While writing down my long list of pros and cons for moving to The Netherlands, I never thought to include “Seeing movies early” in the pro column. In fact I don’t know when or why it became the norm for blockbusters to debut in other countries before the US. I can’t get HBO, but I was able to see both “Dune” and “No Time to Die” over a month before my American friends get the chance. I thought I’d flaunt my new-movie privilege by writing a tiny review for each.

(And yes, the theaters are open; at the door you display a QR code certifying your vaccination status, and in you go. Sorry for flaunting my functional-government privilege, too.)

No Time to Die

We saw the new James Bond at Theater Tuschinski, which at least one outlet has called the most beautiful cinema in the world. Half a dozen signs around the lobby included the iffy hashtag #NoTimeForSpoilers—for good reason!—and I won’t be squawking here. But I will be warning you about the goddamn runtime: TWO HOURS AND FORTY-THREE MINUTES, easily the longest of the Bond films. (What ever happened to 90-minute movies, huh?) Be sure to use the bathroom.

This review isn’t nearly so long, so I’ll cut to the chase and say I liked it. That was no guarantee; I’m convinced people like the idea of James Bond movies more than the movies themselves. Much like Star Trek, the concept is often more appealing than the execution. I didn’t even see the last one, “Spectre,” which put me at a mild disadvantage knowing what was going on in this one. Fortunately, Bond films are NOT subtle about identifying the bad guys.

And that’s perfectly fine. Nothing wrong with going to a Bond movie expecting a charmingly passé number of hallmarks: theme-song-music-video opening credits, world-spanning postcard locations, scarred villain with a secret lair and a truly bizarre number of machine-gun henchmen. “No Time to Die” hits em all. Its most subversive move is introducing Lashana Lynch as a Black female 00 agent, which is really only “subversive” to MAGA snowflakes.

Daniel Craig has said this is his last outing in the tuxedo. It’s no controversy to call Craig the most self-serious of the James Bonds—that’s certainly thanks to his acting, which would have a certain ruggedness even if he were bottle-feeding a baby raccoon¹. But I’d say the larger issue is the steady slide of all blockbuster movies towards a detached stony-faced seriousness—no matter how silly the characters and locales onscreen—which was previously the exclusive domain of Batman. This doesn’t always work; when Bond finally gives us a quippy one-liner, darn near the end of the movie, it feels like a huge relief. But ever since the end of the Cold War (ever since Goldeneye, by the Bond calendar), the premise of a white man fucking and killing his way around the world in the name of “freedom” has felt increasingly icky. A pinch of gravitas seems appropriate, and Daniel Craig can summon a wheelbarrow’s worth.

Dune

Speaking of icky premises, how about a white messiah bringing spiritual leadership to the unwashed masses living in the untamed desert? Cause that’s the unexaggerated proposition of “Dune,” a 1965 sci-fi epic novel that is such a direct influence on “Star Wars” that you feel like George Lucas should have shared royalties. But whereas “Star Wars” is a svelte missile of storytelling, “Dune” and its sequels are famously sprawling and complex—think “Game of Thrones” in space—and, despite two previous adaptations and one infamous near-miss, have frequently been called “unfilmable.”

I was terrified for “Dune” precisely because it looked so good; I thought frequently of the 2005 “Hitchhiker’s Guide” adaptation, which ticked every box you could hope for in adapting the beloved book, yet turned out devastatingly mediocre. Likewise, everything about “Dune” looked just about perfect, from the cast and director on down the line. But, given Hollywood history, it was entirely possible that it just wouldn’t work.

Well, it works. By limiting itself to the first half of the book, “Dune” manages to be a tolerable length—at 2h35m, somehow SHORTER than “No Time to Die”—and less of a confusing rat’s nest of characters and plot lines. (No joke: for the 1984 David Lynch adaptation, they handed out a double-sided cheat sheet to help audiences follow along.) The production design is exquisite, particularly the costuming. You could still be completely mystified by the plot (you might yet be!) but still greatly enjoy the look of the movie. The cinematography demands to be seen in a proper movie theater, though your local COVID situation might demand otherwise.

And yet… I cringed visibly multiple times throughout.

Most or all of the cringing was thanks to the 56-year-old source material. There’s no such thing as a good white-messiah narrative, no matter how many times the white messiah (Timothée Chalamet) pouts about it. Similarly, the idea that the cishet patriarchy will be well in place over 8,000 years in the future is suuuuper depressing, no matter how much the cishet women are shown to be scheming behind the scenes. This adaptation does an okay job at granting some much-needed agency to the oppressed native people², but like your awkward uncle at Thanksgiving dinner holding forth about “what the Arabs think,” I feel like this isn’t necessarily a white man’s story to tell. Or anyone’s story. The time to tell it might be past.

I really am trying to recommend the movie! What it’s good at, it’s VERY good at. I’ll be seeing it again. But the more I think about the asterisk on my recommendation, the bigger the asterisk gets. I’m very interested to hear what people of color think about the whole thing.

1. I’ll try to make it happen, Kiki.
2. In my white man’s opinion, which isn’t worth the blog-paper it’s printed on.