The theatrical experience is BACK! The theatrical experience is DEAD.

Nolangitis?

I’m pretty much in agreement with the Junkers. It felt like 3-4 hours of plot frenetically crammed into a 2+ hour movie. This might not be a popular opinion, but it could have been improved as a two-parter. Exposition flies by so fast that you’re struggling to keep up so maybe a re-watch will improve? But I just stopped caring because I felt detached from all these characters.

I hate to say it, but the disease is obviously Stage 4 Nolan Cancer.

Nolanfluenza?

One thing I do completely agree with Frank on is that I prefer time travel concepts that don’t take things too seriously.

I feel like sometimes those stories get a free pass because there is a belief that just because it follows a hard-to-follow path it’s very well-written, which I don’t understand. Time travel narratives by their nature usually end up simplistic and goofy, because once you establish that everything is connected to each other you can usually see where things are going. Which is why the Back to the Future movies work because they don’t take it too seriously. The grimdark atmosphere of Dark on the other hand makes the show insufferable to me.

Convoluted and complex are not the same thing. You can just as easily make a very hard-to-follow chart with all the connections in a daytime soap opera or a paperback murder mystery series. Good writing is determined by whether those connections and the motivations of characters for causing those connections feel believable. Otherwise, it starts feeling like the joke at the end of Bill & Ted’s Excellent Adventure where they just say what they are going to do with the time machine which instantly causes it to happen.Yes, it’s all one big complicated loop, but who cares if the characters feel like automatons set up for that loop to happen?

On that note, plan on reviewing the new Bill & Ted?

Especially harmful to Frank who is already recovering from Tarantino Syndrome. I recommend a weekly Criterion force-feed until conditions improve, but it may already be too late.

You guys doing any TIFF movies this year? Looks like there are a few different viewing options.

I was just looking at buying a few single tickets but their website is a disaster right now. (As per usual.)

TENET SPOILERS

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Frank: I think the movie does indeed end at the very beginning. The Opera is happening concurrently with the final battle (the CIA dude in the hospital where protag wakes up mentions an explosion that was reported in Russia at the time of the attack). Also, the Opera is relevant in that I believe this is where the 8th of the 9 artifact pieces gets stolen. We see Washington’s team grab it, and then they get captured (and tortured) by presumably Branagh’s henchmen, who retake it. So this is where he literally stumbles into the villain plot for the first time (and where Pattinson saves him for the 1st time). Also, I don’t know if you guys missed it as it didn’t seem to come up in the spoiler discussion, but Pattinson also saves Washington in the climax of the film, sacrificing himself and catching a bullet. When he’s walking away at the end to “do another pass”, that’s him going to his death. So there are technically 3 versions of him running around in that battle I believe.

@jay Did your Arrow Pitch Black come with a slipcover? Mine didn’t. I ordered through Amazon.

I will do my best. Still enjoying it, just not feeling myself drawn back as much as I was previously.