Dune

Rating:
Summary: It disgusts me, yet I can't look away.
Review: What did I just watch? This movie is like a train wreck. Like anything directed by David Lynch, this movie is so bizarre, you're afraid to turn it off for fear of missing something. Do yourself a favor, turn it off! Visually, the movie is interesting. But, the incoherent storyline leaves you staring at a blank TV screen long after the credits have rolled by. I'm not a big reader. But, I must read Frank Herbert's novels just to see what Mr. Lynch thought he was interpreting.

Rating:
Summary: It's Rates the best, it's up there with Star Trek, But...
Review: I'm disappointed in that when it first aired on Chanel 11 (BRKYLN,NYC) it was a full 6 hrs long. There are many cuts & if you've seen the movie before the video like I have you get a bit confused. I miss all the stuff they took out which explanes perfectly why things happened the way they did, for example: How Paul got drugged. Even the gift of the Fremen to Paul's mother was cut off. How about the fight between Paul & a Fremen warrier & why his 2 children where of the chosen 100 that Paul trained to use the Wierding modules. Did it ever occure to you why those 2 kids are present & when Shanee's father was muredered, they cut the part of the funeral & also the part where they get the water of life that Paul's mother uses to become a Reverant Mother. Is there a way of getting the full picture? I'm sure that wahen you've seen the video, you'll find like I have that it's not enoght.

Rating:
Summary: Good, but not good enough.
Review: The only thing that saved this movie was the elaborate sets. I saw this when I was very young and recently rented it again to see if it could still capture my imagination. It failed. The acting was good, the scenes were amazing. Must have been a very expensive movie. On the other hand, the storytelling was horrible. You'd have to watch it at least 2 or 3 times to get the jest of everything. I found time management very poor. Didn't give characters proper time to develop. For instance, how did Paul and the girl fall in love. One minute shes ready to kill him for invading her tribe of freeman, and the next they are making love? My favorite scenes revolve around the mystery of the dreadful Spice Navigator "Slug" in the beggining of the movie. It was always very erie for me to watch him swim up to the front of his tank when talking to the Emperor. Good scenes. Good sc-fi eye candy. But a disappointment in the end. I'll have to read the book.

Rating:
Summary: A Rotten Adaptation of a Wonderful Book
Review: This movie is rotten. The nicest thing I can say about it is that it caused me to want to read the original books by Frank Herbert which are amazing and not to be missed. When I first saw the movie I thought it was okay and sort of intriguing. I knew of the books and decided to pick them up. I am now in the middle of the third book in the six book series and am totally captivated. Because of this I decided to rent the movie to see if I still liked it. I figured that if I did still like it, I would buy the video. I will never be making that purchase. If you have ever read a book and then seen the movie only to realize that a director with an overbloated ego has torn, rent, and dismembered a wonderful work of literature to further their own name and "vision" I think you will know what I am talking about. I don't know why it is that David Lynche thought that a gross and comical Baron would be so much more effective than the smart, charismatic and truly despicable one that lives in the book. Why all of the boils? Why the reverse mohawk on the Harkonens? I know they are supposed to be evil, but can't they get a decent haircut? I also wonder why every "type" of character has to have a certian look. What is it with the mentats have enormous eyebrows and red lips? Mentats are supposed to be human computers, so why is it they can't see that they need to clip those eyebrows? For those of you who haven't read the books yet, Paul becomes a mentat in his later days. Can you see Paul with those ridiculous eyebrows and red lips? Why are all of the reverand mothers bald? I really think that Lynche wanted to put as many gross things into this movie as he could. Alia's bloody embryo, the cow, the cat and mouse tied together, the heart plug, the Baron's aforementioned boils on and on and on. None of these things were in the book and their presence in the movie weakened a tremendous work of fiction extraordinarily. I think it is good that this movie has caused people like myself to read the original works of Frank Herbert, but I wonder what could have been if a less selfish and goofy director who truly cared about Frank Herbert's painstakingly written books would have been at the helm of this movie. I think Dune could easily have the following that Star Wars has. Unfortunately, this probably will never come to pass. Please skip this movie. PLease buy the original books and read one of the greatest works of fiction of this century.

Rating:
Summary: The system doesn't let me leave zero stars...
Review: Um, ok I saw this movie when I was young and the only thing I remembered when I just watched it was what happened when Paul's hand was put in the box.

I read this book a couple months ago and was waiting for my girlfriend to finish reading it. So we finally rented it and watched it.

Wow! I can't believe what they forget! What water means to the people, how Paul had to earn the Fremen's repect, how he failed on his 1st attempt to ride a sandworm, not to mention the landslide that burries his mom, and definitely how it only took one night for them to get across the desert. Didn't Duncan get turned into a zombie and at the end, didn't Jessica and Alia get CAPTURED?

This had to be the sadest representation of a book I've seen ... well, since Jurrasic Park anyway.

It could have been better in the plot but it was a decent "special effects" movie for 1984.

Rating:
Summary: too deep for the 80's
Review: Dune is an excellent movie.A sci-fi classic.Unfortunately it was released at the wrong time.Like Blade Runner,it was a deep science fiction movie that a lot of people didn't understand at the time.If it was released now it would have done a lot better at the box office and with the critics.

Rating:
Summary: The subject is the DVD format
Review: I think the movie is a 4 star movie. But, I am commenting about the DVD format. This DVD was not "cleaned up" for the release. The movie was cut big time to fit on DVD. When I buy a DVD, I expect a lot. That is why I bought a DVD player. Why not release it as the director's cut and clean that film?

Rating:
Summary: Second only to Star Gate as best movie ever made.
Review: You have to be intelligent enought to understand it. To enjoy this movie you have to know something about science.

Rating:
Summary: Has its bad points but it is still excellent.
Review: Its funny that there was one person here that said it was too bad 4 you cause you couldn't get the long version. The long version is shown on the Disney Channel every few months, and the truth is, that it sucks. For those big Dune fans, it has some cool extra footage such as the making of the spice milange, how they measured people by their weight in water and how the fremin processed the dead, and a scene with Gurney playing the instrument he was packing for the voyage in the original but you never saw again. Apart from those little things, I must mention that those scenes are unfinished with none of the blue eyes effects added; hey they even missed some scenes in the original, you can imagine how bad it is in this version. Also, and what truly makes this version horrible, is that you get to see the movie twice: It begins with a crappy slide show of paintings with a horrible guys voice as the voiceover going over the entire story of the movie, maybe explaining it just a tad more but really badly, and then you enter the movie itself which is excellent, but it seems badly cut and unfinished. This is the reason why David Lynch disowned that version of the movie, and it doesn't even appear as if he directed it (his name's not on it).So it's good that the general release of the movie is the original David Lynch release (With the pleasant Virginia Madsen voice overs. It is her character in the book that chronicles the story anyway, so it is as it should be).

About this release: The original movie is both bad and excellent at the same time. Siskel and Ebert put it in their top ten worst films of all time, but they also gave two thumbs up to Speed 2, making their credibility rating fall to crap. The book is obviously superior and no movie could ever match such a good book. But it is also written in a manner that could confuse the general public and the story is very convoluted in many respects. IMHO David Lynch made a film based on Dune as clear and with as good imagery as could be done for the time.

This movie is excellent on so many levels it baffles the brain when it shows something crappy. The design (apart from the harkonnen ships) is stunning and trascends time, looking up to date even today. The acting is mostly excellent with a strange mixture of award winning actors. The directing is more than up to David Lynch's strange standards (which I find excellent). The effects are better than some modern CG effects in many respects and many scenes except for some of the crappy Harkonnen scenes (especially their ships). Remember that this film came out in 1984 and at the time this was close to state of the art. TRON came out in 1982 and was the first film to use CG, but the budget for it was ridiculous and the effects very limited (although Disney did an excellent job with that one).

In conclusion, Dune is an excellent sci-fi classic. If you don't like sci-fi, you might still like its strangeness. If you love sci-fi, then you didn't need to read this review to know how excellent this film is and that you can't have a true sci-fi film collection without it.

Rating:
Summary: Favorite Movie Of All Time
Review: That is right, you read that correctly: This is my favorite movie of ALL TIME! I am really only reviewing this movie so that I can raise its score .01 stars by giving it all five. What follows is a really lame justification for my score, but you may find it interesting, so read on.

Here is why it gets 5 stars:

Star #1: The creator(s) of this film did an amazing job of realizing the planets, costumes, characters, creatures and buildings from Frank Herbert's novel. Everything is right on the money. The worms look amazing, the still-suits are perfect, the Fremen are exactly as they should be, the navigators are totally believable, etc. If you subtracted the plot from this movie, everything would be perfect.

Star #2: This movie proves a concept, which is that a movie's plot can be so hacked up and the movie can be made under such terrible circumstances and still be really enjoyable to a group of people. It is kind of the concept behind all movies that have developed a cult following - a movie can be so screwed up that it seems better than if it were just pretty good.

Star #3: Dune - The Movie begat Dune - The Computer Game. Dune - The Computer Game begat Dune 2 - The Much-Improved Computer Game. Dune 2 begat a whole genre of computer games called Real Time Strategy games that have included some of the best computer games ever. If you have liked any of the Warcraft, Starcraft, Command & Conquer games (or clones), you owe thanks to Dune 2 - The Computer Game and Dune - The Movie.

Star #4: This movie has the quality where it gets better each time you watch it. The first time I watched it, it made no sense to me (although I was intrigued enough to watch it again). The second time, I watched it made more sense, but made me want more. Then I read the book, then I watched it again - everything made a lot more sense. Finally, I watched the long version and by that time everything made A LOT of sense. Any movie that rewards repeated viewings and makes you want to read the book, study the source material, etc. is a GOOD MOVIE. A good movie SHOULD leave you hungry for more, and should not have ALL of the answers.

Star #5: Hmmm... I have run out of things. I will have to think. Well, after watching this movie hundreds of times, I have naturally memorized many of the lines. When I suddenly spout off a line or two at times that seem appropriate to me (but random to everyone else), it helps me with my wierd-but-cool mystique. How about that?

Okay so I have proven (beyond a reasonable doubt) that the movie DESERVES 5 stars. Now I just want to say a few words about the mysterious long version: I now have 3 videotaped copies of the long version (NO, I will not send anyone any copies under any circumstances) and here is the main point - if you haven't seen it, you are NOT missing much. So what is in the much talked about long version? First of all, it is definately longer than the VHS version or DVD version but it is not 4 hours. The movie was made into a mini-series for TV and probably had 4 1-hour episodes or 2 2-hour episodes. Figuring in time for commercials, that is way less than 4 hours. Second, it has VERY little new material. The main new part is a new introduction. It replaces the introduction given by Princess Irulan ("...know then that it is the year 10,191..."). Instead, a man's voice gives the introduction and explains a little bit of the history of man's fight with machines and the rise of the navigating guild. While he is talking, you see very badly drawn pictures of the described events. These are most likely taken from storyboards of scenes that were never shot. The new introduction was probably added with the intention of making the plot make more sense, but fails miserably.

There are also some scenes in the "long version" that are shown several times, like one where a Harkonnen ship is landing or taking off comes to mind.

Finally, there ARE deleted scenes. It has been too long since I watched a long version to tell you what they all are. Here are a few that I can remember: Gurney Halleck (Patrick Stewart) playing his Sitar-looking instrument and singing(!). The drowning of a baby worm in water to create the Water of Life. The removal of the water from a Fremen man that Paul defeats in battle. The extra scenes were shot with the real actors, but no effects were added so, for example, in scenes with Fremen their eyes are not blue.

If you are still dying to see the long version, the best way that I can recommend is to get cable and get the Sci-Fi channel. They show it every few months.

After watching the movie many times and reading the book, it now makes perfect sense to me and has become my ALL TIME favorite movie. If you are willing to put in a similar effort, you will be rewarded with much more enjoyment of this movie.

-Jeremy A. Ellis