From Memento all the way through Tenet with some Bat movies somewhere in between. Is he great at turning high concept filmmaking into blockbusters, or is he great at making dumb movies that seem smart to the casual viewer?

Amazing technician, but a poor storyteller. Crap.

A_Man_Who_Tries wrote: Sun Sep 05, 2021 12:07 am Amazing technician, but a poor storyteller.

Not crap.

He seems to have the smart-for-dumb-people shtick down to a science and is taking it to the bank. Good for him I guess. I think he wants to play in the thematic fields of early Alain Resnais/Chris Marker but is too much a child of Star Wars to fully engage with the material. Of the movies of his I've seen, they all come across detached, disengaged from world, and inert. If computers are already at the point where they can make a movie more fully engaged with memory, time, and the medium itself than what I've seen from Nolan, why would I waste time in his mechanical-man dreams when the dreams of actual machines are becoming more fully human. Crap.

Not crap, though I thought The Dark Knight was overrated.

There's a hidden feature on the special edition DVD of Memento where you can watch the film in chronological order, it's pretty cool. (Look around the web for how-to, the DVD menu is a psych quiz).

I haven't seen Tenet, I've heard mixed things about it. Worth a watch?

zircona1 wrote: Sun Sep 05, 2021 2:02 pm I haven't seen Tenet, I've heard mixed things about it. Worth a watch?

If you thought Inception had any appeal, yes. If it pissed you off, no. Very similar setup: a psychological action thriller powered by one reality-altering technology.

I had read and heard so many things about it that when I decided to watch it and pick it apart it was better than I thought. But I always enjoy watching a film that is a grand gesture and doesn't totally nail it (see Darren Aronofsky).

Makes more-than competent blockbuster movies that don't treat me as a complete idiot, and aren't a mess of CGI. Even the ones that don't work for me have rewarded a repeat viewing.

There seems to be a strand of criticism that he has pretensions to high art, but is a failure. It seems unlikely when you consider he happily made three films about a man who fights crime dressed as a bat,

Seems to genuinely love cinema. I'm glad he's getting a chunk of the money that would otherwise go to Michael Bay and Zac Schneider.

Why start at Memento? I thought Following was pretty great.

Anonymous37 wrote: Sun Sep 05, 2021 8:50 pm Why start at Memento? I thought Following was pretty great.

I started at Memento cause I forgot that he made Following. Haven't seen it yet either. Luckily I still haven't placed my vote!

The guy made The Prestige in between a pair of "Batman..." films.

East NC