Last year I set myself a task to watch all of the movies by a single director. There are likely a few directors whose entire catalogues I have watched, but it had never been homework before and it seemed like an easily achievable ambition (my favourite kind). I started with Denis Villeneuve, because I had recently rewatched Arrival on a long-haul flight (the other film I watched was Crazy Rich Asians, so be prepared for a ranking of Jon Chu films once I get round to Step Up 3D).
Great news! Watching all of Villeneuve’s films was not onerous. I would go as far to say it was enjoyable, though I certainly did start to see some tropes a mile off, as though they were a sandworm looming in a desert and I were a twinkly messiah with windswept hair. Anyway, ahead of Dune: Part Two’s release, I have put all this research into a ranking, starting from Villeneuve’s international break-through, 2010’s Incendies.
7) Sicario
2015’s Sicario appears like your traditional thriller: an FBI agent is tasked with the job of taking down the honcho of a Mexican drug cartel. But the film is elevated by a robust cast – Emily Blunt, Daniel Kaluuya and Benicio del Toro are all here – and Villeneuve’s direction, which is energetic if not as subversive as it is elsewhere on this list. He did not return for the sequel, though Sicario is clearly a stepping stone between earlier work and later blockbusters. Speaking of...
6) Dune
It’s not a knock on Dune to say that its greatest virtue is Villeneuve’s adaptation of the source material. Frank Herbert’s novel is imaginative – it is one of best-selling sci-fi book series of all time – but it’s also dense and unwieldy. The director cuts the book in two, meaning that this film does sometimes feel like a set up, but it’s still a wonderful opening chapter. Timothée Chalamet plays our sullen hero Paul Atreides, who embarks on a sandy journey of revenge after Baron Harkonnen (Stellan Skarsgård) takes out one of his family members. Villeneuve is unafraid of mixing up the thrilling action sequences with some long, reflective passages, and all the better for it.
5) Prisoners
In 2013’s Prisoners, Hugh Jackman, on a career high, plays the father of a kidnapped child, while Jake Gyllenhaal (he will appear higher up this list) is the cop investigating the case. The central mystery, which unfolds in drab corners of Pennsylvania, drives both men to extremes. This is a serial killer drama done right: atmospheric, genuinely scary, and Villeneuve’s devotion to depicting research, here painstaking police procedure, is enthralling. Even when the film becomes a little heavy-handed, it is never less than entertaining.
4) Incendies
Incendies is a film built around a plot twist, but at least Villeneuve chose a memorable one. Adapted from Wajdi Mouawad’s play of the same name, the often-harrowing movie follows Canadian twins Jeanne and Simon as they return to their deceased mother’s homeland – an unidentified country that resembles post-civil war Lebanon – to track down their brother (whose very existence is news to them). Your feelings about this film will hinge on the ending, and that will test your appetite for both melodrama and credibility. I liked it, but I preferred the film’s earlier sequences in which Jeanne traces her family history, which showcase the often boring, sometimes thrilling, occasionally shocking nature of research (a Villeneuve specialty).
3) Enemy
Enemy finds Jake Gyllenhaal on weird form (great) and Villeneuve at his most playful (even better). Gyllenhaal plays Adam, an everyday man in Toronto who’s sinking into depression. He also plays an actor named Anthony, with whom Adam becomes obsessed. This is a pleasingly strange, accomplished film which arguably has the best ending out of all of Villeneuve’s work. He would go onto bigger-budget fare, though luckily he never fully departed from the weirder aspects of this doppelgänger drama.
2) Blade Runner 2049
Who’d want to take on a Blade Runner sequel? Turns out Villeneuve was up for that particular challenge. The sequel to Ridley Scott’s 1982 beloved blockbuster plunges Ryan Gosling into Philip K. Dick’s universe, though the plot is familiar Villeneuve territory: a laborious search for identity and family and, you guessed it, a late-stage plot twist. The whole thing is gorgeous and stuffed with memorable details: the casino shoot out, Ana de Armas as an AI assistant. Gosling is great. Somehow, it was a box office disappointment – and Scott had some thoughts about that – but history will look kindly on this film, that rarest of sequels: a worthy follow-up and distinctive in its own right.
1) Arrival
This is the film where all of Villeneuve’s favourite things – a slightly intellectual premise, gritty sci-fi visuals, eye-opening twists – come together most successfully. Amy Adams plays a linguist (and mother, which is important!) who is appointed by the US army to communicate with aliens who have just crash landed to Earth. The structure is so tight, and the performances so fine, that when the revelation comes, as it must in a Villeneuve film, you will forgive it for being a little sentimental. Even watching it on a 12-inch screen on the back of a plane headrest was captivating (so too, I must add, was Crazy Rich Asians).
Henry Wong is a senior culture writer at Esquire, working across digital and print. He covers film, television, books, and art for the magazine, and also writes profiles.
