Tag: Warner Bros

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Movie Reviews

The Conjuring: The Devil Made Me Do It

Warner Bros, 2021

The Conjuring series may very well be the best horror franchise chugging along today. Sure it has had its misfires, with The Nun and The Curse of la Llorona, but for everyone of those (which are still admittedly better than half the big studio garbage pumped out today) you get a true horror classic like Annabelle: Creation or the first two Conjuring films. It’s safe to say the franchise would not exist if it weren’t for one James Wan, the best working horror director today. His rising star may have prevented him from helming the third instalment in the mainline series –The Devil Made Me Do It – but that hasn’t stopped Warner Bros from surging ahead anyway, with la Llorona director Michael Chaves stepping into the directing shoes.

How does he do? Pretty damn well if you ask me. The Devil Made Me Do it never fully recovers from Wan’s absence, but Chaves wisely moves the story into new territory, centering on real-life demonologists Ed (Patrick Wilson) and Lorraine Warren (Vera Farmiga) as they not only battle unholy forces again but the judicial system, in a frantic race to find crucial evidence that will spare a possessed young man from a murder charge. It’s a story that is, perhaps to what some will consider its detriment, less focused on scares and more so on the relationship between Ed and Lorraine. This is Wilson and Farmiga’s fourth time playing these roles and they get better every time, with such a natural chemistry and believable love for each other that it is just impossible not to root for them against evil. By throwing new, very human hurdles at the Warrens (Ed is in constant fear of suffering a heart attack following an incident) Chaves plays on our fear of losing one or both of these characters to terrific effect. It isn’t so much scary as it is unbelievably tense at times, and you fully believe that the couple could perish at any minute despite their headlining status.

Warner Bros, 2021

Where the story falters is in its characterisation of the supporting cast. In the previous two Conjuring films the Warrens were used almost as a device to stitch together a broken family, revealing their bond and endearing themselves to the audience as they help some truly damaged people. Here however, the victim in question, Arne Johnson (Ruairi O’Connor) just isn’t given enough screen-time or things to do to ever truly make you care. Once he arrives in prison following the demon-driven murder of his housemate, that is pretty much it for his character, who acts more as a visual ticking clock to remind you of the stakes for the Warrens rather than his own fully fleshed out character. There are attempts made to flesh out Arne through his devoted girlfriend Debbie (Sarah Catherine Hook), with Hook giving a fine dramatic performance, suitably distraught at her boyfriends predicament but nothing we haven’t seen before from the franchise. By not having the Warren’s thoroughly interact with Arne and learn about him the whole affair becomes a bit deflated. We only really care because we have a pre-existing care for the Warrens and no half-baked attempts to assert Ed’s confidence in Arne’s innocence because he caught a look in his eyes is enough to fully bring the audience on board.

Then there are the scares, which by most people’s assessment will make or break the film. Nothing here is as iconic or instantly impactful as the Nun’s arrival in The Conjuring 2 or the game of hide and clap in the original, but that doesn’t mean that there aren’t some incredibly well shot and paced scares. The highlight is undoubtedly an all-too brief water-bed scene, which puts child actor Julian Hillard’s skills on full display. It’s a slow burn of a scare, but when it hits it hits like a shot-gun blast to the face. Everything else… not so much. It’s a hard thing to dance around without spoiling things but sufficed to say Chaves places so much focus on the mystery of the demon and its origins – replacing the simple terror of a demon unleashing hell of the previous films with something more manipulated- that the premise just inherently some of the fear factor. What we’re left with are a series of pretty stock-standard jump scares that, whilst predictable, are still done better than 90% of the horror competition out there, with Chaves always achieving the desired jolt through slick and measured camera movements, demonstrating far more control over the scares than on la Llorona.

Warner Bros, 2021

The Devil Made Me Do It marks a continuation of the shift in tone set by Annabelle Comes Home to less conventional horror storytelling, this time in the form of a demonic-leaning murder-mystery. The lack of James Wan’s flair with the camera is sorely felt at times but Chaves does a commendable job stepping into his shoes; furthering the bond between the Warrens and ensuring the audience has a fun time while he does it, even if the scares don’t quite measure up to the franchise’s best. We may never hit the nightmare inducing heights of those first 2 films again (unless Wan makes a miraculous return) but if this is the direction that the Conjuring universe is heading in going forward, then the future is anything but boring.

Warner Bros, 2021

The Conjuring: The Devil Made Me Do It stars Patrick Wilson, Vera Farmiga, Ruairi O’Connor, Sarah Catherine Hook, Julian Hillard, Eugenie Bondurant & John Noble – In cinemas now and streaming on HBO Max in the US.

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Movie Reviews

Those Who Wish Me Dead

BRON Studios, 2021

There’s something to be said for the appeal of the 90 minute movie. Why waste time on a 2 hour epic of you can get in and out, telling your story in a focused and efficient way? This is very much the case for Taylor Sheridan’s new thriller Those Who Wish Me Dead, a tight, well paced story of a traumatised firefighter forced to push her personal demons to the side to help a young boy on the run from assassins. There’s not a surprise in sight of the predictable storyline, but Sheridan aims to entertain and he does that by cutting most the fat around Angelina Jolie and company, with only a few ham-fisted metaphors distracting from their journey. It also doesn’t hurt that the supporting cast is phenomenal, with Jon Bernthal, Aiden Gillen and Nicholas Hoult injecting energy into characters that would otherwise have bored rather than excited. Those Who Wish Me Dead doesn’t aim to do a lot, but what it does it does well.

Jolie’s jaded firefighter Hannah is something of a blank slate, thanks to a lifeless performance that never manages to bring the audience onside in any meaningful emotional way despite the life-or-death stakes. With a rebellious streak and a past trauma established early on, it isn’t long before our heroine is confined to a fire-watch station far above the trees for a significant chunk of time. From there everything that possibly could go wrong does; from lightning storms to shootouts, and Jolie barely manages a look of mild shock let alone terror at having her quiet shift descend into anarchy. Fortunately she is paired for most of the runtime with Finn Little’s escapee Connor; frightened and on the run after narrowly escaping a violent clash with assassins Patrick (Hoult) and Jack (Gillen). Little is giving it his all in his performance; a sympathetic but not entirely helpless kid who is clearly rattled by the recent events that cost him his father (Jake Weber), putting on a brave face to deliver the message entrusted to him. The chemistry between the pair doesn’t exactly send sparks flying even if Little is trying his heart out, but Connor’s presence softens Hannah’s rough exterior just enough for a few genuinely touching moments.

BRON Studios, 2021

Hoult and Gillen’s meticulous assassins are a breath of fresh air in a genre often populated by hapless goons in pursuit of the heroes. They are genuinely intelligent people – Gillen especially, who slips right back into his Game of Thrones character’s villainy with ease – thinking strategically to capture their targets and leave as few traces as possible. Alas, this is a movie, so that antiseptic approach to crime soon goes out the window when Connor escapes and Jon Bernthal’s police chief Ethan arrives on the scene, forced to assist the hitmen in tracking down the boy. Ethan is more than a match for the two and the constant battle of wits and survival between the two sides is far more engaging than Hannah and Connor’s storyline, to the point that when they finally do intersect you’ll almost wish you hadn’t, as the film descends into a clichéd third act confrontation; undermining the intelligence of its characters in favour of wrapping everything up neatly. It is also where a lot of those heavy-handed metaphors are shoehorned in -particularly that of fire, which feels like an afterthought and a device to drive Hannah into battle rather than the examination of the firefighter lifestyle that the opening 20 minutes wastes time having you believe.

While its story isn’t going to win any awards for originality, Taylor Sheridan’s thriller succeeds in telling its narrative in a taut and streamlined way, with characters that demonstrate genuine smarts. The script (also co-written by Sheridan) wisely recognises that it doesn’t need to give you tons of backstory to these characters and that simply presenting them as capable people in harrowing situations will bring the audience on-side, extracting all the tension it can before it overstays its welcome. Jolie’s rigid acting doesn’t ruin the film thanks to an excellent supporting cast, with a special mention to Finn Little’s powerful performance. Those Who Wish Me Dead may not burn up the box office, but it should be enough to brighten a lazy Sunday afternoon once it hits streaming.

BRON Studios, 2021

Those Who Wish Me Dead stars Angelina Jolie, Nicholas Hoult, Aiden Gillen, Finn Little, Medina Senghore, Jake Weber, Tyler Perry & Jon Bernthal – In cinemas now and streaming on HBO Max in the US.

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Movie Reviews

Mortal Kombat (2021)

Warner Bros, 2021

Of all the sub-par video game adaptations over the years that have faded from the collective memories of audiences, 1995’s overly-cheesy Mortal Kombat remains bizarrely revered and loved by fans. Perhaps it’s due to the tongue-in-cheek tone that both does and doesn’t take itself too seriously or (and this is the correct answer) maybe the incredibly 90’s techno theme song whose mere mention will have you screaming “MORTAL KOMBAT” at the top of your lungs. However even die-hard fans can’t deny that the acting and story of that outing were atrocious, with wooden performances and non-sensical plot points souring the much anticipated film debut of the iconic video game franchise. The world of those games is a rich (nether)realm of story-telling with layered and complex lore practically begging for the for the cinematic treatment and Warner Bros has tasked first-time director Simon McQuoid with the franchise’s return: a fun if extremely messy affair that strangely respects and disrespects the franchise’s legacy at the same time.

In what marks the start of a string of odd decisions for the reboot, we follow a newly created character in Lewis Tan’s Cole Young; an MMA fighter with his best days behind him providing for his young family through cheap paycheques from lacklustre amateur fights. When his family is attacked by the ice-powered assassin Sub-Zero (Joe Taslim) and rescued by former military man Jax (Mehcad Brooks), Cole learns that he is part of a chosen few who have been selected to defend the Earth in a fighting tournament known as Mortal Kombat. Teaming up with Jax’s partner Sonya Blade (Jessica McNamee) and the sharp-tongued mercenary Kano (Josh Lawson) the trio set out to uncover the Thunder God Lord Raiden’s (Tadanobu Asano) temple, hoping to learn more about the battle to come and to prepare. Once there the group meets fellow combatants Liu Kang (Ludi Lin) and Kung Lao (Max Huang) and come to learn that their opponent in the tournament, the evil wizard Shang Tsung (Chin Han) is not above breaking the rules of the tournament, ambushing the fighters before it has even begun in order to ensure victory.

Warner Bros, 2021

The film comes out of the gate swinging, with an emotionally and physically brutal opening scene which sets up the conflict between bitter rival ninjas Sub-Zero and Scorpion (Hiroyuki Sanada). Taking place in feudal Japan, the scene showcases a serious tone, gut-wrenchingly ferocious violence and the exploration of the franchise’s arguably most interesting story to terrific effect, setting up an emotional core to what looks to be a grounded take on the franchise in comparison to the 1995 version. Unfortunately that isn’t the case. Scorpion and Sub-Zero are swiftly relegated to side-characters with varying degrees of presence going forward and the audience is introduced to Cole’s story. While not awful by any means, this main storyline is essentially the same as the original film; not a sin in itself, but disappointing after the superb opening. Lewis Tan is fine in the role of Cole, and his martial arts prowess helps to sell some of the more intense fight scenes, but nothing can really hide the poor writing on display. Cole is our window into the world of Mortal Kombat but he himself is something of a blank slate, lacking emotion or even surprise as he encounters fireball-wielding men and Thunder Gods, with scarcely a driving force outside of the generic cliché of protecting his briefly-seen family.

The same can be said for most of the supporting characters within Mortal Komat. Everyone from Liu Kang to Sonya Blade is extremely serious and dour throughout proceedings, constantly discussing the end of the world or how slim the chances are of survival. It all gets to be a bit much after a while, especially considering how handily our heroes dispatch their “fearsome” foes, (with the exception of Sub-Zero) and makes the contributions of the wise-cracking Kano all the more hilarious by comparison. Josh Lawson steals the film as the foul-mouthed Australian, letting loose a constant series of diatribes against everyone he comes across, dropping more F-bombs in a 10-minute stretch than Seth Rogen does in an entire film. His character is the only levity to be found in the entire film, dealing out meta jabs and insults that rip his fellow combatants apart more viciously than the series’ trademark fatalities, and the scenes without him tend to be weaker for it. After all, this is a story dealing with four-armed alien warlords, hell-bound ninjas and men with saw-blade hats; if you don’t stop and laugh at yourself every now and then it becomes ridiculous.

Warner Bros, 2021

What you come to a Mortal Kombat film for is the fights, and there are a lot of them here to be found, with varying degrees of quality. Any scenes involving Scorpion or Sub-Zero, you may have guessed, tend to be gold, with the real-life martial artistry of the stars translating to the characters and allowing McQuoid to simply point the camera and let it roll, showcasing the skills of these talented fighters as they leave it all out there in their decades-long quest to vanquish one another. Everything else generally suffers without the skills of these real life fighters, with McQuoid editing around the action to disguise the constant cuts and piece-meal approach to constructing the scenes rather than the long, fluid choreography of the ninjas. It becomes increasingly difficult to tell what is actually going on within later fight scenes in the film and this isn’t aided by constant cuts between different fights in different locations, a montage of carnage that actually shows you less than if you had fewer bouts more carefully thought out. The expected gore is there for the vicious fatalities, but these are few and far between with barely a drop of blood outside of these handful of scenes. McQuoid also makes the divisive choice of throwing lots of characters into the film. Outside of those already mentioned, the film features franchise staples Kabal, Mileena, Nitara, Reiko and Gore, all of whom barely get anything more than a scene to really shine, which will surely disappoint fans, and whose presence detracts from the amount of characterisation able to be given to the core cast of heroes and villains.

Whilst considerably better than the two previous live-action versions of the franchise, Mortal Kombat is still something of a disappointment, sacrificing solid characterisation and action in favour of a balls-to-the-wall blowout of character appearances and carnage that ultimately lacks much substance. Joe Taslim and Hiroyuki Sanada easily outshine the rest of the cast with an emotionally engaging story and brutally excellent fight choreography, but their limited presence and the decision to focus on Lewis Tan’s Cole instead seems like a misfire from which the film never recovers. Viewers hoping for the next great video-game adaptation should look elsewhere but if all you’re looking for is a fun, mindless action film with wacky characters and over-the-top gory kills, then do what Scorpion tells you to do and GET OVER HERE.

Warner Bros, 2021

Mortal Kombat stars Lewis Tan, Jessica McNamee, Josh Lawson, Joe Taslim, Mehcad Brooks, Tadanobu Asano, Chin Han, Ludi Lin, Max Huang & Hiroyuki Sanada – In Australian cinemas and streaming on HBO Max in the US now.

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Movie Reviews

The Witches (2020)

Warner Bros, 2020

There’s no denying that 2020 has been full of surprises. One of the more unexpected ones in the world of film may just be Robert Zemeckis’ latest feature; an adaptation of famous children’s author Roald Dahl’s The Witches. With a stellar cast and some top notch character design and effects work, the shock here is just how dark Zemeckis’ take on the source material turns out to be. Whilst The Witches may look like a fun family adventure from the outside, it veers into the macabre and horrifying side of Dahl’s world on several occasions, as the demonic Grand High Witch attempts to turn all the children of the world into mice. That jumbled tone between family friendly and horror makes for a particularly uneven viewing experience but one that also offers a ton of fun for bigger kids and adults if you can put up with some kiddy cheesiness and one hell of a showboat performance from Anne Hathaway.

Hathaway’s Grand High Witch is the leader of a particularly anti-children coven of witches, hell-bent on turning all the little tots into mice by way of the particularly wordy “Formula 86 Delayed-Action Mouse-Maker” potion. While it works in the confines of the story most of the time, be warned, this is a ridiculously over the top performance, as if Hathaway was on a personal mission to make sure her performance would be remembered over Anjelica Huston’s 1990 original. We’re talking a ludicrous accent wavering somewhere between German and Swedish, screeching in a register that would likely cause tinnitus from prolonged exposure and some truly horrifying visual effects which rival the original film’s incredible prosthetics to make the Witch look truly disgusting. Hathaway’s performance at once seems comedic, with the accent and some so-overt-they’re-covert jokes about her cat, but once the hunt for children gets going and the action starts to pick up it takes on a much more horrifying presence. There’s nothing quite like the sight of Anne Hathaway’s arms stretching to ridiculous lengths to ensnare a child to really give you nightmares.

Warner Bros, 2020

That movement between the comedic and horrifying permeates the entire film and may have something to do with the extremely varied group of writers that penned the film (albeit likely different versions which have been combined). Kenya Barris (of Black-ish fame) and the great Guillermo del Toro share writing duties with Zemeckis here, and once that little fact is known it becomes immediately obvious where their influences have been taken. Del Toro’s signature gruesome spectacle and horrifying character design shines through in the witches themselves. The grand reveal of the witches’ true forms showcases some exceptional visual effects and character design which carry the horror maestro’s fingerprints. We’re talking knobbly feet without toes, three fingered clawed hands and mouths that elongate to reveal rows of razor sharp, demonic looking teeth. Hell, even the expanding nostrils of the witches, which are used for sniffing out children, are terrifying to look at. It’s all far too much for little children to take which begs the larger question of who exactly this film was made for?

Barris’ influences shine through in the development of our young, unnamed lead protagonist (Jahzir Bruno) and his Grandmother (Octavia Spencer). Almost the entire opening hour is devoted to establishing the relationship between this young boy and his only remaining guardian, herself almost a victim of witches in her youth who has studied the sneaky sorceresses in the years since. It works well to invest you in this young child’s terribly misfortunate life so far, so much so that you genuinely feel sick at the thought of him having to now deal with witches after everything he has been through. The relationship between the boy and his Grandmother is also incredibly sweet, based on love and the strict values of respect and obedience typical of Alabama in the 1960’s, with Spencer showing a fierce maternal instinct for her grandson. Bonded together by circumstance, the grandmother struggles to bring the boy out of his shell following some traumatic events and the thought of losing him to witches is enough to cause sheer panic and a stay at a palatial nearby hotel to escape the witches she believes are in her town.

Warner Bros, 2020

Once here, the boy soon realises that the witches are not in their town and that the hotel is unwittingly host to a gathering of their ilk from all over the state. When the boy and his newfound friend Bruno Jenkins (Codie-Lei Eastick) are transformed into mice by the coven, they team up with the boy’s pet mouse Daisy (Kristin Chenoweth) – herself a former child turned by a witch – and his grandmother to put a stop to the broom-riding baddies and their nefarious plan to transform all the children of the world into mice. Zemeckis further muddies the tone by filming the affair with bright, vibrant colours; an overtly positive outlook shining through in every scene despite the more horrific moments. There are moments of sheer zaniness that lend themselves well to that kid-friendly tone, often involving Stanley Tucci’s woefully unprepared hotel manager Mr. Stringer. These scenes are pure fun, even if they are a bit childish, often leaving you with a huge grin on your face. The hotel itself is often shot from a child’s perspective, emphasising the enormity and foreignness to the boy from a small-town. This only increases once he becomes a mouse, leaving the now doubly gigantic area to take on a more comical tone, with scenes in the kitchen area in particular looking like a live action Ratatouille.

The Witches is a particularly wild ride I will not soon forget, chiefly due to the sheer bizarreness of it all. What could have been a fairly tame family affair is given a potentially unwelcome bend by leaning into the macabre and terrifying attributes of the titular villains. While this works for those old enough to cope with the more horror-leaning aspects, it may alienate a lot of children, arguably the primary audience. Anne Hathaway’s nostrils expanding to the size of a small dog is an alarming sight – even for an adult – and will almost certainly ensure nightmares for little ones. If you do have bigger children though, or are just after a zany, whacky adventure with some genuine heart that occasionally steers into a more mature scariness, then give The Witches a go. It’s so crazy you might think you’ve been put under a spell yourself.

Warner Bros, 2020

The Witches stars Anne Hathaway, Octavia Spencer, Jahzir Bruno, Codie-Lei Eastick, Kristin Chenoweth & Stanley Tucci – In Australian cinemas now and streaming on HBO Max in the US.

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Movie Reviews

Tenet

Warner Bros, 2020

Watching Christopher Nolan’s latest film Tenet was one of the most frustrating cinematic experiences I’ve ever had. Don’t get me wrong, it’s not a bad film by any stretch; spinning a nail-bitingly tense story of high-tech underground arms dealings and the special unit tasked with putting a stop to them around a typically complex sci-fi conceit: the inversion of time around objects causing them to move backwards. Tenet has so much going for it in the right direction – a top-tier cast with stand-out performances from John David Washington and Batman-to-be Robert Pattinson, stunning cinematography, breathtaking visual effects and a suitably epic score from Ludwig Gorranson. So the fact that something as minor (in the grand scheme of things) as sound mixing almost derails the entire thing is a huge blow. As is always the case with Nolan’s work, spoilers are a huge issue – but worry not, this will be as spoiler-free as possible.

That spoiler-free promise becomes immediately difficult to uphold when you have to try and explain the concept of Tenet, but the basic premise involves John David Washington’s “Protagonist” being recruited by a shadowy organisation to investigate a potentially world-ending discovery: the reversal of an item’s entropy causing it to flow backwards through time. Think a bullet exiting the wall it had been lodged in and flying backwards through the air to land back in the chamber of the gun or a car chase flowing in reverse. It’s difficult to visualise when you read it but rest assured Nolan does his best at capturing the mind boggling and making it visually plausible. There are a few spots where this device begins to strain that plausibility, but by the time you reach these moments you’ll likely be far too confused to worry much about them. The journey of the “Protagonist” eventually puts him on a path towards Russian billionaire Andrei Sator (Kenneth Branagh), a man who may know the most about this mysterious technology, and his wife Kat (Elizabeth Debicki), forcing him to enlist the help of colleague Neil (Robert Pattinson) to infiltrate the shadowy organisation Sator controls and unlock the secret to time inversion.

Warner Bros, 2020

As with all of Nolan’s work, Tenet is incredibly well made, from the set designs and costuming which gives the whole affair a real spy movie flair – like some kind of sci-fi-tinged James Bond film – right through to the top tier effects, a lot of which are practical this time around. Where the film does employ special effects to render its time inverted sequences, it does so to jaw dropping effect. Buildings that have exploded piece themselves back together from the wreckage with rubble flying upwards and flames shooting back into explosions, freezing instead of burning in their reversed state. It should come as no surprise to anyone that has seen a Nolan film before and while the effects never reach the spellbinding highs of Inception, there are some incredibly inventive scenes that deserve a spot in Nolan’s highlight real. Another central pillar to any Nolan film is the score and in-demand composer Ludwig Goransson (known for his work on Black Panther and The Mandalorian) does not disappoint, delivering a pulse pounding soundtrack worthy of frequent Nolan collaborator Hans Zimmer’s lofty standards. Hitting all the right highs and lows, with those blaring horns that Nolan’s films have become synonymous with, Goransson’s score adds that epic flare to almost every scene and will give your eardrums the rattling they have been missing from trips to the cinema.

Unfortunately for Tenet this fantastic score works as something of a double-edged sword. Nolan and his team seem to have made the downright bizarre choice to mix the score in heavily whenever anybody on-screen is talking to maddening effect. It’s not an exaggeration to say that by the halfway point of this meaty epic I had only been able to understand about a quarter of the dialogue that had been spoken. In a film already so complex and exposition-heavy (Nolan has clearly done his homework and wants us to know about all the scientific theories that explain this time inversion concept), it seems like an obvious thing to go quiet on the background noise and music in scenes where facts and theorems that are central to our understanding of the plot are rattled off. Those Inception horns I mentioned earlier are blared constantly during these scenes, leaving you clueless as to what was said to the point where when someone in the film references a piece of dialogue said earlier you’ll have no clue what they are talking about, you just have to take it on faith.

Warner Bros, 2020

This wouldn’t be the glaring issue that it is if Nolan didn’t feel the need to complicate the story of Tenet to a frankly ridiculous degree. If you’ve seen any time travel film you’ll be fairly well equipped to grasp what you’re about to see. Nevertheless Nolan seems convinced that his take on the concept is something completely groundbreaking when the reality is – apart from some of these inverted action scenes – it is all pretty standard time travel fare. Twisting the story beyond its already confusing time travel elements is the editing, with choppy cuts that don’t seem to blend very well together failing to give you a proper idea of where our characters are in their globe spanning adventure; one minute we’re in India before a quick trip to Italy and then right back to India. It’s something very atypical for Nolan and along with the sound mixing debacle mentioned earlier it’s quite perplexing that these issues weren’t called to attention in the editing bay, especially given the extended delay during the pandemic that would have given ample time to fix these gripes.

Fortunately these issues are mitigated somewhat by excellent performances across the board. John David Washington cements his status as a leading man following a brilliant turn in BlacKkKlansman; as a man thrust into this extremely covert world spy scenario and completely out of his depth, with nothing to rely on but his own wits and judgement over who he chooses to trust. As a surrogate for the audience, the somewhat clueless nature of his character allows Nolan to unload mountains of exposition in a way that doesn’t seem too boring but there’s only so much you can take before it starts to get a little overwhelming. Beyond that, Washington shows a command over the screen reminiscent of his father Denzel, and with a long career ahead of him Tenet will be remembered as one of his best early performances that showcased the promise of this young talent. Pattinson and Debicki both do great with the roles they are given, with Debicki given a bit more to work with as the beaten-down wife of Kenneth Branagh’s tyrannical criminal mastermind. Her exploration of domestic abuse and the burden of not being able to escape Sator as it means leaving her son behind is especially powerful and one of the most engaging emotional relationships throughout the film thanks to her stellar performance. The real highlight here is Branagh, putting on a wild and deranged display as the unhinged Russian with too much confidence in his status for his own good. Branagh steals every scene he is in, playing the character dangerously close to an 80’s action movie villain stereotype but pulling it back in the quieter moments where Sator gets a chance to show his intellect. This is a man three steps ahead of anyone else in the room and in a film so complex the simplicity of the threat he represents is a welcome counterpoint.

Warner Bros, 2020

Tenet is not Christopher Nolan’s best film, in fact it might not even be in the top 5; but as with his entire filmography it is still an exceptionally well made movie, from its visual flair to its technical impressiveness. The frustrating complexity of the story and the bizarre decision to mix the dialogue in with the score forces the audience to trust the fact that they know where Nolan is taking the story, even if they do not know themselves. Given Nolan’s track record, this isn’t a huge gamble and I won’t exaggerate and say that the sound mixing completely derails the film as the addition of subtitles on future home viewings will likely fix the issue. Nevertheless if you’re going to pay to see this in the cinema – and for a lot of people this will be their first big post-quarantine viewing – you’ll want to understand what you are watching. For a director as precise as Nolan to overlook this, or even worse to do it intentionally is bizarre but Tenet is still an incredibly engaging, inventive film featuring terrific performances from its entire cast that more than earns its spot in Nolan’s incredible body of work.

Warner Bros, 2020

Tenet stars John David Washington, Robert Pattinson, Elizabeth Debicki, Himesh Patel, Michael Caine, Aaron Taylor-Johnson & Kenneth Branagh – In cinemas now.