Dune

Tedious, sometimes boring, sometimes with dodgy effects, but you know, in this case I don't mind it at all. Given the fact that the entire film was shot at Barrandov Studios and that all the desert scenes were shot in one room, those imperfections have their charm. Often you see actors pretending to walk in the desert and right behind them you notice a hanging canvas with painted dunes. There are a lot of moments like that, and picking up on those imperfections is very entertaining on its own. Despite that, I was drawn into the story because “Dune” itself is a great novel and this version sticks to it pretty faithfully. The actors are often rather stilted, but it was nice to see a large number of our actors, of whom Karel Dobrý had an unexpectedly big role. Also, Pištěk’s costume design is great, but that can be expected from him. But like I said, the most entertaining part of the whole film are the cutely imperfect visual effects from our specialists. PS: Having watched it again and re-read the book many years later, I can only conclude that this is probably what Lynch's version was supposed to look like, reverent to the source material. (28/12/2002)

It is a trickily terrible adaptation, really dreadful in some places for nowadays, and I don't mean it because classic tricks are also used here, but because they are simply done poorly. But it is still "Dune" and its story is captured fairly accurately. The problem is that it lacks the depth that the book has, but there is simply just some story being told here. The presence of Czech actors is nice, I was especially captivated by Barbora Kodetová, also because I fell in love with the character Chani already in the book. Weak, but I still liked it more than Lynch's version, even though it has its strong points too. (01/05/2014)