TENET - Nolan at his most

Christopher Nolan back to making sci-fi movies is probably one of the best things to ever happen in 2020. Tenet stars John David Washington, Robert Pattinson, Elizabeth Debicki, and Kenneth Branagh. The movie faced a lot of challenges amidst the COVID-19 pandemic but finally reached the audiences attempting to keep the movie business stay alive in spite of a crazy year.

We follow John David Washington, the protagonist who is a secret agent, recruited for a mission to avert an event that might end reality as we know it. Tenet is the most nonlinear of all his previous movies, a style which very few filmmakers have tried. Took me a couple of watches to get a brief idea of the plot. While one of the main complaints about the movie was the fact that it was so difficult to follow and understand, warranting multiple visits to understand it, the same remains one of the biggest perks for every Nolan fanboy out there. This is probably his most complicated movie to date, this opinion of mine might change after a couple more watches. 

He has never played with time the way he has in Tenet, even though we caught glimpses of the same in his previous movies, the most of it being in Interstellar, this is Nolan and his time fetish at their most here. I've seen it twice already and I still have plenty of questions, but I must admit the questions became fewer after the 2nd watch. My biggest concern was not even how complicated the plot was going to be, in fact, I was really looking forward to that because trying to understand a Nolan movie in some way makes you feel smarter and like you've achieved something, it feels like a science lesson with some spectacular visuals and mind-blowing music, I was afraid that the music part was going to be a huge let down due to Hans Zimmer's absence but Oscar-winning Ludwig Goransson has done a brilliant job with his scores in Tenet. 

Another huge complaint was that the dialogue couldn't be heard because the music took over and was extra loud, luckily, where I saw the movie there were subtitles, but this is something every Nolan movie has faced before so holding Ludwig responsible for this seems unfair. Two noteworthy tracks that are now part of my everyday playlist are 'Rainy Night in Tallinn' and 'Posterity'. Music is certainly one of the movie's biggest strengths and all my fears about the movie's absence of Zimmer were obsolete. 

The visuals were spectacular and the cinematography, top-notch, maybe the best I've ever seen until now even though there was one particular fight scene that felt a bit messy, to say the least. There is a lack of character development especially with the protagonist, nothing new there because the same issue has been there in a few of his previous movies as well, something which I'm hoping Chris works on in his future movies because repeating the same mistake every time doesn't justify its presence. Speaking of repeating mistakes, this movie has a female lead who is relevant to the plot who isn't dead, and does things that move the plot forward. Elizabeth's character in some ways is the main female lead in Tenet and that was actually a first for Nolan, having a significant female lead.

Nolan in some ways has always had a soft corner for India and Indian fans, something which makes our hearts skip a beat every time we notice it. We saw a bit of Rajasthan in the Dark Knight Rises, a small mention of Delhi in Interstellar, and this time, we see quite a bit of Mumbai and a lot of the veteran Bollywood actress, Dimple Kapadia. Not like he had to do a lot to impress Indian fans, he already had plenty of Indian fans before, this just felt like a huge bonus to every Indian Nolan fan out there. 

Overall, in the middle of this curse of a pandemic, watching Christopher Nolan's latest sci-fi thriller in IMAX was one of the few joys that 2020 had to offer. I am already looking forward to the future viewings and the hours of time that I'm going to sit and break my head trying to make sense of this plot. Tenet certainly lives up to the Nolan reputation and in no way does it feel like a downgrade to his previous movies, maybe not his best but I'm sure that Nolan personally enjoyed a lot while filming this one, its certainly Nolan playing the most with his favorite concept of all time, Time.

VERDICT:

Fan in me: 9.5/10

Critic in me: 8/10

Another noteworthy observation I had made during the course of the movie was that anyone who doubted Robert Pattinson as Bruce Wayne and Batman has now been proven wrong. Personally, I'm really looking forward to seeing his Batman, and the fact that both Nolan and Christian Bale approved of Pattinson's Batman is another thing that adds up to the hype, I'm sure that he's going to give us a Batman we can never forget.

  

Inception: Nolan's Best?

After the success of the Dark Knight, Christopher Nolan decided to finally work on his oldest script, which he had been developing for over a decade. I watched Inception a couple of days back and this time, just like the previous viewings, I looked at it from a new and a different perspective, and as always, I found myself in awe towards the end. Welcome to my third and final part of the three-part series where I attempted to highlight certain aspects of my 3 favorite Christopher Nolan movies. 

The other two movies which I reviewed are The Dark Knight and Interstellar. The only common thing about all the three movies including Inception is that at some point in all three movies, you will feel like you've never experienced this feeling before and that no other movie could possibly be this good. 

Inception came out in 2010, it won the Oscar for Cinematography and sound editing although I'd argue it deserved more, I stopped caring about what the Academy thought and didn't want to use that as a yardstick to rate movies. The movie had a lot of familiar faces from other Nolan movies like Michael Caine, Cillian Murphy, Tom Hardy, Marion Cotillard, Joseph Gordon-Levitt, and Ken Watanabe. Leonardo DiCaprio was the main character we followed, Cobb, an extractor who operates by stealing things from other people's minds from their dreams who is also on the run for being charged with the murder of his own wife. 

The majority of the movie involves an expert from a particular field explaining how things work in the dream world. The group consists of a group of architects to design the dream world, a forger, and a chemist. The main plot of the movie is a group of experts, led by Cobb, attempting to plant an idea on the head of a major corporation using positive reinforcement which would then inspire him to dissolve his company. This movie demands and deserves your complete attention throughout its run time, this is not your usual popcorn flick where you can afford to miss a few scenes. In order to fully understand what happens during the mission, you need to pay attention to every second.

I'm not going to go into any more details regarding the plot, what I'd really like to talk about now is Hans Zimmer and his terrific background score which keeps you at the edge of the seat without which the full depth of the movie can't really be felt. In my opinion, this is the best work of Hans Zimmer, no other movie comes close to his work in Inception. There are plenty of soundtracks from Inception that are on my everyday playlist, a few of them being "Mombassa", "Dream within a dream", "Dark Mal", "One simple Idea" and the best of the lot being "Time". Zimmer really gave it everything he had and to this day, Inception's background scores keep getting so much praise.

The other huge achievement was the achievement in cinematography. The visuals were some of the best ever put to the silver screen. There are scenes in this movie that took months to be finished, scenes that would make your jaw drop so much that you'd want to be a part of their world and make you want to say goodbye to reality. This movie was a visual masterpiece, every scene was a spectacle, and this movie was an inspiration to so many other movies that were made during the decade. Outstanding camera work, sometimes it just makes you forget what's actually happening and admire how good the shot looks. I guess if I'm looking to nitpick this movie, this was the only thing that I can actually complain about, that it was so visually spectacular, it made me lose focus of the plot at times.

My plan was to basically just highlight what I liked about these three movies in particular and finish it by saying all three were equally good in their own way but watching these three films now has made me arrive at a conclusion which I really didn't expect to find myself in. Inception is Nolan's most original idea, perhaps his oldest idea, he had the script ready for years, he didn't have the budget for it but following the success of The Dark Knight and the name he earned for himself after that, he could even afford to make a terrible film and still keep his reputation untarnished. But Nolan managed to do the opposite. I'm going to go out on a limb and say this, Nolan made something better than The Dark Knight and Interstellar. The only person who can beat Nolan is Nolan and I'm hoping to be blown away by Tenet whenever we get a chance to catch it in theatres.

He had DC Comics material to guide him to make The Dark Knight trilogy, he himself has mentioned plenty of times that 2001: A Space Odyssey was his favorite film and that Interstellar is loosely based on that. Nolan created something from scratch, something which was supposed to be just a collection of abstract ideas and perfected it with such a flawless feature film, he literally made dreams a reality. Inception is Christopher Nolan's crowning jewel and watching these three films over these past few days transformed the question mark that I had into a full stop for me, to put it in simple words, Inception is 'Nolan's Best.'

Verdict

Fan in me: 10/10

Critic in me: 10/10

Justice League Dark Apokoplips War - The crowning jewel of DC animation

As a hardcore DC fan, I've often felt heartbroken and disappointed watching our feature films struggle to make an impact on the big screens with so much potential and so much source material going waste. Maybe this was because of too much studio interference, cast issues or maybe we didn't pick the right directors but for decades, DC and Warner Brothers have been killing it in the animation game. They've given us classics like Batman Mask of the Phantasm and a great set of animated series including Batman, Superman, and Justice League. The same streak continued when they started off the New 52 animated universe with Justice League War and Flashpoint Paradox.

While fans like me were feeling sorry for the DCEU's current state watching Marvel excel at every stage, the animated studio kept themselves quite busy with a universe comprising of the New 52 characters. They started off the universe with Justice League War and kept giving us a couple of movies every single year. Justice League Dark Apokolips War is the final entry of the universe and it was a masterpiece that was better than the box office mammoth Avengers Endgame itself. It was an experience of a lifetime with all our heroes coming together one last time. Just to give you an idea of how cool it was, it basically had the Justice League, Teen titans, suicide squad along with my new favorite John Constantine and his friends fighting together against the biggest baddie of the DC universe, the character of which Thanos was based on, Darkseid.

This movie turned out to be as good as it was because every single character had already been set up beautifully along the course of 15 movies and no character felt new. Next time someone says DC is no good at making Justice League films, I'd like to show them this. This movie was fan service personified and my favorite character from the entire series was Damian Wayne. His character arc was easily the best and most complex. They used up at least 4-5 films having him as the main hero and in the end, I ended up liking him more than Batman.

The movie focuses mainly on Superman, Damian Wayne, Raven, and John Constantine. Superman has never been handled any better, this doesn't show an evil Superman out of control. It has shown us the best of the boy scout and easily my favorite Superman of all time. I can say the same about the rest of the characters, with the coolest of them all being John Constantine, sorry Stephen Strange, but he's my new favorite wizard now. Raven and Damian's arc were perfect, I love that so much screentime was given for the Titans.

I've never seen a better climax in any other film, including the genius one from Doctor Strange and the portals scene from Avengers Endgame. It was such a fresh take, exceeded all my expectations, I didn't see it coming and the ending was literally out of this world. This whole universe started and ended the same way and it was a beautiful way to wrap it up. The reason behind this is our strong source material and I am extremely excited about the future of this universe even though they were clear about this being their final entry. I think I kind of know what they're going for with this ending but I don't want to spoil it here. Most of the DC fanboys can predict what's coming next and I for one cannot wait.

This is an R rated masterpiece once again proving to us that DC is the boss when it comes to the animated film game and their stories have been so much better and darker than any other story. Easily one of the darkest stories ever and that's saying something. This is my DCEU and I'm waiting for their next animated movie announcement to see if I'm right about where they're headed. I'm grateful for whatever they've done with the New 52 series and Justice League Dark Apokoplips War is the best DC animated movie I have ever seen and my favorite comic book movie of all time. The animated movie writers deserve so much more credit than they actually receive, I hope more people start watching DC animation. I really don't see why Warner Brothers don't even think about handing the big-budget films over to them because in the end it's all about telling a story and no one has done it better than the makers of the DC animated universe.

Here's the list of the New 52 movie universe for anyone who still thinks I'm out of my mind in saying that DC is better than Marvel or for anyone who just wants to explore the DC universe more.

1) Justice League Flashpoint Paradox
2) Justice League War
3) Son of Batman
4) Justice League Throne of Atlantis
5) Batman vs Robin
6) Batman: Bad Blood
7) Justice League vs Teen Titans
8) Suicide Squad: Hell to Pay
9) Justice League Dark
10) Teen Titans: The Judas Contract

11) Wonder woman Bloodlines
12) The Death of Superman
13) Reign of Superman
14) Constantine City of Demons
15) Batman: Hush
16) Justice League Dark Apokoplips War

Verdict:
Fan in me: 10/10
Critic in me: 9/10

The Dark Knight - Nolan's best?

It's been 12 years since this one came out, and the Dark Knight is one of the very few films that stood the test of time. It's my favorite superhero movie of all time, even though other films came close, once you start rewatching the Dark Knight, you'll be forced to agree with the fact that it is undoubtedly the best superhero movie of all time.

For a change, I would like to highlight what I thought was responsible for this movie turning out to be the way it was and why it was the best Batman film of the Nolan trilogy. The answer is not Heath Ledger, even though a lot of people blindly say the Joker made everything better. To them, I say, 'Batman screentime'.

What's the point of making a Batman movie without any Batman? I understand that it takes time to establish a character, but both Batman begins and the Dark Knight rises kind of felt underwhelming because there was very little Batman in both of them. Having him show up in day time to set the final battle of the trilogy was one of the biggest mistakes of Nolan's career. The best moments of both the movies still turn out to be those which feature him with his full costume. So yes, the next time someone tries to make a movie about Batman, they need to make sure that the majority of the screentime goes to him running and gliding around with his Cape and cowl because that's what the fans actually want. I really hope that Matt Reeves delivers and I really hope he learns that by watching the Dark Knight.

All my complaints apart, let's talk about the Dark Knight. We got to see Bruce learn from his mistakes and perfect his bat-suit along with Mr. Fox, just like he was doing in Batman begins. His tumbler scenes were brilliant and that whole scene where he gets a batpod out of his tumbler was phenomenal. We saw him glide around Hong Kong in his kick-ass new suit, full Arkham style, and that interrogation scene with the Joker was probably the best scene in the movie.

It really annoys me when people talk only about Heath and the joker when they talk about the Dark Knight, ignoring so much of Batman and his adventures. I'm not at all saying that Heath was bad, he did manage to revolutionize the role of an antagonist, something which so many people are doing because of him. His dialogue, his acting, the laugh, it was nothing short of a masterpiece. It's really tragic that he wasn't around to collect his well deserved Oscar, once again, breaking new records, bringing the superhero movie genre into the limelight. So yes, Heath was amazing, one of the best jokers, I might have to make a separate article choosing the best joker, I still believe that the animated version of Joker voiced by Mark Hamill and Joaquin Phoenix's version were just as good as Heath Ledger's portrayal. It just goes to say how good of a character the Joker actually is and how great the people who got a chance to play him on the big screen were. For all those critics going around and saying superhero movies are for kids, this is a character who nabbed 2 Oscars.

There was never a dull moment in the Dark Knight, something was always happening, and it was a non-stop action rollercoaster with not a second for us to breathe. Credit goes to the genius camera work which made sure that we were always paying attention, with those glorious long shots and constantly moving camera. All this awesomeness, along with Hans Zimmer's magical score just blew our minds while watching this spectacular film. Every department that was involved gave it everything they had and the product of their hard work was nothing short of a triumph.

I was kind of shocked when they killed Rachel because I realized I was just halfway through the movie and it already felt like so much happened, every second I was just wondering what more could they do and every second, the movie just kept getting better and it wasn't even improvisation, this is what you get when you have a solid script and both Christopher and Johnathan deserve equal credit.

The ending of the movie gave me chills, and it still continues to amaze me, the way they finish it, with Batman making an ultimate sacrifice for the sake of the city, it's citizens, covering up a huge lie that would have made the people lose hope. He was truly a silent guardian, a watchful protector, and a Dark Knight. That would have been the perfect way to finish a franchise and Nolan kind of did something in this movie that even he wouldn't have been been able to beat. The Dark Knight rises couldn't even come close even though there was a lot of buzz about people calling it the movie of the decade, it was still not even close to its predecessor.

The Dark Knight, in many places, makes you believe that you're never going to see anything better on screen than this and that this is the best work of Christopher Nolan, something he has managed to do in two other movies, which is why I will never be able to pick my best Nolan movie of all time. Every time a Marvel fan comes and brags how good their movies are and how much DC is screwing up, this one movie is still strong enough for us to counter every single thing they come up with, and to be honest, there has been no better villain than the Joker. Even the DC haters would have to agree with that.

The Dark Knight is a masterpiece, and I will keep rewatching it for the Batman scenes, the gliding, all the Heath Ledger scenes, the cinematography, the camera work, and Hans Zimmer's brilliant background scores. If I'd have to pick my favorite scores from this, it would be "Agent of Chaos", "Like a dog chasing cars" and "Why so serious?" 

Verdict 

Fan in me: 10/10

Critic in me: 10/10

Interstellar - Nolan's best?

I think the perfect quarantine movie award goes interstellar, I've watched it plenty of times but I've never related to it as much as when I saw it recently during the COVID 19 lockdown. It just goes to say how much of truth and reality there was in the movie and when you actually experience it and come close to an experience such as a world-ending event, it's a whole new feeling.

Christopher Nolan is the reason I started watching Hollywood, his movies and his style of storytelling and masterful writing kind of spoilt other movies to me because I keep trying to compare other films to his movies and it almost never reaches his golden standards.

Interstellar is one such masterpiece coming from the dude who has never managed to make a single bad film till date, Dunkirk being the one which still managed to be good, but just not to his usual standards. The movie is set in the future where mankind has screwed up, where we've successfully managed to choke earth to its breaking point and when we're about to become extinct as a species.

Farming has become more important than advancing our technology. "We didn't run out of television sets and planes, we ran out of food". The movie is full of epic quotes like that, which would fit perfectly on our WhatsApp and Instagram motivational/sad statuses with the background of some scenery, to quote our Tamil people, "idha auto pinnadiye ottalame". I think most of such good writing was only possible because of Johnathan Nolan's involvement in the script. Slowly our crops are dying, there are no more armies, just a bunch of people left, chocking and suffocating often encountering huge dust clouds.

So basically, the movie deals with NASA's final attempt at saving humanity, by sending a team of pilots and engineers through a wormhole near Saturn to another system with three potentially habitable planets. If you think that the previous statement sounded cool, the movie is 100 times cooler. The visuals were just out of the world, maybe because they were literally out of this world but the fact that Nolan still stuck to using actual sets without using green screens still continues to surprise me. Nolan's explanation to why he uses sets instead of green screens is satisfactory because he says that looking into a green screen and delivering emotions aren't nearly as good as looking at the actual thing and because of that, the movie-watching experience became even more immersive and the actors were able to show more heart.

He's one of the very few directors who continues to do stuff like that and the end result is simply spectacular. Speaking of emotions, Matthew McConaughey gave us a performance of a lifetime, playing the role of Cooper, Murphy's father, who single-handedly stole every single scene that he was in. He made us laugh with him, cry with him and be a part of this insane interstellar travel. I'm still surprised by the fact that he wasn't nominated for best actor. Matthew's performance stands out among the rest of the talented cast Anne Hathaway, Michael Caine, and Jessica Chastain. Matt Damon's cameo was another brilliant performance from the veteran actor who yet again gets a role where he has to be rescued, I don't know if Hollywood does this to him on purpose or if this is all just a funny coincidence. Nevertheless, the talented Mr. Ripley does a brilliant job with his limited screen time.

So apart from the brilliant cinematography, intense writing, captivating plot, scintillating, oscar-winning special effects, and world-class acting, another department which managed to fetch an Oscar nomination was Hans Zimmer's insane soundtrack. There are scores in this film which I still listen to on a daily basis, 'Coward', 'Cornfield chase', 'Where we're going', and 'No time for caution' just to quote a few of them. Somehow, his music just made the movie so much better, just as it had done in his other brilliant films. The Zimmer-Nolan combo has never once disappointed us and the only thing that broke my heart was the fact that Nolan decided to not stick with Hans Zimmer for his upcoming sci-fi thriller, 'Tenet' 

Every time I watch Interstellar, there comes a time where it makes me feel like this is the best Nolan movie of all time and that none of his other films have given me such a unique experience. The funny thing is, three of his movies have made me feel the same way at some point and I've still not been able to give even one of them the number one spot or even number two and number three.

One thing that Nolan managed to with Interstellar that he didn't do in his previous films is making the audience cry. I was convinced that making the audience cry was not Nolan's specialty but making the audience think was his forte but he broke that myth and made every single member of the audience cry like little babies in at least four or five different scenes. I was completely out of tears by the end of the film, it was as bad as my first viewing of Avengers Endgame.

Christopher Nolan is a gift to Hollywood and sci-fi is where he thrives even though he managed to make the best superhero movie of all time. I hope he sticks to SciFi and I hope that Tenet extends my three movie list of Nolan's best. Also, special mention to the comic relief, who knew a robot could crack such high-quality jokes, TARS was brilliant in the movie, so was CASE but I loved TARS more. Once again, Nolan tried something new in Interstellar, something which he didn't do in his other films, comedy, and it was brilliant.

I've seen Interstellar at least twenty-five times and each time, I learn something new or I unlearn something wrong which I had learned from my previous viewings and it's something I'd love to keep doing, for the emotions, the tears, the blackhole scenes, the wormhole scenes, the docking scene and for the bond between Cooper and his daughter. If you guys haven't seen it, it's high time that you do and it's the perfect quarantine movie, with all the COVID stuff that has been going on around us for the past few months, it hits you harder than intended. 

Verdict: 

Fan in me: 10/10
Critic in me: 10/10