I've had a copy of this for ages but never watched it. It seems right to watch a BIG film in company. So, my daughter came to visit and the WilliamA family sat down with Biryani to watch..........a pile of shit.

Oh boy. What a heap of crap.

Do I care what happens to any of these people? Nope.

Do I care that they've worked out the back and forth time travel story? Nope.

Am I excited and drawn into the adventure? Nope.

Am I puzzled by all the multi-star reviews? You bet your life.

Sorry if you love it.

 

"a villainous Russian arms dealer named Andrei (Kenneth Branagh)."


I'm out.

I haven't seen all of Christopher Nolan's films, but I have seen several. When he goes for entertainment, mindless or otherwise, he seems to score. I'd say Dunkirk (for example) is serious entertainment and not a bad war film at all. The Batman movies are mindless and fun. When he has a crack at being a bit clever (Inception, Interplanetary, Tenet) he comes unstuck. Inception is the best of that little bundle IMHO, and works quite well as high-concept escapist fun. Interplanetary is great to look at, but the so-called clever story relies on a not especially clever device of having something inexplicable near the start of the film that turns out to be something even less well-explained happening at the end. (Please don't explain it to me. I've heard the explanation and it's about as intellectually challenging as the magic in a Sinbad movie and half as honest).

As for Tenet: I'll give it another go, just in the hope that it's not as bad as the first viewing suggested. I saw a review that suggested I would need to be an "expert" in metaphysics to follow the story. I don't think the world of metaphysics need be unduly troubled by Tenet. Maybe a world where metaphysics has "experts" might be.

I finally watched this the other night. I quite enjoyed it really! But I wasn't taking it particularly seriously mind you. I quite enjoyed the soundtrack, and watching things going forwards and backwards and everything looked very swish and stylish. Like a Bond movie crossed with Inception. And not very much smarter than a Bond movie either. Tina and I had a pretty good hit rate at predicting what would happen next, it's rather clichéd at times. The obvious intentional cues like the smashed wing mirror are fun too in a very similar way.

By the way in the post above you say Interplanetary but I think you mean Interstellar, right?

People who think a metaphysics expert is needed should probably not watch Primer.

I did mean Interstellar. Only a few trillion miles difference.

Primer is fun.

I don't deny that Tenet has a slick production and can be nice to look at, but... Yeah, there are dozens of time-travel films around, and pretty much all of the ideas in Tenet are covered, and the ones that aren't turn out to be sort of daft after a moment's thought. Like inverted bullets. Compare that with the astonishing but awful 'death of Seth' in Looper. That's a twisty (and twisted) time travel idea.

 

Yeah, I can't remember Looper properly, will get around to a rewatch of that sometime I'm sure. Absolutely wouldn't bother myself trying to defend Tenet, no worries.