VHS and Betamax You Have Recently Rented

[DavidB6937]

Some people have to learn from their own mistakes.

[SaitoRyo]

Something's Gotta Give

Old, rich white people and their problems eh?

This was a Valentine's Day watch as the other streaming options available weren't good and, at the end of the day, it had Jack Nicholson and Diane Keaton in it. The film is enjoyable pretty much because of them, as they're both great, but it's not something I'd be in a rush to ever watch again. 

[Devon Malcolm]

7 minutes ago, DavidB6937 said:

Some people have to learn from their own mistakes.

Or learn from mine.

The only good Resident Evil films are the first and third ones, and even then it's pushing it to call them 'good'.

[Jesse]

Rewatched TENET with my very brave wife. I've seen it three times, and I'm still not sure if I tracked every single thing they have going on that it would make cohesive sense but it doesn't matter even a little bit because it makes it really clear that it's not the kind of movie that is interested in doing that. It's just interested in putting cool things on screen and revealing each new layer of things for the feeling of doing it. Pretty sure they say "temporal pincer manoeuvre" at least three times and it's great every time.

My wife loved it but it pissed her off too. To quote her: "I can just imagine him sitting there writing 'temporal pincer maoeuvre' and thinking oh I'm so fucking smart. It's infuriating" I could watch this movie once a month for the rest of my life.

[DavidB6937]

Tenet should have been something I loved but I just really fucking hated it and I never want to see it again. I'm not someone that needs everything explained but it just wasn't an enjoyable movie.

[Dr. Alan Grant]

52 minutes ago, Devon Malcolm said:

Or learn from mine.

The only good Resident Evil films are the first and third ones, and even then it's pushing it to call them 'good'.

I’ve only watched the first 3 so far, but this is a fair assessment. I’m only watching them because I was playing some of the games and it gave me the zombie bug. But the films are so far removed from the source material, it defeats the purpose. Still, Milla Jojovich is easy on the eye and Iain Glen was hamming it up wonderfully in 3. I will persevere.

[Devon Malcolm]

I'm not against making a film and not being too concerned about whether it makes sense or not. But going out of your way to be deliberately confusing and being repetitive and boring with it, Tenet is shite even by Nolan's standards.

Edited February 15, 2025 by Devon Malcolm

[Hannibal Scorch]

Tenet is the best example of just because you can, shouldn’t mean you should. Yeah the gimmick of stuff going in reverse is clever, but there is nothing enjoyable in that film, and I say that as a fan of Elizabeth Debicki.

[Jesse]

Sad to see the board fall victim to this tribal thinking, history will vindicate me and my love of nonsense rollercoaster movies like Tenet and Trap.

Re-watched Heretic tonight because my housemate really wanted to see it. Not much to be gained on a second viewing, other than thinking it would probably work pretty well as a staged play. I should watch more late-career Hugh Grant.

[Hannibal Scorch]

1 hour ago, Jesse said:

. I should watch more late-career Hugh Grant.

Paddington 2 it is!

[BigJag]

He has a nice cameo in the latest Wonka Movie.

[Chest Rockwell]

Not a cameo. 

[LaGoosh]

The main issue with Tenet is that the "reverse time" thing is so stupid and makes pretty much no sense. When they introduced it in the film my immediate reaction was "so what? Why would that be of any use to anyone whatsoever?" and when you think that about the main concept the film is based around well then your films fucked. And that's before you even get into all the other problems the film has.

[Jesse]

Not to get too into defending a movie that I also don't think holds together on close scrutiny, but I think the overall premise of reverse time holds together. Spoilers (and probably way too many words) for Tenet below
 

Spoiler

The future at an unspecified time is dying, seemingly due to limited resources and climate change. Seeing themselves run out of time, they want to develop a way to reverse the flow of time and start living backwards. A scientist develops a way of doing this but thinks it is insane and won't actually work the way they think it will - that without the past that brought them into existence they will instead collapse reality, so they use a limited form of it that can reverse an object's path through time to send the knowledge of it (the algorithm) into the past to try to hide it from the future.

An evil person finds it, that person is dying and is happy to see the world go with it, so colludes with the future to try to find the algorithm and piece it together. An organisation (Tenet) is formed to fight it and try to save their present. The real risk to that organisation isn't that bullets go backwards, it's that if you have a perosn who can reverse time, they can seem to anticipate every move you make by waiting until you've made it and then going back through time to interfere (or send that information backwards). That's the "temporal pincer manoeuvre" that's used against them in the car heist scene.

The problem Tenet has is that anything you do in the past can be anticipated by the future, so they hide information from themselves and each other, and why there are so many reveals throughout the movie as our main character learns another piece of information previously hidden from him. That comes to a head in the epilogue, where he realises that not just a specific action (like the car heist, or the final assault on the algorithm's storage) is a temporal pincer manoeuvre, but in fact the entire film is one, where his future self acting in the knowledge of all that has happened before has created an organisation to guide his naive past self into the actions that will counteract the future and secure victory.

I am not arguing that that actually holds up to any scrutiny. But I do think the motives and actions as presented in the movie make sense on the surface, and I think that the premise of "We are in a cold war against the future, who can know everything about us and we know so little about" is a fun setup and the reverse time effects look great. It is best enjoyed as a dumb movie that presents as much more complicated than it actually is, which is why Nolan is the greatest director of blockbuster movies for teens who get straight A's and think they're better than the people around them for that (me 20 years ago when I first fell in love with them)

 

[Mr_Danger]

Christopher Nolan would have written that post backwards, had it narrated by Michael Caine and loudly scored by Hans Zimmer.