Well, those little green shoots of recovery I forecast last year have flowered. This year is set to bring tighter scripts, cheaper projects (which is good, because studios can take more chances) and a more enjoyable cinema-going experience all round. On 16 January, 28 Years Later: The Bone Temple will deliver (honest) on all those promises exasperatingly kept back in 2025's 28 Years Later . There will be Cillian Murphy reprising his role from 2002's 28 Days Later, plus more from actor Jack O'Connell's "Jimmys", an acrobatic killer cult. There will also be Nia DaCosta in the director's chair - a young, much-lauded talent who not so long ago had the misfortune to helm The Marvels .

Last year, filmmaker Paul Schrader--the director of Blue Collar, American Gigolo, and First Reformed, and writer of Martin Scorsese's Taxi Driver--issued what seemed like the last word on artificial intelligence in Hollywood filmmaking. A few days after the release of Denis Villeneuve's sci-fi blockbuster Dune: Part Two, Schrader asked his Facebook followers: "Will Dune 3 be made by AI? And, if it is, how will we know?" Schrader is well regarded not only as a director, but one of cinema's top-shelf curmudgeons, quick with a wry burn or baiting shit-post. But his Dune tweet seemed like more than another provocation. It spoke to a mounting feeling among many filmgoers, myself included: that Hollywood had stooped to producing sleek, antiseptic images so devoid of personality that they might as well have been made not by a living, breathing, thinking, feeling artist, but by a computer.

There's a war brewing in Hollywood and we're not talking about how AI will inevitably kill us all by plagiarizing The Joker's chaos plans from The Dark Knight. The latest shot came from Dune director Denis Villeneuve in a red carpet interview in which he called the Wolverine & Deadpool popcorn bucket "horrific" and called the Dune buckets "unmatchable." Villeneuve did an impromptu interview with eTalkCTV where a reporter asked him about the feud that's been brewing between him and Deadpool star Ryan Reynolds over their respective popcorn receptacles. The reporter showed Villeneuve a picture of the Deadpool & Wolverine bucket featuring the yellow Wolverine's head and his gaping maw full of some of Orville Redenbacher's finest. Villeneuve said he doesn't have anything against the bucket but he thinks they are just riding the coattails he unfurled when the Dune sandworm popcorn bucket blew up the Internet.

A new top-grossing film that has received global recognition for its cinematic prowess is now being revered by the most successful director of the century. Oscar-winning director Steven Spielberg recently proclaimed Dune: Part Two as a'visual epic' in a new interview, calling it'one of the most brilliant science-fiction films I've ever seen.' Spielberg said his favorite scene in the Blockbuster was watching Timothée Chalamet - who plays Paul Atreides - ride a sandworm. Spielberg has also lavished praise on Denis Villeneuve who directed both Dune films, saying Villeneuve's name will be added to the list of sci-fi filmmakers who have built incredible and unique worlds. 'You have made one of the most brilliant science fiction films I have ever seen,' adding that it'is truly a visual epic and it's also filled with deeply, deeply drawn characters,' Spielberg told Villeneuve in the Director's Cut podcast: Dune: Part Two cleared 82.5 million in its opening weekend, surpassing Oppenheimer which brought in 82.4 million. Since its release, the film has grossed nearly 240 million at the domestic box office and 570 million globally.

I have questions about Denis Villeneuve's Dune: Part Two. If the Fremen have lasers, why don't they just shoot the sand harvesters and run away? Why don't they use their sandworms until the last battle? Wouldn't it make more sense to fight the other great houses on Arrakis itself, where they have sandworms, rather than board ships off-world to go off to war? If Paul (Timothée Chalamet) has to invade the galaxy at the end, why bother marrying the daughter of the emperor he just deposed?

While fighting a hydra in the shadow of a sand-covered Tokyo Tower, I couldn't help but think of another world: that of Dune. The glistening sands of Shin Megami Tensei V's bombed out, post-apocalyptic Tokyo are superficially similar to the terrain on Arrakis, sure, but the emotions I felt while traversing the Nintendo Switch game were similar to those I had watching Denis Villeneuve's blockbuster--wonderment at watching a beloved series finally well-realized on a big, modern screen. Out on November 11, Shin Megami Tensei V is the newest installment of the long-running Megami Tensei series of role-playing games. Like Dune, this franchise has a storied history: The first entry, 1987's Digital Devil Story: Megami Tensei for the Nintendo Famicom, was based on a trilogy of sci-fi novels about a demon summoning computer program. Gameplay-wise, it set the franchise's basic template: turn-based combat, dark themes, and scores of demons to recruit and collect.

VENICE LIDO, Italy – When the highly anticipated remake of Frank Herbert's influential '60s novel world premiered in September at the Venice Film Festival, it was "Dune -- Part 1." Now as Denis Villeneuve's lauded adaptation opens nationwide, it's simply "Dune" -- maybe because no one knows if there will be a concluding Part 2. "The biggest challenge," said Villeneuve ("Sicario," "Arrival") "is that the book is so rich and its strength is all in its details. I had to find equilibrium for someone who doesn't know the book at all and be as cinematic as possible. So that they will need to understand the movie without crushing them with exposition. So the ideas could follow the story." "Dune" is set far into a future where Oscar Isaac's Duke rules the kingdom of Atreides.

Life during the Covid-19 pandemic would be even more difficult without the Internet and automation, making this year timely for the upcoming "Dune" film to portray a distant future where humanity is devastated by our dependence on machines. Director Dennis Villeneuve is set to release his adaptation of the science fiction epic on October 22, both on HBO Max and in movie theaters. The release was delayed from last December to make it safer for people to view and hear the space fantasy in theaters. WarnerMedia aims to distribute Villeneuve's vision of the first "Dune" novel in two films, but has not yet scheduled a release date for the second film after the first half is released. Frank Herbert's "Dune" novel begins in the far distant future, thousands of years after humans were enslaved by robots, fought a revolutionary crusade and banned artificial intelligence with a new anti-tech religion.

Science-fiction film costume designers create sartorial future worlds and, if they get it right, can influence current trends along the way. Here, we ask a few forward-looking costume designers to describe their favorite piece from each of their current films and, interestingly, the choices were anything but outrageously fantastical -- they ranged from the lovely and nostalgic to the manly and the fussy. Luis Sequeira's favorite costume is Elisa's (Sally Hawkins) enchanting dream-sequence dress. Set against the film's lush, dark, moody world of the early '60s, the black-and-white dream sequence "is pure light and love," says Sequeira. "It was amazing to create something so opposite to the rest of the film."

There's a scene in Blade Runner 2049 that takes place in a morgue. K, an android "replicant" played by Ryan Gosling, waits patiently while a member of the Los Angeles Police Department inspects a skeleton. The technician sits at a machine with a dial, twisting it back and forth to move an overhead camera. There are two screens, positioned vertically, that show the bony remains with a light turquoise tinge. Only parts of the image are in focus, however. The rest is fuzzy and indistinct, as if someone smudged the lens and never bothered to wipe it clean. Before leaving the room, K asks if he can take a closer look. The blade runner -- someone whose task it is to hunt older replicants -- dances over the controls, hunting for a clue. As he zooms in, the screen changes in a circular motion, as if a series of lenses or projector slides are falling into place. Before long, K finds what he's looking for: A serial code, suggesting the skeleton was a replicant built by the now defunct Tyrell Corporation. Throughout the movie, K visits a laboratory where artificial memories are made; an LAPD facility where replicant code, or DNA, is stored on vast pieces of ticker tape; and a vault, deep inside the headquarters of a private company, that stores the results of replicant detection'Voight-Kampff' tests.