Tenet reviews

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gunnar
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Re: Tenet reviews

Post by gunnar »

Two of my cousins have a podcast where they discuss movies and tv shows (both in the theater and streaming). They both loved Tenet when they saw it back in September. I'd planned on seeing it eventually and when I saw it had received an Oscar nomination, I looked online and saw that one of my local libraries had it as a free three day rental and had a copy in stock so I picked it up. I understood the movie pretty well, but I didn't find it that compelling overall and thought the score wasn't that great. The visual effects were decent and there were some good parts throughout. I have no desire to revisit the movie ever again, though.
Mister Tee
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Re: Tenet reviews

Post by Mister Tee »

For whatever reason, this was almost impossible to get on Netflix disc. I mean, I had it number one in my queue from the day it was released, which I think was in the last days of 2020. And week after week after week, it said Short Wait. Until, literally, this past week. I've never waited remotely that long for a disc, even blockbuster things like Avengers. I have no idea why this happened. Relatedly or not, my friend the Academy voter said he was unable to get any kind of copy, screener or streaming, before he voted for nominations. Something weird is going on with this movie.

What did I think of it? I spent what seemed half the time shouting "What?" at my TV screen. Some of the set-pieces were enjoyable enough to watch on their own, but I could rarely connect up why they were important to the overall story. Part of this is due to a familiar Nolan failing: having people mumble exposition. But more of it was having a narrative that was complicated as fuck, to the point of "I'm not even going to bother to try and keep up". Some guy on IMDB purported to explain it -- something about two time universes, one backward and one forward, and I had to watch the movie twice to understand it. To which my reply was, I've already wasted 2 1/2 hours of my life, I'm not going to double it. (It honestly astonishes me that so many people find serious movies too demanding to watch, then they pour all their intellectual power into understanding a piece of cheese like this.)

I don't even think the visual effects are all that much -- though the piles of smoke being drawn back into the ground were kind of cool. Nolan is likely to win a very lucky Oscar, simply because no other big movies bothered to release this year.
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Re: Tenet reviews

Post by Sabin »

I mean, someone has to post on this thread, right?

Saw Tenet last night. At best, I understand it as The Nolan Guilty Pleasure. A truly lunatic, palindromic tapestry that plays like the wacko dream that inspired Inception, which in some ways (not enough though) makes it preferable. But it's so disconnected from the rules of competent storytelling and the human condition that it can only really be enjoyed by those who finds Nolan's biggest blindspots to be features, not flaws.

- He never explains inversion sufficiently.
- The villain's motivation in this film is simultaneously: A) hatred of a world killing itself through climate change, B) a business transaction with the future, C) he's dying of cancer and if he can't have his wife, nobody can.
- He willfully refuses to tell the audience why the Protagonist is doing anything (ie, motivation for the movie) or why he wants to meet Sanjai Singh until they meet.
- Instead of letting the reason for the plane crash come as a surprise, he tells us beforehand so there's nothing to do but wonder "How big's that explosion going to be?"
- It's essential that there be personal stakes to the destruction of everything that's ever lived so Kat must make the direct connection that her son is a person who's been alive.

I find it less infuriating than Inception but that doesn't make it better. I enjoy it a bit as a mad folly, but we're dealing with a filmmaker with a profound disconnect from the human race, delusions of grandeur, but very little to say. I don't think he should be allowed alone in a room with a pen.
"How's the despair?"
Mister Tee
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Tenet reviews

Post by Mister Tee »

It feels like something happening on Earth II, but Tenet has been screened and reviews appeared yesterday. It's got a 71 on Metacritic, which probably translates to fun enough, but not exactly worth risking your health to see in a theatre.

BTW, hard to grasp, but: were this not 2020, we'd be all agog over the just-about-to-begin Fall season.

https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/news/ ... ilm-review

https://variety.com/2020/film/reviews/t ... 234742936/

https://www.screendaily.com/reviews/ten ... 30.article
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