The Official Movie Thread
- Thread starter Manic Ferocity
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no country for old wainds
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- Nov 23, 2002
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it’s a central plot point, along with other such cultural totems as new jack city, rush, kim fowley, dick cheney, vanilla ice etc. truly a film of culture. (twas #1 on my 2018 list)
challenge_everything
Active Member
I can't believe it didn't get picked up by a major studio. There must be nearly 50 people in the world who get all those references.
no country for old wainds
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- Nov 23, 2002
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trust me, that’s not the only reason it didn’t get picked up by a major studio
Blurry_Dreams
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- Apr 2, 2018
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looking at movie plots
i only just now noticed
the 1988 movie Fatal Pulse has a completely different plot than the 2018 movie titled Fatal Pulse
since i don't clearly remember watching either of them
i had,
until just now,
totally assumed that the 2018 movie was a re-make of the 1988 movie because they had the same title
CiG
Approximately Infinite Universe
Blurry_Dreams
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Einherjar86
Active Member
CiG
Approximately Infinite Universe
Tenet was fucking insane.
I was expecting it to be a clusterfuck but I honestly didn't have any issues with the plot. I'm not particularly sure what the issue was supposed to be narrative-wise in the first place? The action was so crazy, doing entire action sequences in reverse is some next level shit.
My stupid arse watched the whole movie thinking "god damn this lead guy is like a new Denzel" and then afterwards I looked him up and it's Denzel's son... lmfao. I think it's the first time I've seen him in anything but he's so fucking watchable he could have carried the whole film, so having Robert Pattinson in there too was like overkill (in a good way) and even though it was 2 and a half hours long I already want to rewatch it, probably will this weekend.
Definitely wish I'd seen Tenet at the cinema. For me? This is Nolan's best film so far. That could be post-viewing hype though, I still need to see Following, Interstellar and Dunkirk mind you.
Anybody who had issues with Tenet please lay them out here (in spoilers) so I can see if I agree or maybe I missed something.
I was expecting it to be a clusterfuck but I honestly didn't have any issues with the plot. I'm not particularly sure what the issue was supposed to be narrative-wise in the first place? The action was so crazy, doing entire action sequences in reverse is some next level shit.
My stupid arse watched the whole movie thinking "god damn this lead guy is like a new Denzel" and then afterwards I looked him up and it's Denzel's son... lmfao. I think it's the first time I've seen him in anything but he's so fucking watchable he could have carried the whole film, so having Robert Pattinson in there too was like overkill (in a good way) and even though it was 2 and a half hours long I already want to rewatch it, probably will this weekend.
Definitely wish I'd seen Tenet at the cinema. For me? This is Nolan's best film so far. That could be post-viewing hype though, I still need to see Following, Interstellar and Dunkirk mind you.
Anybody who had issues with Tenet please lay them out here (in spoilers) so I can see if I agree or maybe I missed something.
Vegard Pompey
ALLY TO GOOD, NIGHTMARE TO YOU
I share your feelings on Tenet more or less. Saw it twice during its theatrical run, great both times. My only real issue with it is I think the villain is kinda bland. The first time I saw it I didn't recognize the Russian guy as Branagh and I really thought he'd just be a minor villain and not the big bad of the whole thing.
The plot actually makes... a decent level of sense, for a time-travel story anyway. The main issue people seem to have with it is that it's too mechanical and lacking character and whatnot, but it's not like Nolan was ever a great dramatist so I don't really care. I thought Tenet played to his strengths.
The audio mixing in the film is also pretty bad, to the point that a lot of people who saw it without subtitles had trouble following the dialogue. This is anecdotal, but I've pretty much only heard Americans complain about the movie; every Swede I've spoken to who saw it in theatres liked it.
The plot actually makes... a decent level of sense, for a time-travel story anyway. The main issue people seem to have with it is that it's too mechanical and lacking character and whatnot, but it's not like Nolan was ever a great dramatist so I don't really care. I thought Tenet played to his strengths.
The audio mixing in the film is also pretty bad, to the point that a lot of people who saw it without subtitles had trouble following the dialogue. This is anecdotal, but I've pretty much only heard Americans complain about the movie; every Swede I've spoken to who saw it in theatres liked it.
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challenge_everything
Active Member
This. I couldn't understand a fucking word in the cinema. I rewatched it a few months later with subtitles.
I agree t it was a bit too clinical -there's a fair bit of time invested into what Elizabeth Debicki is going through to protect her son, but we don't see the relationship and Debicki isn't a good enough actress to pull it off.
I also wasn't a fan of the last action scene. The temporal pincer concept is cool but it was just all over the place and I stopped caring what was going on.
CiG
Approximately Infinite Universe
I started to watch that recent Nicolas Cage movie Willy's Wonderland but after seeing Tenet I was definitely not in the right mood, so I decided to throw on that new one with J.D. Washington in the lead called Malcolm & Marie.
Anybody saying in their reviews of Tenet that Washington can't act is out of their minds. This movie blew me the fuck away. The whole thing is just one long argument that takes place between a director who debuted that night and his girlfriend, at like 1 in the morning. It flows like a jazz track with moments of frenetic energy and then mellow introspection, back to frenetic, and so on. It has the frantic conversational energy of Woody Allen at his best, and the sharp-tongued bitter jabs of Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf. Basically an open wound critique of society and culture in the guise of a fucked up relationship. Some of the rants in this are classic and it makes you laugh when you're not expecting it.
Directed by Barry Levinson's son.
I guess I dodged a bullet by not seeing it at the cinema in that case. At home it sounded perfect, I didn't need to use subtitles or rewind to catch a sentence or anything like that.
I'm curious what you mean by bland. Bland as in he was a typical 'motivated by evil' stereotype?
As to the clinical/mechanical element of Tenet that for me is one of its strengths. Very few directors have this style (Michael Mann kinda does?) and so I relish in it myself. It's cold and alienating in a way I find appealing, it distances you from the characters but I guess most people don't like that.
Anybody saying in their reviews of Tenet that Washington can't act is out of their minds. This movie blew me the fuck away. The whole thing is just one long argument that takes place between a director who debuted that night and his girlfriend, at like 1 in the morning. It flows like a jazz track with moments of frenetic energy and then mellow introspection, back to frenetic, and so on. It has the frantic conversational energy of Woody Allen at his best, and the sharp-tongued bitter jabs of Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf. Basically an open wound critique of society and culture in the guise of a fucked up relationship. Some of the rants in this are classic and it makes you laugh when you're not expecting it.
Directed by Barry Levinson's son.
I guess I dodged a bullet by not seeing it at the cinema in that case. At home it sounded perfect, I didn't need to use subtitles or rewind to catch a sentence or anything like that.
I'm curious what you mean by bland. Bland as in he was a typical 'motivated by evil' stereotype?
Or bland because he's one of these done-to-death Thanos types who is motivated by good intentions but taken too far? Andrei definitely fell into the latter for me. Maybe if it wasn't such a common trope he might have felt more interesting, but we've had so many "must wipe out humanity for the good of the planet" villains it's starting to feel played out.
As to the clinical/mechanical element of Tenet that for me is one of its strengths. Very few directors have this style (Michael Mann kinda does?) and so I relish in it myself. It's cold and alienating in a way I find appealing, it distances you from the characters but I guess most people don't like that.
I'm assuming by that ending that there will be a sequel, which funnily enough I'm not against if Nolan can maintain the quality and scale. Would not be against a Tenet trilogy either.
Einherjar86
Active Member
All these comments make me want to rewatch.
I should say that I probably am making more out of these issues than is fair, but I'm very fond of time travel narratives and put a lot of stock in writers who handle the material in good faith. Tenet struck me as a movie that thinks time travel is a cool idea, and makes for some good visuals, but isn't all that interested in engaging with its implications.
Most of my problems here revolve around Sator, whose motivations I do not understand. I don't think it's developed enough why he wants to end the world, or reverse its entropy. Presumably this has something to do with his cancer--and I could very well be misremembering or forgetting details here, so by all means correct me if so.
As I understood the film, he wanted to reverse the world's entropy--but I'm not sure I understand why this would make the world end. Furthermore, he plans to kill himself because he's dying of cancer, and wants the world to die too; but couldn't he just invert himself and make his cancer disappear? Obviously this entails other complications, but still... it never even crosses his mind? Furthermore, why does inverting the world mean it would end, rather than making everyone/thing experience negentropy? And in that case, wouldn't it also reverse the development of his cancer?
In short, I think the inversion sequences made for cool visual opportunities, but I don't think the film thought through all their implications. It raises more questions than it answers for me.
Again, I'm being a stickler. It's a fine and fun movie, just not a terribly smart one.
As I understood the film, he wanted to reverse the world's entropy--but I'm not sure I understand why this would make the world end. Furthermore, he plans to kill himself because he's dying of cancer, and wants the world to die too; but couldn't he just invert himself and make his cancer disappear? Obviously this entails other complications, but still... it never even crosses his mind? Furthermore, why does inverting the world mean it would end, rather than making everyone/thing experience negentropy? And in that case, wouldn't it also reverse the development of his cancer?
In short, I think the inversion sequences made for cool visual opportunities, but I don't think the film thought through all their implications. It raises more questions than it answers for me.
Again, I'm being a stickler. It's a fine and fun movie, just not a terribly smart one.
CiG
Approximately Infinite Universe
Remember that he has contact with (or has personally visited) the future where they want him to use the Algorithm to reverse climate change, so presumably he has knowledge of a devastated future and wants to either spare humanity from it or save the planet in spite of humanity. This is why he says his greatest sin was bringing a child into a world he knows is fucked.
Yesterday I was reading this article and it basically explains the doomsday effect:
As to curing his cancer by inverting himself, I think this would clash with Neil's philosophy within the film; "What's happened, happened." His cancer was caused by exposure to plutonium when he was young, digging for it in Stalsk-12. Also I assume his constant use of the turnstile is exposing him to radiation.
Einherjar86
Active Member
I had forgotten this bit. Like others, we also had some sound issues with the dialogue. I had to keep turning it up and down, and eventually said fuck it. So I probably missed some shit.
Damn, these are really cool points. Also,
hadn't thought about the turnstile exposing him to radiation. That's plausible.
I only had one quibble with the film's internal philosophy, as you reminded me here:
The whole point of inverting entropy is that you can make something that happened not happen. That's how the physics of it would work. So, it doesn't really cut it (for me) to just propose that the things that happened, happened--no, in fact, things that happened will un-happen.
Now, this raises what I think is a crucial issue that human narrative can't circumvent (or hasn't figured out how to yet): namely, the relationship of entropy and memory. If memory is also a function of physics (and we have no reason to assume it isn't) then wouldn't a person with inverted entropy experience memory... in reverse? Would they un-remember things? Of course, this doesn't work for narrative, which is premised on remembering.
Interestingly, Nolan gets at this issue in Memento, and even a little bit in Inception. But it's curious that he can't figure out what to do with it in Tenet, except to have one character say "what's happened happened." No, that's only true because it would make for a really complicated story if your characters had to forget things that "happened."
Now, this raises what I think is a crucial issue that human narrative can't circumvent (or hasn't figured out how to yet): namely, the relationship of entropy and memory. If memory is also a function of physics (and we have no reason to assume it isn't) then wouldn't a person with inverted entropy experience memory... in reverse? Would they un-remember things? Of course, this doesn't work for narrative, which is premised on remembering.
Interestingly, Nolan gets at this issue in Memento, and even a little bit in Inception. But it's curious that he can't figure out what to do with it in Tenet, except to have one character say "what's happened happened." No, that's only true because it would make for a really complicated story if your characters had to forget things that "happened."
CiG
Approximately Infinite Universe
Einherjar86
Active Member
CiG
Approximately Infinite Universe
Einherjar86
Active Member
I thought Elizabeth Debicki's character was shot, and so they took her through the turnstile so she could be "un-shot" by a reverse bullet, or whatever. Which presumably means her body... healed? I don't know.
CiG
Approximately Infinite Universe
Oh right. I don't think she was being un-shot I believe they took her through the turnstile because the radiation from the inverted bullet spreads faster in the normal flow of time, so once they inverted her the radiation was able to be treated and the bullet wound was then able to heal itself like any other wound would.
Edit: Or maybe inverting the body makes the inverted bullet wound just a regular bullet wound?
Edit 2: From a 'Tenet explained' article; "Since it moves at the same speed either way, being in the path of the latter is just as bad, with the added side effect that the inverse radiation also infects the bullet wound."
I'm pretty sure that's what happened but I do need to watch it again, it was such a sensory overload.
As an aside, I just found out that Pattinson's character was modelled after Christopher Hitchens, wtf?
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