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johnc7791
Reviews
Dune: Part Two (2024)
Fantastic grown-up science fiction, beautifully shot
Dune Part Two is a masterpiece, which succeeds in combining all the key parts of creating a true epic:
- Strange and intriguing characters, well acted, who develop with the story
- Incredible world building - writing, language, costume design, cinematography all working together to create the feeling of being in a very different, but very coherent reality.
- Massive spine tingling moments - action sequences and political set pieces that make you feel emotionally invested in the narrative.
A couple of things worth calling out: there are changes to characters and narrative from the book, but they are all relentlessly in service of ensuring that the themes from the book stand more clearly. The narrative is all about the increasing complexity and darkness of the choices facing the lead characters, and like both the book and other Villeneuve films it has no qualms about not answering all the questions it raises.
The second is the pacing - I'm not sure there's a two minute sequence in there I would have cared to miss.
Finally this is a Dennis Villeneuve film and you absolutely getting his trademark sensational visuals!
Death in Paradise: Death in the Salon (2020)
Really quite poor - very sloppy writing
So good things first, the writers finally managed to tone down Ruby to be a good replacement for Dwayne in the last 4 episodes of season 9, and most of her scenes went well. (they then got rid of the character, who therefore spent 75% of her run being desperately annoying). Her scenes are very good, especially those with JP and the Commissioner.
For the rest this was poor. In theory I'm all behind making DI Neville an uncomfortable oddball - that puts him in the same box as the original Inspector Poole, it's a good way of avoiding the 'white saviour' trope. But the scratching and the allergies are used as *replacements* for writing in interesting actual difficulties with Caribbean life.
The actual details of the murder and the investigation also make virtually no sense. The murderer is presented as a normally kindhearted, ordinary civilian, who turns out to have incredible murder skillz for no reason whatsoever.
But this means that *all* the original evidence (the open backdoor, the mutual alibis of the women, the killing with a single clean narrow stab to the heart, the missing weapon) points at a professional hit. This is never even considered, owing only to the washing machine. Secondly the actual murder turns out to involve feeding a large woman so much benzodiazepam that she keels out of her chair, unconcious, without sound or waking up, within 15-20 minutes. That's a lot, a borderline fatal dose! But the autopsy said there was only a little!
Finally, Death in Paradise is formulaic and that's OK. But the 'All the witnesses can alibi each other' format has now been thoroughly beaten to death. In this case it meant that it was obvious who did it, as usual it was the last person to leave the victim alive *and* the first to find them dead. If they really want to run the format again, they should wait for a week the writers are feeling fresh and original, rather than lazy and tired as they clearly were for most of this episode.