Dune

★★★★★ Dune reminds us what a Hollywood blockbuster can be. Denis Villeneuve’s fantasy epic tells us that big-budget spectaculars don’t have to be dumb, that it’s possible to allow the odd quiet passage amid the explosions. Adapted from Frank Herbert’s 60s opus, Dune is dense, moody and quite often sublime.

Timothée Chalamet, pictured, plays Paul Atreides, your archetypal hero, unsure of his powers and questioning the merits of the mountainous task before him. His father, the Duke (Oscar Isaac), has been handed stewardship of the desert planet Arrakis, source of a magical substance called “spice”, which extends life and fuels space travel. But Arrakis is also home to vast worms that can rise up with little warning, and an oppressed people – the Fremen – who see the spice harvesters as exploiters.

The drama is played out with relish by an ensemble cast (Rebecca Ferguson, pictured, Charlotte Rampling, Jason Momoa et al), and Villeneuve is confident enough to let the temperature slowly build before the big operatic set-pieces eventually break cover.

He has constructed an entire world for us here, thick with myth and mystery, stripped of narrative signposts or even much in the way of handy exposition. It’s an invitation to get lost.

Xan Brooks

Dune is on general release in the US and UK, and from 2 December in Australia