Tenet (2020)

There are certain movies that are difficult to wrap your head around.  I knew Tenet would be like that going into it.  It’s 2½ hours, which is intimidating enough.  But to know that there are people and objects that are temporally inverted adds a whole new level of things to keep track of.

The lead character, known simply as The Protagonist, starts by trying to extract someone from an opera house.  He gets caught up in something much more complicated.  The first hint of this is bullets that can be fired backwards so that they go in to a gun.  There are other items that ostensibly come from the future, which would imply that people can go backwards, as well.  Also, what happened to cause this?  Was there some sort of war?  How was all of this set up?  What’s the end game?

I’m not going to go into the details of the plot, mostly because I can’t remember most of them.  It was that complicated.  I will say that I found a lot of it confusing.  Yes, people can go backwards in time.  It’s tricky and they have to bring inverted oxygen with them.  To give you an example of what I mean, one character drives a normal car while inverted.  The car seems to go on once the character jumps out, but it’s not clear why.  I’m not sure if the car was inverted or if someone was driving the car before (or is it after?) the other character.

This is not a movie for people who don’t like complicated plots.  I like complicated plots and I think I was able to follow most of it, but I’m not sure.  The movie is heavy on the technical side without really making a lot of sense.  I think part of it is that you have to keep track of what’s going backwards and what’s not going backwards.

We get to see at least one big fight in both directions, which is something to watch.  The question is, though, what can be changed?  Could someone from the future do something different on the way back?  What would that even mean?

Stuff like the fight scene was cool, only because I grasped what was going on.  There were a few scenes that I didn’t understand and I felt like I was supposed to.  If you’re reading this and you’re confused by the movie, you’re not alone.  And this isn’t even something that could be explained in a few sentences.  I’d probably need to watch the movie again with notes to understand a lot of it.  This is one of the few times where I might have watched the movie again with a commentary track where someone was explaining it all.  (I’m good with details, but I’m sure there’s a lot that I missed.)

I wouldn’t recommend watching this with someone else who hasn’t seen it yet.  I was watching it with my parents and they had about as many questions as I did.  I had no answers for them.  Yes, it’s a confusing movie.  Now that the movie has been out for a while, I might look around for some explanations.

 

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All Is True (2018)

The title of the movie, All is True, is a bit ironic.  I always wonder how much of any biopic is actually true.  You imagine that some liberties are taken.  For instance, the English sounds modern.  Granted, this is done to make it more relatable.  No one wants to wade through a thick Elizabethan accent.  I’m just saying that most people watching this title probably aren’t expecting total accuracy.  (It would seem that the title of the movie comes from an alternate title for Shakespeare’s play, Henry VIII.)

I’m not exactly sure what prompted me to see this movie.  There are a lot of options at the theater right now.  Why this one?  Why not rent a movie or read a book?  There is a part of me that’s trying to branch out from the movies I know I’ll like.  One of the advantages of a subscription service is that the ticket is basically paid for.  Rather than waste a spot, I figured I might like the movie.

About ten minutes in, I started to regret that decision.  The movie deals with Shakespeare’s life from the end of his career to the end of his life.  The fact that the Globe Theater burned down stopped The Bard from writing any more.  So, he returns home to Stratford-upon-Avon, where his wife treats him as a guest.  That’s how long he’s been in London.  Yes, he sent money home to support his family, but he missed a lot, like his son’s funeral.

The movie is about this absence, as well as the loss of his son and not having a male heir.  Shakespeare is portrayed as being progressive, but this is still a time when money was passed down to men.  There are several lines about which daughter might control the estate.  (Susannah is married, but only has one child, a daughter.  Judith is unmarried, but might get married someday and have a son.)

Summer is known for being the season of blockbusters.  I found this one a little lackluster.  I have Men in Black: International and Terminator: Dark Fate to look forward to.  Both promise to be exciting.  I could see many high school students dragged to see this by their parents and subsequently falling asleep.  (The parents and the students, to be clear.)

I don’t know that anything would have been accomplished by having Michael Bay direct it, though.  This is something that probably will be viewed by those with an interest in Shakespeare.  The movie is disjointed at first, but does come together later on.  This isn’t to say that it’s going to be for everyone.  I think most people will be correct in assessing whether or not they want to see it.  If you think you wouldn’t like All is True, I think you’d probably be correct.

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Wild Wild West (1999)

When I was in middle school, we got a new principal.  I think the first interaction I had with her was her coming up and hugging me.  It was is if she were treating us like third graders.  It didn’t make much sense until we found out that she had been teaching at an elementary school the year before.  It took her some time to overcome force of habit.

I thought of that when I saw Wild Wild West.  It’s as if the writers were used to writing movies for small children and this was their first attempt at writing for adults.  Many of the scenarios seem intended for more for adult audiences, but the overall sense of the movie seems to be geared towards a less-sophisticated audience.  (I wouldn’t say it’s geared towards teenagers, but it’s close.)

The movie starts out with James West and Artemus Gordon both looking for one General McGrath.  He’s wanted for murder.  Gordon is inside a brothel dressed as a woman.  West arrives later, having chased a carriage filled with nitroglycerin.  (West, of course, stops the nitroglycerin from going over a cliff at the last moment.)  Arresting McGrath doesn’t go so well.  He escapes and the nitroglycerin is pushed into the building, starting a fire with both West and Gordon still in the building.

The next scene has Gordon and West meeting with President Ulysses S. Grant, both apparently unscathed.  Apparently, McGrath is part of a larger plot.  All anyone knows at the moment is that several top scientists have been kidnapped.  They pursue a lead to New Orleans; Dr. Arliss Loveless is hosting a party there.  In the mansion where the party is being held, West and Gordon find Rita Escobar.  She claims her father is one of the kidnapped scientists.

It turns out that Loveless is the one behind everything.  His plan is to get President Grant to hand over all of America’s land.  He’ll give back certain territories various parties, such as giving back the former colonies to Britain.  He’ll keep the northwest area of the United States for himself to rule over.  The only catch is that Grant won’t surrender.  What follows is a sort of cat-and-mouse game, eventually resulting in Loveless‘s defeat.

I’m not sure exactly where the movie fails.  Will Smith and Kevin Kline play West and Gordon, respectively.  I can’t put it on the acting, though.  The same goes for the directing.  Barry Sonnenfeld also directed the Men in Black movies, which I liked.

I think it has more to do with the writing.   Salma Hayek is given very little to do Rita Escobar other than stand there and look pretty.  She’s not even a McGuffin.  Her character probably could have been written out with very minor changes to the plot.  There are also a few scenes where West and Loveless talk to each other.  Instead of anything useful, the two just insult each other.  West makes jokes about Loveless not having legs and Loveless makes crude remarks about West’s race.  It’s not entirely out of character, but it’s also not entirely necessary or funny.  (On that note, there’s also an Asian character, who’s last name is East, which sets up an obligatory East-meets-West joke.)

I don’t really feel guilty about giving away some of the jokes, as I’m going to have to recommend skipping this movie.  Rather than worry what would happen if you saw it anyway, I’d rather explain why it’s something you’d want to miss out on.  I kind of wish I had been given that warning, myself.  The movie is billed as a comedy, but wasn’t really funny about it.  It felt like a lot of the jokes tried too hard or missed the mark.  I kept watching the movie thinking Salma Hayek could have done better.  Then it occurred to me that this applied to everything about the movie.  There are so many better movies out there.  You shouldn’t have a problem finding one.

IMDb page

Murder on the Orient Express (2017)

A few months ago, my mother found out about a program called Moviepass.  It allows you to watch movies, in a theater, for $9.95 per month.  It’s somewhat complicated and the details really aren’t important right now.  What’s important was that my parents and I all signed up last week.  Our first movie?  Murder on the Orient Express.  We needed something that we’d all agree on, which basically meant this or The Man Who Invented Christmas.

The movie is based on the Agatha Christie novel, as you might expect.  It starts with Hercule Poirot in Jerusalem solving a crime by proving it wasn’t any of the three main suspects.  He ends up on the Orient Express through a friend that works on the train.  It isn’t long before the train finds itself snowed in…and with a murder victim.

You’d think it would be easy.  The train is trapped between towns, making escape difficult.  It should just be a matter of figuring out who’s connected to the victim.  Well, it turns out that most of the other passengers had some connection to him.  You see, Edward Ratchett kidnapped a child who subsequently died.  If a suspect didn’t know the child, they at least knew someone who knew the child or the family.  What we get is a moderate procedural.  Poirot asks questions of the suspects and gathers clues.  At the end of the movie, he’s able to gather everyone together and work out the solution.

Having the movie on a train does make for cramped quarters.  Everyone has a room and a narrow hallway to pass each other.  This makes for the use of a few overhead shots.  There were also a few times where I noticed the use of a wide-angle lens.  (It tended to be evident as much with motion as it did with people sitting on the edge of the frame.)

The pacing seemed a little slow to me.  It’s not to say that it dragged at all, but there were times that I was wondering when the next bit of action was coming.  I don’t know that anything could have been cut.  It just seemed drawn out.  I think this has more to do with what I’m used to than anything else.  The accents tended to be more of a problem for me.  There were one or two scenes where subtitles might have helped, but it didn’t really stop me from following the movie.

I think this is one of those movies that most people will be able to judge for themselves whether or not they’ll like it.  Agatha Christie is well known, as are many of the actors.  There didn’t seem to be many surprises.  From what I’ve read, the movie follows the novel pretty closely with one or two exceptions.  I would say that if you do go to see the movie, it’s probably going to be either because you like Christie or you’re going to see it with a group, like I did.  Not being someone who’s read her work, I’d say that it’s middle of the road.  It’s enjoyable, but had it not been for Moviepass, I probably would have waited for this movie to become available on Netflix.

IMDb page

Dead Again (1991)

Wouldn’t it be great if you could get the details of a 40-year-old murder by talking to the victim?  Mike Church is about to stumble in to just such a case.  A woman finds her way to an orphanage run by Catholics.  She’s mute with the sole exception of screaming when she has nightmares.  Father Timothy won’t let the woman stay, but knows just the guy to handle it: Private Detective Mike Church.  Father Timothy lays on the guilt and Mike accepts.

Mike takes her back to his place for the time being and starts calling her Grace.  He has his friend, Peter, to run her picture in the newspaper along with his contact information.  An antiques dealer named Franklyn approaches him soon after, claiming to be an amateur hypnotist.  Mike says up front that he can’t pay, but Franklyn says he’ll do it in hopes that her loved ones might.  Under hypnosis, Grace recounts her life in the 1940s.  We see a couple, Roman and Margaret, who bear a striking resemblance to Mike and Grace.  (Mike and Roman are both played by Kenneth Branagh whereas Grace and Margaret are both played by Emma Thompson.)

Grace recounts the Roman and Margaret meeting through work.  She played in an orchestra and he was a guest conductor.  They eventually married and live in his house where he was working on an opera.  She was killed one day with him as the prime suspect.  It comes as no surprise that he was convicted, as this is revealed early in the movie.  (The movie starts with headlines to that effect.)

Mike wants a second opinion on the whole thing.  Past lives sound a little crazy to him, so he meets with Cozy Carlisle.  Cozy used to be a psychiatrist until he was caught sleeping with a patient.  He’s able to tell Mike that past lives are a real thing and that karma can be cruel.  What we do in our past lives can haunt us in the present one.  We may be doomed to forever suffer the consequences of our past misdeeds.

Since this is a thriller and the suspense is a good part of the movie, I’m not going to give you any of the twists and turns.  I will say that the buildup takes up a good part of the movie.  We spend a lot of time hearing the story of Margaret and Roman and their life together.  Even under hypnosis, Grace doesn’t remember her current identity; Peter finds her information late in the movie.

The movie does require suspension of disbelief.  We have a hypnotist that can send people back to past lives.  Even the psychiatrist believes; he cured a patient by finding a hundred-something-year-old trauma.  At least it doesn’t seem forced.  The movie is able to use it effectively.  I’ve always thought that using the same actors for the past lives was a bit odd.  Even if we accept reincarnation, what are the odds that you and your spouse will both look the same in the next life?  With only two reincarnated characters, it wasn’t really necessary.

It’s definitely a 1990s movie.  The tone and plot are about what you would find in other movies released around that time.  There were a few aspects that I thought were over the top, but it was overall a good movie.  Fans of Seinfeld will recognize Wayne Knight as Peter.  I instantly got a feeling that that Franklyn, played by Derek Jacobi, looked familiar,   Sure enough, he was Professor Yana on Doctor Who.   I was able to watch the movie when my parents rented it from Netflix.  I’m not sure I would have rented it myself, but it is something I might have watched streaming.  If you’re into the whole past-life murder-mystery thing, I’d say go for it.


IMDb page

Thor (2011)

Note:  This review was originally posted to my Epinions account.

I’ve been meaning to watch The Avengers, which is based on the Marvel Comics universe.  The problem is that it draws from other Marvel-universe-inspired movies, including Thor.  It’s not that I mind watching many of these movies.  I had already seen Iron Man and probably would have watched Iron Man 2 anyway.

In Thor, the main character is Thor, Norse God of Thunder.  He’s the son of Odin, King of the Asgard.  Thor is about to receive some more power, but the Frost Giants attack Asgard to get back a relic.  (Years ago, the Asgard took said relic from the Frost Giants causing them to become mortal enemies.)  Thor drives back the unexpected attack, but wants answers.  He goes to their home planet and upsets an uneasy truce, requiring Odin to save Thor.

As punishment, Thor is banished to Earth.  His hammer, Mjolnir, is sent to Earth, as well.  Thor is found by Jane Foster, who is doing research with Erik Selvig (her mentor) and Darcy (her assistant).  The hammer attracts the attention of locals at first, then the attention of S.H.I.E.L.D., who want to figure out what it is.  Thor finds that he is stripped of his powers; he has to live on Earth as a mortal.  This isn’t easy for someone who’s as arrogant as Thor.  Of course, that’s the point.  Thor has to learn humility.

As you might expect, not all is going well on the Asgard home world.  Thor’s brother, Loki, is living up to his reputation as a troublemaker.  When Odin falls into a coma, it becomes evident that Loki is up to no good.  With Thor on Earth, there’s no one to stop Loki from doing as he pleases.

I have to admit that half of my motivation for watching this movie was because I want to eventually see the Avengers.  The other half was curiosity.  I was sort of familiar with the Marvel comics and wanted to see how they would handle it as a movie.  (Yes, this is one of those movies where someone has to learn a lesson and does so at the last possible moment.)  It’s also fun watching someone’s take on mythology.

The CGI was great.  Asgard and the Frost-Giant planet both appear to be all CGI.  (At least, the exterior shots anyway.)  The story was a little weak.  It seemed mostly like it was setting up The Avengers movie.  There were two notable references to other movies in the Marvel Universe.  At one point, Eric Selvig talks of knowing someone who was researching gamma radiation.  In another scene, a giant robot lands on Earth.  Someone asks if it’s one of Stark’s, referring to Tony Stark.

This isn’t to say that the movie’s not entertaining.  I rented it from Redbox for free using a code from Checkpoints.  I don’t know that I would have wanted to see the movie in theaters, but it was still fun to watch at home when I wasn’t paying for it.  I’d say that if it comes on one of the premium movie channels or you can get it on demand, go for it.  (Also, as with the other movies, watch after the credits.)

You don’t really have to have seen any of the previously released movies to watch this movie, nor will watching it ruin the other movies, but you may miss a few references.  It’s also not a movie for small children.  I’d say it’s good for teens and up, mostly due to some violence.  All in all, not a bad movie. 

IMDb page