10 Sci-Fi Adaptations first published by BFI, 14 October 2021, to coincide with the release of Denis Villeneuve’s Dune Includes capsules of: Frankenstein, Forbidden Planet, 2001: A Space Odyssey, Horror Express, Starship Troopers, War of the Worlds, A Scanner Darkly, 1, The Congress, Aniara With its immense world building, vast ensemble of characters, and complicated…
‘Embrace the desert’: Denis Villeneuve on Dune (2021) first published by Little White Lies Denis Villeneuve loves a challenge. The Quebecois filmmaker has turned a horrific real-life misogynistic massacre – the sort of material that would normally yield only the lowest form of exploitation – into the sensitive Polytechnique (shot twice, in French- and English-language…
Polytechnique first published by Little White Lies, as the 117th entry in my Cinema Psychotronicum column In Canada, 1989 was a year that saw several victories for women’s rights and representation. On March 9th, the Supreme Court of Canada declared moot an appeal brought by anti-abortionist Joseph Borowski, and so in effect established a protection…
First published by Real Crime As text explains at the beginning of Denis Villeneuve’s latest film, the word ‘sicario’ is now used in Mexico to denote a ‘hitman’, but comes originally from the zealots of Jerusalem, murderously opposed to the “Romans who invaded their homeland.” Accordingly, Sicario opens with a different homeland under invasion, as…
Enemy first published by FilmLand Empire “Chaos is order yet undeciphered” reads text near the beginning of Denis Villeneuve’s Enemy, proclaiming the film’s status as a thorny puzzle in need of careful decoding. Enemy may be adapted from José Saramago’s 2002 novel The Double, but it is equally haunted by the spirits of Hegel, Lynch…