“Another classic Thor adventure!”

It’s an early quip from Chris Hemsworth’s hulking supe, an attempt to wrestle an ever-transmogrifying character with something approaching a… catchphrase? Later in this, his fourth solo outing (a Marvel first, incidentally), Hemsworth’s God of Thunder and King Valkyrie (Tessa Thompson) take a couple of cheeky jabs at Natalie Portman’s newly-returned Jane Foster, for her hokey attempts at forging a catchphrase of her own. Talk about potshot calling the kettle black.

It’s indicative of the at-times almost chaotic tonal freefall that besets much of Thor: Love and Thunder. Taika Waititi waded in with 2017’s Ragnarok and injected perhaps the most stoic and sullen of the MCU alum with a flippant 80s punk vibe that, for the most part, worked to great effect. Hemsworth was already establishing himself elsewhere as having the comedy chops to go alongside the rippling physique, and paired with Waititi’s penchant for irreverence, Thor, it seems, was reborn.

Thunder, alas, does not seem to strike twice.

Perhaps most surprising is that, when you scrub off the Waititi silliness (which remains mostly enjoyable in a dismissive, inconsequential sort of fashion), the core bones of Love and Thunder are remarkably similar to 2013’s first Thor sequel, Alan Taylor’s placid and formulaic The Dark World (generally regarded as something of a low ebb amongst early MCU offerings). Thor and friends set out on a galaxy-trotting adventure to stop an embittered super villain from getting his vengeful claws on an apocalyptic McMuffin, all under the umbrella of impending doom for do-gooding love interest Foster.

True, there is a lot of Waititi nonsense/fun (delete as applicable) here. For some, this will make Love and Thunder a more buoyant jaunt, but even ardent fans of the distinctive Kiwi director will likely feel the recurrent undercutting of tension. There’s an overall breeziness and fleeting sensation to much of what transpires here, a little discombobulating when it covers things as heady as parental bereavement and terminal cancer.

Portman’s much-hyped return as Jane Foster, newly imbued with the powers of her godly ex (hammer included) is at least underpinned with some poignancy, but it’s often rather sped through. Christian Bale’s Gorr the God Butcher begins strong, but then gets relatively sidelined to glorified child snatcher for much of the rest of the film. The vast majority of his god-slewing atrocities are completely bypassed. There’s a niggling sense that Waititi wants to get all this heavier, comic-booky stuff out of the way so he can get back to cracking puns and being goofy.

Nowhere is this more evident than in the main man himself. Russel Crowe pops up and injects some genuine laughs into a second reel pitstop to a City of Gods that really, surely should have had something to say about that Thanos chap. But the biggest goofball is supreme ‘himbo’, Thor himself. There’s an undeniable sense that Hemsworth is enjoying himself in this Mk II Odinson, and there’s some gleeful silliness in concepts such as the anthropomorphic jealousy between his iconic two weapons, which offers classic rom-com vibes with a goofy Marvel/Waititi twist. But still, looking at the character over the course of his early Avengers days, the brooding ‘dadbod’ of Endgame, to this almost parodic figure, and you can’t help but wonder if the joke is starting to wear a bit thin.

“There’s an undeniable sense that Hemsworth is enjoying himself in this Mk II Odinson… but you can’t help wonder if the joke is starting to wear a bit thin.”

In fact, that’s true of Waititi’s handling of the franchise as a whole. There’s enough here that works, that is funny, that is entertaining. It generally avoids integrating itself into any wider MCU shenanigans, though this could be partly because post-Endgame, the MCU as a whole seems to be flailing around aimlessly as Kevin Feige stretches himself out to Reed Richards-defying proportions. It saves some heftier emotive thwacks for its third reel. There’s no multi-verse ‘madness’ at play (thank Zeus), and fans of the character will likely appreciate the full circle feeling that the handling of the Thor and Jane relationship evokes here, ABBA-abetted flashback sequences included. A giggle-worthy duo of scene-stealing, screaming giant goats are quintessential Waititi fare, even if they end up being over-applied.

But where Ragnarok felt fresh and invigorating, Thunder feels familiar, trodden. We’ve seen it all before, including elsewhere in the Waititi oeuvre. A late-game beat involving kidnapped Asgardian kids, for instance, feels ripped straight from the finale of his 2019 Oscar-winning JoJo Rabbit. And whilst Ragnarok had Waititi stepping in, sprucing up and having fun with a screenplay not of his penning, Love and Thunder is his output from page to screen.

It’s difficult to dislike Thor: Love and Thunder, it’s just how firmly it lands in the category of being solid but unspectacular. In a world of laden, three-hour slogs (The Batman, anyone?), getting back to a relatively lean 120 minutes is no bad thing. It’s just a shame that it routinely bypasses much in the way of substance to grand-slam yet more style and silliness.

Ultimately, we’re eight visits in for Hemsworth, and Odin-knows how many more for Marvel releases as a whole. Fatigue is, perhaps, inevitable. But it is a little surprising that, only two outings in, the Waititi magic has already become rote. That it is sprinkled on a film that, much like Multiverse of Madness before it, hung on a painfully atypical Marvel structure, only compounds the beige.

It proves to be, after all ‘another classic Thor adventure’, but precious little more.

It’s nigh-impossible to discuss and appraise Jurassic World: Dominion without drawing a beady, world-weary and brow-beaten glance towards 2019’s Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker.

The sheer number of parallels is striking. Both are pitched as grandiose closers not just to their own respective sequel trilogy, but indeed as the final chapter in a wider saga of decades past, and one which began with a bonafide cinematic classic. Fan favourites and old faces have been dragged out of character retirement to tickle the nostalgia bones. An OG villain returns from death/obscurity to adopt the mantel of finale big bad. And both see the helmer of their trilogy’s first outing back to wrap up business after a decidedly more artisan and divisive middle chapter.

Where the Jedi and the Jeff diverge, however, is in their fidelity to the essence of their franchise DNA. Rise is a cluster bomb so busy trying to make itself Star Wars that it completely fails to be its own film, whilst Dominion tries so hard to be something different that it utterly bypasses pretty much anything and everything that made the franchise (or at least its glorious original and a handful of moments from one or two of the sequels) special.

The grandeur, awe and suspense of Spielberg’s 1993 classic is quite literally nowhere to be found here. Which, on the surface at least, is somewhat surprising, given director Colin Trevorrow follows suit with J.J. Abrams in stuffing so many callbacks and nods on screen throughout Dominion’s runtime that they reach the point of actually becoming laughable (just you wait for even the iconic Jurassic Park logo to get a set-up and pay off precisely nobody asked for).

Events in Dominion pick up a few years after the close of Fallen Kingdom – an uneven but bold instalment which at least deserves credit for JA Bayona’s inspired sharp-turn into haunted house semi-horror midway through. A film of two halves, Kingdom looks positively restrained next to Dominion’s choose-your-own, Saturday morning serial style adventure, which sees World franchise leads Owen (Chris Pratt) and Claire (Bryce Dallas Howard) embark on a bizarre, increasingly absurd globe-trot to find friendly pet raptor Blue’s new offspring and adoptive daughter Maisie (Isabella Sermon), both of whom they’ve whisked away into a life of isolation (see: protection). Because, naturally, someone thought it was a good idea to continue the widely-detested clone subplot from last time round.

Elsewhere, in a plot line which Dominion almost breaks its beak trying to shoehorn into wider World lore and continuity, Jurassic Park bit-part Lewis Dodgson (Campbell Scott) – ‘nice shirt’, ‘see nobody cares’ for franchise non-devotees – is back, only this time in the style of a genetics-obsessed Tim Cook (complete with his own prehistoric Apple Park, no less), and his shadowy work is threatening to bring about something bordering on the apocalyptic. Thankfully, Dr’s Ellie Satler (Laura Dern, giving it her all despite a laughable script), Alan Grant (Sam Neill, mostly superfluous) and Ian Malcolm (Jeff Goldblum, unsurprisingly one of the film’s few glimmers of light) are at hand in an attempt to expose the shady goings-on.

In an increasingly embarrassing screenplay with risible dialogue and plotting that would be embarrassing even in the scope of the franchise’s child-aimed Camp Cretaceous, Treverrow misfires in practically every direction. The action sequences lack any believability, and whilst a couple of moments, such as a Bourne-esque tussle through an apartment building, or an underground cave encounter, briefly pinch the adrenal glands, you can rest assured that a line or moment of sheer detaching stupidity will follow not long after. By the time you’ve got Pratt grabbing formerly dangerous carnivores into choke holds, you know any attempts at tension and grounding have long since checked out.

Sure, Dominion does attempt to offer up some new things, but little of it remotely successfully. Early moments, such as a sauropod navigating its way through a Sierra Nevada logging community, or the film’s customary Mosasaur cameo, offer up glimpses of a film that could have been, and indeed that Kingdom’s denouement teased. But that quickly goes out the window. It’s all too nonsensical, internally contradicting and surprisingly bloodless to fashion any impact. Having clearly learnt little from Book of Henry, Trevorrow once again delivers something representing complete tonal napalm.

An extended series of action sequences in Malta, for instance, are completely undone by camp villainy, lazy coincidence and fist-clenching lapses of internal logic (maybe just… shoot the dinosaur that’s attacking you, rather than using said gun to try and shoot out a window exit?).

“…almost literally, a jigsaw of showdowns and set pieces we’ve seen exhausted by Jurassic too many times already.”

Almost as if the film itself realises it is suffering a mid-reel identity crisis, Trevorrow and team hard reset, soft reboot  and course… correct (?), into an equally egregious fumble as all paths and characters meet for a painfully formulaic Jurassic finale. There’s little vision or invention to be found here. Again, like Rise of Skywalker, which lazily culminated in a space battle whilst dealing with that pesky Emperor Palpatine, Dominion’s conclusion is, almost literally, a jigsaw of showdowns and set pieces we’ve seen exhausted by Jurassic too many times already.

Enjoyed Jurassic World‘s three-way dino dukeout? Here, have it again! And how about that classic scene of Ellie Sattler being sent off to reboot a power system, with Malcolm guiding her over radio? Here’s round two!

The original trio do what they can with the vapid material they’re given, though Neill’s Dr Grant is left by the wayside for much of the plot, and Sattler and Malcolm both regularly feel like slightly exaggerated caricatures of what came before. Pratt and his Owen are on complete autopilot, DeWanda Wise is all sass but little substance as severely underwritten newcomer Kayla, leaving Dallas Howard as the only one of the World cast given much in the way of an arc, paper thin though it may be. It’s borderline unforgivable that the characters given the most to do, learn and adapt from are Sermon’s Maisie and BD Wong’s returning semi-baddie, Henry Wu.

Technically and aesthetically, the World franchise continues with its slightly jarring approach to creature design. By the time we encounter the boxy ‘Atrociraptors’ (seriously) and numerous cartoonish dino offspring that look like they belong more alongside the cast of Jim Henson’s 90s Dinosaurs! tv show, it’s difficult to decide who will be rolling hardest in their graves – Michael Crichton or Stan Winston. And, perhaps more than anywhere else in the series, the symbiosis of CG and cinematography fluctuates wildly, ranging from genuinely impressive (hazy, fog-laden jungle scapes cast some new beasts in a moody, effective hue, and the new mega dino is generally lit and rendered impressively) through to decidedly ropey (pretty much every raptor, Blue included).

Jurassic World: Dominion bills itself as ‘the epic conclusion of the Jurassic era’. Only, it isn’t really a conclusion at all – offering a mostly-self contained story positively saturated with increasingly lazy callbacks and nods, and that ends up bringing itself pretty much back to where it started. And it isn’t so much epic as it is very, very silly. The dinosaur action is mostly incidental, frequently uninspired and disappointingly toothless throughout.

Robbed of any of the majesty and craft that oozes out of every frame of the original Jurassic classic, Dominion can at least share one mild redeeming footnote with its franchise-souring counterpart. It may be a woefully uninspired, nostalgia-bating mess of Triceratops dung but, like Rise of Skywalker, it is separated enough from what has come before that it can be somewhat mercifully rejected and ignored altogether.

Life, after all, will find a way.

…Even if that ‘way’ is just, well, pretending it didn’t even happen.

It would be easy, by now, to autopilot an appraisal of Everything Everywhere All At Once as being ‘the film that Multiverse of Madness should have been’. ‘What Doctor Stranges wishes it was’. Or words to such effect.

In truth, pushing A24’s latest curio through the filter of Marvel is insultingly reductive. Even in its wildest or most bonkers moments (Alligator Loki, anyone?), it’s nigh-impossible to imagine even a Strange outing featuring anything as off-the-wall as a security guard being brutally bludgeoned to death by two uber-sized, blood-soaked dildos.

There is invention, silliness and absurdity in abundance adorned in practically every frame of the Daniels’ reality-warping romp. Even the film’s opening sequences, establishing Michelle Yeoh’s Evelyn, overwhelmed by the chaotic mundanity of life, taxes, people-pleasing and teenager-raising, bristle with a kinetic fury of incident, plot and character.

Her laundromat business is on the rocks, relationship with recently-out daughter Joy (Stephanie Hsu, a revelation) is equally bumpy, and are those divorce papers for husband Waymond (Temple of Doom’s Ke Huy Quan in a triumphant returns to screens) bumping around frame?

Throw in a padded, hilariously bothered Jamie Lee Curtis as the IRS inspector ready to drop the hammer on the family’s business enterprise, and a borderline-senile father (the legendary James Hong) yet-to-be-impressed by his middle-aged daughter’s life choices, and you have the recipe for an immediately engaging indy drama.

Or so one would be forgiven for expecting (and in truth, we’re completely down for watching). But this is Daniels territory and, from the creatives that brought the inspired, batshit insanity of Swiss Army Man, there is real strange-ness that needs introducing, and a multi-verse of actual madness to explore.

To say Everything Everywhere plays with its dimension-hopping antics, as Evelyn is drawn in to a cross-existential crisis to fight an unstoppable evil, would again undersell the outrageous fun and at-times breathless genius that the Daniels’ have with the infinitesimal toolbox at their disposal. At a conceptual level, having Yeoh tap into the skills and experiences of a myriad different Evelyns allows for, amongst other things, jaw-dropping martial arts and fight choreography that play as a hyperactive blend of The Raid meets Drunken Master. Everything is not short of action, and it is directed, performed and generally executed to a calibre few Western releases can boast.

Widening the lens, the places we go creatively, emotionally and visually with Yeoh and friends is rarely anything less than breathtaking in its invention, and frequently hilarious to boot. The concept of ‘pathfinding’, a cheeky dig at modern day algorithmic logic, offers up endless giggles, whilst one particular sequence, which sees both a formerly friendly face weaponise their pet and a ‘you have to see it to believe it’ tussle with a pair of security guards, may be, beat for beat, the most uproarious, bonkers and brilliant fight sequence of the decade thus far.

Yet perhaps most amazingly, for all of its technical and visual audaciousness, it’s a film that says as much as it shows. Its emotional clout and resonance are reminiscent of some of Pixar’s finest outings – films such as Inside Out, where an interesting premise and concept are actually in service of a deeply human and intimate study. The Daniels deserve a lot of the credit here, as does Paul Rogers, whose remarkable editing both clarifies and enhances in equal measure.

“It’s a dream of a role, multi-faceted in every possible sense, and Yeoh traverses her own multiverse of madness like the absolute pro she is”

But it is Yeoh who steers and steadies this potentially unwieldy ship with absolute grace and aplomb. Unsurprisingly, she absolutely eats up the action and fight sequences, but it’s the trajectory she takes her world-weary, brow-beaten Evelyn on that rises up above even the googly-eyes and hot-dog fingers. It’s a dream of a role, multi-faceted in every possible sense, and Yeoh traverses her own multiverse of madness like the absolute pro she is. She may need to clear the shelf of buttplug-shaped awards to make room for some alternatives.

The supporting cast are equally wonderful, too. Hsu, as mentioned, is superlative, whilst Ke Huy Quan gets a similarly fractured, eclectic turn as kindly Waymond and his trans-dimensional alternates. The scenes between the core family unit – Hong’s ‘Gong Gong’ included – are the film’s beating heart, and you won’t find a weak link (or, by the denouement, likely a dry eye).

In supporting turns, Jamie Lee Curtis is great fun, and tremendously game, as she switches from despondent administrator to wounded and lovelorn, to – perhaps most entertaining of all – brutish, hulking pursuer not a million miles from her Halloween nemesis Michael Myers. Harry Shum Jr., Jenny Slate and Biff Wiff are amongst other bit parts that pop up throughout to sprinkle some extra madness on proceedings.

Everything Everywhere All At Once erupts with vision and vibrancy. It is the very essence of cinema, an experience almost impossible to imagine in any other medium or environment. It’s clearly made with a lot of love and reverence, too, managing to pack into its runtime nods and gags to the likes of Ratatouille, 2001: A Space Odyssey and even some Wong Kar-Wai and Buster Keaton, for good measure. It looks, plays and feels very much like a tentpole outing, in much the same vein as, say, The Matrix.

Jamie Lee Curtis recently got into a spot of online fan boiling when she claimed Everything Everywhere All At Once ‘out-marvels Marvel’. Landing at the same time as the latest juggernaut of the MCU colossus, it’s easy to see why she – and many others – seized upon the comparison. But really, to say this is a cinemagoing experience more marvellous than fairly formulaic superhero fare is to bat too narrow; here is a masterclass in cinema that is ‘All At Once ‘better than pretty much ‘Everything’ Hollywood has cooked up in recent memory.

The colossus of the Marvel engine has finally, it would appear, been capsized by its own hype carriage. The Studio that made a cultural staple of mid-credits surprises, internet-breaking cameos and monolithic crossovers a la Avengers: Infinity War and Spiderman: No Way Home seems, when presented with the most obvious opportunity yet to completely freewheel on its smorgasbord of intertextual goodness, to have opted to spin its wheels with formula instead.

There’s probably a fair argument to be made that the relative restraint of Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness is worth celebrating. This is no kaleidoscope of fan service or flurry of cross-franchise scuttling. Indeed, outside of a second reel vignette that clusters a few twists, turns and surprise faces within itself, Sam Raimi’s long-awaited venture into the MCU is a mostly focused and linear affair.

Still, it seems a trifle anticlimactic given months (years?) of fan hypothesising and Studio hyperbole, that the long-awaited venture into the mythical multiverse of endless opportunities settles on delivering a fairly typical Marvel follow-up. And it’s a flatness only amplified by those hands guiding the project. In Evil Dead and Spider-man supremo Raimi, the sheer creative possibilities for Benedict Cumberbatch’s sophomore adventure as the reality-warping Stephen Strange seemed, much like the multiverse itself, endless.

Let’s be clear, cameos and narrative detours shoehorned in for their own sake add nothing. That Multiverse isn’t the name checking bombardment some expected and hoped for doesn’t, in and of itself, constitute a critique. What does, however, is Raimi and screenwriters Michael Waldron and Jade Bartlett’s seeming reluctance and timidity to explore the dramatic and creative possibilities of their infinitesimal McMuffin. The spectre of No Way Home looms large here, as does the joyously barnstorming trailer (and first reactions) for Daniel Kwan and Daniel Scheinert’s Everything Everywhere All at Once, both of which seem to offer more fun, impact and invention with their reality-hopping antics.

Instead, Multiverse of Madness is a pretty rote exercise in typical MCU shenanigans, as Strange and Elizabeth Olsen’s Wanda Maximoff attempt to unravel the mystery surrounding newcomer Xochitl Gomez, whose America Chavez appears to be jumping through realities, pursued by sinister forces. Cumberbatch is on reliable form here, even if the character gets little to do beyond pining for his yesteryear love in Rachel McAdams’ Christine. Olsen, buoyed by the heavier arcs Marvel flung her way in Infinity War and Wandavision, is perhaps served best by a script that nonetheless mostly undercooks both its characters and, as mentioned, its premise, but even Wanda’s journey is immediately predictable and akin to what we’ve seen from, say, X-Men several times over.

And with Raimi, Marvel look to be trying to have their auteur cake whilst avoiding eating it too much of it, too. Being the director who delivered one of the finest superhero sequels ever in Spider-man 2, Multiverse is an altogether less impressive and consistent beast. Some of the best sequences here are where Raimi leans on his pulp horror sensibilities – an increasingly violent escape from a fortified complex, or a late-game ‘if needs must’ that could have been pulled straight from Army of Darkness or Drag Me To Hell. It’s sprinkled with both fun and fright, and yet under the palpable shackles of the MCU family-friendly totem – and doubtless a PG-13-at-worst edict – these more extreme moments end up feel jarring and even in places a touch silly, embedded as they are within the more neutral and measured Marvel filmmaking around them.

Multiverse of Madness is not a bad film. Nor is it a bad sequel. Throw it on a ranking board of the MCU releases so far, and you’re likely looking somewhere middle of the pack. The problem is, following on from recent juggernauts in the film’s own studio backyard, and some decidedly more original offerings elsewhere, middling feels even more underwhelming than usual. Doubly so given the narrative potential at play, and treble for having one of cinema’s most distinctive and vibrant visionaries at its helm.

Raimi’s long-time collaborator Danny Elfman does a serviceable job of trying to elevate things with a solid score, and visually and aesthetically it’s all bold and dynamic enough – even with some genuinely wobbly CG peppered throughout. Not to mention some fairly trademark Raimi-esque prosthetics that, again, end up feeling downright hammy and out of place amidst the polish and cleanness of Marveldom.

“…the Marvel magic may finally be itself beginning to wear off, or at the very least, thin.”

Spider-man aside, Phase Four of the Marvel Cinematic Universe seems to have struggled to gain much of its former traction. Accusations of formula fatigue were levied at Black Widow, Eternals and even (unfairly), Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings pretty much instantly. And, whilst there remain strong contenders coming up to hopefully jolt some life back into Kevin Feige’s own multiverse of possibility and profit (see: Taika Waititi’s Thor: Love and Thunder, James Gunn’s third Guardians outing), to have flubbed with Raimi suggests perhaps that, after a fairly uncontested reign and an unprecedented surge of consistency and creativity, the Marvel magic may finally be itself beginning to wear off or, at the very least, thin.

The ardent fans will doubtless flock to it in their droves, and it’s by no means a bad time at the cinema, but one can only hope that somewhere out there in the multiverse exists a version of Sam Raimi’s Doctor Strange that offers up a little more to, well, marvel at.

If applying the law of diminishing returns to the vortex of ‘inspired by’, wheels-within-wheels intertextual madness of Ruben Fleischer’s long-gestated Uncharted, you can perhaps start chipping away at why it feels like such a tired slog through the overly familiar. The original series of Naughty Dog videogames of the same name (and 99% of the same plot line, albeit over the course of four instalments) were themselves bold, dynamic and, indeed, cinematic homages to both the Indiana Jones movies and also the globetrotting, tomb-raiding gaming hijinks of a certain Ms. Croft (Tomb Raider being a franchise similarly mishmashed and manhandled by the Hollywood adaptation machine.). Whispers of a movie adaptation manifested almost immediately, and as the adventures of Nathan Drake jaunted across multiple console generations and increasingly impressive sequels, there’s still probably a fair argument to be made that nestled somewhere within its archeological bones lie the promise or schematics of a decent big-screen adventure romp.

Sadly, Uncharted is not it. Even as a bloated origin story, it bandies between feeling formulaic and altogether unnecessary, despite the best efforts of current Hollywood go-to Tom Holland and the mostly-dependable Mark Wahlberg trying to rise above a flacid script.

Anyone remotely familiar with the games will know the key beats here, though even complete newcomers will see most of the twists and turns coming a mile off. Bartender-cum-kleptomaniac Nathan Drake (Holland) catches the attention of professional pilferer, Victor Sullivan (Wahlberg), who recruits him to embark on an expedition to find the greatest treasure never claimed. Surprise; it isn’t spices, knowledge or anything particular inventive (despite the film’s own acknowledgements), no, it’s gold. Yes, gold, and not even the kind with the decency to bring along with it any sort of curse or supernatural complication.

Cue a familiar foray of shadowy goons, ancient relics, underground vaults, globe-trotting that actually vocalises its Indy inspirations, and everything on the adventure romp 101 check-list right, down to yet another rising water (sinking thrills) trap room.

The problem is, not only have we seen it all before, but here Fleischer and co. commit the cardinal sin of never making Drake’s journey feel remotely dangerous or thrilling. Some of the crazily kinetic fight choreography may momentarily excite, with a jostle in an underground bar fleetingly fun, and Holland’s balletic and acrobatic background is on impressive display throughout, but we quickly crash down to Earth reminding ourselves this isn’t Peter Parker we’re watching. Just as wistfully as his Drake flies around in mid-air being hit by everything from sucker punches to an accelerating car with nary a bruise to show for his troubles, so too does too much of Uncharted feel weightless and inconsequential. The crosses and double-crosses have no real bite – or in the case of one particular turncoat make absolutely no sense whatsoever – and as the film desperately tiptoes around its 12A rating, it foregoes any chance to get any dirt – or blood – beneath its fingernails.

It would be easy to dismiss this as videogame logic mistranslating to the big screen, but even at their most fantastical, the Uncharted games never shied away from showing off the fire in their belly. Characters die, actions have consequences, and heck, Nathan and Chloe (admittedly well played here by Sophia Taylor Ali) jump into bed with each other practically immediately following her introduction in the second game. And whilst the film does shrewdly handle the fact that videogame Nate is a mass murderer on a scale that would make Harold Shipman wince, it’s aversion to fatalities only adds to the overall wanton bloodlessness. Again, outside of cashing those family-friendly dollars, there’s no real reason for this to be such a relatively sexless, diluted affair.

Sure, the filmmakers have some hindsight on their side in being able to thread a sub-plot regarding Drake’s older brother in from the start -whereas the games clumsily semi-retconned it all into their fourth entry – but it’s still integrated and executed with little in the way of invention or surprise.

Antonio Banderas gets a thankless role as a cookie-cutter villain about as intimidating as he is memorable, and Tati Gabrielle does the most as his woefully underwritten subordinate, but most of the positives that can be found here are to be lain at Holland and Wahlberg’s feet. They have just about enough chemistry to carry the plodding plot, and, despite early naysayers, it’s easy enough to see why this introduction to the characters is pitched so comparatively young. Holland himself is notably buffed up from even No Way Home standards (as the film goes to pains to showcase several times over), but again this just compounds the lack of any real frisson he’s offered with any of his co-stars. Keeping his squeaky clean gloss intact was clearly vetoed by last year’s Cherry, so again blame has to go to courting that 12A rating and consciously watering down the more consequential games into what regularly veers towards Saturday morning TV standards. By the time suspension of disbelief has been jettied off the back of a rotting ship being implausibly airlifted and swung around the Philippine coastline, it’s really only the central duo’s bond and on-screen dynamism that just about manages to hold the whole precariously dangling thing together.

“…it’s really only the central duo’s bond and on-screen dynamism that just about manages to hold the whole precariously dangling thing together.”

The first Uncharted game was an ambitious, exciting romp that laid the foundation of strong character work and fun adventure storytelling as a litmus for what was to come. Its follow-up, Among Thieves, was a virtual masterpiece, and remains to many the apex of the series. If this derivative, CliffsNotes Hollywood adaptation series follows suit – and a late sting and bizarre mid-credits sequence suggest at least intent to do so – then at least there’s hopefully an upward trajectory ahead. The biggest challenge Holland’s Nathan Drake faces right now, though, is whether or not this tepid, uninspired debut can garner enough traction and precious box office coins to get said sequel greenlit and, if it does, whether he and his ‘Sully’ can go on to unearth an even more nebulous, forgotten treasure of all; our interest.

“Steven uses cranes like other people just use cameras. He’s got big cranes, little cranes, medium cranes. And he’s swooping all over the place.”

EGOT legend Rita Moreno tells Parade of maestro Spielberg’s penchant for grandiose, sweeping and at-times audacious camerawork when discussing this, remarkably his musical debut, over five decades in to his illustrious career.

They’re superlatives that can be laid at West Side Story as a whole.

The industry took a collective intake of breath when the master of the blockbuster announced he’d be helming a remake of the seminal 1961 Sondheim-Bernstein classic.

That critical and audience favourite – sitting ‘pretty’ in the history books with 10 Academy Awards including Best Picture and a Best Supporting Actress statue (for returnee Moreno) – is regarded as amongst the finest of screen musical adaptations. Did it even need a remake? With the fifties period having been etched in early on as staying, there was no chance of it being a modernised take on what was already a rejuvenated spin on Romeo and Juliet, translocated to the West Side of Manhattan, that exchanges its Capulets and Montagues for toe-tapping, soft-shoeing ‘Jets’ and ‘Sharks’. Familial honour and dynasty clashes making way for turf warfare and racial tensions.

The answer, as Moreno rightly alludes, lies in Spielberg himself.

And, yes, those cranes.

As Story 2021 opens, with a stunning extended span over the crumbling remains of Manhattan’s impoverished slums of yesteryear, with trademark visual gusto Spielberg and DP Janusz Kamiński take in birds-eye sweeps of nigh-dystopian vistas of urban collapse, pushing through to frames suffocated by wrecking balls and detritus, eventually soaring from the vast to the intimate, as the director’s impacting one-shot hones right down to – quite literally – street level.

“A master of film taking on a dynamic, emotional story and infusing it with his borderline-unmatched mastery of camerawork and the visual language of cinema.”

It’s a litmus for what lies ahead; a master of filmmaking taking on a dynamic, emotional story, and infusing it with his borderline-unmatched mastery of camerawork and the visual language of cinema.

Every beat, set piece and sequence of West Side Story positively crackles with this same level of scope, vitality and vision. See as ‘America’, already modified back in ’61 to be an infectious to-and-fro between Puerto Rican lovers, here bursts from its original rooftop confinements to take in what feels like the entirety of the Big Apple; stopped traffic, sky scraping verticality and all.

But it isn’t all bombast, either. Late-game favourite ‘Somewhere’ is put in the hands – and soothing, delicate vocals – of Moreno (playing an alternative, beefed-up take on Kevin Young’s pharmacy owner from the original) and what was once a rousing – if slightly discordant – duet between the story’s doomed young lovers becomes here a tender, affecting reflection on societal divide, and a tinged hope for a better tomorrow, as second reel deaths and disasters compound upon themselves.

“It’s almost unprecedented to say this is actually better than its predecessor in pretty much every regard.”

Spielberg has gone on record to say that every musical number had him both chomping at the bit in excitement and simultaneously chewing his fingernails in trepidation to get them right, and does it ever show. It’s almost unprecedented to say this is actually better than its predecessor in pretty much every regard.

It’s a long list of boxes to tick, but the musical arrangements, truly stunning choreography and stuntwork, and potentially MVP Kaminski’s gorgeous, vintage palette that borrows from Daniel L. Fapp’s Oscar-winning work on the original in heightening and saturating the moments between Maria (Rachel Zegler) and Tony (Ansel Elgort) to a point of almost ethereal radiance, all harmonise and hit the same staggeringly high bar that their ship’s captain manages to catapult over throughout.

On Zegler and Elgort, they head up a cast quite stupendously good. It’s perhaps a tad rote to wheel out the ‘star is born’ homilies for newcomer Zegler, but it’s a film debut of such startling confidence and power that little else seems fitting. Pushing any external conversations about Story’s leading man aside, he is undeniably on point, switching between boyish naivety and commanding ex-con on a dime, and the chemistry between the duo lights up the screen – and tugs on the heart strings – throughout.

Supporting, Ariana DeBose dominates every moment she appears as the fiery Anita – dancing, singing and acting up a storm in a turn that deserves to do for her exactly as it did for her co-star Moreno. She’s beautifully met by a brooding, dangerous David Alvarez as Shark leader Bernardo, the two practically setting the screen on fire during any of their (thankfully numerous) musical pair-ups. A repeat of Moreno and George Chakiris doing a rare Supporting Oscars double-dip could well be on the cards for their successors, and it would be more than deserved.

Elsewhere, Mike Fast is excellent as ‘Jet’ leader and Tony’s best friend, Riff, all derision and barely-contained rage at what he perceives to be the dual evils of gentrification and migration, whilst Corey Stoll is suitably odious in a bit part as a Lieutenant assigned assigned as overseer of both. Ezra Menas carries a lot of the film’s less showy but pivotal moments on his shoulders in a sensitive and well-observed update to the character of ‘Anybodys’, and the ever-reliable Brian D’Arcy James is suitably put upon, yet never parodic, as the officer desperately attempting to keep order between the vying factions.

But in truth there are no weak or middling links – and the buoyant ensemble get to shine in moments of Spielbergian invention even where there are no leads about; see, for instance, the transmogrifying hijinks of ‘Gee, Officer Krupke’.

It isn’t really a spoiler to say that West Side Story ends on much the same technical note as it begins; with another trademark crane, only this time somberly panning up and out, to take in the emotional and physical fallout of the what has unfolded.

The audience, likely breathless, devastated and overjoyed in equal measure, become grateful for one final, considered beat to exhale and take in what has just played out. Eventually, Bernstein’s glorious score picks up the ante and kicks the end credits into a more rousing gear, but, played out as they are over images of the film’s dilapidated locale, it’s almost impossible to shake the feeling you’ve been privy to something very special indeed, guided by one of the finest filmmakers of all time somehow at the absolute peak of his powers.

Somehow, someday, somewhere.

Today, here.

A magnum opus amongst masterpieces.

Anyone going in to Pablo Larraín’s eagerly-anticipated biopic expecting Peter Morgan-esque high drama, character confrontations and power plays should temper their expectations. Spencer is decidedly not The Crown 2.0, nor is it really even about the late Princess of Wales’ relationship with Charles, The Queen or any particular member of the institution she eventually came to very publicly separate from. Indeed – bar fleeting glimpses and wide establishing shots of their arrivals at Sandringham early on – it’s almost a whole hour into proceedings before we even get a proper appearance from the Windsor elite, and even then it’s all disapproving glances and steely silence over a toe-curlingly uncomfortable dinner sequence where Diana (Kristen Stewart) battles to keep both her Bulimia and marital anguish bay.

No, this is Diana’s – and by proxy, Stewart’s – film, and for most of the first half we join the disillusioned royal as she scuttles about the unwelcoming, alien halls of Sandringham (take a shot every time someone mentions how ‘cold’ it is, and prepare for renal failure), with little by way of human contact or warmth outside of young Princes William (Jack Nielen) and Harry (Freddie Spry) and the odd helpful servant or member of staff.

Set over the course of a Christmas weekend stay at Sandringham at a time where Charles and Diana’s marriage was decidedly on the rocks (it’s the ultimate ‘Christmas with the in-laws’ horror, really), the context is well established – see, for instance, the shadow of Charles’ relationship with Camilla (Emma Darwall-Smith) looming large over early proceedings despite the latter’s actual appearance being no more than a fleeting churchyard camero – but it is ultimately set dressing for a fascinating, remarkably performed character study.

Dubbed ‘a fable from a true tragedy’ at the off, Spencer sets out its stall with a not terribly subtle opener that intercuts the quite literal military operation of Christmas ingredients arriving at Sandringham via an armed convoy with a lone, unprotected Diana driving top-down through the Countryside (she’s ‘lost’, you know…). It’s this very clash of the regimented and the precise with the spirited and the wilful that forms the key conflict at the heart of Spencer, and whilst its handling and depiction can occasionally be a little blunt, in Stewart’s steady hands and by isolating her and audience both, it makes for an absorbing, empathetic look into a troubled life.

‘Troubled’ being the operative word. Many will no doubt chew up and then spit Spencer back out over its perceived accuracy or lack thereof, whilst others still will debate ad naueseum as to whether or not screenwriter Steven Knight presents an axe to grind with the royals, or if he unduly deifies Diana here. Ultimately, it’s all irrelevant, as Spencer works best when it is full-frame focused on its damaged, struggling protagonist in a matter-of-fact fashion that bypasses obviously labelling.

Which, thankfully, is the vast majority of its run time – full-frame, warts and all.

Has one of Diana’s only friends and allies in the estate (delicately played by Sally Hawkins) actually been accusing her of going crazy behind her back? Did the all-seeing new major-domo (Timothy Spall in a stellar supporting turn) actually sneak a book on Anne Boleyn (‘the one that was beheaded’) into her room as a warning? Spencer does hint early on at Diana’s potentially loosening grip on reality, and she even implores her young boys to tell her if she gets a little too ‘silly’, adding that is only them she will believe.

What’s admirable in how Knight and Larraín craft Diana’s story here is in its ongoing ambiguity and nuance. Yes, in places it can get a little ‘silly’ – the recurring Anne Boleyn motif (a royal executed by a paranoid husband who was in fact the one having the affair… sound familiar?) is a trifle laden and overcooked, but generally much of the character’s anguish here is palpable and immediate. Relatable, even.

“What’s admirable in how Knight and Larraín craft Diana’s story here is in its ongoing ambiguity and nuance.”

The sense of discomfort and suffocation she feels as a string of pearls metaphorically choke her at the kind of family dinner or formal function we’ve all been to and loathed. The degree to which so much of her anxiety and frustration is either self-imposed or presumptive. And the aforementioned ever-circling gnawing of paranoia and uncertainty.

It leaves, admirably, in Spencer a tale that doesn’t glibly depict either side as right or wrong. Stella Gonet is mostly decoration on the periphery as big Liz herself – barring a short exchange where she punctures through Diana’s popularity and media darling status, and Charles (Jack Farthing) mostly operates from the shadows, for instance presumably the agent behind Diana’s curtains being sewn together as a further act of suffocation. Or is even that genuine concern when she has already been spotted undressing in plain sight of the much-mentioned (yet never seen) cabal of photographers and paparazzi supposedly circling the estate.

Take too much of it at face value, and Spencer can seem to bandy between the mundane and the melodramatic. But it is in its restraint, in its multitude of murky grey territory where it really shines.

Of course, the conduit for almost all of this is Stewart, who is exceptional and utterly transformative here. The physical resemblance ebbs from passing to borderline uncanny, but so much more than simply attempting to create a biopic, Stewart dives wholesale into an intoxicating, unforgettable exploration of a wife, mother and woman desperately attempting to navigate her isolation, her confinement (both mental and physical) and her demons within an institution not exactly renowned for its empathy or modernity in handling such matters.

“Stewart dives wholesale into an intoxicating, unforgettable exploration of a woman desperately attempting to navigate her isolation, her confinement and her demons…”

Much has already been written, said and performed about the idea that it’s a selfless, sacrifical life to be a royal – even in other fairly Diana-centric fare such as Stephen Frears’ The Queen (2006). But, barring a brief verbal jostle between Charles and Diana on the subject, there’s very little of that overt postulating going on here. Instead, the full weight of the stifling formality, traditions and expectations of royal life are simply thrown on top of an already existing bonfire of marital unhappiness, and we get to watch the emotional fireworks fly almost entirely through Diana’s eyes.

Larraín and cinematographer Claire Mathon bathe much of Spencer in moody hues of muted grey and blue, lending even scenes that should conventionally feel festive and inviting (being set, after all, at Christmas) that consciously cold, unwelcoming nip. And they bandy – sometimes suddenly – between the intense immediacy, extreme close ups and whips of Diana’s face filling the screen, to the distance, rigorous uniformity and stillness of the royals, whom, perhaps like Diana herself, Larraín never allows us to get too close to – casting them in shadow, or blocking them out of reach behind overstretched billiard tables or elaborate candelabras.

Though indeed befitting the erratic nature of its central character, Jonny Greenwood’s overbearing score is nonetheless a slightly jarring mash-up of style and approach. Light, almost improvisational jazz plays over Diana sneaking out into the grounds of Sandringham by night. Organs deafen out a Christmas morning church trip, and the initial arrival at Sandringham sounds more akin to something ripped from a James Wan piece. Again, intentional as the discombobulation and discordance may be, it’s still amongst the film’s lesser achievements.

Ultimately, though, despite some handsome and clever camerawork, plenty of era-appropriate hair, costume and production design that completely convince, this is, as mentioned, a character study front and centre.

“Despite some handsome and clever camerawork, plenty of era-appropriate hair, costume and production design, this is a character study front and centre.”

Very often, big ticket film biopics like this flail about attempting to cover too much ground, shoehorning in too much backstory or event, or simply unable to find an effective way to convey their subject matter through the prism of cinema.

By stripping out so much of what would have seemed de facto inclusions, and instead taking essentially one key moment and decision in Diana’s life, Pablo Larraín and Kristen Stewart afford their piece the time and opportunity to do something far more interesting; really explore and consider the psyche, potential unravelling and the hopes and fortitude of a woman whose story would only be cheapened by filtering it through such conventional, soapy means.

But in doing so, and in much the same spirit as its late, iconic muse, Spencer sweeps away so much baggage and weight from its shoulders, and unburdens itself to become a wholly absorbing, remarkably focused and perennially fascinating biopic that knows exactly where its worth and merit lies – in a central character and accompanying performance that are both truly for the ages.

Full disclosure. We guessed the plot, direction and even mythos of Scott Cooper’s Antlers within, no joke, the opening minutes. Granted, this was mainly owing to the prologue (and much of what was to follow) being almost nigh-dentical in lore and in its locale of a dimly-lit former mining complex, to one of Supermassive Games’ highly successful horror releases (we’ll try to steer from overt spoiler territory by naming which one), but this bit of horror mythos geekery merely gave a head start on what was to quickly become a drawn-out and predictable affair even for those coming at it ‘blind’.

The biggest trouble with Antlers lies principally with its screenplay and storytelling. It’s a handsomely shot affair; Florian Hoffmeister bathes its small Oregon suburb in so much fog, drizzle and mire as to make it borderline monochromatic, effectively soaking the piece in mood and atmosphere. Cooper mostly directs in a deft, measured fashion, even if there’s doubtless a much tighter and more purposeful cut buried away somewhere amongst the first hour’s laboured meandering in particular.

At a conceptual level, Antlers tackles some interesting ideas. In a small, isolated mountain town, a series of disappearances and deaths seem to pivot around troubled young schoolboy Lucas (Jeremy T. Thomas, a talent to certainly watch), with his teacher Julia (Keri Russell) taking it upon herself to begin uncovering the truth; doubly so when she happens upon some particularly worrying drawings and reference texts young Lucas has stashed away in his desk. She also happens to be the sister of the town’s reluctant sheriff, Paul (the ever-reliable Jesse Plemons, who deserved more dimension from an underwritten supporting turn), whom she has recently returned home to live with.

Oh, and she has trauma. Trauma to spare. In case you don’t get the subtleties and nuances of her childhood plight as first depicted with screamingly obvious flashback glimpses in what is only the character’s second scene, Cooper and co-writers Nick Acosta and C. Henry Chaisson find ways to crowbar this subtext in to almost every scene in which she appears, and scarcely with much in the way of subtlety.

“Trust me, I’m well equipped to know when someone is being abused,” the character exclaims as she takes her findings and suspicions about her troubled pupil to the boss. Lather, rinse, repeat… and then sprinkle with yet more flashbacks a little later on in case, you know, anyone left in the cinema hasn’t gone completely glass-eyed from it all.

The trouble is, had Antlers left the parallels between the cyclical nature of abuse and the more supernatural goings-on of Lucas’ story to just light allegory and some surface symbolism, it would have been a far more satisfying experience. The creatives here are capable of it – see their much defter inferences that deforestation, industrialisation and man’s encroachment on the natural world is getting mother nature more than a little pissed off. But instead, where Cooper and co. think they are being frightfully clever and miminalist with their handling of trauma and abuse, they instead pummel it in with the grace and delicateness of napalm.

Worse still, it becomes apparent very early on what some of the twists and turns to come will be, and instead of leaning in further to affirm or indulge in the nastiness of it all, Cooper spends far too much time attempting to create a sense of mystery or suspense when the audience is already ten steps ahead.

There is some grim delight to be had in some of the more twisted moments of the opening hour, but they are scarce, and ultimately repetitive. It’s a shame, because Tim Grimes’ production design marries with Hoffmeister’s cinematography to lend a sickly, wet and truly disconcerting feel to some of Antlers‘ grislier moments and set pieces, and, come the finale, Cooper knows just how to frame, capture and light the film’s antagonist to almost Spielbergian effect. The design and camera work for an eleventh hour showdown are particularly excellent.

It’s a shame then, that after a plodding, laboured first hour, what follows quickly descends into a nonsense of formulaic horror cinema 101, some truly bonkers character decisions (no… do not go outside to investigate that strange noise when you know there are murders and deaths occurring quite literally on your doorstep, you FOOL) and a complete suspension of disbelief in regards to the mechanics and logistics of what is happening in this town. What’s that, immediately call it in and request backup when you find a fellow police officer brutally killed? Not in this town, friend!

Russell’s Julia, for instance, takes it upon herself to just take Lucas home after a particularly grisly discovery and turn of events (and a subsequent brief stay in hospital all alone for the poor boy), and, despite this being a child who has been at the scene of multiple murders, her brother (you know, the Sheriff) doesn’t see anything wrong with this. Apparently, Antlers takes places in an America that has never heard of appropriate adults, social services or child protection procedure.

It doesn’t help that the relationship Julia adopts with Lucas is, when you scrape it down to its core, so underwritten and obvious that it becomes utterly toxic and inappropriate; the troubled teacher projecting her own abuse, trauma and father issues onto this boy, at times even downright manipulating him and broaching subjects that morally, ethically and professionally just wave nothing but the biggest and reddest of flags. It is so egregious, and so bluntly slathering the symbolism of abuse onto the horrifying events surrounding Lucas, that you’d be forgiven for thinking the movie was going to atually lean into self-awareness and acknowledge this being far from a healthy set up (it should have done – it would have made for a much more fascinating study). Perhaps Plemons’ Paul would step in and forbid his sister from continuing to attach herself to the boy – for both personal and professional reasons – injecting some much-needed conflict between the two characters.

Instead, Antlers ultimately comes to treat Russell’s character almost akin to a saviour figure. It’s all horribly misjudged; where she should probably be losing her job and getting a restraining order, she instead becomes the film’s Ellen Ripley, and it all demonstrates a screenplay in desperate need of more time in the oven (and more brains on the page). Perhaps nowhere is this more soberingly apparent than in the finale, where we come to the morbid realisation that a key character whom could perhaps have offered some hope or ambiguity, was actually in the film the whole time just to fulfill a much simpler, depressing and wholly unnecessary function.

There’s promise tucked away beneath the murky, rain-soaked exterior of Antlers, and as mentioned it’s a gorgeously bleak thing to admire from an aesthetic perspective, but its potential is trodden so deep underfoot by the clunky writing, questionable character work and delusion that it is tackling its subtext with any semblance of nuance, that the whole thing becomes a feat of endurance without anywhere enough in the way of either thrills, scares or satisfying payoff. It takes too long to get going, and then jetties logic and restraint to descend into borderline B-movie schlock. As mentioned, you’ll likely spend much of the runtime twenty-or-so minutes ahead of where Cooper thinks you’d be, with a particular late-game sting you’d have to be asleep to not have already seen coming a mile off.

It makes Antlers difficult to recommend, as the only thing it truly does successfully from the perspective of a new arrival to the horror playground is looking good (very good). That extends to the villainous entity it unleashes upon its world, too, and yes, there are creepy moments and some disturbing, effective visuals smattered throughout, but it takes itself so seriously, and is so almost perplexingly self-important in its blundering application of subtext and subject matter, that it ends up being ultimately little more than a frustratingly pretty and rarely frightening mess.

So, at long last, Dune. It’s strange to come to terms with the prospect of Frank Herbert’s widely celebrated masterpiece of science-fiction literature finally making it to screen after all this time. Although prior attempts and adaptations have been made – notably David Lynch’s 1984 bloated cult oddity and a somewhat more successful Sci-Fi Channel miniseries in the early 2000’s – the efforts to wrangle the weighty tome of a text into something cinematically workable have proven surprisingly difficult.

Not because the text itself is telling a story too difficult to grasp or beyond comprehension, but mainly owing to the deeply entrenched nuances of its intricate world-building of names, places, items, rituals and people, its thematic grounding, its unwieldy, sometimes dense and impenetrable prose, as well as its direct and indirect groundings in historical significance that draw from a well of influence ranging from medieval Byzantine fantasy and cosmic transformation to the life of T.E. Lawrence.

To say there is much to digest behind the subtext of the book’s function and purpose as a generation-defining text in the genre – this is very much to science-fiction literature as, say, Tolkien is to fantasy – is an understatement. The problem that is faced is how much do you realise and where do you draw the line? In diluting the majesty of these deeply entrenched concepts at play, you run the risk of having just another white saviour narrative wherein our young male hero (man of the hour Timothy Chalamet) is called to his destiny saving the natives of a foreign land whose resources are being harvested for political and capital gain. A narrative trope so familiar as to almost be rote. Much like John Carter of Mars, these are narrative hallmarks that have been mined for nearly a century.

The challenge, then, has never been to answer the question of whether someone can make an accessible and inherently cinematic adaptation out of Dune, but rather whether they can do so whilst also managing to stay true to to the essence of its higher-minded ideas concerning consciousness, fate, revolution and revelation.

Fortunately, the answer we have in the form of filmmaker Denis Villeneuve’s Dune: Part One (as titled on screen, we’ll get to that) is a mostly satisfying one. An epic science-fiction studio blockbuster that delivers on the expected visual splendour that is to be expected from the director of Blade Runner 2049, and on a narrative and cinematic sensory level is just about the best of what could have been expected of such a production – some casting choices for certain Arab and Islamic based characters aside.

The vistas Villeneuve presents are stunning to say the least. Greig Fraser’s cinematography grants everything a lived-in, washed-out aesthetic that manages to unify the different worlds depicted into something of a believable whole, and that’s without mentioning the gorgeously unique production design running the full gamut of clothing, makeup, set dressing and the design of spacecrafts that feel at once rustic and functional yet distinct. The aural and sensory stimulus is bombastic and loud. Villeneuve certainly grants everything a sense of enormous visual scale when it comes to landscapes, of tiny vessels exiting the centre of a spacecraft in orbit, only for these tiny crafts to measure to entire city blocks on the planet surface. That being said, it does feel weirdly underpopulated at points even given the size of the speaking cast.

Hans Zimmer’s score is expectedly grandiose; a rapturous blend of assorted sounds and instruments to account for the themes of different houses and overtures, from pounding drums and choral swells to throat singing and bagpipes.

When it comes to the storytelling itself, Villeneuve’s sense of pacing certainly helps the film to sprawl and extend itself in order to settle us into its world and conflicts before things start going bang. Jon Spaihts and Eric Roth’s screenplay strikes the right tonal balance between mythologic portent, accessible summer blockbuster and high fantasy fare. There are very few compromises in the faithfulness of events from the text, though it does occasionally stumble to the repetition of already established information and expositional dialogue that feel slightly unnatural under the circumstances.

The cast are generally outstanding, perfectly suited to their positions as both stand-ins and fleshed-out figures within the narrative. There is a briskness to some of them that feels like some more attention could have been paid, and a few beats missed when it comes to emotional exploration and clarity even if it does feel that there are at times being held unintentionally or accidentally at arms length.

Oscar Isaac does well as Duke Leto, the descendent of once great men who walks into a losing battle for the sake of his house and pride. Jason Momoa and Josh Brolin turn their hardened warriors into scene stealers through sheer charisma and chemistry alone. Stellan Skarsgård is a grotesque scenery-chewing delight as villain Baron Vladimir Harkonnen, a man so gluttonous that he uses antigravity equipment to float around the scenery to humorous yet haunting effect.

But Rebecca Ferguson as Lady Jessica almost walks away with the entire film, a performance of deeply rooted pain kept at bay behind closed doors, carrying the burden of guilt and shame thrust upon her by her sisterhood, the secretive and matriarchal Bene Gesserit.

Affirming his position as a bonafide tentpole lead, Chalamet is excellent as the young chosen-one-to-be too, cocky and adolescent yet struggling to come to terms with his own destiny, untapped power and potential, calling him from across time and space to a blood-soaked fate that may rob him of his humanity in the process. Most enticingly, by the time the credits roll, it’s clear that his journey and awakening have only just begun.

Therein lies the primary issue at the heart of the film, though. This being the first of what is intended (and hoped) to be a two-parter, the climax doesn’t entirely satisfy as an ending in and of itself, leaving so much once again stranded in the speculative status of benefit of the doubt when it comes to how the rest of the narrative will play out and satisfy what has already been established.

There’s also the unusual circumstance of the film’s reliance on flash-forwards that offer glimpses of events predetermined to happen. While they operate well on the level of the themes and narrative track concerning a future that has and always will be, forcing its hero into the role of an active participant trapped within a passive narrative he knows he will not escape, it does suck some of the suspense out of a piece of cinematic storytelling when visualised as such in some unforeseen ways.

Still, despite a second act lull and a non-climax of sorts when nearing its final reels, Dune presents a rather breath-taking cinematic experience to take in. The full level of Villeneuve’s achievement will only be realised when we get round to the recently-confirmed Part 2. But even as a slightly uneven half a story, it still stands as a tremendously exciting, visually engaging and full-blown operatic blockbuster of extremely high calibre and craft, and one whose existence is worth celebrating alone.