TENET

 

Written and Directed by Christopher Nolan. Starring John David Washington, Robert Pattinson, Elizabeth Debecki and Kenneth Branagh. Running time 150 minutes. Budget $225 million.

 

I saw Tenet last Wednesday, or as we call it in our house, Tenet. We prefer to spell it backwards. It's taken me this long to arrive at an opinion about it. This film has a lot riding on its shoulders, namely the rebirth of the British cinema laid low by Covid-19. And my local 12 screen cinema put this on in each of its 12 screens in an attempt to tempt us all back.

I went in knowing nothing beyond the trailer and I can't remember the last time I went into a $225 million film almost blind and it made for an exciting change, so if you've not seen it, or know nothing about it then please don't read this review just go and see this film blind, cos you'll never have this opportunity again.

However if you still want to read my review then here it is. This is a spoiler free review.

 

 

SPOILER ALERT. 

 

Amazingly, for a film about time travel that takes place in the past, present and future simultaneously the plot is simplicity itself. Two spies, John David Washington and Robert Pattinson, working for an undisclosed agency race, against time itself to prevent Russian baddy, Sator, as played by Kenny Branagh, from doing something very nefarious. And that's it in a nutshell, or llehstun if you'd prefer.

Directed by Nolan, who because of his gender was not allowed to join his sister's band, and instead became an impressive film maker, with some absolutely stunning films to his credit including, Batty Begins, Inception, Memento, The Prestige, Dunkirk and Interstellar (as long as you stop watching before Matthew starts knocking books off his shelf).

 

As with all of Nolan's films, this one is beautifully staged, well-directed and plot-wise complex beyond belief. Indeed after a while, I just stopped trying to understand what in god's name was going on and just slumped back in my seat and let it all just wash over me, which is probably for the best because for the life of me I'm left the cinema two-and-a-half-years later with more unanswered questions than I went in with, like why is it called 'Tenet'?

This is a long film waddling in at a bladder-busting 150 minutes, and follows a tried, tested and very sensible story structure of: ACTION! Exposition. ACTION! Exposition. ACTION! etc until the end. It opens with a stunning and relentless action sequence set in an opera house, which because everyone (except the audience) is wearing full-body armour, makes following the story impossible and ends with a bizarre rail-yard sequence, which leaves much unexplained and so far, so the trailer.

Indeed, if all you have to go on is the trailer you soon find yourself mentally checking off all the beats you've already seen hoping they will help you make sense of this, but shortly afterwards, you realise the trailer footage is gone and you're on your own. Good luck.
 

Anyhoo, after the exhilarating opening we get to meet our hero properly as played by John David Washington. His character, our lead has no name, he ain't got time for names, there's a baddy to stop.  He's one of those characters who knows far more about what's going on than the audience and refuses to let us in on the secret thus forcing the audience into the role of voyeur. He has almost zero chemistry with the other characters and the only thing you ever think about him is 'gosh, how short is he?' Now maybe he's not that short, maybe everyone else is taller! These are the sort of questions that run through your mind as you watch this, given as you aren't allowed to know anything.

 

Inbetween the plot exposition, Nolan wedges a series of impressive action sequences, all mounted 'in camera' and each designed to 'out-Nolan' the last one, building to a mind-boggling finale that will leave you shaken and stirred. Sadly, however, because there's no absolutely no emotional engagement with our heroes, there's also no sense of jeopardy or drama, we know who will live and who will die. There is also one action sequence that is so mind-bogglingly impressive to both stage and watch that Nolan, clearly impressed revisits it not once but three times, just so we can marvel at his awesomeness.

Also this film seems to have no time to spare for introspection or to allow the audience to catch its collective breath, which is surprising given its running time. We are never allowed a moment to ponder or learn about our hero, nor are we ever sure as to which agency he is working for, why, or under what parameters? This is a shame because Bond's visits to MI6 were often the most enjoyable scenes of the Bond films this clearly doffs its cap to.

And talking of Bond, Nolan, a declared Bond fan seems to have set out to make his own Bond film, but along the way replaced all the fun, excitement and bonhomie of those films with this grand, over-stuffed, operatic extravaganza filled with mind-bending whiffle-waffle as we're batted back and forth through time, like the Irwin Allen's Time Tunnel but without John William's awesome theme tune.
 

Visually this film is stunning, its locations are beautiful its action beats spectacular, but for all its technical skill this is film feels flat and un-engaging, it's packed to the gills with characters who pop up for a single scene to propel our plucky heroes on to the next plot point, dispensing exposition, mostly unheard because of the dreadful soundmix which has important information drowned out by all the ambient noise.

 

And that's about it. This film is being hailed as a 5 star masterpiece. I sadly can't agree. This film suffers from the Emperor's new clothes syndrome, the critics will all hail it as a masterpiece but for me it was the purest example of style over substance and although I can't fault its look, style, blah blah the story left me cold, unmoved and at times a tad bored.

And like it's story structure this film is a film of two scores, one for technical brilliance and the other for entertainment.

10/10 for visual and technical brilliance

6/10 for entertainment.

SHUT-IN MOVIE #18 CAPTAIN AMERICA: THE FIRST AVENGER (2011)

Starring Chris Evans, Hugo Weaving, Hayley Atwell, Sebastian Stan, Dominic Cooper, Stanley Tucci, Tommy Lee Jones, and Toby Young. Directed by Joe Johnson.

I've not seen this film in ages, maybe not since it first came out on Blu-ray. It recently survived a film cull when I got rid of a whole load of films I just couldn't be arsed to try and sit through again and films I found myself fast forwarding through thru sheer boredom. I remembered having a soft spot for this one and I'm glad I saved it.

What a refreshingly brisk and enthusiastic little flick, by Marvel movie standards, this was. Chris Evans is yet another staggering charismatic actor, who it seems was born to play Captain America. And it wasn't even his first comic character role, nor even his second!

The plot sees puny human, Steve Rogers selected to become the first recipient of Doctor Erskine's Super Solider Serum thus becoming Captain America. Created by the good doctor in an attempt to thwart the nefarious activities of Hugo Weaving's the Red Skull, the leader and creator of the Hydra, the super secret, super-advanced scientific arm of the Nazis. He's only gone and got his hands on the Tesseract, a object of near limitless power, blimey! it's a good job Captain America is on the case, that is once he's finished making movies of course. 

This is a rip-roaring and rollicking adventure that has real heart and soul. By focusing on the puny Steve Rogers prior to his transformation and giving us time to, not only, like the puny kid with a big heart but come to really root for him really makes this film work. He's so utterly plucky, and his never-give-up defiance in the face of big bullies everywhere easily wins you over. Sure he's a Dudley Do Right, but he's so damn good looking one and does it all with such guileless heroism that he can't help but make Captain America so gosh-darn likeable! 

This is action packed and effects driven but the effects, even nearly 10 years later are surprisingly good, particularly the way they melded Chris Evan's head to the body of a puny body double.

(Nearly) everyone raves about the likes of the last two Avenger movies or Black Panther but for me, this one, and the first Iron Man and to a lesser extent the first Thor movie are the true heart and soul of the entire Marvel Movie Universe franchise, if these had failed to work we perhaps wouldn't have had the likes of Batman vs. Superman, Justice League, Suicide Squad and The Biddies of Prey: The Farcical Constipation of Harley Quinn. So, naturally this film has a lot to be sorry for.

8/10 

SHUT-DOWN MOVIE #17 – EXTRACTION (2020)

Based on a graphic novel, directed by Sam Hargrave, written by Joe Russo and starring Chris Hemsworth.

The plot, sorry if this is too long.

The son of a Bangladesh crime boss is kidnapped by a rival. Mercenary Tyler Rake (Hemsworth) is hired to get the kid back. Although when Tyler is double-crossed he's forced to fight his way through the city with the boy in tow to get him home safely.

Phew! I hope you could keep track, I know I was reaching for the remote a lot while I watched this, so I could rewind and watch the complicated plot again when I got confused. This NETFLIX movie is being touted as a hi-octane action flick and features several of those, almost ubiquitous 'one-take' action sequences, that Atomic Blonde and John Wick have made so popular. It's safe to say it is very action packed, very hi-octane and very, very violent. Luckily we're now well past the hateful stage of jerky, handheld action sequences of past films and although this is a VERY frenetic and frenzied film you can at least work out what's going on.

This film works because of Hemsworth who has a staggering amount of charisma, his Tyler Rake (terrible name) is the driven man of action, an Action Man if you will, who gets injured a lot, shot, stabbed, punched, kicked. At one point he suffers a paper cut that will have you wincing, you know when you get cut between the skin of two fingers, and another time he bangs his funny bone, although why it's called a funny bone is beyond me, because it's not at all funny when you bang that bad boy.

ANYWAY, Tyler fights his way through the entire police force of Dhaka, who luckily ALL happen to be super corrupt and don't have any families at all, no wives or kids, indeed they're all orphans and in no way, just police men trying to do their jobs, so their brutal, savage deaths are all okay. Rest assured kind reader, that none of these characters had any real lives for you to worry about, just like in Fast and Furious 7 when that tank ran over all those empty cars on the motorway.

Along the way, Tyler is able to tick several tropes off his 'action man bingo card', including 'Betrayed by old friend', 'walking away from explosions', 'bonding with his youthful charge' and surviving several others I won't reveal for fear of spoiling the movie.

The Bangladesh setting was very unique and gave the film a fresh look although i gotta say I found the body count surprisingly unsettling.

Overall, this was an okay action flick if you like your action, relentless, brutal, unstopping, savage, excessive and down right nasty.  7/10

SHUT-DOWN MOVIE #16 - FAMILY PLOT (1976)

Alfred Hitchcock's final film. Starring Barbara Harris, Bruce Dern, William Devane and Karen Black. The film sees fake psychic Barbara Harris and her down-on-his-heels, cabdriver boyfriend, Bruce Dern hired by an old lady to search for her long lost remaining heir, William Devane who it transpires is one half of a no-good kidnapper gang, who along with his girlfriend Karen Black, expertly kidnap wealthy people for huge diamonds, keeping their victims locked up in their custom built basement vault. There's no disputing Hitchcock's skill as a film maker, he is the perfect professional, and this film, while nowhere near his best still shows his skills as a story teller, scenes are expertly set up, visually explained and shot, although without any real visual flair or tricks. It is the very definition of workmanlike, but that's not a criticism. This is a light-hearted comedy thriller which just holds its own. As with earlier films it takes its time setting up the situation, but the characters work very well. Barbara Harris as the fake psychic has an annoying tremble to her voice which sounds like she's seconds from bursting into tears, but her relationship with Bruce Dern sits at the heart of the film. Bruce plays a cabdriver who spends most of the film pretending to be an lawyer as he searches for the missing heir to a fortune and for most of the film they bicker as only two people in a long term relationship can. It's a nice counter-point to the relationship of Devane and Black, which is very much one of control and malevolence. Devane is the lost heir with a dark secret who gleefully runs the kidnapping racket from the back room of his hi-end jewellery business.
This is mostly worth watching because it's the last film of Hitchcock, it's punctuated with some nice moments of tension, particularly the final showdown between the two couples in the basement of Devane's house. And as with all Hitchcock movies, the all comes down to this final scene and it's amazing to see how little time is left at the end for Hitchcock to wrap things up with. How unlike most modern films that seem to spend an age getting to the end and far too long wrapping everything up. This also has a bloody good soundtrack from John Williams.
This was a fun but slight film probably best watched on a Sunday afternoon. 7/10

SHUT-IN MOVIES #15 - REAR WINDOW (1954)

Now, that's a classic! After the tedium and creepiness of Vertigo I decided to watch Rear Window, another 'classic' I'd never seen. And I gotta say I really enjoyed it! Great fun. However, I do have reservations. This is definitely a failing of mine but i couldn't wait for the ending, i was frutstrated and anxious to know what was going to happen, I believe that when I come to watch this for a second time I'll be able to just enjoy it without wanting it to end so quickly because there's so much to love in this film. The film is 100% set bound, but it's that set that helps to make the film so wonderful. It overlooks the shared garden of a four different building tenements and we get to meet a huge cast of characters who all live in the various different homes. There's the sexy dancer, the frustrated composer, the lonely spinster, the newly weds, the married couple and their dog and the sculpturist. Indeed its amazing how we come to know them so well since we only ever see them in longshot. Hitchcock creates a whole world of different characters all with their own lives and problems. The plot see James Stewart play a photographer who's been stuck indoors for that past 11 weeks with a broken leg who spends his time perving on his neighbours through his rear window. He becomes fixated on one neighbour, Raymond Burr, who Stewart thinks has murdered his own invalided wife. What follows is either a Stewart's descent into paranoic obsession caused by being shut indoors for so long a period, or the witnessing of the aftermath of a domestic murder. The film follows Stewart as he drags, first his nurse Thelma Ritter, and then his girlfriend, the staggering beautiful Grace Kelly in on his obsession, all the while his best friend a homicide detective tries to make him see reason. The film set entirely in Stewart's one room appartment helps to build the sense of claustaphobia, and Stewart's vunerability helps to build the building sense of dread. This film is the very definition of a slow burn movie, which i didn't like on this viewing but will like do on the next. Those final minutes of the film are simply exhilarating! I was utterly gripped, that slow burn makes it that payoff makes the whole film so so worth it! Bloody loved it!

9/10

SHUT-IN MOVIES #14 - VERTIGO (1958)

I decided it was time to watch something I've never seen before that considered to be a classic. Believe it or not there are many so called classic films I've never seen, including, but not only: Dirty Dancing, Sound of Music, Gone With the Wind, Little Trouble in Big China, Rear Window, Kramer vs. Krammer and many others to numerous to mention. So, today I sat down to finish off Alfred Hitchcock's 1958 classic VERTIGO, starring Jimmy Stewart and Kim Novak. It's taken me two days to watch this, so I think it's safe to say it didn't engage me greatly. And having just finished watching it, I gotta say I ain't a fan, in fact I actually burst out laughing at the end, thank god I didn't see this at the NFT or I'd have been lynched. That said, there are many bits I enjoyed, the way it looks, the superb music, the sets, the matte paintings, the strange colours, the utterly superb dream sequence but overall it's downright creepy and unpleasant and not in a good way. Stewart plays an love obsessed cop with vertigo who falls in love with Kim Novak only to watch her leap to her death when he's unable to climb a tower to stop her from jumping. This film, over 2 hours in length spends its first hour or so just establishing the relationship between the two leads. And indeed for the first hour literally nothing happens, except Stewart fails to indicate at any time during the world's slowest car chase through San Fransisco while he tails the girl of his dreams. Once the girl of his dreams, actually the wife of an old college chum of his, ends up dead, having leaped to the her death from the tower, then the film finally starts to unravel the mystery and ratchet up the creepiness as Stewart fixates on a girl he sees in the streets who looks like his dead one love. He follows her back to her hotel and manipulates her into dressing and looking exactly like his dead lost love, all the time ignoring the fact that there's another girl who'd deeply in love with him (Midge Wood, played by Barbara Bel Geddes) who he doesn't seem to give two shits about waiting for him at home. Seriously, Stewart's character is a right dick. Anyway, this film winds its languid way back towards a Columbo style ending back at the tower, where his true love died for a seriously hilarious 'shock' revelation that made me burst out laughing. I often feel with certain directors that it's not 'form' to criticise their films, but for me, Vertigo was just a long shaggy dog story only saved by a very funny punchline. 7/10

SHUT-IN MOVIE #13 - SANDY WEXLER (2017)

What is it with me and Adam Sandler? I keep watching his movies and never seem to learn my lesson. Damn it, there's something about him that I kinda like, he's been in films that I've loved and so I keep giving him another pass. But for every Punch, Drunk, Love or Murder Mystery there's a Grown Ups, Pixels, Jack and Jill, Ridiculous Six. And so I settled on Sandy Wexler. A film is so staggering meh it's uhh, actually staggering. The plot follows Hollywood talent agent, Sandy Wexler's (Adam Sandler) float, float, mild rise and fall, and finally HUGE RISE to the top. The comedy, when it comes is provided from his stable of mostly useless talent and a vast cameo of friends of Sandler who all pop up to tell us how awful Wexler is until the end and we find out the truth. What is it about Sandler that makes me keep coming back for more? That said, his one man show on Netflix is pretty funny. Avoid this and watch that instead, or if you've already seen that then only watch this if you have already watched everything else on Netflix twice before. 3/10