Dune

Frank Herbert’s Dune—an awesome and dense mythology of feudal intrigue in space, which meditates on religion, politics, environmentalism, and other topics—is rightfully considered one of the greatest science fiction novels. It’s also, admittedly, not the most accessible tome. From the opening pages, the prose is heavy on series lore and so full of in-universe jargon and strange names that nearly every edition ever printed has included a glossary to aid the reader (and even with that, I still read it with the Dune Wiki at the ready).

Even giving a concise synopsis is difficult, but I’ll take a stab at it: The setting is a far distant future where humans have colonized space and live in a feudal empire of rival houses vying for control of the cosmos. In this society, the most prized substance is “the spice,” a chemical which gives humans the power to navigate through space using their minds. “Spice” is only found on the desert planet Arrakis (aka “Dune,” though rarely referred to as such on film), long controlled by the cruel House Harkonnen, but coming under control of their rivals House Atreides as the story opens. The plot mainly follows the young Paul Atreides (played onscreen by Timothée Chalamet), who is plagued by visions of a future where he either dies or becomes a messiah to the Fremen, the desert-dwelling native people of Arrakis.

Director Denis Villeneuve’s film is a pretty good adaptation, for better and for worse. It certainly tries to compact the book’s lore into digestible exposition. But this amounts to little more than refresher cliff notes for the already familiar. Frankly, anyone who hasn’t read Herbert’s novel will likely be lost at sea. Those who have, however, will see as great a Dune movie as could probably be made.

It’s a beautiful film full of visual wonders. The desert landscapes are stunning in their starkness, and the look—the sets, the costumes, the starships—is truly otherworldly. Like 2001: A Space Odyssey or Blade Runner (Ridley Scott’s original or Villeneuve’s sequel), the picture knows how cool it looks and takes it slow at times to give the viewer a chance to just take in the incredible sights. When things are moving, the action is never less than exciting, and a few battle sequences are absolutely breathtaking.

Villeneuve’s style can be a little stiff for scenes of dialogue or emotion, but it absolutely fits the material in this case. Herbert’s characters know they’re important people at the center of major moments in their fictional history. This is certainly reflected in the cast, who give scenes heavy on dialogue and exposition urgency and momentum between the big moments.

As Paul, Chalamet practically jumps off the page. He looks appropriately young and green, and is note-perfect as someone who alternately knows he’s destined for something big, but is unsure and not yet ready to face it. His visions of the future and the story’s present coursing to intersect form the main narrative, and he anchors it splendidly.

This Dune is huge in scope, fairly long in runtime, and meticulous in its craft. And yet, it still isn’t big enough to contain Herbert’s tale. Even though the picture only covers the first half of the book (it’s subtitled “Part One” on film), details still get left out or eschewed to the background, characters reduced to near-cameos. Even though the cast is terrific, aside from Chalamet, most don’t get much more screentime than mere role players (Dune the book is often compared to The Lord of the Rings, and the movie could definitely benefit from the same extended cut treatment of Peter Jackson’s film trilogy).

It is, however, very faithful to the spirit and vision of Herbert’s epic. For fans of the book, seeing scenes from it come to life in all their glory and splendor is pretty thrilling. For everyone else, I can’t say for certain if it’ll provide much clarity, but it might be worth doing a little homework brushing up on the basics of Dune’s mythology, to at least try to understand what those vivid images on the screen mean. I so strongly hope we get to see “Part Two.”

The Many Saints of Newark

What more can be said about The Sopranos at this point? I’ll add this much: it gets better with age, and not just because it still stands out as one of the best examples of the long-form prestige TV that it pioneered. When I first watched as a teenager who had just gotten into gangster movies like GoodFellas, I loved the show for all the mobster action and its cinematic quality (and swearing and sex and violence), which at the time still seemed fairly new for television. Watching it again for the first time in years as a thirtysomething during last year's pandemic lockdown, the mob stuff still entertained me, but suddenly the domestic and family drama really hit home.

The long-awaited and year-delayed prequel The Many Saints of Newark, unfortunately, can’t carry such a dramatic load. It certainly has the feel of the series, with the prestige sheen (specifically, that of the show’s flashback episodes) and the structure which cuts between several players in an ensemble narrative. But it feels like catching an episode in the middle of a season, with pieces of stories and no context to what’s going on except some character names viewers of the show might recognize. Not that there's ultimately much going on here.

The film tells the story of Dickie Moltisanti (Alessandro Nivola), the until now-unseen father of Michael Imperioli’s Christopher (who offers scant narration and appears briefly as an infant). In the 1960s and 70s, Dickie is a member of New Jersey’s DiMeo crime family, living large and crossing paths with several Sopranos characters in their younger days. During the 1967 Newark riots, Dickie’s Black associate Harold (Leslie Odom Jr.) flees the city to avoid a murder rap. But in the early 70s, Harold resurfaces hungry for his own criminal empire, and attempts to bloodily push Dickie and the Italians out of the city’s numbers racket. Through all this, Dickie catches the eye of the young Tony Soprano (Michael Gandolfini), who looks up to his "uncle" like a surrogate father.

Nivola makes a splendid leading man, engaging and stylish when chewing the scene or dispensing mob justice. And there are traces of greater depth which elude most everyone else. In the contradictions between the scraps of decency and humanity he shows to some and the savage brutality he’s capable of, one can see a bit of James Gandolfini’s Tony Soprano in Dickie. It's a pity the character only gets a movie's worth of screen time, because there's potential for story arcs which could enrich the show's mythology that are merely hinted at.

Sadly, the same can’t be said for the younger Gandolfini. He looks convincingly like a teenage Tony, but we barely get a glimpse of the complex and fascinating powerhouse of a character his late father played. Other returning characters amount to, at most, recurring cameos, and are utterly inconsequential across the board. Though to be fair to the cast, the lack of any coherent or compelling drama doesn't seem like their fault. Rather, it’s that the script seems intent on creating moments to make callbacks to the series, less so on expanding on any of the characters or telling a new story with them. An on-paper terrific cast (Jon Bernthal, Vera Farmiga, Corey Stoll, and Ray Liotta failing to make much of an impression in two roles) are wasted doing threadbare imitations of their TV counterparts and dropping obvious references and lines viewers remember (or if they're playing new characters, are reduced to mafia stock roles). It’s barely even lip service, let alone fan service.

With little of the show's great character drama to speak of, all that's left is a pretty basic mob action movie starring Dickie. And it's admittedly some fun in these moments, if pretty inconsequential (much like the violence on the show, which usually amounted to quick bloody skirmishes and was often resolved anticlimactically if at all). Nivola plays action antihero solidly, and Odom makes for a decent foil. This much upgrades the film from a pure disappointment to an okay popcorn flick, but it only amounts to very average and ordinary, things The Sopranos never was even in its handful of lesser episodes.

Black Widow

If Black Widow had come out on time last year, it might have felt like a victory lap after Avengers: Infinity War and Endgame. But while movie theaters saw few new movies the past 16 months, the Marvel Cinematic Universe kept chugging along on Disney’s streaming arm. So, Scarlett Johansson’s heroine finally gets a movie of her own (and a solid one), but after the universe has moved on.

It would almost be a pity, except the film is already sort of a throwback, and would have been even if it wasn’t delayed for 14 months. Set in the aftermath of Captain America: Civil War (which is set, and came out, five long years ago), it finds Johansson’s title Avenger on the run and trying to live off the grid. She soon crosses paths with her “sister” from her pre-S.H.I.E.L.D. assassin days (Florence Pugh). Hunted by the shadowy organization that trained them both, the two set out to find their surrogate parents/former handlers (David Harbour and Rachel Weisz) and free countless others who have been turned into assassins via mind control.

At first, this one feels like a darker entry in the vein of Captain America: The Winter Soldier. The plot goes to some dark places. There’s less superpowered stuff, and the shootouts and hand-to-hand fights are (slightly) more real and rough. The humor is snider than Marvel’s usual banter, cutting the tension instead of setting the tone. Even the heroes wrestle with some terrible things they've done, and Ray Winstone is a terrific foil, expertly towing the line between scene-chewing comic book baddie and truly evil.

The film doesn’t sustain this, though. About halfway through, it loosens up and becomes standard Marvel fare, lighter and fun instead of heavy and dark. Mostly, that’s okay. The action scenes are a good time, and the cast is having a ball, with Harbour in particular getting a lot of laughs. The finale is a spectacle, combining some fantastical superhero mayhem with a few fun twists right out of Mission: Impossible. And Johansson carries it all well enough that one laments her character only gets to be the lead now (indeed, her character was rather underutilized prior to this, and her final fate in Endgame was dealt with a bit shabbily—but that’s another conversation).

Black Widow is the usual fun time offered by a Marvel movie, and that’s enough (being my first time in a theater in 16 months, that’s all it really needed to be for me). And yet, I can’t help but wish it had broken the mold a bit more, or at least stuck with its initial tone and saw it through. Since the film’s original planned release date last May, MCU streaming series like WandaVision and Loki have shown a willingness to be more experimental and strange, and the franchise’s upcoming film slate looks like a completely new direction. If Black Widow had done the same, it might have stood out and made more of a statement, rather than just being one last curtain call for the first era of the MCU.