked it and want to see more and will see Dune Two but I also can’t strongly recommend Dune itself. Because it’s good, but it’s just good.

@Adam_Pyde on Twitter, Adam Reviews Things on Facebook. CanadianAdam on Twitch.

The Disaster Artist: An Okay Movie About The Worst Movie

The film adaptation of The Disaster Artist is both admirable that it exists, as much as it is a bit of a disappointment as a fan of the The Room and the titular book that it wades into fiction. It’s a perfectly fun and lighthearted watch that gives you a nice little half-documentary retelling of a great tale. But that’s where the movie falls short. It’s just a half-documentary/mockumentary and leans into the comedy side a bit much for me, with the focus more on having fun making a movie versus staying true to the source material.

Usually when a project like this gets made, it looks like a Kickstarter movie: flat angles like a soap opera, efficient shooting and cinematography, one or two “star” actors that are definitely actors but not really stars and overall acceptable acting but nothing special. But this movie is different. It has a real budget and has actual name talent in the roles and a litany of cameos.

James Franco is the man behind it all and he cast himself as the infamous Tommy Wiseau. He doesn’t generally excite me as an actor but he does a really good Tommy Wiseau impersonation. It would be so easy for him to play to the comedy side but he restrains from going too far that way. He nails it and really has you buy in. It doesn’t feel like a comedic impersonation, but that he really wanted to be in character in service of the best movie he could make so I give him props for that.

His brother Dave Franco plays our beloved Greg Sestero and the results there are much more mixed. I’ve met Greg Sestero, read his book, seen him in interviews and followed some of his other work. I don’t feel that Dave Franco captures Greg’s personality and overall demeanor the same way that his brother committed to going full Tommy. Plus his fake beard is terrible. It’s full on pubes-glued-to-face bad.

Seth Rogen is in the movie as an off-screen personality as Sandy Sinclair. I guess you can’t really have a Franco movie without Rogen and you get the feeling that they wanted to cast their friends in the movie too. There are a lot of small roles and cameos by actors you’ll recognize: Zac Efron, Jason Mantzoukas, and Sugar Lynn Beard were most notable to me. Sugar is my favourite as I grew up watching her on YTV. I really like Sugar.

The point of the movie and the entire aura of this project is to tell the tale of the worst movie ever made. To visually tell the story of a movie that got reviews such as “it feels like you’re being stabbed in the head”. That’s the goal, and this is where the film is just okay.

The movie does a decent job of telling the story you want to see. You do get a glimpse through the looking glass and get to learn some of the behind the scenes quackery. There is a charm to seeing the wild interaction and unfiltered Tommy moments from the book now being played out visually.

But it’s still glossy and sugary. The book will constantly drive home all the different ways that Tommy was a terror on set. Arriving late, treating people like trash, being an emotionally abusive asshole, etc. But then also the moments where he’s just a guy passionately trying to make his passion project while being woefully unequipped to do so from every perspective.

The movie glosses over a lot of those moments. There’s really only one moment where you get terrorist Tommy. The rest of his scenes are just loveable doofus. I wanted to see more of Tommy the Terrorist dickhead and not this sympathetic weirdo.

The relationship between Greg and Tommy is also much different on screen compared to the book. They’re more along the lines of good pals in the movie that are having some ups and downs, yet they stay close through the whole ordeal of The Room. Reality was much different where Greg and Tommy weren’t really friends for a very long time. Greg tolerated Tommy and Tommy was trying to use Greg. The dynamic there definitely involves some weird interpersonal stuff and manipulation. I don’t know about you, but that isn’t common to me in a healthy friendship.

They’ve reconciled obviously, since money will do that.

I guess what I’m trying to say is that it can be tough to treat this movie as a serious or accurate re-telling when you know you’re looking at fiction. Because when you know this part isn’t real, like the motivation of the beard shaving scene, then you’re going to question other parts you’re less familiar with.

Overall, the movie does a decent job of telling an entertaining story but it fails to accurately tell the true story behind it all. I guess I shouldn’t be surprised, as Tommy and Greg were both officially involved in this project and both would want to be seen in good ways and not have their dirty laundry exposed.

But that’s the juicy meaty goodness in the book to me. This is more comedy film than a historical film or bio-pic. The novelty of this kind of movie should be celebrated. I enjoyed it. But I just wanted more. If you know you know at this point.

And so wraps The Room quadrilogy: The Room, The Room flash game, The Disaster Artist book and the Disaster Artist film.

@Adam_Pyde on Twitter, Adam Reviews Things on Facebook. CanadianAdam on Twitch.