Barden, Jessica (1992- )

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    Review: ‘Dune: Prophecy’ Is Still Looking for Its Voice

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    A long-gestating prequel, about the women who seek to guide a galaxy, is splashy, somber and insufficiently spicy.“Dune,” the multi-novel, multi-movie saga, is in part about the battle for a precious commodity hoovered up from a desert planet to enrich the rapacious nobility. It’s called spice.“Dune: Prophecy,” the six-episode prequel series beginning Sunday on HBO, also concerns a valuable resource hoarded by empires and processed through machinery. It’s called intellectual property.Spice is a dangerous substance, controlled through violence, but at least the universe gets something out of it. Its mind-expanding properties make hyperspace travel possible and can induce prescience in the user.I.P., on the other hand, tends to simply give us lavish, lesser copies of things we already have. “House of the Dragon” is “Game of Thrones: Blonder and Blander”; “The Rings of Power” substitutes the mystic wonder of “The Lord of the Rings” with C.G.I. and metalsmithing.“Dune: Prophecy” is set 10,000 years before Timothée and Zendaya strode the sands. Its action unfolds shortly after an uprising against “thinking machines” that enslaved humanity. But the series itself is securely in the control of the I.P. machine.Its focus is the Sisterhood, the precursor to the Bene Gesserit of the films, now overseen by the ruthless and subtle-minded Mother Superior Valya Harkonnen (Emily Watson). A combination of deep-state apparatus and deadly yoga colony, this secretive society of female mentalists provides “truthsayers” (human lie detectors) to the ruling nobles while guiding history with a genetics program designed to breed ideal rulers. (Humankind may have faster-than-light spaceships, but the galaxy remains a patriarchy that women can influence only by stealth.)We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      ‘Holler’ Review: Escaping a Life of Scraps

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      In Nicole Riegel’s feature debut, Jessica Barden stars as an Ohio teenager who strips buildings of metal to earn cash.“Holler” begins with Ruth (Jessica Barden), its protagonist, running. She’s racing to drop trash bags into the flatbed of a truck, where her brother, Blaze (Gus Halper), is waiting. They high-tail it from the scene and sell discarded cans to Hark (Austin Amelio), who pays them chump change for metal. Soon, they will graduate to higher-stakes scrap work: stripping deserted buildings of wiring for larger payoffs, with even bigger risks.The central question of the movie is whether Ruth will summon the courage to run again, to flee her hometown. The director, Nicole Riegel, making her feature debut, shot the film in the section of southern Ohio where she’s from. Riegel has said that Ruth’s story was inspired by her own challenges leaving the area. Even the medium — Super 16-millimeter film, in the era of digital — adds to the ambience of rusting, abandoned machinery.Ruth has little overt incentive to stick around. She hides an eviction notice under a flower pot. Her mother (Pamela Adlon) is a drug addict in a county jail. But Ruth gets an unexpected — and, to a condescending teacher at her high school, impractical — offer of college admission: Although she had prepared the application, she never submitted it. Blaze did that for her.The film strikes an unanticipated false note with its ending, which initially seems too easy — a way to avoid resolving conflicts. But despite a parting smile, and the music of Phoebe Bridgers over the credits, the final moments becomes bleaker upon reflection. The only way to end this story is to abandon it.HollerRated R. Violence and trespassing. Running time: 1 hour 30 minutes. In theaters and available to rent or buy on Apple TV, Google Play and other streaming platforms and pay TV operators. More

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      ‘Pink Skies Ahead’ Review: Partying Through Anxiety

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      Kelly Oxford’s ’90s-set coming-of-age story follows a college dropout as she navigates a new romance and a new medical diagnosis.A blue-haired ball of manic energy, the 20-year-old Winona (Jessica Barden) has dropped out of school and moved back home with her parents. In a crucial time for finding autonomy, Winona is stunted. She cannot, for the life of her, pass her driving test. Even though she has outgrown her longtime pediatrician (Henry Winkler), Winona still sees him and he tells her she has an anxiety disorder — a label she immediately rejects. She carries on with her life: partying, getting high, gorging on candy and dating. She meets a strait-laced Ph.D. student and things seem to go on track. But as can be expected, her life hurtles toward a crash.“Pink Skies Ahead” is set in 1998, when the writer/director Kelly Oxford would have been about Winona’s age. Oxford’s debut film is semi-autobiographical, adapted from an essay of hers, titled “No Real Danger,” and it mirrors the anxiety she struggled with as a young adult.But for being such a personal film, “Pink Skies Ahead” lacks a distinctive center; it feels more like an amalgamation of different coming-of-age movies over the years, from “Ghost World” to “Lady Bird.” It is not without tender or enjoyable moments — that’s the beauty of a formula — but there’s a tonal imbalance of comedy and drama. The two constantly deflate each other.The film takes a few distracting turns but rightfully comes back to Winona’s vulnerability. Though Barden is older than her under-drinking-age character, she effectively captures her immaturity and complexity. You may be left wishing she had more depth to work with.Pink Skies AheadNot rated. Running time: 1 hour 34 minutes. Watch on MTV beginning May 8. More