Thanks to the box office success of Dune: Part Two, Denis Villeneuve is now firmly established among the top directors in Hollywood. It’s an overnight success story that only took 26 years to come to fruition. And over the past decade, Villeneuve has taken it upon himself to make some of the best science fiction movies of the century. But Villeneuve has already proven that he can do a lot more than sci-fi.
To celebrate the director’s films, we’ve narrowed them down to the 7 best Denis Villeneuve movies ranked from seventh to first. And there is no “worst” among these Denis Villeneuve movies.
7. Enemy
Although Enemy didn’t light the box office on fire, this unnerving thriller drew attention to Villeneuve’s work. Jake Gyllenhaal stars in dual roles as Adam Bell and Anthony Claire. Adam is a college professor who notices Anthony as an actor in a movie. Adam is so taken aback by his physical similarity to Anthony that he seeks out Anthony’s other films and suspects that they may be related.
Adam is such a perfect doppelganger for Anthony that the actor’s agency can’t tell them apart. Adam takes his stalking a step further and contacts Anthony’s home, where even Anthony’s wife, Helen Claire (Sarah Gadon), assumes that he’s Anthony. That puts Anthony and Adam on the road to finally meeting, but it won’t be a joyous occasion.
6. Prisoners
Prisoners was the first film to bring Villeneuve’s work to the attention of American moviegoers. It was also his first collaboration with Jake Gyllenhaal, who plays Detective Loki, the lead investigator in the case of two missing girls: Eliza Birch (Zoë Soul) and Anna Dover (Erin Gerasimovich).
While Loki chases real leads on the case, Anna’s father, Keller Dover (Hugh Jackman), becomes convinced that the girls were kidnapped by a mentally disabled man, Alex Jones (Paul Dano). Even proof of Alex’s diminished mental capacity isn’t enough to dissuade Keller, who kidnaps Alex and starts torturing him for answers that he may never be able to give.
5. Sicario
How’s this for a dream team? Villeneuve directed Sicario from a script by Yellowstone co-creator Taylor Sheridan with leading roles for Emily Blunt, Benicio del Toro, Josh Brolin, and Jon Bernthal. Blunt portrays FBI Special Agent Kate Macer, a woman who accepts an invitation to join a task force to take down the Sonora Cartel alongside CIA operative Matt Graver (Brolin) and Alejandro Gillick (del Toro), a former Mexican prosecutor who now works for the CIA as an assassin.
Kate becomes suspicious about the task force’s true nature, especially since both Graver and Gillick have agendas that don’t align with hers. There’s a very slippery slope of morality in this story, leaving Kate to wonder if she can trust anyone on this case.
4. Dune
Frank Herbert’s Dune is a notoriously difficult novel to adapt. David Lynch tried to do it in a single movie in 1984, while John Harrison opted for a miniseries on Syfy in 2000. Villeneuve’s approach split the story of the first novel across two movies, which managed to convey the most important parts of the book without losing them.
The key thing to know going in is that Dune is another name for the planet Arrakis, the most important world in the galactic empire. It’s the only place where Spice is produced, and that’s essential to space travel. Paul Atreides (Timothée Chalamet) accompanies his parents, Duke Leto Atreides (Oscar Isaac) and Lady Jessica (Rebecca Ferguson), to Arrakis after his family takes over the Spice mining from their enemies in House Harkonnen. What they don’t realize is that they’ve been trapped by their enemies, who are determined to wipe out their house. Paul’s growing mental abilities offer him a glimpse of the future, but not everyone around him will live long enough to see those events play out.
3. Arrival
Villeneuve began focusing on sci-fi films with his adaptation of Ted Chiang’s Story of Your Life. Arrival is a more appropriate name since it relates that the premise of the story is about aliens who have finally come to Earth. These creatures are not remotely human, nor does their language conform to anything humans would recognize.
Linguist Louise Banks (Amy Adams) and physicist Ian Donnelly (Jeremy Renner) are called upon to make sense of the aliens’ enigmatic language. This turns out to be a transformative experience for Louise as she gets closer to unlocking the gift that the aliens have brought to mankind. But Louise still has to race the clock as other nations around the world are so afraid of the alien visitors that they may feel compelled to attack them.
2. Dune: Part Two
Continuing where Dune left off, Dune: Part Two finds Paul (Chalamet) and Lady Jessica (Ferguson) as the only two members of the Atreides family to survive their betrayal. While taking refuge alongside the Fremen tribe, some of their members believe that Paul is the prophesied savior of their people. That’s a belief that Lady Jessica works to cultivate as Paul proves himself as a fighter.
Chani (Zendaya), a young Fremen woman, is one of Paul’s most vocal detractors regarding the idea that he is their chosen one. However, Chani and Paul have romantic feelings for each other, especially when he denies being their savior. However, Paul is forced to reconsider the question, which may end his romance with Chani soon after it begins.
Dune: Part Two is now playing in theaters.
1. Blade Runner 2049
Villeneuve may personally disagree with the placement of Blade Runner 2049 over both of his Dune movies, but this sequel deserves the top spot for its great performances, compelling story, and absolutely jaw-dropping visuals. Barbie‘s Ryan Gosling leads the cast as K, a replicant who has inherited a job that used to fall to humans: hunting down renegade replicants.
During a routine case, K discovers shocking proof that a female replicant has given birth, which shouldn’t be possible. It also shouldn’t be possible that K is the child in question, but he has good reason to believe that he might be. First, K will have to find Rick Deckard (Harrison Ford), a retired Blade Runner and the leading character from the first film. If K can live long enough to locate Deckard, he may not like what he discovers about himself.
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