Dune [Blu-ray]

Dune has -- in my opinion -- become a sort of cultural totem in the same way as Ishtar and Heaven's Gate -- a legendarily "awful" movie - irredeemably excessive, technically terrible, utterly unsalvageable Hollywood dreck etc, etc. The problem is that I suspect most of the people propagating that idea haven't actually seen it, or don't remember it, or worse, didn't get it. This happens all the time with Internet Elitism - pop into an audiophile forum and ask if you should buy Bose anything - headphones, speakers, soundbar etc. Watch the dogpile of prebaked opinions. Maybe some of those are even correct. But the vast majority will be from people who haven't tried them. It's a rite of entry into that fandom that you get in lockstep with the lore and mantra.David Lynch's movie is flawed. It's too short. There was interference from the studio. Some of the additive ideas don't work. Some of the (apparent) deletions should have been retained. The Weirding Way, for example, is switched from a Matrix-style super combat art, to a sci-fi sound cannon. But as a spectacle, and as a broad envisioning of Herbert's universe, it's astonishing and brave and in many ways successful. The costumes (with the exception of the "welding way" Sardaukar) are peerless. Set designs are intricately styled, instantly authentic to each world and create a powerful sense of place. VFX are limited by available tech, but often grand and spectacular. Casting is hard to beat - and all but a few players are absolutely blasting charisma - Duke Leto, Rev. Mother Mohiam, Lady Jessica, and yes, Baron Harkonnen by a brilliantly hammy Kenneth MacMillan, are viscerally memorable.Music is suitably epic, with clever little deviations from biblical scale strings and brass, to sneakily devious court intrigues via electronics and harpsichord, to machiavellian pipe organ sinister should but somehow don't rank among the classics of Williams, Horner and Zimmer's factory. That Prophecy Theme by Brian Eno was worth the pricetag and bickering.The story, famously "hard to parse" is remarkably straightforward and introduced by a useful and stylishly still modern looking prologue. The studio likely created this myth by panicking and sending out printed explanations - that basically underestimated the intelligence of the audience and put off a lot of folks who'd otherwise have sailed through it narratively. It's not confusing. If anything, a lot of it is dumbed down too far with inner monologues and painfully long exposition. And that affects the pace of the film negatively too.Anyway, it's a flawed masterpiece, and the unmade Jodorowski film would have been catastrophically unrelated to the source material, so at least book fans dodged a bullet there, even though I too would have loved to see its lurid insanity. Villeneuve to his credit isn't trying to avoid ideas from the Lynch film that are essential to the story, but the delayed release and box office uncertainty may already have sealed the fate for a potential sequel. His film will finish about halfway through the story of Lynch's version.

Great movie to watch

Even before the film gets rolling Amazon has decided to torture you, the viewer who has already shelled out $100 plus for the "privileges" of Prime membership, with COMMERCIALS about Alexa (or was that Alexa's Crohns disease..... no, no, something about Alexa's vagina.... or Alexa's trip to Whole Foods....it's all a blur) All I know is that it interrupts the flow of the movie needlessly and helps mega monster Amazon make even MORE money from you. So the real fantasy here is the belief that Amazon is actually providing a "free" benefit with Prime membership.Now to the movie. I won't bother trying to summarize the story----it would require pages and other reviewers have done a decent job sharing the highlights. To help the uninitiated better understand the terminology I would recommend checking out one of the less complicated "Dune Dictionaries" available online otherwise you might get lost in Frank Herbert's quirky universe. The movie is immensely creative and the artistic director has chosen a sort of steampunk-meets-Islamic realization for the story's setting and props. While everything in the movie looks old, we are treated to funky gold spaceships, a "space guild" that folds time so your ship can travel without moving and an interplanetary empire aptly ruled by a swaggering Emperor. Appropriate to the storyline the "goods guys" in this universe look like they're from West Point; the "bad guys" look, well, just plain gross and cruel (you'll see what I mean). And anyone who's been taught by the legendarily strict nuns some 60 years back will recognize that same nun incarnate in the Mother Superior at the Emperor's court who appears in this movie set some 10,000 years in the future---comforting to know that parents many generations distant will still have an ally in controlling their bratty kids. The film is full of quirky gems which made it both a flop at the box office and an enduring cult favorite. A surprising list of well known actors show up on screen and they help give the movie a momentum it probably would lack with a lesser cast. Appreciated also is the device where we listen in on the thoughts of the characters and not only hear their spoken words. The ritual "ceremonial" scenes that appear are unfortunately clumsy and stilted. But on the light side just for fun, be sure to catch the brief appearance of the imperial bulldogs at the beginning of the movie, and then the scenes later on of the ducal gray pug that eventually ends up in Patrick Stewart's military jacket during a dusty battlescene. Like I said lots of quirky fun.