Movie Review: Tenet

Tenet is the 11th film that Christopher Nolan has directed. It stars John David Washington as The Protagonist, an American operative given a mission to stop the end of the world. Scientists discover that some objects are moving backwards in time through a process called inversion and it is The Protagonist's job to determine what is causing inversion and needs to stop it. Basically, Tenet is Nolan's version of a Bond film. The Protagonist gets help from a sidekick named Neil (Robert Pattinson) and they jet set all over the world, from India to Estonia to hanging out off of the coast of Vietnam, to take down a Russian oligarch (Kenneth Branagh)- who is using a McGuffin to destroy the world- with help of the oligarch's beautiful wife (Elizabeth Debicki). 

I could go into the plot further, but the story of what happens in this movie is so damn confusing, that it's basically better to visit the r/Tenet Reddit thread to figure out what happens. The first third of this film is all confusing exposition dumps of people sitting down and talking to each other and the rest of the film sees characters going forward and backwards through time yet partaking in the same events. The whole film is needlessly elaborate and makes for a frustrating moviegoing experience.

I normally love Christopher Nolan films and don't generally mind his long-winded attempts to explain the rules of the film. The first third of Inception is also basically full of exposition dumps, but Nolan found a way to entertain the audience while clearly explaining the rules. He fucking flips an entire city on itself! I also don't mind if the film is confusing and messes with the concept of time, when again, Nolan clearly communicates that in the movie. Tenet follows a lot of the same rules of Memento. But whereas Memento firmly establishes how to watch the film and what it is (the present day scenes are going in reverse chronological order intercut with the main character talking on the phone about Sammy Jenkins), Tenet is a narrative mess. Everything does make sense and loop together as Reddit has confirmed, but the film itself doesn't convey that well. I don't mind a Nolan film that doesn't explain itself fully upon a first viewing and requires multiple rewatches, but it needs to be entertaining and make somewhat sense the first time around. Tenet does not. 

Unsung Movie Acting Performances of 2020

I want to take this post to spend some time appreciating a handful of movie performances that are sure to go overlooked come award season. I'm not talking just about the Academy Awards, I'm taking about all award shows: the Independent Spirit Awards, Golden Globes, Critics Choice Awards and everything in between. There's no shortage of places where an actor can be praised come award season, yet even still, many are overlooked for their great performance. That's where I come in. These are the performances that I loved that, like Rodney Dangerfield famously states, can't get no respect. 

Robert Pattinson

Best Supporting Actor
The Devil All The Time

Why The Performance is Great: While Antonio Campos' campy Southern Gothic epic The Devil All The Time may not be very good (though it continues to live in my head rent free), Robert Pattinson's performance will haunt my dreams. He plays Preston Teagardin, a morally corrupt reverend who uses The Lord to justify his wicked ways. There's a slickness like a used car salesman to his performance that allows him to steal the show and monologue in a way where you want to punch his character in the face while hanging on his every word. In a film loaded with some of Hollywood's best young stars, it's Pattinson's performance that stands out. His attempt at a Southern accent doesn't hurt either. While the rest of his non-American co-stars are trying to use a traditional movie Southern dialect, Pattinson created a voice all his own. While Campos himself might not have approved, the words that ooze out of Teagardin's mouth like an oil sludge only helps to elevate Pattinson as one of the best young actors currently working today. 

The Devil All The Time is currently available to stream on Netflix

Margo Martindale and June Squibb
Best Supporting Actress
Blow The Man Down

Why The Performances are Great: Blow The Man is a modern day neo-noir set in a remote New England coastal fishing town, directed by Bridget Savage Cole and Danielle Krudy. Cole and Krudy do an amazing job establishing the vibe and seedy underbelly tone of the town. You can smell the fishiness from your living room, both from the sea animals as well as the actions of the townsfolk. The film centers around two young sisters in the wake of their mother's death as one of them kills her would-be sexual abuser in self-defense. The death of the both the mother as well as the attacker sets off a chain reaction pitting the sisters against the town's Madame (Enid Devlin played by Martindale) against a cadre of Karen's led by Susie Gallagher (played by Squibb). If you've seen Margo Martindale's Emmy wining wicked turn as Mags Bennett in Season 2 of Justified, then you know just how well she can play evil, and if you've seen June Squibb in anything, you know that there's a reason she an Academy nominated actress. Martindale and Squibb play characters on the opposite side of the coin. Martindale's Enid is ruthless, but sweet when she needs to be while Squibb's Susie is sweet, but ruthless when she needs to be. The great character actresses play so well off of each other that it enhances the great foundation that Cole and Krudy built. 

Blow The Man Down is available to stream on Amazon Prime

Movie Review: Mank

Mank is the story of Herman J. Mankiewicz (aka Mank, played by Gary Oldman) as he reflects upon the incidents of his life inside the Hollywood studio system and his interactions with newspaper mogul William Randolph Hearst (Charles Dance) to write what became the 1941 classic Citizen Kane. Analogous to Citizen Kane, there is a present storyline of his time cooped up in a bed writing the film intercut with flashbacks of his time in the 1930's working at MGM with real life studio big wigs Louis B. Mayer (Arliss Howard) and Irving Thalberg (Ferdinand Kinglsey). As the main plot points of Citizen Kane are its titular character attempting to run for Governor of California and being thwarted at the last moment when his opponent runs a smear campaign that Charles Foster Kane was having an affair with a "singer" and then Kane leaving his wife to marry said "singer", Mank tells the story of Louis B Mayer, as a proxy for Hearst, attempting to ensure Republican incumbent Frank Merriam defeats Democrat and "socialist" writer Upton Sinclair as Governor of California. Mank also shows the titular character's platonic relationship between Hearst's tryst, actress Marion Davies (played spectacularly by Amanda Seyfried) who is the inspiration for the "singer". 

Like all David Fincher films, the technical aspects of Mank are top notch. The creamy black-and-white cinematography to reflect Old Hollywood, the score that feels time period appropriate by frequent Fincher collaborators Atticus Ross and Trent Reznor, and the pitch perfect costume design and production design. The weakness in the film is its script, written by David Fincher's now decreased father Jack Fincher, in particular the story. The first time I saw the film, it felt empty. I felt so disconnected that it made me mad (and the hype of seeing a brand new David Fincher film didn't help either). But that being said, Mank lived rent free inside my head for so long that I give the film a second watch. I enjoyed it a lot more the second time around, and the second viewing helped because I was able to get invested in the story earlier because I knew where it was going. 

Movie Review: The Devil All The Time

Even during a pandemic, the tech titan Netflix has been consistently churning out original content. Now that Labor Day has come and gone, now is the time of the year where that original content is prestige, award-hopeful films. With Aaron Sorkin's The Trial of the Chicago 7 and David Fincher's Mank coming later in the year, and past the release of Charlie Kaufman's I'm Thinking of Ending Things, this past week saw the release of Antonio Campos' The Devil All The Time, a southern gothic epic starring basically every young and talented white actor working nowadays, such as *takes deep breath* Tom Holland, Bill Skarsgard, Sebastian Stan, Riley Keough, Jason Clarke, Harry Melling, Haley Benett, Eliza Scanlen, Mia Wasikowska, and Robert Pattinson. 

The film spans two generations during the 1940's through 1960's in the American South as the film is about the cyclical and generational cycle of religion and violence. Early in the film, Bill Skasgard's Willard, a soldier in the Korean War, comes across a fellow soldier that has been tortured and crucified. Willard comes home from the War with PTSD (never explicitly said, but shown through Skarsgard superb acting). A nice fellow, but clearly haunted by both his religious past and his overseas experiences. We see his tendencies, both pure and evil, passed down to his son Alvin, the older version of the character is played by Holland, ostensibly the film's lead but feels like he doesn't show up until two hours into the film. Along the way we meet Charlotte (Benett) who eventually becomes Willard's wife and Alvin's mother, Alvin's step-sister Lenora (Scanlen), Lenora's mother Helen (Wasikowska), Helen's pastor beau Roy (Melling), a cop named Lee (Stan), Lee's sister Sandy (Keough), Sandy's husband Carl (Clarke), and a flashy snake-in-the-grass preacher named Preston Teagardin (Pattinson).