The Odyssey

"Step up and show me who you are."

How can one review a thousands-of-years-old poem, given the movie treatment by one of the biggest movie directors working today, who, himself, is a myth in his own right? Let’s find out together!

Dunkirk

"...This is a pleasure yacht. You're weekend sailors, not the bloody navy!"

Dunkirk isn't your average World War II movie. It may not even be a war movie, at all. It is a big spectacle (with cross-cutting galore), and all of the crafts firing on all cylinders but instead of big battle scenes and 'men in rooms' strategizing, it pinpoints a specific window of time in the early days of the war, one whose outcome would have had a staggering effect on England's psychology.

Inception

"A man possessed of some radical notions..."

Have you ever seen the logo for Christopher Nolan’s production company, SYNCOPY?

Insomnia

“You’re my job. You’re what I am paid to do.”

Halfway though Insomnia, I was wondering: Could Detective Will Dormer (played by Al Pacino) sleep better during the Alaskan midnight sun if he hadn’t been plagued by guilt, or could the darkness of nightfall have provided adequate passage to sleep, even with his guilt? It’s hard to say. This upside down kind of question is not only the sort of thing that Christopher Nolan likes to toil with in fiction, in the real-life lead up to being hired to direct Insomnia also lay an upside down question.

Following

"You take it away and show them what they had."

Inside Chris Nolan's Following are two wolves. (There are also two wolves inside of Chris Nolan, but we'll get to that later.) One is a scruffy, wannabe writer who lacks self-confidence (he calls himself "Bill" but is credited as "Young Man") and the other is a smooth, coiffed and dashing thief named Cobb. These two men represent a duality. Could the difference between them simply be defined by clothing and swagger? Well, yes, in a way. And also no.

Movie Review: Oppenheimer

“Do you guys ever think about dying?”

I tend to sort Christopher Nolan’s films into two categories: those that are about filmmaking, and those that try to be about something else.

Tenet

"We're the ones saving the world from what might have been."

I wasn’t sure if he’d be able to do it, in light of the state of the world right now. However, Christopher Nolan was able to release Tenet this year. And I, being the dedicated moviegoer that I am, decided to see it twice this weekend. Here are my thoughts.

Interstellar

Great movies are sometimes difficult to define. They can be simply wonderful on every level, or they might just be amazing for slightly less obvious reasons. So I'm struggling with whether or not to call Interstellar a great movie, or just a good one.

The Prestige

“You want to be fooled.”

Christopher and Jonathan Nolan’s third big-budget film, The Prestige is a story of duplicity and duplication, tricks and tall tales. Like Memento and Inception, it is also a puzzle narrative, with clues to the various illusions and truths promoted by the two main characters scattered about like so many top hats.

Movie Review: Memento

After surviving a brutal home invasion that left his wife dead, Leonard (Guy Pearce) has brain damage. Specifically, anterograde amnesia: the inability to form new memories. Determined to track down his wife’s killer, Leonard uses Polaroid pictures, notes, tattoos, and dumb luck to keep track of all the information needed for his vengeful quest. Sound straightforward? It’s not.

NewsFlash: Nolan, Wormhole, Awesome

Totally awesome director Christopher Nolan is, according to The Hollywood Reporter, in talks to direct a new totally awesome science-fiction movie called Interstellar, written by the totally awesome Jonathan Nolan. "The story involves time travel and alternate dimensions," says the article, "and sees a group of explorers travel through a wormhole."

Newsflash: Man of Steel Teaser(s)

Look! Up in the sky! Is it a bird? Is it a plane? No, it's...a fisherman? Huh, can't say I was expecting that. It's been six years since Superman Returns failed to restart the franchise (I liked it, but can see why people had issues with it), so now Warner Bros. is having another go at bring the last son of Krypton back to the big screen with Man of Steel.

The Dark Knight Rises

Selina Kyle: "There's a storm coming, Mr. Wayne. You and your friends better batten down the hatches, because when it hits, you're all gonna wonder how you ever thought you could live so large and leave so little for the rest of us."

To start off, this is a ponderously dense and intricately plot-heavy movie, with dozens of mini-arcs and character through-lines. The narrative structure was a little cumbersome and slightly messy, having to cover a lot of ground and tell a lot of story. But the plot itself was exceptionally well crafted, and successfully brought all the disparate pieces from throughout the entire series together in a satisfying way, all the while introducing a number of new characters.

In other words, I loved it.

The Dark Knight. And I mean really, really dark

(This review includes spoilers.)

I'm going to pay this movie the ultimate compliment. It was so dark, edgy and realistic that I literally forgot I was watching comic book characters. That has never, and I mean never, happened to me before. In fact, it got so intense that at one point, I was flashing on Brian dePalma's Untouchables, which is probably my favorite crime movie. It was that heavy.

Batman Begins

Fox: "So what do you think?"
Bruce: "Does it come in black?"

I have always had a difficult relationship with Batman on film.