Prisoners is so good that I can’t watch it again without a significant break. Holy hell.
Gotta throw some love as well to the relentless intensity of Sicario.
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Well, TDK was his biggest budget when it happened. And that was the biggest cultural movie for quite a long time and is the very rare superhero movie that holds up 15+ years later.
Dunkirk is while not his best movie, about as good as it gets for that genre. If you want to say of recent war films thay 1917 is better, thats the only real other option.
I think we should absolutely praise directors like Nolan and Villaneuve for stuff like TDK and BR2049. Those movies could have been bad legacy sequels! They are incredible! BR2049 even lost money, but man what an experience that film was in theatre.
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That’s the truth. I still can’t believe how good it ended up being, especially Harrison Ford.
I don’t know what counts as “recent,” but I’d certainly take Hacksaw Ridge over Dunkirk also. And yeah, definitely 1917 by a significant margin.
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Robert Downey Jr. Gets Emotional Thanking Christopher Nolan for ‘Oppenheimer’ Casting: ‘I Needed Someone to Have a Vision of What Was Possible for Me’
Nolan crediting the actor for the camaraderie he brings to a set and how he makes everyone feel involved and appreciated. “And that allows you to dominate the scene,” Nolan noted. “Some people will dominate the scene through selfishness.”
I don’t get the Nolan love at all really. I thought dunkirk was totally devoid of any humanity. That’s generally his problem in all his films.
I’m obviously in the minority there but that is my opinion.
Enough negativity.
I revisited Spring Breakers after hating it the the first time and I think I just didn’t get it the first time. It’s pretty awesome. Visually it’s so cool and the camp and over the top nature works perfectly.
Didn’t you list Oppenheimer as your #4 film of a year that you’ve extolled (as I also have) as being a top-tier film year? I just thought by inference that meant you were a pretty big fan of this film.
Yep it’s his best film in a decade. I have soured on it a little since seeing it in imax though. It hasn’t stuck with me.
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Hadn’t thought of this but gerwig is the only director ever to have their first three films all be nominated for best picture.
Gotta nit you on that. Her very first director credit was Nights and Weekends, which didn’t get a nom. She only co-directed, but I think that still counts as co-directors can be nominated and even win.
There are very, very few people who consistently make big budget movies that are original and good.
For the 21st century, Zach Snyder might be close to top 5 for this!
In a world where nearly everything is IP, having someone do Oppenheimer, Tenet, Dunkirk, Inception, Interstellar in a 15 year run post cashing the IP $ is incredible.
Fincher took the Netflix money and has been just playing around with mindhunter, mank, the killer.
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Not a Nolan fan either (feel like I should watch Oppenheimer given the praise here but 3h is a tough sell…)
“the prestige” is by far his best imo (maybe his only really good movie), although iirc (it’s been a while) something that bugged me at the time was that the whole time the magicians are like “yeah you shouldn’t show your tricks, it’s all about that prestige moment” and then the movie completely disregards that advice by having the last half-hour be an overly long resolution where every single detail has to be explained/resolved.
A couple movies I saw recently and really liked :
Blue Collar (Schrader 1978)
Three factory worker friends (Harvey Keitel, Richard Pryor, Yaphet Kotto) get increasingly desperate for money and decide to rob their local union.
The movie takes its time (while still being entertaining) before things really go off but by the end it gets really intense. Interesting (and very angry !) view on how the working class gets screwed, although rather pessimistic (collective action is not possible, individualism can only help a few by definition).
very good movie from my favorite movie period and one of its best directors (who might still have a few left in him…)
The beast
French arthouse sci-fi movie (dir. Bonello), US trailer said “coming soon” so you should be able to see this in a few months.
It is loosely based on a Henry James short story (the beast in the jungle) follows a couple (Léa Seydoux, George Mackay) and their sort of love story during their different incarnations in 3 different time periods (1910, 2014, 2044).
Must see if you like Seydoux even a little bit as she’s on screen (and acting/looking amazing) 95% of the time.
Also recommended if you like : nonlinear narration, foreshadowing, flashes of past lives, movies shifting gears in the middle, last year at marienbad / Lynch* type vibes, nightclub scenes
(I love all of these)
(* the Lynch stuff might be a bit too much as there’s definitely moments in the second half where this crosses the “inspired by” threshold and is really just citing, but I didn’t really mind…)
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Tenet is an unwatchable assault on the senses with no plot and incomprehensible dialogue. It’s so bad I walked out part way through it.
Snyder has yet to make a single good movie imo. Granted I’ve only seen a few of his but they are all awful. He makes Bay look good.
It has a very easy to understand plot. Maybe if you got through the film you would have got there!
The dialogue was incomprehensible, not the plot. It was Nolan’s awful sound mix that ruins so many of his films. I’ll admit when I go to one of his films with that mix I instantly start at -5 so the film is working uphill. It’s why I can’t stand interstellar.
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Dune (in any of its forms) is one of those things, you either get it or you don’t. It’s like monty python. If you don’t think monty python is funny the first time you see it you’re never going to think it’s funny.
actually I don’t think “get it” is the right terminology. it either resonates with you or it doesn’t. Plenty of people “get it” but it still doesn’t hit them.
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I am going to watch dune again before part 2 as I’ve only seen it once and not in theatre.
Part 2 is getting rapturous early reviews so I am intrigued.
this I absolutely cannot figure out. dude is unanimously regarded as a complete hack and loser and yet they keep throwing money at him, what the fuck. he has the real epstein flight logs or something.
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I saw Dune once, not in the theater, and it didn’t land for me. I recently caught it on IMAX in rerelease and I guess it got slightly better, but I still don’t see any sort of big deal; the best I can call it is decent. In the tradition of Fury Road, people sure do like their loud sand movies.
All the same, I’m planning to see Dune 2. It does seem like something that could not only deliver on its own, but could maybe even tie things together in a way that allows me to better appreciate the original and the foundation it laid.
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