Films featuring
Brad Dourif

Dune

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Dune is an absolute triumph of art direction over coherency. That’s not to say that it’s completely incomprehensible, but in its theatrical length, the average moviegoer will probably be lost in this heavily compressed version of Frank Herbert‘s mythos.

The Dune series of novels, especially the first, has been compared to the Lord of the Rings stories, due largely to density of detail in the universe. Another parallel is that both were considered virtually unfilmable. Unfortunately, David Lynch was not given the degree of control and freedom that Peter Jackson< had and the film suffers for it. Forced by the De Laurentiis family to condense his movie into just over two hours, Lynch's theatrical cut feels more like a highlight reel than a cohesive story. Continue reading

The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers

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The middle entry in a trilogy often has the hardest job, picking up where the first story left off and leaving enough for the final part to build on. In other words, it has to hit the ground running, assuming you remember what you saw a year ago and then leave you hanging two or three hours later. I don’t count faux trilogies like the Indiana Jones movies, which are only called a “trilogy” because there just happened to be three movies. There was, however, no common narrative thread tying the films together, like there is for Lord of the Rings.

Like The Empire Strikes Back, The Two Towers successfully avoids the “middle movie” trap. Continue reading