Incendies is his first movie that got him a nomination at the Academy Awards. The budget is smaller than Dune and it's in French and Arabic, so the mass appeal isn't there, but it's well worth the watch. To quote Denis Villeneuve: "[it's] a modern story with a sort of Greek tragedy element".
The movie is filmed in Jordan and Montreal, which have a similar feel to Dune, and I would say that he probably took inspiration from his Incendies days to make Dune.
The movie is based on a play by Wajdi Mouawad, who now works at the very prestigious théâtre national de la Colline as the director.
Bladerunner 2049 is so slow with such a bland uneventful story and I don't think that cinematography or visuals are enough to compensate for a weak story. I just found the whole thing incredibly boring.
To make a parallel between cinematography and special effects - I think at this point people are kind of dismissive of movies that emphasize special effects and there's this old George Lucas quote that "a special effect without a story is a pretty boring thing". But swap "special effect" for "cinematography/visuals" and suddenly movies like Bladerunner 2049 are treated like they are masterpieces even though they hardly have any story to tell.
> Bladerunner 2049 is so slow with such a bland uneventful story
Well, it follows a similarly slow and relatively uneventful story in the original, so that's not really a critique. That's not really the point of BladeRunner, anyway - the point is the ambience, the worldbuilding, and the philosophical questions it raises, which 2049 provides in good amount. It will never have the same cultural impact that the original had, but it is an extremely respectful sequel with incredibly beautiful cinematography.
Not everything is a space opera (Lucas' is terrific!). 2048 has strong emotions stretched over a weak story. 1984's somehow had more story, but also quite slow paced.
Some of my favorite movies almost don't have a story at all, neither sfx.
This is one of the few movies of the last two decades that brought me to tears at the reveal towards the end. Once it hits you, you'll look back at the entire movie in a different mindset and it's emotionally jarring. It also helps not having read the source story.
Don't know if you have but may I recommend reading the original novel from Ted Chiang named "Story of your life"? It's a bit different from the movie but still incredibly mind bending.
Also, any novel from the collection "Story of your life and others"[1] is worth reading and thinking about. Ted Chiang is an exceptional writer.
