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. 

Oscar Movie Review: Dunkirk

Dunkirk
Written & Directed By: Christoper Nolan
Starring: Mark Rylance, Tom Hardy, & Kenneth Branagh
STARS: 3.5 out of 4

SHOULD I WATCH IT: Rent it immediately and watch it on the biggest screen with the best speakers you can find.

Brief Description: Dunkirk begins with a group of young soldiers scavenging their way through an abandoned village next to the shore of Dunkirk, France during WWII. Flyers drop upon stating that the enemy has them surrounded. The young men suddenly come under attack leading two of them to the shore of the shore of the beach where they encounter an entire British battalion as they attempt to escape from Hell.

Dunkirk follows three main story lines as the United Kingdom tries to rescue these men and get them off of this beach. The first story line follows Tommy (Fionn Whitehead) and George (Barry Keoghan), two of the soldiers we met in the first scene, as they meet up with Alex (Harry Styles- who's surprisingly excellent in the film and who's fame works to the film's advantage to help distinguish between the random white kids we're following) as they spend a week trying to get off of the beach. Next, we follow Mr. Dawson (Rylance) and a group of rag tag civilians who spend the day boating across the English Channel in a last ditch effort to save the stranded, beached soldiers. The final storyline follows Farrier (Hardy) and Collins (Jack Lowden), two English fighter pilots spending an hour in the air to assist in the rescue mission any way they can.

How The Academy Awards Passed Christopher Nolan By

In 2008, five films were nominated for Best Picture. Those films were: Front/Nixon, The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, Milk, The Reader, and the winner Slumdog Millionaire. 2008 also saw the rise of one of the greatest films of all time. The film has a 9.0 on IMBD.com and is ranked the #4 film of all time by the site, it has a 94% on Rotten Tomatoes, and, at the time, was the 2nd highest grossing domestic film ever. The film was both a cinematic achievement shaping the way we not only viewed superhero films, but films in general, and a commercial smash. It was nominated at the Academy Awards for Best Cinematography, Best Editing, Best Art Direction, Best Make Up, Best Sound Mixing, and Best Visual Effects and it won the Oscar for Best Sound Editing and Heath Ledger won for Best Supporting Actor.

That film is obviously The Dark Knight. Conspicuously, the three major Academy Award nominations the film did not receive was Best Adapted Screenplay, Best Director, and most notably Best Picture. In fact, The Dark Knight's snub in the Best Picture category famously helped paved the way for the Best Picture expansion we see today where up to 10 films can earn a nomination. Since the expansion, we've seen genre and action films like Avatar and Mad Max: Fury Road earn Best Picture nominations (as well as nominations for their directors). We have also seen the rise of genre and actions shows in television awards as well with Game of Thrones sweeping the Emmys in recent years.

Matthew Vaughn and Kingsman in a Post Dark Knight World

In a recent issue of SFX magazine, director Matthew Vaughn (Kick Ass, X-Men: First Class) ranted against action movies being "Nolan-ized". He stated:

"People want fun and escapism at the moment. Look at the success of Guardians of the Galaxy. I think Nolan kick-started a very dark, bleak style of superhero escapism, and I think people have had enough of it."

I think it's funny how we all tend to "blame" Christopher Nolan for the serious brand of superhero and action movies we seemed to have gotten in the 2000's thanks to the incredible commercial and critical success of The Dark Knight. Nolan takes all of his films and the world his characters inhabit very seriously. The funniest moment in all of his films is probably the scene in Inception where Joseph Gordon-Levitt steals a kiss from Ellen Page. It’s chuckle-worthy, but it shouldn’t be the most hilarious moment of a 9 film span. The word “gritty” gets thrown around so much that it seems to be a law that you must use it when describing a Nolan vehicle. But that’s Christopher Nolan for better or worse, and we all seem to take him for better.

My Interstellar Review and The New Norm For Christopher Nolan

Christopher Nolan is my favorite director of all time. I will blindly go see any movie the man makes. Hell, I went to see Man of Steel in part because his name was attached to it. It was my blind faith that I even went to see Interstellar in the theaters at all. Nolan was coming off of his worst movie since his debut of Following, The Dark Knight Rises, and the trailers made Interstellar seem horrible and boring as shit. I was neither looking forward to nor excited to see Interstellar. But this was still a Christopher Nolan film, and as such, I needed to go see it.

And bow howdy am I glad I did.

The reason I will go see any movie that Christopher Nolan makes is because between 2000 and 2010, the director had one of the greatest runs in the history of American cinema. You would have never guessed that a man responsible for the 1998 indie film Following would go off on the hot streak that Nolan did. (At one point, and it still might be, Following was streaming on Netflix. I watched the first half hour of it and I had to turn it off because it was so bad and it was not compelling).