Dune: Part Two (PG13)
166 minutes
4 stars
By the end of Dune: Part One (2021), the elaborate world-building had boiled down to a simple revenge story. Paul Atreides (Timothee Chalamet) had seen his family massacred and his bloodlust will spur the action of the second film.
Paul and his mother Lady Jessica (Rebecca Ferguson), having survived the attack by House Harkonnen, are travelling with the Fremen, the natives of the desert planet Arrakis. The Harkonnens believe that Paul and Jessica are dead.
The signs that Paul is the one promised to free the Fremen from tyranny are growing, though he resists the idea, as his premonitions speak of widespread suffering should he take on the role.
The two films are adapted from Frank Herbert’s 1965 science-fiction novel Dune.
This being a Denis Villeneuve film, Paul’s journey will not be marked by endless fights.
Villeneuve’s preference for using wardrobe, cinematography and action over dialogue to convey meaning reaches its peak in the scene introducing new villain Feyd-Rautha (Austin Butler), nephew of Baron Harkonnen (Stellan Skarsgard).
Feyd is not just selfish and cruel, but he is also a psychopath. In a scene of gladiatorial combat, Feyd glows with an otherworldly luminescence through the use of special lenses. The tasteful use of camera technology says more about Feyd’s creepiness than dialogue could, which is a blessing given the film’s close to three-hour running time.
Her (M18)
120 minutes
4 stars
Now that artificial intelligence has escaped from laboratories into everyone’s mobile phone and laptop, this 2013 movie feels more prescient than ever.
It is a film of science-fiction ideas suffused with emotions. In here, one will find gentle humour, joy, and most of all, melancholy.
In the Los Angeles of an unspecified future, Theodore Twombly (Joaquin Phoenix) ghost-writes personal letters for a living. Insular and broken-hearted from an impending divorce from wife Catherine (Rooney Mara), he installs an intelligent operating system, who calls herself Samantha (the voice of Scarlett Johansson).
Much of that profound sense of loss and longing from writer-director Spike Jonze comes from the sound, set and costume design.
Jonze (Where The Wild Things Are, 2009) uses music from art-indie sources such as Arcade Fire and Karen O to stunning effect. He could have easily made everything look and feel grey, steely and industrial. Given the film’s themes, that would have been the obvious and easiest artistic choice, but he is too smart for hitting things squarely on their heads.
Twombly’s world is the world as it is today, but with better technology, enabling one to stay in constant touch while making one feel lonelier than ever.
This movie is being screened as part of the ArtScience Cinema’s Notes On Tenderness Film Programme, created for the extended Valentine’s season.
Where: ArtScience Cinema, Level 4, ArtScience Museum, 6 Bayfront Avenue
MRT: Bayfront
When: March 3, 9 and 17, various timings
Admission: $13 for a standard ticket
Info: str.sg/k5Sa
Polite Society (PG13)
105 minutes
4 stars
The anarchic martial arts comedy Polite Society is Bollywood meets Kill Bill (2003) by way of English novelist Jane Austen, with a dance number from the Hindi blockbuster Devdas (2002).
British-Pakistani schoolgirl Ria Khan (Priya Kansara) is desperate to rescue older sister Lena (Ritu Arya) from impending marriage, so that Lena, an art school dropout, can fulfil her creative potential. Moreover, she suspects wealthy groom Salim Shah (Akshay Khanna) is up to no good.
Polite Society is the first feature of writer-director Nida Manzoor, who created the Channel 4 sitcom We Are Lady Parts (2021 to present) and its British-Muslim female punk band. Her movie packs the same defiant feminist laughs and then some.
Ria, 16, is an aspiring stuntwoman. “I am the fury” is her battle cry as she chop-socks against gender norms and cultural expectations. No matter that Lena is genuinely smitten with genteel doctor Salim.
Manzoor, who based the story in part on her experience as a second-generation South Asian immigrant, pairs zestful imagination with an empathetic understanding of sisterly bonds and the adolescent insecurities that underlie Ria’s melodramatic schemes.
