The Odyssey (2026)

Score: 5 / 5

How do you tell a new version of one of the oldest stories in the Western world? You start by telling a story about stories. I was a little nervous at first that Christopher Nolan would pull some of his usual shtick again and mess up the timeline of his own film, but then I remembered that The Odyssey itself isn't really linear. Of course there's no reason not to start in medias res, and in this case it makes perfect sense with Nolan's oeuvre. But the truth is that if you're consuming the foundational epic for its plot, you've already missed the mark. Sure, the whole dang thing is arguably "about" its plot, but what makes it really compelling is its sense of style, its complicated characters, its sense of pacing and propulsion despite its stretched timeline. 

Actually, Nolan's film feels at once like a wildly satisfying (and the first, which is crazy) adaptation of Homer's epic poem for a modern audience and one of the most riveting pieces of filmmaking this year. In a perhaps unobvious move, he starts us focused intently on Telemachus (reliable Tom Holland) and Penelope (a glorious Anne Hathaway), fending off a cadre of suitors feasting and whoring in the king's hall in Ithaca. These scenes take place near the end of the story, chronologically, as Odysseus has been missing for ten years. That's in addition to the ten years he was away from home for the Trojan War. He barely knows his own son, and Penelope is nearing the end of her rope. Or, rather, tapestry, which she cleverly uses (and unravels) to keep the wolfish suitors (led by a sniveling Robert Pattinson) at bay. These scenes, occasionally sprinkled in between flashback episodes of Odysseus's adventure, are filmed like a bleak political thriller, ending in a climactic banquet hall battle that, truly, took my breath away with its sheer barbarism and spectacle.

The bulk of the film -- though, as I say, arguably not its focus -- concerns the titular journey of its hero, told in lengthy flashback sequences. He's on an island with Calypso (Charlize Theron, wasted in the bit part but always a commanding and welcome presence on screen), eating lotus flowers (in a curious but effective change to the source material), suddenly trying to remember why he's there and for how long he's been stuck in a somewhat limbo-esque beachside paradise. He's seeing visions of his past in Troy, wallowing with his army for years outside the city gates until he designs and creates a massive wooden horse; this bit takes several scenes, including a particularly gross montage of the men hiding inside with their piss and shit and dead comrades, getting dragged and flipped around as they're brought into the city (again, not part of the original story, nor from The Iliad). He's also seeing the goddess Athena (Zendaya), though he doesn't always seem sure if it's really her, or a dream, or just his own imagination. All this is to say that his mind is fractured, and so is our approach to his story, a highly effective means of granting us emotional access to these characters and their plight as we, too, attempt to figure out what's happening.

Even a graduate-level familiarity with the material won't save you from at least wondering once or twice, "Gosh, I don't remember that part" or "Wait, who is that again?" That's because Nolan's vision isn't a straightforward adaptation so much as it is a thesis project, combining other sources (like Virgil) along with Homer to deliver a story that's familiar but fresh at the same time. He's uniting stories rather than corrupting them. At its heart, it's very much the story we want to see; in his grip, though, Nolan's story takes on new and important themes paired with some of the most arresting and thrilling visuals we've ever seen from an epic. Not because it's bombastic and loaded with CGI, but because most of it is filmed in seemingly natural light and with practical effects. Perhaps the only scene clearly done with CGI is the encounter with Scylla and Charybdis, and while I didn't love those designs, they worked fine enough. But the Cyclops, the Laestrygonians, the sirens, Circe's animals, and all the "big ticket" creatures and visuals are apparently practical. It's gobsmacking.

Yet for all the spectacle -- even the frustrating moments -- Nolan cares more about the effect of these things on his characters than about our experience of them. He makes it a profoundly human story, grappling with weighty themes of fate and purpose; he makes us wonder about our own lives, our glorious intentions, our miserable failures, our great shames and hopes, inviting us to think about the story of our own lives through the warping lens of memory, regret, and uncertainty. With all these ideas whirling around our minds, it might be easy to say the nearly three-hour runtime is a slog, but it isn't. The simplicity of these proceedings keeps us grounded, compelling us to continue experiencing rather than drifting away. The experience, though, is exhausting, and more than once during the film I had to stretch and breathe deeply, just to attempt to revive my endurance.

Despite the hullabaloo online about this film -- perhaps hypocritically, I'm becoming increasingly convinced to leave social media, if only to avoid people complaining loudly about things they neither understand nor care to -- and as a student of the classics, I had no significant qualms with this film's depiction of history or characters (or the cast, for that matter). Everyone is playing at the top of their games, including Benny Safdie, Elliot Page, Lupita Nyong'o in brilliant double roles, Himesh Patel, and even John Leguizamo. Samantha Morton plays such a terrifying Circe that I nearly choked on my own saliva (and, again, her scene features some of the nastiest and most inventive practical effects I've ever seen on film). The costumes are exquisite, especially Agamemnon's helmet. Ludwig Goransson's score is transportive, utilizing ancient instruments to evoke a unique sonic palette. Sure, some of the dialogue can be off-putting (the repeated use of "dad" in Telemachus's mouth is grating), but any complaints about accents, etc., are little more than stupid hot air from people who have clearly never thought critically about any film.

And we haven't even discussed the analog filmmaking, the brutally physical shoot, Nolan's use of brand new technology for IMAX film cameras, or even Matt Damon's performance as the complicated protagonist. There will be college courses based around this film for the sheer amount of material to be covered. While I'd have liked a few changes, having now seen the film twice (specifically, more cleverness and agency and violence from Penelope, more comeuppance for Mia Goth's character, a better visual on the sirens, less obsession with genre lingo like "Zeus's law," and slightly more elevated dialogue a la The Lord of the Rings), I'm so thrilled that this is what we have. Seeing this on the biggest screen possible and with the best sound system will change you; there were moments of such intense passion from the subwoofers that my seat was vibrating like in a 4D movie. Most importantly, Nolan expects us to both do our homework, denying us the pleasures of modern blockbusters and forcing us to catch up with him in a story that feels almost suspiciously anti-AI and anti-summary. These are complex ideas and characters, and we're meant to approach them with appropriate nuance and thoughtfulness. Harryhausen films and their ilk are fabulous and personal favorites, but Nolan is giving us something brand new. Which is saying a lot when he specifically references such things, including a shot from the original Clash of the Titans (1981) involving Athena's statue's head broken off and tumbling down steps. It's a single shot, and I let out a half-strangled moan and laugh combined that probably unnerved people sitting around me. They should be so fortunate to understand the craft at work here. All hail!

Oppenheimer (2023)

Score: 4.5 / 5

The American Prometheus, referring of course to the mythic titan who stole fire from the gods and gave it to humanity, is J. Robert Oppenheimer, the infamous physicist who developed the atomic bomb. This title isn't just about his invention or its valuable and dangerous fallout (so to speak); it also refers to his politically and existentially tortured life afterward. Christopher Nolan's newest film, for him unusual as a biopic, is a cerebral character study of one of the most interesting and consequential figures in human history. Taking place over three hours we're treated to a dual storyline, again one of Nolan's trademarks, here emphasizing two very different ways to destroy the world.

The first plotline, filmed in color, is subtitled "Fission," referring to the splitting of an atom's nucleus (and the means by which Hiroshima and Nagasaki were destroyed). It dramatizes Oppenheimer's life on his way to his "great deed," from his times in various European universities to his PhD in the '20s and '30s, from his dabblings in communism to his marriage to Kitty (Emily Blunt) and his affair with Jean Tatlock (Florence Pugh), and of course his appointment to lead the top secret Manhattan Project in Los Alamos, circa 1942. It's the lead up to this last that makes up the driving force of the film, as even the score indicates a ticking clock toward doomsday. When General Leslie Groves (Matt Damon) verifies that Oppenheimer is not, in fact, communist, he's put in charge of the race to beat the Nazis in creating the first atomic bomb. The race is personal for Oppenheimer, who was Jewish, and he has fears of what Heisenberg may be developing; contracting his own scientists, he moves them and their families to a secret location with their families, building a town around them to keep everything close and tight-lipped.

Filmed in IMAX by the magnificent Hoyte van Hoytema, the location of this town is beautifully constructed against the beautiful scenery of New Mexico's deserts. It's a bit chilling, too, knowing what will happen to parts of the world in the wake of atomic disasters. The filmmakers here seem intent on impressing that contrast to the audience, often interjecting images of curling flames, flying debris, and sparkling explosions between images of Oppenheimer's intense, tortured face. His life, as brought to award-worthy performance by Cillian Murphy, seems a similarly tortured landscape, occasionally flaring with personal faults of impulsive pride and lustful greed. He's a Greek tragic hero, often dissociating from the hullabaloo of his life to think about his own fantasies of physics, sex, and impending doom. One wonders what it would be like to change the course of world history by creating the thing that could annihilate us all; Murphy delivers that.

The second plotline, in black and white, is subtitled "Fusion," a process by which two nuclei are combined and releases far more catastrophic energy than fission. This part of the film doesn't make as much sense for a while, as we follow Lewis Strauss (Robert Downey Jr.) trying to get approved by the Senate as commerce secretary in the '50s. He's being held up and though he doesn't know why, he strongly suspects it's due to the influence of his old rival, Oppenheimer. The physicist, haunted by the hell of Nagasaki and Hiroshima, had urged President Truman (Gary Oldman) to restrict increased nuclear weapon development, which Truman dismissed as weak. We learn, through flashbacks (if that word is even applicable amidst all the time jumps here), that as an advisor to the Atomic Energy Commission headed by Strauss, Oppenheimer advocated against additional nuclear research that would lead to the creation of a hydrogen bomb. Strauss resented Oppenheimer for this and other perceived slights, and so proceeded to assassinate Oppenheimer's reputation and credibility during the latter's security hearing in 1954, resulting in neutralizing his influence on security as well as policy. The McCarthy-era fervor is brought to full flavor in these scenes, though thankfully Strauss gets his comeuppance eventually, primarily at the hands of testifier David Hill (Rami Malek), who publicly reveals the personal grudge match.

It's a fascinating way to frame the title character's life, and one that remarkably humanizes both the character and the director, Nolan being a prime case of director who notoriously leeches his films of sentiment or "humanity." This is his Amadeus, if you will, in which "great" men collapse under the weight of their own prides, jealousies, and pettiness. Add in, if you will, other personal faults hinted at but never really fleshed out by the film, including his adultery and Kitty's suffering and alcoholism, and Nolan is really going for gold here; that said, this film only strengthened my annoyance that Nolan is incapable of writing well-rounded female characters or of directing female actors (Pugh and Blunt are among the best, and they are wildly unsupported here in garishly archetypal roles that only use their bodies and emotions to function). It's a shame, because Kitty has a few lines that reveal her sharply tactical sense of logic, and some of Oppenheimer's worst choices would have been avoided had he listened.

On a similarly personal note, I found it dismaying that the film callously avoids direct reckoning with the bombings that effectively ended World War II. The arguments for and against the use of those bombs are voiced, briefly, but little to no consideration of the historical reality of those arguments is provided. Was Japan too determined to quit, or were they on their knees at that point in the conflict? The film espouses neither perspective, choosing instead a maddeningly cryptic approach that makes us, like Oppenheimer, get a bit paranoid. Leave it to Nolan to give us a puzzle box rather than a coherent story. It's this that, while feeling very much like the filmmaker, reminded me of several other auteurs; I've never considered Nolan as anything but himself, but this film repeatedly reminded me of Terrence Malick (especially in editorial style), Oliver Stone (especially in the hearing scenes, and with Oldman, Blunt, and Downey's almost camp performances), and of course Stanley Kubrick in its bleak sense of humor (a la Dr. Strangelove and when, notably, government officials debate over which Japanese cities to bomb). 

Like it or not, enjoy it or not, this is a masterful and galvanizing film, one that perhaps best exemplifies the best (and worst) tendencies of its profoundly complex creator. Never has Nolan so seemingly identified with his own subject, and never has his own theoretical interests meshed so flawlessly with those of the story he tells. Some of the best critical writing this year will be about this film, how its relentless editing matches some obscure physicist's understanding of human psyche, radiation fallout, or cosmic structure. Because ultimately that's the puzzling game Nolan plays, and frankly I don't much care for that level of masturbatory cleverness. What I love about this movie is its old-school approach to acting and melodrama, its deep understanding of the boundaries between personal and collective identity (and trauma), and its respect for the audience, along with its characters, to decide for ourselves the significance of these potentially world-shattering events and, worse, ideas.

Tenet (2020)

 Score: 3 / 5

There can be no denying that Christopher Nolan is a unique voice in the industry. For better or worse, he saved the Warner Bros./DC partnership and has revitalized cinematic noir for the twenty-first century. It's impossible to watch one of his movies and not instantly recognize his aesthetic, but his latest ultra-high-budget outing is a nearly perfect microcosm of a case study, showcasing why his visions are brilliant and often utterly inaccessible.

We begin with a SWAT siege on an opera house in Kiev. During the concert performance, our unnamed Protagonist (as identified in the credits) rescues an exposed spy and retrieves a bizarre-looking artifact. He is saved by a mysterious soldier before he is captured and tortured; after biting into his cyanide pill, he is resuscitated to learn that the pill was a fake, the mission was a test, and he passed. It really doesn't make much sense at this point, but it makes for a pulse-pounding opening sequence. Unfortunately, the movie makes less sense from here on.

The Protagonist, played by a beautifully dressed and skillfully underperformed John David Washington, is basically a stand-in for what we might imagine 007 to look and sound like under Nolan's directorial control. Suave and stoic, he infiltrates, races, fights, and of course shoots in his impeccably tailored suits. He travels around the world form Kiev to Mumbai, Tallinn to Oslo, meeting with powerful oligarchs and arms dealers while following his lead: a single word, "Tenet." He learns the shadowy organization has developed technology to reverse entropy, essentially "inverting" seemingly spontaneous, kinetic objects to travel backward through time.

Much like Nolan's last foray into theoretical physics, Interstellar, this movie manages to impress us with its Big Ideas but utterly fails to convey the science involved. Unlike that film, though, at least Tenet can boast of plenty of exciting action between the messily contrived, exposition-heavy scenes of dialogue. But for a movie that runs 150 minutes, you'd think Nolan could have included a concise, simplified description of just what the hell is happening. While the science of inverted movement is bizarre enough -- I mean, entropy itself is insanely complex -- Nolan further complicates it by allowing humans to invert themselves in time, and suddenly we have a particularly bizarre version of time travel in what is otherwise an already twisty spy thriller. He's basically showing off his dubious understanding of theoretical physics (he consulted with the same physicist on Interstellar) but in such a way that he doesn't let us in on his masturbatory fantasies. In fact, he lets one of his characters early on -- a scientist, no less, played by Clemence Poesy in a single scene -- tell the Protagonist, "Don't try to understand it; feel it." It's really a shame Nolan didn't take that advice, either.

The Protagonist learns that a Russian oligarch named Andrei Sator (played by a deliciously wicked Kenneth Branagh, doing his best Bond villain impression) supplies the inverted bullets that started this whole mess, and he attempts to infiltrate through Sator's wife. The art dealer Kat, played by a cool Elizabeth Debicki, is unfortunately as underwritten as she is transparent, and is easily the weakest element of the movie (again, a common criticism of Nolan's work, this one of female roles). In a truly mind-numbing series of dialogue, we learn that she is being blackmailed by the husband she loathes for selling him a forged painting. Instead of giving her a character, the movie gives Kat a son, whom Sator dangles as incentive for her to not simply leave. The Protagonist seemingly cares for Kat and his attempts to help rescue her result in a parallel plot that often intersects with the espionage/heist mess.

To discuss the plot any further will surely confuse me, so I'll leave that to the hordes of YouTube "explainers" who get off on that sort of thing. My takeaway here is that the plot often makes just enough sense if you just let it take you along for the ride, but the more I try to understand the physics the worse my comprehension fails me. This is Inception on steroids; at least that film had a fairly simply vertical structure of levels of artificial dreams. This film is a web of time-travel like we've never seen before and hopefully will never see again, draped in Nolan's slick style and carried along by a series of fabulously realized action scenes. Of course, many of these are also commonly criticized in his flicks, which boast high concept themes but rely heavily on car chases, heists, and hallway combat to entertain. There's really not much that's groundbreaking in those, despite his fans' loudest praises.

And, frankly, the film might make more sense upon a repeat viewing. Specifically one in which I can use closed captions. Ludwig Goransson's hypnotic, pulsing, drone of a score may be effective, but it is also deafeningly loud. The sound editing, too, often drowns out the voices of the cast in key scenes -- I'm thinking of the characters behind their breathing masks a la Bane (in The Dark Knight Rises) or Kenneth Branagh whispering into a walkie-talkie during the climax. Some might call this technique immersive, but struggling to hear took me out of the moment in ways that were, at that point, irreversible. An immersive experience like Dunkirk this most certainly is not.

Finally, and just because this is the kind of thing I'm interested in, I became aware of attempts at palindrome in the script in ways that I'm desperate to hear Nolan discuss. Not only is the back-and-forth visual dynamic key in the film -- in ways that sometimes occur in the same scene, or are visited later in the same scene from a different perspective -- but specific names reminded me of the Sator square, which the credits confirmed for me with the spelling of the villain's name:
SATOR
AREPO
TENET
OPERA
ROTAS

I would love to know what the square means for Nolan, and if it helped serve as his inspiration. Actually, I'd just like to know what the hell this movie means to him, generally, because I'm just at a loss. You could discuss the briefly-mentioned impetus for the plot as climate change; you could discuss the problematic female lead; you could discuss the thematic implications of inverted time. Even the basic plot is sure to spark some bewildered after-screening discussion; my group stood in the parking lot and some fairly basic plot points were topics of some contention and consternation. Ultimately, there is too much going on in this movie to really make any concrete sense of, well, anything. Which is fine, for some viewers.

This viewer preferred to enjoy the vibrant chemistry between Washington and Robert Pattinson, and their incredible habiliments that were never less than impeccably ironed. My God. 

Dunkirk (2017)

Score: 5 / 5

Who knew Oscar season would start so early? July it may be, but Dunkirk is unquestionably one of the best movies we'll see this year. Shall we begin nomination guesses? Best picture, director, cinematography, sound mixing and editing, screenplay, score, and maybe editing and production design. If it sounds like a lot, it should: This movie is also Christopher Nolan's masterpiece, something I didn't expect after the middling Interstellar.

Hailed by some as the greatest war film ever -- a claim I'd readily argue against -- Dunkirk recounts the awesome drama of the Dunkirk evacuation in France, 1940. Told in three parts that recount the events by sea, by air, and by land, the film weaves its way through time and space with amazing clarity. Ever the auteur, Nolan's command of this picture is absolute, eyeballing the spectacle with 70 mm film and immersing us in the horror from the opening sequence. Immerse, I say, because despite the film's non-linear narrative and wide scope, he places us in the thick of each dramatic twist with intimate visual and aural sensation. Though I didn't see it in IMAX, I would recommend that option, if only to really experience Nolan's vision.

Though certainly the vision alone is enough to make the movie great, Nolan has some other surprises up his sleeve. He cuts away the tropes and trappings of war films to unveil a relatively new subgenre. I thought this was going to be a wartime psychodrama, like The Hurt Locker or Apocalypse Now, but it's more an experiential war movie, one that forces us into its world before letting us emerge changed. Like Zero Dark Thirty or Fury, this picture narrows its scope enough that we can't see everything, we don't know everything, and so we're sitting on the edge of our seat while we absorb the violence, the fear, and the pain. Though, with our three vantage points of trooper, pilot, and sailor, we get more information than in those other examples, we're kept invested by the tight editing and compelling score, ticking away at our nerves like a timebomb waiting to explode.

And explode it does, though not conventionally. Nolan masterfully manipulates events so that our emotional reaction is similar to that of the characters. We aren't on the outside, feeling pity or sympathy; we feel isolated, fearful, and vulnerable too. The notices of imminent doom fluttering down on the town at the beginning are disturbing enough; the fighter planes start swooping overhead and firing at random made me flinch more than once; and when a band of boys find themselves in a grounded ship's hull while enemy troops are using it as target practice, it was all I could do not to scream. Which is exactly the problem for the characters. It's an exercise in intensity, one that makes the most of a mere 106-minute screen time. When the yachts and fishing boats come sailing in to save the day, it's the lone, glorious moment of sentiment in the whole picture, all the more rare because it actually works. I'd compare it to a similar scene in Australia, when the boat filled with children sails through the smoking harbor of Darwin to prove the Japanese soldiers did not win the day.

There's so much more to say about Dunkirk, but let's leave it there for now. It's an amazing film. I'm going again this week and probably will still have trouble being too objective. Do yourself a favor and go see it on the biggest screen available.

IMDb: Dunkirk

Interstellar (2014)

Score: 3 / 5

It feels important. It feels sometimes dreamlike. It feels like Oscar-bait. Christopher Nolan's newest, much-anticipated cosmic drama was, frankly, a disappointment to me. But it is also quite beautiful, and in unexpected ways.

Typical of Nolan's work, Interstellar makes you think while it awes you with great visuals. Its fanciful appeal keeps the lengthy running time (almost three hours) not quite unbearable. Though not as explicitly dazzling as the special-effects-heavy Oscar winners of the last two years (2013's Gravity, 2012's Life of Pi), Interstellar features truly amazing effects and visual art. Perhaps my attention was most captured by the practical appearance of those effects. I've not read much about the making of the film, but it seems to me that more of the effects were tricks of science and photography, rather than straight computer generation. That's a really interesting choice for a space adventure, and one that keeps it fresh and absorbing.

But the emotional substance of the film falls short of its visuals. Nolan and his brother Jonathan intriguingly wrote the film with an emphasis on human (especially family) drama rather than wild space exploration and adventure. But I think they failed at balancing what might be a moving family drama and what could have been a riveting sci-fi excursion. The film is only occasionally "exciting" in the typical sense of the word, and though a lot of the characters cry most of the time it's never cathartic; this film may tug at your heartstrings, but you can also feel the heavy hand that plucks 'em. Though the dialogue has its moments -- often heightened and abstract -- there are only so many times I want to hear Michael Caine recite the same verse. In fact, I think the most emotional connection I made to the film was through the lovely score by Hans Zimmer.

The acting is really solid, fortunately. Matthew McConaughey gives a powerhouse lead performance that will surely garner some award nominations. Jessica Chastain and Anne Hathaway tag-team as his strongest supporting castmates, and Hathaway especially delivers in a crucial monologue about the essence of love, about halfway through the film. These dynamic ladies, though, are featured with lots of close-ups of alternating crying and anger; they are giving great strength, but Nolan's direction sometimes works against them. Other actors Wes Bentley, Michael Caine, Matt Damon, John Lithgow, and Ellen Burstyn are all fine, though their roles are all quite brief.

I really liked the first hour of the movie, and the second hour only a little less. The family drama is a little too familiar, but paired with this cast and the high-stakes science, it's no less engaging. Not all of Nolan's dramatic choices work as well as he obviously wanted them to, and frankly I was annoyed and shocked by all the sizeable plot holes in the picture. Nolan usually knits up his plots with incredible detail, so this felt quite uncharacteristic. But in the third hour (or at least the third act, as I wasn't really keeping time), I just checked out. I don't want to spoil anything, but the already out-of-this-world film gets aggressively weird, and I just couldn't take it any more. It felt wildly contrived and forced, and Nolan's already sentimental approach controlled the last half hour so much that I was giggling at the melodrama. That, I guess, is not the response we're supposed to have.

IMDb: Interstellar