Rank The Films Of Denis Villeneuve

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• Seve The island of Lemoy

  June 28 edited June 28 Posts: 658

  1) Prisoners
  2) Sicario
  
  3) Blade Runner 2049
  
  
  
  
  4) Dune
  
  
  
  
  
  
  5) Arrival
• Feyador Montreal, Canada

  June 29 edited June 29 Posts: 786

  Rated with annotations, not ranked ...
  
  1998 August 32nd on Earth / * [unseen]
  
  2000 Maelström / A-
  A darkly absurdist, oddly poetic tale of love & existential dread in contemporary Montreal. Narrated by a talking fish, no less.
  
  2009 Polytechnique / A
  Shot in monochrome, this revisits a real-life, misogyny-motivated 1989 Montréal school shooting/massacre. Depicted with a harrowing degree of clarity, compassion & restraint, especially regarding the after-effects on the survivors. A timely reminder that movie violence is nothing like real world violence.
  
  2010 Incendies / A-
  Another harrowing, grief-stricken story, this time about two Montrealers unraveling the secrets of their mother's brutal experiences from her past life in Lebanon. Oscar-nominated for Best Foreign Language Film
  
  2013 Prisoners / A-
  2013 Enemy / A-
  Both mark Villeneuve’s transition to Hollywood, blending psychological depth with a new degree of genre—one a murky moral thriller, the other a surreal identity puzzle full of unease [shades of Maelström]—but both still haunting and masterfully controlled.
  
  2015 Sicario / B+
  Taut, enjoyable thriller, but also the point at which he becomes a little more 'art-house conventional' combined with a stronger slant to genre.
  
  2016 Arrival / A-
  Highly cerebral, emotionally resonant sci-fi triumph [Close Encounters meets 2001?]—anchored by Amy Adams’ quietly powerful performance. Like others among his films this repays repeated viewing. Ranked #29 on the recent NYT 100 Best Films of the 21st Century, the only one, I think, among his films to make the largely US-centred list.
  
  2017 Blade Runner 2049 / A-
  I prefer the more distilled visual/aural poetry of the original, but this still well-honors the basic themes of time & memory and just exactly what it means to be human. But it's also recognizably Villeneuve in mirroring Enemy’s doppelgängers, Incendies’ buried past [literally here], and Arrival’s time-bending introspection.
  
  2021 Dune / *
  2024 Dune: Part Two / *
  
  In a Craig Bond context, I'm reminded of just how much themes of memory & grief run through Villeneuve’s work. Sorry haters. But maybe he'll have left all that behind by B26.
  
  Still haven't seen the Dune films, and I'm strangely averse to doing so, maybe because I'm so unfamiliar with the source material, which feels like it must arch over everything. Anyway, I prefer human-scale drama ....
• Seve The island of Lemoy

  June 29 Posts: 658

  Nothing to say about "Prisoners" ?