Film Review - Tenet (2020)

 

Tenet is written and directed by Christopher Nolan and stars John David Washington (son of Denzel) as the Protagonist who is assigned a mission to recover some dangerous weaponry from an arms dealer (Kenneth Branagh) but his only call mark is a word named Tenet, a word that could spell disaster for the world.

I was very keen to see Tenet as it’s a new Nolan film and I had an inkling as to the kind of time games Nolan was going to play with this time and I was keen to see how it would go but alas current events delayed its release in my home state of Victoria but I finally got the chance to go and see it and was it worth the wait.

 

Absolutely it was as I had a great time watching this movie for three key reasons:

 

- First is the sheer craft that Mr Nolan brings to this movie, he’s always been an ambitious filmmaker but unlike the Dark Knight Rises or Interstellar where that ambition got the better of him, this feels more like the ambition of his previous film Dunkirk where everything felt tightly wound like a ticking clock and the audience was given only what they needed to know and then thrown into a situation and they were able to then fill in the blanks for themselves, the visual effects work and the sound design are also great to watch and I feel for those who will not get to see this on a big cinema screen with a great sound system that doesn’t drown out the dialogue which has been the case with some viewers though I also fully understand as to why viewers wouldn’t feel comfortable going to a cinema right now given current events.

 

One thing I also loved was the music score by Mr Ludwig Goransson who delivers a fast paced musical score that really adds to the amazing visuals your watching on screen.

 

- Secondly a lot of the films performances are great, Mr Washington is every inch his fathers son and commands the screen with a calm charisma that acts as the perfect anchor point for all the crazy story points the film throws at you and at times you can really hear a young Denzel in his voice, Robert Pattinson is also a lot of fun and not only does he share great chemistry with Mr Washington but is someone I would put in the running to be a new James Bond one day as he would based off of this movie do a great job with that role.

 

- And lastly I really enjoyed the time gimmick Mr Nolan gives us in this movie though it made me think of a certain Red Dwarf episode a lot of the time that comparison is not a bad one in the slightest and because of it I was fully onboard with the tricks the film plays on you and at times I thought to myself “Its like that, yeesh.”

 

What doesn’t work sadly is Sir Ken Branagh’s performance as his accent is really silly to listen to after a while and as much as I love Elizabeth Debicki as an actress and I really do her character didn’t work as well for me and a lot of the time I didn’t really get on board all that much with her sideplot.

 

And so that was Tenet and this is a great 2 and a half hour ride by Mr Nolan that despite some character and accent missteps was one I really enjoyed and I am very keen to get back on this ride again soon, 4 and a half out of 5.

Film Review - Unhinged (2020)

 

Unhinged stars Russell Crowe as a Man who gets angry with a woman named Rachel (Caren Pistorius) after she doesn’t apologize to him for cutting him off during a traffic jam one day and this Man is a very angry man and he is determined to make Rachel pay for not apologizing to him in traffic.

 

Unhinged is good fun and that is really down to Mr Crowe’s great performance as the man at the centre of his story, though at times he reminded me a bit of John Goodman as they looked a bit similar, the movie works best when he is on screen and beating the smeg out of everyone he comes across and I had a big smile on my face during a lot of this movie because of it.

 

What doesn’t quite work as well is some of the films overall story points, at times the characters in this movie do some pretty silly things and I just sat there thinking “Don’t do that, oh man, oh well” or words to that effect but they didn’t bother me all that much in terms of denting my overall enjoyment of the film.

 

And so that was Unhinged and it was a fun thriller with a great turn by Mr Crowe anchoring it, 3 out of 5.

Film Review - Trial of the Chicago Seven (2020)

 

Trial of the Chicago Seven is a new Netflix film written and directed by Aaron Sorkin and concerns the trail of seven people in Chicago in 1968 regarding the events of that years Democratic National Convention but whether they believe it will be a fair trial Is a whole other question.

 

Trial of the Chicago Seven is well written by Mr Sorkin and well performed but as a movie I mainly thought it was perfectly fine if nothing spectacular for me but before I delve into that point I want to delve more into my first 2 points.

 

The first of those is Mr Sorkin’s script and like his other writing over the years be it The Social Network or the West Wing TV series or a Few Good Men it sticks in your head and you never feel bored when listening to his dialogue being performed.

 

And Mr Sorkin certainly has assembled a great cast of actors to perform that dialogue as you have Eddie Redmayne, Mark Rylance, Frank Langella, Sacha Baron Cohen and Joseph Gordon-Levitt among others and they all do very well in their roles Mr Redmaybe and Mr Cohen in particular are standouts in their roles given how mixed I’ve felt about their work prior to this movie.

 

But to come back to my last point about the movie being perfectly fine I think that would have to come down to Sorkin’s directing work, it isn’t bad per se but there are a lot of moments mainly in the editing where it feels scattershot in terms of following the events that led up to the trial and those that were left out to some extent and I wish someone like Rob Reiner had directed this movie instead as someone of his skill at making this kind of movie could’ve streamlined this a little bit and brought into a tighter and sharper focus and it might have been more memorable for me.

 

And so that was Trial of the Chicago Seven and it’s a perfectly fine movie, well made and well performed but it wasn’t one that really stood out for me all that much in a way that I want to recommend it widely, 3 out of 5.