This past Friday, October 3rd, acclaimed French-Canadian film director Denis Villeneuve celebrated his 58th birthday. In honor of this occasion, I’ve selected five of his films to dissect and recommend as part of the first edition of the ABC, or Auteur Birthday Collection. Please enjoy and let me know if there are any of his films you love that I’ve neglected to mention!
“Arrival”
Adapting a short story from American writer Ted Chiang, Arrival disjointedly tells the story of linguist and alien communicator Louise Banks, played by Amy Adams. The film opens with an acknowledgment of Banks’ daughter Hannah, who died at the age of 12. Instantly, we are transported to her present, as 12 extraterrestrial aircrafts land at various places on Earth, to the chagrin of the United States.
After being enlisted by the U.S. Army to speak with the supposed alien lifeforms, Banks becomes attached and emotionally volatile, feeling an intense empathy and care for the symbol-speaking aliens she’d been assigned to ‘figure out’ and subsequently destroy. With support from actors Forest Whitaker and Jeremy Renner, the audience is progressively submerged into Banks’ world, losing track of time as well as logic with every new conversation she has with these beings.
An outwardly brash yet inwardly compassionate take on grief, Arrival will not leave your mind long after the credits roll.
“Dune Parts One and Two”
While David Lynch brought his own distinct and irreplaceable vibe to his 1984 rendition of Dune, Villeneuve perfected Frank Herbert’s 1965 sci-fi tale of power and corruption. With an all-star ensemble cast featuring Timothée Chalamet, Zendaya, Austin Butler, Javier Bardem, Josh Brolin, Christopher Walken and much more, both parts of Villeneuve’s Dune effortlessly evoke Herbert’s vision of 10,000 years in the future, with incredibly complex character and nation relationships throughout.
Chalamet plays Paul Atreides, heir to the Atreides clan and owner of supernatural powers, who is charged with avenging his family’s honor in a dusty, inhospitable land. As Paul submerges himself further into his visions of the future, the audience bears witness to the power of a charismatic leader over a desperate people. Huh, that sounds a little familiar!
While some were bored by Part One and never cared to witness the epic that is Part Two, this reviewer is waiting impatiently for Part 3 to release in December of 2026. One of the best pairs of sci-fi films ever made, Dune Parts One and Two are essential viewing in 2025.
“Prisoners”
A father’s violence is unleashed in Villeneuve’s crime thriller Prisoners. Starring Hugh Jackman and Jake Gyllenhaal, the film follows Jackman after his daughter is abducted one afternoon, while Gyllenhaal plays the detective charged with solving the case. Beginning with a brightly lit family dinner and concluding with a dark, dirty hole in the ground, this film is a journey like no other.
Paul Dano steals the show as Alex Jones, an unnerving young man initially brought in for questioning as a suspect, but who is eventually tortured by the hands of Jackman and the latter’s perceived search for justice. As Jackman seemingly gets closer to finding the truth, the audience witnesses the degradation of a man’s moral compass as well as the implication of what justice means in a world full of evasive criminals.
Horrific in more ways than one, Prisoners is a film you won’t regret watching. Then rewatching again.
“Sicario”
Starring Benicia del Toro, Emily Blunt and Josh Brolin, Sicario goes head first into America’s war on drugs, following an undercover force assigned to assassinate the leader of a prominent Mexican drug cartel. Blunt leads the film as FBI special agent Kate Macer, who within 15 minutes is faced with the shocking death of two officers which serves to foreshadow the tasks she’s asked to participate in as the film progresses.
del Toro plays Alejandro Gillick, a former state prosecutor turned assassin who will stop at nothing to complete his mission, including Macer (Blunt). Brolin rounds out the cast as Matt Graver, the CIA member who enlists Macer shortly after her traumatic opening sequence. All together, these actors are powerhouses, bringing vast amounts of emotion to a rather emotionally sparse script.
Along with Villeneuve’s masterful tension-building (particularly in an iconic bridge shootout), Sicario seeks to unsettle, entertain and captivate, and luckily it succeeds in accomplishing all three.
“Blade Runner: 2049”
No, this is not much like Ridley Scott’s (arguable) magnum opus Blade Runner starring Harrison Ford, but that by no means indicates that Blade Runner: 2049 is a subpar movie. Trading Scott’s gritty and grey cinematography for bright and bold neons, Villeneuve recaptures the not-so-distant future explored in the original, while providing modern imagery which instantly feels like a few decades from now.
Starring Ryan Gosling as K, a ‘blade runner’ tasked with ‘retiring’ (killing) other automated replicants like himself, 2049 brings wildly new concepts into Scott’s original vision such as: what if these robot people could procreate? Following K in his search for the truth, the film seamlessly integrates larger than life, interactive advertisements to distract the viewer (and K), as well as tricks the viewer into falling down rabbit holes K can’t seem to recognize.
A Kafka-esque exploration of what humanity and living mean to artificial identities, 2049 capitalizes on the original film’s ideas while bringing its aesthetic forward to our future.
Stay tuned for the next ABC, and feel free to recommend directors, actors, and even producers! This series is meant to broaden our collective appreciation of those who bring us the movies we love, and I’d love to use any of your examples.
