Obviously none of us have seen the movie yet but reading David Ehrlich's negative review it just seems like he's firmly in the "Dune is unfilmable" camp and reviewed the movie accordingly.
I generally like Ehrlich, I'm not trying to attack him, it just seems like he thinks the book is fundamentally unfilmable based on how the review is written and the problems he had with it. Honestly I kind of think it's unfilmable too, even as a tv series, because a lot the characters' interiority is necessarily going to be lost in the translation from page to screen and that is an extremely important aspect of the book. I just don't know if I would personally go about reviewing the movie they did make from that position. Again, though, this is just my impression based on what he wrote, we obviously haven't seen the movie yet.
I think instead of naming scores Ehrlich gave random movies that have nothing to do with each other, it is much more useful to note that Ehrlich is not a massive fan of Villeneuve films in general. I think the most he has liked one of his movies is Prisoners, which he gave 3.5/5 on Letterboxd. That being the case, it makes sense that he would not love Dune, esp. if (as it appears) he's a fan of the books and was hoping this would be a deeper exploration of its themes, which based on all the early reviews it seems like this is not. It's fine that he doesn't like it! He was probably never going to. In this scenario, even though I generally like Ehrlich more, I find Justin Chang's review to be more helpful, because he's generally positive on it despite his review calling Villeneuve "a filmmaker more dependable than he is interesting," which I could not disagree with more.
I often disagree with Ehrlich, though he's a great Twitter follow, but I trust his word more than Showbiz 411, AwardsWatch and Den of Geek. Justin Chang is also very reliable.
I'll say I definitely enjoyed the LA Times and The Independent reviews way more because those are the reviews that I want to agree with when I see it lol Also this 5-star review from The Guardian: Dune review – blockbuster cinema at its dizzying, dazzling best
Good write-up without a score on AV Club also: Dune has finally premiered, and it's a staggering sci-fi spectacle
Ehrlich's Godzilla v Kong review was so funny. "God what happened to movies." like chill out dawg it aint a big deal.
This is definitely getting pushed huh? Seems it’s too close to push, but I reallllly hope I can see this in theaters next month with other vaxxed brethren.
A lot of the negative reviews I’m seeing are also around how it’s only half the story, so while technically amazing, not a full arc. I loved the book so I’m ok with it being the first half. If they make a second, people can watch them together at that point for the full first book view
I don’t quite remember because I was only 9 when it came out but going by it’s rotten tomatoes score and a very rare 92 on metacritic I’d say it was pretty much loved by everyone including the first initial reviews.