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THE SWEET EAST 18
Free Ryder…
★★★★★ OUT 29 MARCH CINEMAS
Talia Ryder isn’t actually related to her namesake Winona. Yet there’s a lot of the Heathers star in the younger Ryder’s quizzical turn in The Sweet East, an episodic road movie-slashcoming-of-age drama about a bored teenager from South Carolina who goes wilfully AWOL during a hedonistic school trip to her nation’s grandiose capital.
Hooking up first with a band of dumpster-diving artivists, disaffected Lillian (Ryder) goes on to form an attachment with a Poe-obsessed white supremacist called Lawrence (Red Rocket’s Simon Rex) who gives her room and board in return for unspecified sexual favours. It’s not long, however, before he also is traded up for two indie filmmakers (Jeremy O. Harris and Ayo Edebiri) who cast her in a wigs-and-corsets period piece they’re making with British hottie Ian (Jacob Elordi).
Further adventures ensue, each more surreal and outlandish than the last. Yet Lillian views it all with insouciant equanimity, her Gen Z cool resolutely unruffled even when she is confronted with sudden gunbased violence. Cinematographer-turned-director Sean Price Williams lensed 2017’s Good Time for the Safdie brothers, and he brings a similar, improvisatory scrappiness to his debut feature, shot on grainy 16mm. As fitfully enthralling as the film is, though, it doesn’t ultimately amount to much more than a rogues’ gallery of garrulous eccentrics, cancelling each other out.
THE VERDICT A hip young cast shines in a diverting if disposable jaunt up America’s eastern seaboard.
DUNE: PART TWO 12A
Fine and sandy…
★★★★★ OUT NOW CINEMAS
Blockbuster as grand tragedy? War movie as political/psychological/romantic fable? Sci-fi spectacle as colonial allegory? However you cut it, Denis Villeneuve wrangles coherence from Dune author Frank Herbert’s unruly elements to deliver a sequel that ranks alongside The Dark Knight, The Empire Strikes Back and the director’s own Blade Runner 2049.
The action picks up shortly after 2021’s Part One. Their people massacred by House Harkonnen, Paul Atreides (Timothée Chalamet) and mum Jessica (Rebecca Ferguson) join the Fremen, who live as one with the planet Arrakis. As Paul bonds with Fremen scrapper Chani (Zendaya), he has nightmares of grim destiny. Will he convert his Fremen doubters and become the messianic Muad’Dib, as prophesied? Villeneuve delivers with forceful style. Hypnotic and horrifying images mount, the sound mix thumps your torso and Hans Zimmer’s score conjures wonder, scale and impact. Among the well-appointed cast, the lead trio shine brightest. Zendaya invests feeling in a character smartly built up from Herbert’s vision. Chalamet blossoms in tandem with Paul, showing previously untapped reserves of command. And Austin Butler oozes toxic trouble as Harkonnen heir Feyd-Rautha.
The sharply judged climax leaves room for more. Could Dune Messiah be adapted next, as teased? Tall order, but there’s little doubt Villeneuve is the man to see a way through that delirious desert storm.
THE VERDICT The spice is mighty in a richly satisfying sequel that fulfils and exceeds its predecessor’s promise.