CS Film Club II

Trying to find a few minutes to write some thoughts on Tenet but I really enjoyed it. More to come.

Tenet

So here we are, me and Chris together again for the first time since Dunkirk.  Where to even begin?  I know my reputation here over the years has been that of someone who despises Chris Nolan and while I've done my part to contribute to that inflated image it's really not true.  Do I have issues with some of his creative quirks? Sure and I've launched into those before, but in no sense do I consider him to be a bad filmmaker.  Tenet was the first Nolan movie I missed out on in theaters since The Prestige but that was because of the pandemic along with having a very pregnant wife and 2 year old kid, not because I had any aversion to the movie itself.  The covid/wife combo didn't exactly lend itself to letting a guy duck out for three hours to do much of anything let alone seeing a sci-fi action movie and by the time I got back into my regular movie-viewing groove there was more than enough I had to catch up on.  I guess the main reason I hadn't gotten around to seeing Tenet until now is because I heard some pretty tepid opinions on it so I wasn't exactly rushing to give it a spin.  Maybe it's because I approached it with that mindset that I ended up really enjoying the movie even though there are still some logical gaps that I'm not quite sure the movie is able to thoroughly jump.

I won't go into the synopsis as I'm sure most everyone on these boards has seen the movie by now.  My overall opinion is kind of all over the place, much like this movie.  When it comes to all the ins and outs of the method of time travel the movie presents, I think I got it.  I'm sure it would make more sense on a rewatch but who knows when exactly I'll be able to watch it again. The technical logic that Robert Pattinson presents comes at you hard and fast and you aren't really given much of a chance to digest it or comprehend whether what they're doing makes sense or has any purpose however you're quickly launched into the next act of the movie which all contain their own heist or seige sequence.  It's sometimes easy to predict where the movie is going to take you but the reveals do make sense and work rather smoothly.  The action sequences are also done well and it helps that the beats feel structured.  It very much carries Inception vibes in that there are effective and well done sequences contained within an overarching, mind-bending narrative.  I read that Nolan spent years working on this movie and I assume that there's some sort of stable logic between being inverted and not and all the things it entails (seeing your reflection, air being unbreathable, temperatures being flipped) and while the film seems to gloss over some of the explanation, sometimes at its own expense, it doesn't necessarily hurt the story that's going on in front of you.  I'd say the one thing that stuck out at me was Kenneth Branagh's motivation being so thin that it's almost nonsensical to the point of being a 70s Bond villain, almost as if he's destroying the world for the sake of destroying the world, but it didn't stop the movie dead in its tracks.  I'm curious as to how it would hold up on a rewatch, whether I would like it more or if it would come off as more plain and losing luster like Inception did, but for a first watch I had a very fun time.

A- so says Doomsday

Of course you'd add a minus to that A. Typical Nolan-hating Doomsday.

in

I'm game.

I'm in.

Let's do this.  For any previous reviews that aren't in yet, I'm going to run over a dog on the street for every day they aren't posted.

Round 228
Dracula - IanTheCool
Nilade - Doomsday
PhantomKnight - PG Cooper

Let's have the due date be March 31st unless everyone can get a review in beforehand, then we can start earlier.  Let's start earlier.

I was hoping you would say that.  Say goodnight, Cujo.

Nilade:

LA Confidential
Ace In The Hole
Apocalypto
Letters from Iwo Jima
The Man Who Would Be King

I'll probably do Underwater

For you

Ball of Fire
Beyond the Infinite Two Minutes
Cyrano
Fire of Love
The League of Gentlemen (1960)
Stowaway

I think I'll go with Drugstore Cowboy.

Boudu Saved from Drowning (1932)

Boudu Saved from Drowning is a French satire from master French satirist Jean Renoir. As with his later The Rules of the Game, Renoir takes aim at the wealthy, in this case their hypocrisies and strict social customs. The premise here is that a rich Parisian family, who preach the values of charity and generosity, witness the homeless Boudu throw himself into a river and save him from drowning. Not just that though, the family take Boudu into their own home and commit to reforming the poor and unkempt fellow into a proper middleclass gentleman.

It's not hard to imagine a "The Blind Side-esque" version of this story, where the generosity and refinement of the wealthy create prosperity for the hapless hobo, even the least dignified and most impoverished person transformed by bourgeois values and etiquette. Renoir did not make that movie. Instead, Boudu brings an anarchic spirit to the household, defying the valued social customs the family try to instill, lusting after the maid, and just generally (and literally!) spitting on the foundations on which these rich people live. Crucially though, Michel Simon's performance is mischievous rather than malicious, his undoing of the home played as comedy. Watched in 2023, I didn't find the film that laugh-out-loud funny, but I did find it consistently amusing, especially at certain moments. The film also demonstrates just how skilled Renoir was as a filmmaker. 1932 is still pretty early in the sound era, but there's an ease and a grace by which Renoir incorporates sound into the film. That ending is also pitch-perfect too. Renoir would certainly make grander films (literally again!) but Boudu demonstrates a similar care for the craft and is also a very fun watch.

A-


Good recommendation Doomsday. Also topped my Top 5 vlog on Patreon.