Timothée Chalamet returns to the desert as Denis Villeneuve triumphs again in filming the unfilmable with a colour-saturated blockbuster contemplating zealotry and religious war

If there’s another blockbuster this year that matches the visual impact of Denis Villeneuve’s Dune: Part Two, I’ll eat my desert boots. The second Dune instalment is jaw-on-the-floor spectacular. It elegantly weaves together top-tier special effects and arresting cinematography; it layers muscle, sinew and savagery on to the bones of Part One. It’s an inhospitable, brutal kind of beauty that Villeneuve has created – there’s not enough lip balm in the universe to make a visit to the sandblasted wilderness planet of Arrakis look appealing. But this epic action picture, which follows the journey of Paul Atreides (Timothée Chalamet) from a cheeky whippersnapper who’s a bit handy with a sword, to a feared warrior, to the prophesied leader of the Fremen tribe of Arrakis,...