Film TENET

I was recently listening to a podcast where they review films going through them almost scene by scene and it reminded just how much of a turd this film was. I wasn't a fan of Dunkirk either but I can at least see what he was trying to do and see some merit to it, but this... bloody hell.

Really weird one to re-release from his catalogue, it's not like it's developed a cult following or antyhing anyway.
 
I think Tenet was a great cinema experience, but I already watched it multiple times in IMAX. I would much rather see either Inception or Interstellar in IMAX.
 
I enjoyed it. Not sure if enough to go back and watch in cinema again though :nervous:
 
Rooney in Paris said:
I was recently listening to a podcast where they review films going through them almost scene by scene and it reminded just how much of a turd this film was. I wasn't a fan of Dunkirk either but I can at least see what he was trying to do and see some merit to it, but this... bloody hell.

Really weird one to re-release from his catalogue, it's not like it's developed a cult following or antyhing anyway.
Click to expand...
I think the logic is that a lot of people missed out due to it being released during peak COVID in September 2020, when the reality is probably that people stayed away due to the middling reviews.
 
I didn't like Tenet at all. Probably his only movie in the big screen (and I've pretty much seen all of them on IMAX since Batman Begins) that I was desperately waiting for to end.
 
Mr Pigeon said:
No need to thank me.

In an opera house in foreign land the CIA are sent, with the help of some local assets, to find another CIA who has been compromised. This CIA guy has part of the deus ex machina that somehow destroys the planet, but it's best not to ask questions. The whole thing goes wrong when the local assets turn out to be bad guys and are looking for the deus ex machina, which is now missing because it's best not to ask questions.

Denzel Washington's son, who seems to have had a lobotomy since Blackkklansman, wakes up on a boat because his death pill wasn't real and now he works for a group called Tenet. He gets shown a hand signal and code word that gets used twice in the upcoming ten minutes and then never used again because it's best not to ask questions. He meets a sparkly vampire who surprises everyone who only knows him as the sparkly vampire from the sparkly vampire movies because it turns out that he's not actually, as we were led to believe since the sparkly vampire days, a massive whiny cnut. They find an arm's dealer who tells Lobotomy Washington to find some nuclear material and give it to the guy who is the boss of the folk who betrayed him in foreign land. They decide to get to him by using the very tall blonde woman who, based on every role I've ever seen her in and because Nolan has never understood what woman are, will now be called Denzel in Distress because it's a pun and I'm fecking amazing at puns. She also has nice pins which also autcorrects as puns on my phone but I'm not sure why I'm telling you that.

So they go to a place where the picture that is being used to blackmail Denzel in Distress is and Denzel's son - feck it this will be too confusing I need another name for her tall blonde woman who always needs saving from a man. They don't get the photo even though that was why they went there and instead find a machine that you go in one side and come out of the other, even though it's made patently clear later on that the process to do this is different than what transcribes in the fight scene, but it's best not to ask questions.

They finally meet the bad guy, who turns out to be that actor that is in lots of stuff but you never remember because he has the appearance and acting ability of a shoe with a speech bubble beside that says "I'm very angry raaarrrr". They then mess up a driving lesson and end up giving the bad guy the final piece of his Deus ex machina and now he's going to destroy the world and the woman who needs to be saved all the time gets shot so they have to go backwards in time so she can be healed which will take about a week and then they need to bring her back to forward time so they decide to go back to the place where the picture is and use the machine again but this is when we discover that Lobotomy Man is fighting himself, which we already knew because Nolan as a writer has all the subtetly of a foil wrapper in a microwave, and then they fight and escape and then get back into the forward universe it's very badly filmed and difficult to keep track of its best not to ask questions.

Then they have to stop Evil Werthers Originals Man From destroying the world using the same pincer movement he used against them, where half his team to through an event backwards and relay intel to the ones going forwards, and so they land in his hometown where they fight......nothing as far as I saw. But they fire their guns and blow up a building twice for no reason other than because it looked cool as feck. Then sparkly vampire sacrifices himself so Washington can save the world and they all leave happily ever after. Oh, and the woman who always needs saving gets her redemption arc in the only way Nolan thinks woman can which is by fecking up the entire plan and almost destroying the world because she gets emotional and kills her husband.

Then Neil says "I'm going to go back in time and get shot in the head now, bye bye" and Washington doesn't say anything that a human would remotely respond with as their parting words because Nolan was raised in a test tube and his only interaction with humans is his brother who is equally weird.

The film finishes off with some thing about how the events in the movie happened without anyone knowing about it which is exactly how I wish this film had been in general. Then you realise that Neil must have somehow saved Washington at the opera House as well which means he must have gone back and forth in those entropy machines for ages and I keep asking why they didn't just end the film with a set piece in the opera House to go full circle but it's best not to ask questions fecking hell this film was shite.
Click to expand...
Came in to this thread just for this post. Awful movie, 5 star post.
 
For real feeling, you need to watch it on VHS with real rewind button experience. Nolan missed the trick by not publishing it on VHS.
 
This movie sounds so uninteresting and tedious I haven’t got around to seeing it. Someday I probably will but just can’t be bothered atm.
 
amolbhatia50k said:
This movie sounds so uninteresting and tedious I haven’t got around to seeing it. Someday I probably will but just can’t be bothered atm.
Click to expand...
It’s bad. The main actor can’t act and swallows all his dialogue. He looks as comfortable on camera as a dog wearing a sweater, or a dog being made to walk on its hind legs. Part of the problem is every scene up to the halfway point is truncated by aggressive editing, getting out of every scene early with no transition. It feels like a montage the first 30 or so minutes, and then it eases up a little and some scenes actually play out to a "normal" length. You don’t care about anybody or anything they’re talking about. Then every time they advance the plot, they jump around to new locations while someone is talking so you can’t tell if it’s a memory or a jump forward in time, which might be the point, but it makes viewing a chore.

There are no scene transitions either. At one point Washington and Neil are hatching a plan, W says they need at least 4 vehicles faster than they look, one has to be a fire truck, and it all has to be cash . They cut to Neil, then back to W and it’s already happened. Can’t tell if this is supposed to be part of the time inversion theme or just wacky editing. Like, there is no visual cue that weeks have passed.

Seeing Michael Caine reminds the viewer what acting is supposed to be, or at least what a naturalistic style is, someone who looks comfortable on camera. JD Washington has zero of daddy’s charisma, and most of his scenes he delivers his lines like he's reading them from cue cards just off camera. Robert Pattinson sounds like a douchebag with his English (normal?) accent. There was absolutely not a shred of heat between Washington and the long-necked woman (Kat?), but I think you’re supposed to believe Washington is willing to botch the mission to save the world so he can save her — but she shows zero interest in him. There’s actually more unrequited passion between Washington and Pattinson. Casting was shite. I wonder if Cillian or Leo or Bale or some of the other Chris Nolan Players were supposed to be in this?

I bet if you were a glutton for punishment and watched this thing 5 or 6 times it would suddenly burst open dramatically and all make sense. Instead, it’s almost impossible to tell where they are, why they are going to these far flung locales (India, Ukraine, Estonia et al.), or even when they are going anywhere. Everything happens by instantaneous teleportation.

I put this on last night for my daughter, and she was laughing in so many places it made we wonder if this thing was a comedy. At one point, the giraffe woman is laying there on a gurney, needing to go through a "turnstile" to invert time, and daughter says, "why is she still here? What is she doing in this part of the movie? Go home!"

What is the plot? There is a device that resembles a cam shaft out of a diesel motor, and it can dissemble into 9 pieces that are each held by the 9 countries with nuclear weapons. The cam shaft is a physical manifestation of an algorithm that reverses the flow of time. I think they explain that Kenneth Branagh touched some radioactive material as a teenager and discovered anything that came into contact with it moves backwards through time. "Inverted time". Why? Who knows. Who cares. It goes from interesting to laugh out loud stupid with regularity. Seeing him "catch" bullets with a gun (instead of firing them) is among the silliest things in a movie crammed full of silly things. Second silliest is snow falling because something exploded (because negative heat entropy).

Part of the appeal must have been the sleight of hand and camera tricks to make half the action play in reverse in the same frame as normal motion action. Mapping out the effects must have been a real headache. I wonder if it was supposed to be mind blowing? It’s not. Mostly it just makes no fecking sense whatsoever. The Protagonist is a super CIA agent brought into this conspiracy, the gnarliest secret ever, exponentially more dangerous than the Manhattan Project, and then we see about 100 run of the mill army grunts taking part in a battle where half their opponents are doing everything in reverse, and all 100 of them are never going to talk about their mission.

And Kenneth Branagh does another ridiculously shitty accent.

3/10
 
Last edited:
The funny thing is it’s not actually that confusing, Nolan just makes it confusing by insisting on explaining everything all the time in a really flat and boring way (with unhelpfully inaudible sound) so the audience never has any chance to relax and intuit what’s going on by just enjoying it and/or being invested like in a normal film. You’re constantly trying to digest the last mega-load of dull exposition as the film moves on to another scene where it gives you even more.

It’s literally like someone shouting a plot synopsis at you underwater. You just fecking tune out.
 
Last edited:
Wing Attack Plan R said:
It’s bad. The main actor can’t act and swallows all his dialogue. He looks as comfortable on camera as a dog wearing a sweater, or a dog being made to walk on its hind legs. Part of the problem is every scene up to the halfway point is truncated by aggressive editing, getting out of every scene early with no transition. It feels like a montage the first 30 or so minutes, and then it eases up a little and some scenes actually play out to a "normal" length. You don’t care about anybody or anything they’re talking about. Then every time they advance the plot, they jump around to new locations while someone is talking so you can’t tell if it’s a memory or a jump forward in time, which might be the point, but it makes viewing a chore.

There are no scene transitions either. At one point Washington and Neil are hatching a plan, W says they need at least 4 vehicles faster than they look, one has to be a fire truck, and it all has to be cash . They cut to Neil, then back to W and it’s already happened. Can’t tell if this is supposed to be part of the time inversion theme or just wacky editing. Like, there is no visual cue that weeks have passed.

Seeing Michael Caine reminds the viewer what acting is supposed to be, or at least what a naturalistic style is, someone who looks comfortable on camera. JD Washington has zero of daddy’s charisma, and most of his scenes he delivers his lines like he's reading them from cue cards just off camera. Robert Pattinson sounds like a douchebag with his English (normal?) accent. There was absolutely not a shred of heat between Washington and the long-necked woman (Kat?), but I think you’re supposed to believe Washington is willing to botch the mission to save the world so he can save her — but she shows zero interest in him. There’s actually more unrequited passion between Washington and Pattinson. Casting was shite. I wonder if Cillian or Leo or Bale or some of the other Chris Nolan Players were supposed to be in this?

I bet if you were a glutton for punishment and watched this thing 5 or 6 times it would suddenly burst open dramatically and all make sense. Instead, it’s almost impossible to tell where they are, why they are going to these far flung locales (India, Ukraine, Estonia et al.), or even when they are going anywhere. Everything happens by instantaneous teleportation.

I put this on last night for my daughter, and she was laughing in so many places it made we wonder if this thing was a comedy. At one point, the giraffe woman is laying there on a gurney, needing to go through a "turnstile" to invert time, and daughter says, "why is she still here? What is she doing in this part of the movie? Go home!"

What is the plot? There is a device that resembles a cam shaft out of a diesel motor, and it can dissemble into 9 pieces that are each held by the 9 countries with nuclear weapons. The cam shaft is a physical manifestation of an algorithm that reverses the flow of time. I think they explain that Kenneth Branagh touched some radioactive material as a teenager and discovered anything that came into contact with it moves backwards through time. "Inverted time". Why? Who knows. Who cares. It goes from interesting to laugh out loud stupid with regularity. Seeing him "catch" bullets with a gun (instead of firing them) is among the silliest things in a movie crammed full of silly things. Second silliest is snow falling because something exploded (because negative heat entropy).

Part of the appeal must have been the sleight of hand and camera tricks to make half the action play in reverse in the same frame as normal motion action. Mapping out the effects must have been a real headache. I wonder if it was supposed to be mind blowing? It’s not. Mostly it just makes no fecking sense whatsoever. The Protagonist is a super CIA agent brought into this conspiracy, the gnarliest secret ever, exponentially more dangerous than the Manhattan Project, and then we see about 100 run of the mill army grunts taking part in a battle where half their opponents are doing everything in reverse, and all 100 of them are never going to talk about their mission.

And Kenneth Branagh does another ridiculously shitty accent.

3/10
Click to expand...
:lol:
 
You must log in or register to reply here.