OVP: Picture (2021)

 OVP: Best Picture (2021)

The Nominees Were...

Laura Berwick, Kenneth Branagh, Becca Kovacik, & Tamar Thomas, Belfast

Philippe Rousselet, Fabrice Gianfermi, & Patrick Wachsberger, CODA

Adam McKay & Kevin Messick, Don't Look Up

Teruhisa Yamamoto, Drive My Car

Mary Parent, Denis Villeneuve, & Cale Boyter, Dune

Tim White, Trevor White, & Will Smith, King Richard

Sara Murphy, Adam Somner, & Paul Thomas Anderson, Licorice Pizza

Guillermo del Toro, J. Miles Dale, & Bradley Cooper, Nightmare Alley

Jane Campion, Tanya Seghatchian, Emile Sherman, Iain Canning, & Roger Frappier, The Power of the Dog

Steven Spielberg & Kristie Macosko Krieger, West Side Story

My Thoughts: We are officially finishing off 2021, the year that brought back the "ten-wide" rule (thank the lord...it should be ten or five, not this floating number each year), and the year where movies returned to theaters.  We'll get to the My Oscar Ballot tomorrow (where I pick my nominees), but for today, we've talked about all of the films for weeks (links to all past contests below)-let's crown a winner!

Dune is a movie that plays as a half of a film.  This isn't the first time this has happened (Empire Strikes Back and Back to the Future II come to mind), but even in a world where sequels are inevitable, I don't know that I love that it's not a complete vision, as it's hard to gage without seeing the second half.  That's really the only complaint I have about an otherwise magical film.  The effects, cinematography, and writing are all top drawer, playing with visual space onscreen by showing grandeur against a limitless nothingness on the planet of Arrakis, and featuring solid turns from Rebecca Ferguson & Charlotte Rampling.

Speaking of movies that feel incomplete, we have King Richard.  This has a solid lead performance from Will Smith, but it's too glossy for me.  This happens when you have portrayals of real-life figures, especially when those real-life figures still have a lot of power to shape their narrative (the Williams sisters are not signing off on a movie that makes their dad look bad).  As a result, you get an unrealistic look at a man who the film insists is always right, and late in the film tries to give you some of the complications of his parenting without actually articulating them.  The tennis scenes are well-edited & timed, but the film itself can't claim the same.

Licorice Pizza was marred in some critical debates by conversations about its content...largely from young critics who don't really understand that movies aren't supposed to be literal reflections of life.  The film itself is meant to be a suspension-of-reality, and it pays off.  We get Anderson's most cinematic movie yet, a dreamy look at the coming-of-age narrative, with terrific performances from Cooper Hoffman (very much doing his dad proud) and a star-is-born turn by rocker Alana Haim.  Throw in fun cameos by Bradley Cooper & Harriet Sansom Harris, and you've got yet another "W" in the PTA column.

The Power of the Dog is a slow-burn enigmatic tale that never stops surprising the audience.  That lack of expectation & the way that we don't know what's next is really a testament to Campion's ability, decades into her career, to come up with one of her best movies to date (have to clarify with "one of" when you made The Piano).  Benedict Cumberbatch's weird accent work and unusual delivery is somehow the perfect fit for his Phil, an enthralling, dangerous man who knows the best way to make all of the people in his life (ably played by Kirsten Dunst, Kodi Smit-McPhee, & Jesse Plemons) on edge, and feeling like they have no way out.

Drive My Car got most of its press from its length and the shocking moment 40 minutes into the movie where they decided to start the credits, showing the audience they're in for the long haul.  But that's not a problem for the movie, whose in-depth story of grief & loss doesn't play as a dirge, but instead something you want to continue watching.  The movie overdoes it with the connections to Uncle Vanya and some of the side characters (specifically the owners of the theater company) feel a bit stilted, but overall it's a strong movie, and features a great lead performance from Hidetoshi Nishijima.

West Side Story is one of those remakes I insisted I didn't need...until I saw it and realized "this one gets a pass."  Of course Spielberg has possibly the greatest musical score of the 20th Century to play with, but he reinvents characters (Mike Faist comes out as a STAR in this), gives us unique takes on the film's original text (it isn't afraid to point out the racial politics at play that were underdone in the 1961 film), and during many of the musical numbers, you're reminded why he's one of the great filmmakers of all time (that scene at the dance!).  There are quibbles (the choreography is too repetitive, the cinematography feels a bit too heightened in some scenes), but overall this is Spielberg's best work in decades.

The films of Adam McKay have gotten increasingly off-track, and utterly ridiculous (giving a man an Oscar does not make him Quentin Tarantino).  That's more-than-true with Don't Look Up.  Listen, nothing in this film isn't true-the absurdity of the media, the inability of the political establishment to do anything about major issues without needing to be pushed to the brink...this is literally what is happening with climate change.  It's appropriately terrifying.  But it's broad as a barn, and with a call sheet that boasts five Oscar winners (not to mention Timothee Chalamet & Melanie Lynskey!), he does nothing with this godsend of a cast, making Mark Rylance & Meryl Streep give maybe the worst performances of their careers.  A sloppy, gross mess...that admittedly makes some decent points.

CODA is the sort of movie that if you take it out of the context of the Oscars, would age very well.  The movie is strong if formulaic, with a decent roster cast (best of the bunch is Daniel Durant as a sexy, sullen older brother caught in his sister's shadow), and it does what it is attempting to do well.  Simple is not always easy, and it plays at warmth & heart without feeling saccharine or like you're watching a third act speech on a 1990's sitcom.  Giving it the Oscar made it an easy target for potshots, but if we're being honest-it's a good movie, and better than a lot of its competition.

The same can be said for Belfast, a wonderful spin on the Cinema Paradiso trope that gains a lot of its strength through the casting department, as the entire team is working well here, particularly Jamie Dornan in the film that gets him out of his Grey doldrums and proves what a fine actor is underneath his chiseled-from-marble exterior.  In a different life, this would've been a feel good, word-of-mouth hit thanks to the way that it plays on the importance of family set amidst the tragedy of violence, and while it doesn't stick the ending...after a joyous ride it's hard to care that much.

The final nomination is for Nightmare Alley, arguably the big shocker of this slate, and like West Side Story, a remake I didn't really want but was happy to receive once it came on my doorstop.  Like WSS, the movie does things the original couldn't, particularly sticking to the original book ending (which I won't spoil here, but it's better than what we get in 1947), and playing with the nastiness of the darkest film noir of the Golden Age.  Bradley Cooper has never been better, and the ways the gothic cinematography play with space are super inventive.

Other Precursor Contenders: The Globes separate their categories into Drama and Musical/Comedy (and in 2021, they separated their awards from an audience given the HFPA boycotts), so you have The Power of the Dog taking Drama over Belfast, CODA, Dune, and King Richard, while Musical/Comedy went in the predictable direction of West Side Story against Cyrano, Don't Look Up, Licorice Pizza, and Tick Tick Boom.  PGA goes ten-wide, and picked CODA atop Oscar's lineup save for Drive My Car & Nightmare Alley which were replaced with Tick Tick Boom and Being the Ricardos.  And BAFTA is still five-wide so while they went with Power of the Dog as well, it was only over Belfast, Don't Look Up, Dune, & Licorice Pizza.  Eleventh place has to be Tick Tick Boom, given its precursor run, lead actor citation, & (most crucially) a nomination for editing with AMPAS.

Films I Would Have Nominated: You'll find out tomorrow!

Oscar’s Choice: In a victory that I predicted but still shocked, CODA took it over the more critically-acclaimed Power of the Dog (I also wonder if in future years we'll think about this as the year Dune lost in the way we think of Star Wars losing in 1977, depending on that franchise's legs).

My Choice: In a pretty solid field, Power of the Dog stands on top as the champion.  Jane's look at the western is too strong to ignore, and I'm not going to make the same mistake as Oscar.  Following it will be (in order) Dune, West Side Story, Licorice Pizza, CODA, Nightmare Alley, Belfast, Drive My Car, King Richard, and Don't Look Up.

And there you have it-another OVP in the books.  Are you joining me in Jane's uncomfortable western or do you want the heartwarming tale that Sian brought with CODA?  What film was most vulnerable to an attack from Tick Tick Boom?  And overall-what is your favorite movie of 2021?  Share your comments below!

Also in 2021: Director, Actress, Actor, Supporting Actress, Supporting Actor, Adapted Screenplay, Original Screenplay, International Feature Film, Animated Feature Film, Sound, Original Score, Original Song, Production Design, Cinematography, Costume, Film Editing, Visual Effects, Makeup & Hairstyling, Previously in 2021

Past Best Picture Contests: 2002, 2003, 2004, 2005, 2006, 2007, 2008, 2009, 2010, 2011, 2012, 2013, 2014, 2015, 2016, 2017, 2018, 2019, 2020

OVP: Director (2021)

OVP: Best Director (2021)

The Nominees Were...

Paul Thomas Anderson, Licorice Pizza

Kenneth Branagh, Belfast

Jane Campion, The Power of the Dog

Ryusuke Hamaguchi, Drive My Car

Steven Spielberg, West Side Story

My Thoughts: We are on the penultimate contest of the 2021 race, and, in a testament to the films of 2021, I'm still not tired of these movies yet.  Usually when I write these, I get kind of exhausted.  Especially in the past 15 years (which has been the bulk of our focus for the OVP), the Academy is so repetitive with their nominees (the same 8-10 movies in every category) that it's hard not to get bored.  But in 2021, they picked such a worthy vintage, as is evidenced by this fine crew of filmmakers, that I can't really get mad even if we've been to all of these places before.

The movie we have discussed the least of the bunch is Drive My Car, which is only on its third of four nominations (I anticipate we'll hit Best Picture & My Ballot in the next 48 hours to close out this season).  I have discussed this before, but I think that the film's steady hand and some of its risks with length really work.  It takes its time, especially with our two leads' journey, and while it short-changes the side characters, that feels more a fault of the writer than the director.  Hamaguchi's work here is measured and disciplined, and worth the payoff.

Jane Campion is one of those filmmakers that you breathe a sigh of relief when they win a directing Oscar, as you know she'd join Hitchcock, Kubrick, & Altman on the list of "embarrassing misses" for AMPAS.  That she won for such a wonderfully-controlled western is icing on the cake.  Power of the Dog is very much a product of its director.  She has to incorporate the vast wilderness (admittedly, not the American frontier it's implied to be, and it shows) of this world that swallows many of its characters without making the audience get too distracted.  It helps that she remains disciplined & focused on the four primary characters, her camera rarely moving off of them.  It's a triptych told as a quartet, and the direction is appropriately calculated.

Kenneth Branagh's Belfast is also quite controlled, and briefer than you'd expect for a biopic about a filmmaker who is not known for his brevity.  That choice to bounce & quickly give us snippets of his young life rather than drawn out treatises is so wise-the best asset Branagh has as a director is his cast, wonderfully brimming with chemistry.  I do feel like this film, more than any other cited by Oscar, is borrowing from previous films (you can't help but think the phrase "Cinema Paradiso" on repeat throughout this movie), and the way the film occasionally crosses into the present time feels unnecessary.  But I don't mind that too much, nor am I really torn up that the movie isn't darker (not all coming-of-age films need to be insanely depressing, even when they're about tough historical eras).

Steven Spielberg at once had the most difficult task of the five directors here, bringing to life the greatest musical score of the 20th Century (easy) while living in the shadow of one of the most beloved Best Picture winners of all-time (hard).  He almost completely succeeds, doing so by adding in just a little bit extra around side characters the first movie short-shifted (namely Riff & Valentina), and giving us inspired restaging of a number of the musical numbers.  Not all of them work ("America," in particular, feels like it's not up to the original, and the Jets choreography in the beginning is too repetitive), but when it dazzles (like the scene at the dance), you almost forget the Wise & Robbins outing.

Paul Thomas Anderson is (kind of) the only one of these five without an Oscar (it's so stupid they don't give the International Feature Film Oscar to a person instead of a country).  You know he'll get one eventually, though, and hopefully it'll be for a movie as good as Licorice Pizza, his most autobiographical film to date.  The decisions of the film are so smart-giving us a dreamy world largely in the perspective of Cooper Hoffman's charming leading man, the sort of story that plays not as reality but instead as a memory you think back upon as an adult.  The staging of some of the scenes (especially those with Bradley Cooper) are done for maximum comic effect-a really well-designed movie.

Other Precursor Contenders: The Globes went with Campion, here atop Branagh, Spielberg, Denis Villeneuve (Dune), & Maggie Gyllenhaal (The Lost Daughter...HFPA loves their celebrities!), while DGA picked a near carbon copy (including winner) of Oscar's lineup except they subbed out Hamaguchi in favor of Villeneuve.  BAFTA was doing its own thing in 2021, and that didn't stop with directing, with Campion winning against Anderson, Hamaguchi, Audrey Diwan (Happening), Julia Ducournau (Titane), & Aleem Khan (After Love).  In terms of sixth place, it was clearly Denis Villeneuve...this category was basically invented for big-scale epics like Dune, and it's wild he didn't get a nomination for it given Oscar has liked him in the past (and no, future Oscar historians, it wasn't CODA-all that buzz happened later).

Directors I Would Have Nominated: Yeah, I don't get the Villeneuve snub either-he'll make my ballot when I do it this weekend.
Oscar's Choice: You can always wonder whether Sian Heder might've taken this if she'd been cited, but without her, this was the one trophy that Power of the Dog took, and likely won in a landslide.

My Choice: Campion-she's on a different level, and makes the fewest mistakes.  There are no duds here, though, and I'd follow her with a solid Spielberg, Anderson, Hamaguchi, & Branagh.

Those were my thoughts-how about yours?  Are we all kind of on the same page that this was the right time to give an Oscar to Jane Campion?  Do we think the moment has passed for Spielberg to get a third directing trophy, or could it still happen?  And would Sian Heder have been a real threat here had she snuck in through the Hamaguchi slot?  Share your thoughts in the comments!

Also in 2021: Actress, Actor, Supporting Actress, Supporting Actor, Adapted Screenplay, Original Screenplay, International Feature Film, Animated Feature Film, Sound, Original Score, Original Song, Production Design, Cinematography, Costume, Film Editing, Visual Effects, Makeup & Hairstyling, Previously in 2021

Past Best Director Contests: 2002, 2003, 2004, 2005, 2006, 2007, 2008, 2009, 2010, 2011, 2012, 2013, 2014, 2015, 2016, 2017, 2018, 2019, 2020

OVP: Original Screenplay (2021)

OVP: Best Original Screenplay (2021)

The Nominees Were...

Kenneth Branagh, Belfast

Adam McKay & David Sirota, Don't Look Up

Zach Baylin, King Richard

Paul Thomas Anderson, Licorice Pizza

Eskil Vogt & Joachim Trier, The Worst Person in the World

My Thoughts: We move straight on into the writing categories today for our 2021 retrospective (links to all past articles below), with a Best Picture-heavy lineup from Oscar.  It does feel like we're in a weird holding pattern right now with the Academy where, because of the expanded Best Picture field, we have a plethora of both original & adapted screenplay contenders from that field.  In a different era, one of them was usually more unique, and quite frankly, didn't even lean that heavily into the Picture also-rans, truly bringing in new names.  But here we are, overloaded with top prize contenders and with one of the most widespread fields in terms of quality.

The one film I'm confident would've gotten into the five-wide field for AMPAS is Belfast.  I think one of the reasons that people didn't glom onto Belfast is that it takes a pretty weighty subject (the Troubles in Ireland) and makes it light, the story of a family (in this case, a semi-autobiographical tale of Kenneth Branagh's childhood), mirroring the mixed reactions to other films such as Life is Beautiful.  But I think it works.  Belfast is a heartwarming look at how humanity continues, even happiness continues, in the worst of situations, and how the bonds of family can endure.  That's not new territory, but it's well-executed in this drama.

This is not the case with King Richard.  The difference between the two is that Belfast is largely viewed through the lens of a child, so in that case a glossier view of his father, in particular, feels appropriate.  But while an adult audience can see the complexities (and mistakes) of Jamie Dornan's dad in Belfast, in King Richard, Richard Williams crosses the line from esteemed to deity, always being right about everything.  This would work if that was the point of the film-that Williams is a figure that continually fought against the system; it's not an interesting topic, but it could work in terms of narrative.  But the film also wants Williams' real-life struggles with fidelity and complicated relationships with his non-superstar daughters, including a big speech that comes out of nowhere from Aunjanue Ellis late in the film, without giving them proper time in the movie to complicate our leading man.  This is the problem with making films about living people (you have to cover up reality to get permission to make the picture), and in the process it makes for a poorly-structured, less interesting movie.

Licorice Pizza is our third film that has to deal with the juxtaposition of how we view the world as a child versus as an adult.  There were some people on Film Twitter who foolishly compared this film to condoning inappropriate relationships between the adult Alana Haim & (in the film, but not in real life) the teenage Cooper Hoffman.  In reality, it's clearly meant to be a nostalgia, the way that Hoffman idolized this woman who is also trying to find her own way in the world, and it's clearly meant to be a cinematic blend of fantasy & reality, the things we think are real as teenagers but understand as we get older were not.  The way that Anderson does that, seamlessly bringing together a coming-of-age story (complete with a celebrity cameo!) is fascinating, and some of his more ingenious onscreen work.

The Worst Person in the World also finds a way to look at aging in a challenging way, here looking at the struggle of our twenties with the realities that come when we are entering middle age, and understanding that mortality is creeping up on us.  The film's structure, occasionally showing innocuous or even heartbreaking stories to piece together a relationship (and in one case, a life), and show the unfairness of existence (and how we don't get to have guarantees) is at once hopeful and tear-inducing.  The film has a totally unnecessary narration that takes us out or underlines points that the film crafts so beautifully, and if I had my way I'd have chopped that entirely from the picture, but otherwise this is a miracle of a screenplay.

Our final nominee is Don't Look Up, which I dislike more and more the longer I sit with it (this is true of all of Adam McKay's films, which play better when you're experiencing them than when you have time to think about them).  The movie does not shy away from skewering modern life (somehow this was written BEFORE the Covid pandemic, despite displaying that moment's loss of sanity accurately), and it is uncomfortable but not without grounding.  But when you get beyond the social satire, it doesn't work.  The characters are too thin, the ending too disjointed, and the resolutions too predictable.

Other Precursor Contenders: The Globes combine adapted and original into one category, but in 2021 they almost entirely went with original choices (only one adapted), with Belfast winning atop other original screenplays like Licorice Pizza, Don't Look Up, and Being the Ricardos.  The WGA went with Don't Look Up, here over Being the Ricardos, King Richard, The French Dispatch, and Licorice Pizza, while BAFTA had something of an upset as Licorice Pizza took it over the more locally-sourced Belfast (along with Being the Ricardos, King Richard, and Don't Look Up).  Sometimes when you see a precursor dominating film you are wrong to assume it was in sixth (buzz can peak early for a film that ends up having no chance with Oscar), but here I don't think it's the case-it's weird that Aaron Sorkin didn't make it for a film with three acting nods, and Being the Ricardos was a just miss.

Films I Would Have Nominated: 2021 would've been a good time for the writing branch to remember that, just because an animated movie doesn't have Best Picture heat doesn't mean that you can't put it in for writing (they do that with live-action films all-the-time, after all).  Either Encanto or Luca would've been a great choice in a relatively thin year for original screenplays.

Oscar’s Choice: Clearly a tight race between Belfast, Don't Look Up, and Licorice Pizza, but Kenneth Branagh's lack of an Oscar over thirty years since his first nomination made it easier to award given the film's clear "labor of love" approach.

My Choice: I'm going to side with Licorice Pizza in a close race against Worst Person in the World, with the narration in the latter film costing it the trophy.  Behind them are Belfast, King Richard, and Don't Look Up, in that order.

Those are my thoughts-what about you?  Are you partial to the family strife of Belfast, or do you want to join me in the cinematic haziness of Licorice Pizza?  Now that Branagh has an Oscar, what's it going to take to get Paul Thomas Anderson a trophy?  And anyone have a theory how Aaron Sorkin missed here when Kidman, Bardem, & Simmons all made the cut?  Share your thoughts below!

Also in 2021: International Feature Film, Animated Feature Film, Sound, Original Score, Original Song, Production Design, Cinematography, Costume, Film Editing, Visual Effects, Makeup & Hairstyling, Previously in 2021

Past Best Original Screenplay Contests: 2002, 2003, 2004, 2005, 2006, 2007, 2008, 2009, 2010, 2011, 2012, 2013, 2014, 2015, 2016, 2017, 2018, 2019, 2020

OVP: Belfast (2021)

Film: Belfast (2021)

Stars: Jude Hill, Caitriona Balfe, Jamie Dornan, Judi Dench, Ciarin Hinds

Director: Kenneth Branagh

Oscar History: 7 nominations/1 win (Best Picture, Director, Supporting Actor-Ciarin Hinds, Supporting Actress-Judi Dench, Original Screenplay*, Sound, Original Song-"Down to Joy")

Snap Judgment Ranking: 4/5 stars

A loyal reader of the blog recently asked "are you not doing reviews of 2021 movies anymore on the blog?" which was a good wakeup call to me that I was getting a bit behind in my 2021 film reviews. Admittedly, if you're following me on Letterboxd (and you should!) you might know some of my brief opinions of this week's movies, but all of this week, starting yesterday with Power of the Dog and headed into Friday, we'll be getting a different 2021 film as we move straight into not only December, but the heart of Oscar season.  It makes sense for us to catchup first with one of the movies that has the best chance of not only getting that "Oscar-nominated" stamp, but a picture that feels like it could be one of the threats for the win in a race that's (at least right now, the precursors will surely soon ruin it) a contender for taking the top prize for Best Picture: Belfast.

(Spoilers Ahead) The film is about a young boy named Buddy (Hill), who lives in Belfast in 1969 during the height of the Troubles.  He alternates between spending his time with his parents, primarily his mother Ma (Balfe), as his father Pa (Dornan) is away much of the time for work, and doting on his grandparents Granny (Dench) and Pop (Hinds).  Buddy has the fascinations of a young boy, and as this is semi-autobiographical to director Kenneth Branagh, a lot of those fascinations float toward the cinema, where he feels most at-home.  The film takes on a bit of a Cinema Paradiso vibe as a result (that's a compliment from me-I love that movie despite it having some detractors due to the schmaltz), but Branagh also takes time to view the complexities of Ma & Pa's marriage, under strain from Pa's commitment to nonviolence with his Catholic neighbors, and the sadness of Pop's deteriorating health (it doesn't take a spoiler alert to let you know that not all of the adults are making it out of this one alive).

This sounds like a bit of a downer of a film, but Belfast is hardly that.  Despite its heavy subject matter, it's pretty lightweight stuff, and while it never pays lip service to the tragedies happening around young Buddy (this is not a case where you're going to feel offended that Branagh's film is spending too much time at the cinema and not enough time on the atrocities occurring around him), it is a feel-good picture with a largely happy ending for most involved, with Pa & Ma giving young Buddy a chance that he likely wouldn't have hung onto in Belfast.

This is what makes the movie successful for me (I was a fan).  Branagh's alternating between black-and-white and color feels a tad gimmicky at times (it looks good, but I thought it felt a little bit hokey), but he strikes gold with a solid cast.  Young Hill is good as our eyes into the world, but it's the adults in the cast that stood out for me.  Hinds & Dench, longtime veterans of the screen, play well off of each other, each getting their own moments to lean into their weathered personalities.  Balfe's harried mother feels appropriately heartbreaking, trying to decide between staying in the place she always pictured herself, or moving on to a new world where she might give her family a better chance.  Best of all is Jamie Dornan.  Freed of the heavy-handed storytelling of Christian Grey, he plays his Pa as a man thrust into responsibilities that he might not have been ready for.  Dornan better than anyone finds the balance of the film, alternating between the weighty subject matter and the lightness (it helps that he & Balfe get a perfect little musical moment late in the film that had the audience in my theater visibly smiling).  It's hard to tell which of this quartet will get Oscar nominations (none are assured, though it's possible all could happen), but all bring their A-Game to a breezy, successful film.

OVP: Tenet (2020)

Film: Tenet (2020)
Stars: John David Washington, Robert Pattinson, Elizabeth Debicki, Dimple Kapadia, Aaron Taylor-Johnson, Michael Caine, Kenneth Branagh
Director: Christopher Nolan
Oscar History: 2 nominations/1 win (Best Production Design, Visual Effects*)
Snap Judgment Ranking: 3/5 stars

Well, after six months (and literally 169 movies caught at home) I have finally seen a movie in theaters since the start of quarantine...well, sort of.  I am still debating, but am probably getting close to the point where I will want to see films in theaters again, even if I time it so I'm going on a day that is less trafficked (and will be pickier about what I catch in a stadium), but for Tenet I lucked out.  A drive-in movie (80 minutes from my house, so appreciate the devotion) was showing this and so I drove all the way and watched this for the first time from my car (I'd never done a drive-in movie).  While I loved getting back into theater mode and enjoying a movie on the big-screen, I will admit that I enjoy traditional theaters better (there's something more immersive than sitting in your car, where it's easier to grab your phone or let your thoughts wander).  Still, even if I'd been forced to watch Tenet with subtitles, I sincerely doubt that stretches of Christopher Nolan's stunning-but-convoluted new epic would've made complete sense.

(Spoilers Ahead) Tenet has a lot of plot, some of which doesn't make sense upon first viewing, and the characters don't all have names but I'll attempt to ground for a discussion.  We have the Protagonist (Washington, who doesn't warrant a real name apparently), who in the opening scenes is in a Russian opera house trying to deactivate a bomb, and in the process is nearly shot by a bullet that "un-fires" and after he grabs a strange artifact, and eats a cyanide pill in order to stop himself from giving secrets to his captors.  It turns out this is a test, and that he is being recruited into a secret organization, partnered with Neil (Pattinson), and together they have to essentially stop Andrei Sator (Branagh), a man who has the ability to commune with the future.  Soon Neil & the Protagonist are communicating with the past, moving back using a weapon to correct or change the past; aided by Sator's wife Kat (Debicki), they eventually stop Sator from destroying the world with a dead man's switch, and in the end it is revealed that Neil has known the Protagonist for some time...and was in fact hired by him, as we learn the operation (Tenet) was the Protagonist's in the future, and he is the actual mastermind behind the Tenet operation.

The movie sounds awesome (with all of the complimentary & pejorative associations of that word), and it is.  The fight scenes early on in the movie, especially the car chase sequence, is well-constructed & impressive, and Nolan knows how to open a movie (the opera attack is thrilling, and a good reminder as to why we should be rooting for movie theaters to work-as this will never play as well on a small screen).  The acting is mixed, with Pattinson taking best-in-show.  Debicki is a brilliant actress, but kind of gets sidelined with the "grieving wife/mother" role that is such a Nolan cliche, and I don't know if Washington is quite up to the movie star caliber that you need to play this part (this is unfair because his dad is one of the great stars, but man it would've been cool to see a young Denzel in this role).

The problems are the same, though, that you'd expect from most Nolan films.  His movies always have the same four issues: bad parts for women, expository plotting, strange sound mixing, and a sloppy final half hour.  All of these are here in Tenet.  We already mentioned Debicki's underwritten part, but the plotting is worse.  The film requires a lot of dialogue explaining the complicated theories in Tenet, a sign, perhaps, that Nolan didn't quite know how to handle even the logistics of a time travel movie (he fell into a similar hole with Interstellar, though I liked Tenet better than that picture).  When you have to have your characters explain every complicated move you watch, it's proof you aren't nailing down the logistics of your film.  This affects the final act of the movie the most, with multiple, repetitive action sequences (it's hard to tell entirely what Robert Pattinson's Neil is doing during this it gets so convoluted), and even an obvious payoff (it's clear that the Protagonist is going to be the mastermind from the first art heist), doesn't feel satisfying we've detoured so much.

Nothing, though, compares to how bad the sound mixing was (I toyed with a 2-star rating just as punishment for this, but decided the movie is too good for that).  Seriously-Nolan's hatred of his own dialogue is bizarre.  There are scenes in the movie where the explosions or action are so loud you wish that the theater had subtitles, and it takes away from the movie because you don't understand what the (helmet-wearing) Aaron Taylor-Johnson & John David Washington are even saying.  This particularly becomes bad in the final thirty minutes, and that's a problem because if you're going to have high-concept detailing in your movie, you've gotta let us hear the explanations & emotions.  I looked past this with Dunkirk because of the hyper-realism (also because other than some spots with the dialogue, this feels like a home run), but this was a serious issue with Interstellar and Tenet it gets worse.  Someone needs to take Nolan aside and just let Willie Burton do his damn job please, because his films are too rare & too visually intriguing to be ruined by something so fixable.

OVP: Dunkirk (2017)

Film: Dunkirk (2017)
Stars: Fionn Whitehead, Tom Glynn-Carney, Jack Lowden, Harry Styles, Kenneth Branagh, Cillian Murphy, Mark Rylance, Tom Hardy
Director: Christopher Nolan
Oscar History: 8 nominations/3 wins (Best Picture, Director, Film Editing*, Cinematography, Score, Production Design, Sound Mixing*, Sound Editing*)
Snap Judgment Ranking: 4/5 stars

I’m still stuck in that airport when this is being penned (I’m hoping that I get a lot of articles at least out of this attempt to ward off sleep), so we’ll continue on into what was one of the best moments I had in a movie theater this year, even if I still find the pictures of Christopher Nolan to have their own set of problems.  Thankfully Dunkirk didn’t have the irrational fanboy nature of his past pictures (or perhaps I just missed it), so I don’t go into this with the same sort of need-to-make-a-point that I did for something like Interstellar.  Dunkirk, Nolan’s attempt to go into more grownup affairs (you can see the way that he mimics Spielberg in this regard, trying desperately to get the Oscar that he clearly wants but so far hasn’t been able to land with his genre work), succeeds as an expansive look at war, even if it occasionally falters in his quest to make it an anonymous series of moments, making war an entirely universal experience.

(Spoilers Ahead) The film centers around the actions on the beach at Dunkirk, when during World War II over the series of a scant few days hundreds of thousands of soldiers were evacuated from the beaches of Dunkirk at great peril (they were essentially sitting ducks at the time for the Germans, and with them was the last hope of the British people and all of Europe).  Despite being one of the most storied moments of World War II (a favorite cinematic subject), it’s never really been done in a “definitive” way until now, so Nolan has chosen well, and uses a triptych of land, sea, and air stories to tell the story, frequently mixing virtual unknowns (like Fionn Whitehead) alongside more famous figures such as Tom Hardy, Mark Rylance, and in his film debut, Harry Styles.

The movie’s most unique attribute, and the one that really sells it as an atypical war movie, is the way that it uses very little dialogue or even much identity to establish these plotlines.  Very few characters have openly-stated names in the movie, and we don’t get any really strong character growth.  Normally this would be a fault, but it’s the picture’s secret weapon.  Nolan makes his steady direction, the hyper-realistic cinematography (I saw this on 70mm, and genuinely felt like I could become seasick during select scenes, where the claustrophobia of war’s physical spaces are filmed in staggering realism).  Nolan gains from making his shots expansive and wide-you get a sense of the scale of such an evacuation, with tens of thousands of men littered like sitting ducks along the shores, their only hope of home waiting in a line, or taking matters into their own hands.

The movie, when it veers away from this anonymity, doesn’t succeed.  Scenes late in the film, particularly the way that Harry Styles’ character is treated as a xenophobe when the bullets fly, ring false (it’s worth noting that Styles is actually quite good in the movie, even if he’s saddled with a character that the script can’t handle-I hope he continues acting as he has a naturalism that his boy band brother Justin Timberlake couldn’t remotely approach).  I also felt like the climax of the picture doesn’t succeed, as we’re meant to underline Tom Hardy’s silent flight to the beach, likely to be captured, but the emotional ring of this moment is hollow as we don’t know anything about him other than he’s Tom Hardy (and in yet another role where his gorgeous face is covered by a mask), and I feel like Nolan had a deeper connection with this character when he was writing the script than came across in the picture.

Still, these are small quibbles over one of the better films I’ve caught this year.  Nolan’s script continues to be his weakness (I wish that he’d just storyboard and leave the actual writing to someone else), but his direction remains as capable as sure as ever, even without Science Fiction or comic books as source material.  Dunkirk is movie magic that feels like it’s of a bygone era, something we’d expect more in Thanksgiving than ever in the Summer.  Note to Spielberg, Scott, or Cameron-please when you go “serious” continue to challenge yourself creatively like Nolan does here.