Film Shapes

This is an oddly constructed reincarnation AI romance film (you probably won't hear that every day). Based loosely on the Henry James novella, The Beast in the Jungle , director Bertrand Bonello sets our present in 2044 where Gabrielle (Léa Seydoux) must decide between getting a better job or keeping her emotions. You see, Artificial Intelligence has saved humanity from an unnamed disaster and is now running things, perfectly but dispassionately. The offer to 'clean her DNA' would remove her 'affects', or memories, thus enabling her to undertake work tasks logically, free of emotional influence. Through this process we see two earlier incarnations of Gabrielle - in 1910 Paris, and 2014 Los Angeles. In a none too subtle hint early on, Gabrielle mentions to someone that she doesn't want to become a Buddhist - maybe she had no choice, as it appears her DNA is 'remembering' things and carrying her experiences through time. Seydoux shimmers in each time perio...

Dune: Part Two picks up very close to the end of the first film - Paul Atreides (Timothée Chalamet) and his mother, Jessica (Rebecca Ferguson) are embedded with the Fremen following the attack on house Atreides from Dune: Part One . The first scene of some Harkonnen foot soldiers getting dealt with is neatly done but not quite the opener that I was expecting. This ties into my major issue with the film - it takes an awfully long time to get going. I'd say the whole first hour is spent developing Paul's relationship with Chani (Zendaya) and Jessica's rise to Reverend Mother of the Fremen, blue worm juice ingesting and all. There's also an extended 'rites of passage' angle where Paul must show his mettle to be accepted by the tribes. All important stuff, granted, but I'd have preferred a bit more back and forth with the other camps - Harkonnen, Emperor & Bene Gesserit. When this does eventually happen, the film really finds its groove. Christopher Nolan s...