Arrival in the 14the Place, the first part of dune in year 53e And Blade Runner 2049 in the year 87e: Denis Villeneuve cuts a more than good figure in a list published by the magazine of the 150 best science fiction films in cinema history Rolling Stone.
What, if any, eloquent additional proof of the Quebec filmmaker's importance in Hollywood would be needed. In this ranking, published on January 1st, his films are ranked alongside and in some cases even ahead of those of legendary directors such as Steven Spielberg, James Cameron and Stanley Kubrick.
Thanks to its enviable position in the top 15, Arrival (L'arrivee, in French, released in 2016) ranks well ahead of Terminator 2, Planet of the Apes, ET: The Extra-Terrestrial and The Empire Strikes Back, all great classics of American cinema.
Amy Adams in the film Arrival. Photo from Jan Thijs' archives
Winner of an Oscar for Best Sound and a finalist in the prestigious Best Picture and Best Director categories, Arrival strikes “an elegant balance between the intellectual and the emotional,” praises Rolling Stone.
Alongside Jeremy Renner and Forest Whitaker, Amy Adams plays a renowned linguist who is entrusted with the delicate mission of contacting aliens whose ships are stationed a few meters above Earth.
“From the elegant design of the aliens to the eloquent and confusing plot design, Arrival departs from the more popular trends of the genre and offers a realistic portrait of humanity facing its fate, culminating in an ending that is both unsettling and moving.” the American magazine also mentions.
THE dune de Villeneuve, best of all
Denis Villeneuve's reinterpretations of the genre classics “Dune” and “Blade Runner” were also celebrated by Rolling Stone. At number 53, Dune: the first part of the Québécois clearly surpasses the 1984 version by David Lynch, which could not do better than number 140.
Timothée Chalamet and Rebecca Ferguson in Dune. Photo by Chiabella James, provided by Warner
With Blade Runner the opposite is the case. At number 4, the original is considered a science fiction masterpiece. Villeneuve's version appears in 87th place.
Blade Runner 2049 Photo Archive
Not surprisingly, it's 2001: A Space Odyssey, named by Rolling Stone as the best science fiction feature film of all time. Kubrick's masterpiece beat out the film “Stalker” by Soviet filmmaker Andrei Tarkovsky and the classic “Close Encounters of the Third Kind” by Steven Spielberg.
The best science fiction films of all time
1-2001, A Space Odyssey (2001, A Space Odyssey)
2-Stalkers
3-Close Encounters of the Third Kind
4-blade runner
5-Alien
6-Under the skin
7-human children
8-metropolis
9-Star Wars (Star Wars)
10-The Matrix
11 Starship Soldiers
12-The day the earth stood still
13-The man who fell to the earth
14-Arrival
15-A Day Without Tomorrow (Edge of Tomorrow)
Also in the list
16-Terminator 2: Judgment Day
19-Planet of the Apes
22-The Empire Strikes Back
39-Wall-E
42-Back to the Future
45-Journey to the Moon
58-RoboCop
60-ET the alien
Source: Rolling Stone