KEITH UHLICH
Dune. Photo: Chiabella James / © 2020 Warner Bros. Entertainment Inc. All Rights Reserved
film roundup
Red Rocket (Dir. Sean Baker). Starring: Simon Rex, Bree Elrod, Suzanna Son. Here’s a different kind of raging a-hole: Down on his luck fortysomething porn star Mikey (Simon Rex), who returns to his Texas hometown during the summer of 2016 (a certain former president looms large in the background) like nothing less than a human poltergeist. He argues his way into crashing with his estranged wife Lexi (Bree Elrod), then sees a potential reversal of fortune in the comely form of jailbait donut store waitress, Strawberry (Suzanna Son), who he proceeds to groom for eventual sex-flick stardom. It’s easy to imagine a moralistic version of this story, but director Sean Baker (Tangerine; The Florida Project) 12
ICON | DECEMBER 2021 | ICONDV.COM
goes more gutsily for a non-judgmental tone and a seductively freewheeling momentum. This tale of an unrepentantly terrible person doing horrible things is, perversely, a joy beyond measure. [R] HHHH1/2 Dune (Dir. Denis Villeneuve). Starring: Timothée Chalamet, Rebecca Ferguson, Zendaya. Frank Herbert’s science-fiction epic gets about two-thirds of an adaptation with Denis Villeneuve’s starry, somber blockbuster. Paul Atreides (Timothée Chalamet) is the heir, alongside his father, Duke Leto (Oscar Isaac), and mother, Lady Jessica (Rebecca Ferguson), to the desert planet Arrakis, where hallucinogenic spice flows, monstrous sand-
worms burrow, and a messianic revolution is brewing between the elite classes and the native, blue-eyed Fremen. There’s also a floating fat man, Baron Harkonnen (Stellan Skarsgård), and plenty of IMAX-sized negative space that, while captivating on occasion, doesn’t come close to the staggering imagery in David Lynch’s 1984 film maudit, made from the same material. At least Lynch told the whole story (and had a leavening sense of humor amid all the convoluted palace intrigue). This is mostly dull setup for a sequel
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