Topic: Tenet

[Bad Ambassador]

His third film was Insomnia.

TNUC EGAP WEN

[popcorn]

His third film was Insomnia.

Yeah Inception was his seventh!

Insomnia is a weird film because it's just so... normal. I've seen it twice and both times I remember thinking "that was all right" but can recall no details.

[popcorn]

I find his films impress me a lot more on first watch but don't hold up as well to repeat viewings, possibly due to all the "woah, stop the plot and watch this crazy set piece for the next 20 mins" moments.

I've found this too - loved Dark Knight in cinema, but its flaws are more obvious on every viewing, and The Dark Knight Rises was outright dreadful when I rewatched that.

This sassy move from Catwoman dazzles me in its crapness. It's worth rewatching a few times to study how she just vaguely spins out of shot with no sense of impact. "Aargh she did a sort of cartwheel on my hand"

[El Unicornio, mang]

Sorry, yeah I meant Insomnia.

[Chedney Honks]

A capable director who drastically overestimates his intelligence. His films are largely dreck.

[Phil_A]

I think his films have definitely got worse the bigger the canvas he has to work on. Memento is still his best.

[Chedney Honks]

Yeah, totally agree.

[Mister Six]

I think The Prestige really benefitted from being based on a (well thought out) novel. It definitely suited Nolan's interests (and he did change a few things), but it also shored up his weak spots (characterisation, human interaction).

I'm slightly surprised Nolan (to date) hasn't worked with Hugh Jackman again, as it seemed like he gave the better performance out of the two leads. Possibly Nolan hates Australians, as he hasn't worked with Guy Pearce again either.

I watched The Prestige intently, hoping to pick up on the twist/how "it" was done, so the magic machine bollocks at the end felt like a total swiz. I was also half-cut, though, so probably would have appreciated it more as a whole if I'd been properly compos mentis.

Nolan's success is odd because he sold as this director of big, exciting intellectual films, but the high concept stuff is usually lacking in any genuine imagination or intelligence, and his action scenes are usually extremely bland, anodyne and sometimes genuinely incompetently shot and only saved in the editing.

There's a good three-part video series embedded here that compares the truck chase scene in The Dark Knight (a film I really like!) with similar vehicle chase scenes in Salt and The French Connection, blowing holes in Nolan's sloppy craftsmanship. Worth checking out. The point about editing down to PG-13 affecting the impact of the film is a good one, and I wonder whether it also leads to stuff like Catwoman's hand-breaking flip looking so naff.

Anyway, I liked The Dark Knight, Inception (mostly) and Interstellar. Haven't seen Momento or Dunkirk but find most of his other films okayish. Dark Knight Rises is the only one that struck me as downright bad. Mrs Six wants to watch Tenet so I imagine we will soon. But I'm not champing at the bit.

[mothman]

I watched this the other night. It's not great. I think I'm prepared to give it a re-watch (for reasons below) but at the same time I don't find myself hurrying to do so.

Though I understand the time inversion concept, the three main sequences that rely on it are confusing. The first one - in the Freeport - at least benefits from being revisited later on from the opposite perspective, though it's still quite a confusing mess given it's basically two blokes fighting in a corridor. Then you have the warehouse in Estonia which starts off very poorly, even though you're seeing both sides of the action at once through a pane of glass it's still hard to follow. It's possible my brain was numb following the most exquisitely tedious heist scene in movie history. And finally, the final battle. Even with colour-coded troops it's hard to follow.

I'd like to see all these scenes again to see if I can make better sense of them now I know the overall structure of the narrative that's being followed in them. Though in fact what I really need is someone to edit all the scenes together in a linear or even split-screen fashion and stick them on YouTube (chances are if someone hasn't done that already they will soon).

It's six and two threes, you know? You shouldn't HAVE to need to watch a film several times to make sense of it. But then I also like a film that rewards rewatching and lets you discover new things; to my mind, Inception does this: I understand what's going on, but I like further puzzling out its complexity. And I can watch The Prestige again and again.

MrsMoth: What are you watching?
Me: Tenet
MrsMoth: Would I like it?
Me: Probably not. It's by him what did Inception.
MrsMoth: Oh, watching that, I didn't know whether I was coming or going!
Me: Well... in this film, they do both!

Thinking about it some more, I've enjoyed many other of Nolan's films to some degree, and would like to see them again. The thing is though - I never bother. Memento, Dunkirk, Interstellar - I'd like to see them again. I just can't be arsed. And maybe that's the problem.

[Claude the Racecar Driving Rockstar Super Sleuth]

It's just struck me: During the freeport fight, why doesn't the future version of the protagonist use the tenet gesture to placate his younger self?

[mothman]

Because when he was his younger self, he wasn’t thus placated and so they ended up fighting?

[Ant Farm Keyboard]

How do people poop when they’re reverted?

[Sonny_Jim]

What happens if they have a wank inverted after they've been shot?  Does it make them shoot bullets out of their willy?

[Bernice]

having a reverse shit would feel amazing.

i haven't seen this film.

[Bad Ambassador]

What about eating inverted food? Would it be like vomiting bites of sandwich and swalllowing vomit? Nolan hasn't thought this through at all.

[Hand Solo]

What happens if they have a wank inverted after they've been shot?  Does it make them shoot bullets out of their willy?

The cat shoots you in the cock.

[mothman]

Everything you do goes the same way in time as you. So no, no reverse wanking. But if you ate inverted food... OK. Here’s an example.

On December 27th, you invert intending to go back two days and have a second Christmas dinner while inverted. On December 26th, you sit on the toilet and an absolutely massive Boxing Day shit flies up your arse. On Christmas Day you sit down at an empty table and vomit an entire Christmas meal onto it.

[Inspector Norse]

I just watched this. Absolute toss it was. Quite liked R-Pattz and the two-way ”is this supposed to be a twist, it’s so fucking obvious” fight. Dialogue and acting were otherwise Wiseau levels of awful, though the dismal sound mixing mercifully saved me from having to listen to some of it.

Some of the plot makes sense[1] but only because there are no actual characters with human motivations, only animatronic Ludo pieces blurting exposition every five minutes, complemented by a bizarre MY NAME IS MICHAEL CAINE cameo and what appears to be a talking bamboo stick. Sirkenneth Branagh and his faintly racist evil oligarch caricature reminded me of the ’Windowlicker’ video by hitting the exact centre of the funny-weird-scary-OK can we move on now? Venn.

Most Nolan films are like this, of course, but the action is usually more spectacular. Here we just got a humdrum car chase and a disastrously underwhelming climax where some random armies we’d never seen before had a totally bloodless fight in a desert somewhere.

1.	though the whole thing with Branagh doing some suicidal nuclear take on the last Harry Potter book was just laughable

[Claude the Racecar Driving Rockstar Super Sleuth]

the whole thing with Branagh doing some suicidal nuclear take on the last Harry Potter book was just laughable

I don't know about Harry Potter (because I'm not a nerd) but the thing about him linking the doomsday device to his Fitbit was exactly like the baddie's scheme in dark and edgy 90s comics film Spawn.

[St_Eddie]

MrsMoth: What are you watching?
Me: Tenet
MrsMoth: Would I like it?
Me: Probably not. It's by him what did Inception.
MrsMoth: Oh, watching that, I didn't know whether I was coming or going!
Me: Well... in this film, they do both!

Needless to say, you had the last laugh.

[mothman]

If only.

[Starlit]

I know it was kind of important at the end of the film,  but I found the Kenneth Brannagh's frequent reference to his Fitbit very jarring. Like an attempt to be on trend with what people do these days.

There were a few parts in the film that I liked, but overall I didn't really like it or properly understand it.
It didn't even look very good with the muted colours and weak lighting.

The only Christopher Nolan film that I like is The Prestige, but the more I watch it the less I like it, finding the holes get bigger each time.

[mothman]

So Branaghovsky decides that the best time for the universe to be destroyed is back when he was on this happy holiday with his wife and child, despite the ample evidence his wife loathed him before and after.

So he sends his goon backwards to assemble and activate the device at that time. As well as the Tenet mob going back to stop that, his wife also goes back to kill him once (but not before) they’ve got it. And pretends that instead of leaving him alone on his yacht... to feel all happy and dopey in love by... himself? ... she stays with him. But past him doesn’t suspect a thing despite all the backwards & forwards shenanigans that have been perpetrated by him and others. Doesn’t he even speak to the goon while she’s skulking around? So how is it the film’s big bad is so clueless during the film’s denouement? And, he has his Fitbit that will set off the device if he dies - but at that point in HIS (forward) timeline, he didn’t have all the components yet!!

I really need to watch it again to get this straight. But I’m resenting that I should need to. Is there some overlong Reddit thread out there?