Tenet (dir. Christopher Nolan, 2020)

It was nice to be in a theater. There was nobody within 100 feet of me and i stayed masked the whole time (as did the nearest person).

Honestly, there is little better than seeing a movie in a near-empty theatre, just as there is little worse than seeing a movie in a packed theatre. Even pre-covid. The sound and smell of people eating, the cellphones, the talking, the people getting up and down ...

Though now that I think of it, watching movies at home does do a pretty good job approximating the theatrical experience.

I used to have a Cinemark exactly 7 minutes from my house that was basically a ghost town during the week. my bit of zen back then was finding a movie to go to solo and enjoying having a theater mostly to myself.

packed theatres are cool for broad comedies and horror but yeah anything else is pretty much death. the worst is anything vaguely intellectual/arty because you not only have to deal with the chewing but also people either pontificating out loud or over-laughing at the "clever" bits

Packed theatres are only cool for air conditioning.

when i used to give blood on a regular basis my fav move was to do it early on a weekday and then take the free coffee and cookie and woozily enjoy a 11:30am movie in an empty theater

a lot of movies are greatly improved when you're down a pint of blood

It's only fitting because most of them do suck.

I'm almost ready mentally to return to a theater because during normal times I went solo most mornings before 10:30 a.m. when I had the damn theatre to myself.

The press people have sounded out my film critics group about keeping the general public out of screenings. There are only a couple of us locally anyway, and pre-COVID we scattered around the room.

I probably was just glad to be in a cinema eating popcorn again.

This contributed a nonzero amount to my enjoyment of Tenet. Between COVID and having a baby last year, I hadn't been to the theater in more than a year and a half

Uhh yeah I saw it tonight cause I guess I felt reckless

I didn’t hate it exactly but I also felt that I would have enjoyed downloading the soundtrack while playing any random James Bond movie in reverse more than this movie, esp as it dragged on and got more tedious

Also the reviews weren’t lying about Elizabeth Debicki’s role being paper thin, I don’t go to Nolan movies for fleshed out female characters but yikes

Armed with only one word, Tenet

secret pokemon film

the climax of the film is 45 minutes of John David Washington just walking up to random people on the street and barking "Tenet" at them to see if they're spy people

so can anyone who's seen it go and listen to the Travis Scott song on the soundtrack and confirm that it "unlocks" the movie or whatever as Nolan claimed

I'll take a pass on listening to Travis $cott, i do not feel compelled to unlock this movie

The song played over the credits but I just went to check out the lyrics, which contain a couple references to the events in the movie. Movie unlocked!

all because Nolan has equity in Genius Media Group

Saw this last Sunday. Best theater in Baltimore miraculously reopened despite the rest of the city remaining closed (they're right on the city/county line, with multiplexes opening up a mile away, so The Senator was allowed to open).

800 cap theater normally, now 25 max.

Felt totally safe and comfortable, wore mask whole time, main theater is gigantic

Movie was SOO fucking stupid but it was big and loud and that was enough for me rn. Felt great to be back in a theater

cf.

Sound mix is fine—it’s the movie that’s incoherent! hey now pic.twitter.com/a6scjx2ZAS

— Nicky Smith (@nickyotissmith) September 6, 2020

were concessions being sold flappy?

concessions

You mean besides paying money to see a dumb movie in the middle of a pandemic?

they were showing this in IMAX last night for $10 and i still couldn't get myself to go

did you think the last hour of Interstellar was on par with Citizen Kane? if so, this flick is for u

i was hoping for a cross between casino royale (2006) and matrix reloaded

is that too much to ask

both of those movies are impotent tbr

uh ... ok

joeks

phew!

that’s a good one for the post / username thread 8======D

Rip: They were, just popcorn and soda and candy. They had every other row blocked off and people separated themselves well. Masks required "unless eating in seat." Super ad-hoc. I went with my mom (she was really dying to go back to the movies, I could've waited but glad I didn't), and we told each other if the situation looked really dire--people misbehaving, coughing, huge crowds--we'd turn around. It was fine. Everyone was on their best behavior and again, this place seats 800 people normally.

Josh: I'm sure you've made equally "dangerous" concessions in the last 6 months. I love my mom.

and I would've gone to sit with her in the Senator if they played two hours of unexposed film

hey hey hey sit down and take yr COVID shaming like a man >:-(

I was just making a concession joke and making fun of the movie. No offense intended.

None taken 😘 Sorry for jumping to concessions [ ;) ]

https://deadline.com/2020/09/tenet-broken-hearts-gallery-warner-bros-sony-weekend-box-office-1234575805

In case the link doesn't work, suspicions are the movie only made 12 million last weekend.

lol hope he goes bust!

The article basically says, if not literally, chin up, Warner Brothers, you are going to lose money on this, but you will recoup on something else in the future. Also observes that by obscuring and misleading to make the box office look bigger, but still low, then the big drop from weekend one to weekend two will look even worse, rather than just holding steady at a low number.

What does the box office even mean during COVID?

I literally fell asleep in this movie, early in the third act.

But my review from what I did see is: He introduces a really intriguing idea concerning time travel, with an element, or twist, that you may have never considered, and you're thinking 'okay, this could be fun,' and then proceeds to make the worst and most boring movie possible around that idea.

DAMN

lol

that's the Nolan approach in a nutshell yeah

haha I was laughing at the $12mil box office, but believe me Rip is OTMFM.... movie starts out fairly strong--I like the symphony sequence a lot, and it's cool to be just plunged into the thing--but yeah, as Rip said, it just goes NOWHERE.

This won't hurt Nolan's career tho, in a way I think the pandemic saved him, the box office for this will always have an asterisk next to it. I think if this movie came out in 2019 for example, he would've been eaten alive. his New Jersey maybe? Who knows. it would've made a ton of money obviously but this thing is not fucking Inception, which was very good! or Interstellar, also very good! it's just fucking BORING LOOKING and GOES NOWHERE!!!

Saved by the virus the man is!!

"but this thing is not fucking Inception, which was very good! or Interstellar, also very good!"

it's worse than that he's dead jim!

My 2014 comment about Interstellar:

in the future, space travelers will put their kids into stasis and then revive them when they return, so they won't miss out on attending all their ball games. kids will put their pets into stasis and revive them months later, just as a joke to confuse them. housewives will put leftovers into stasis instead of a refrigerator. laid off workers will be put in stasis to save on unemployment benefits. the possibilities are endless!

rip van wanko otm

Interstellar may not have made sense, but I thought it looked AWESOME with many striking and memorable images (the fucking bookcase! the dust on the desks...), and I got swept up in it. and I watched it at home! Inception with a packed summertime crowd was so much fun. I haven't seen it since then but those were two really fun action movies. I don't care if he's a dilettante! Brits get SO worked up over Nolan.

I've got to admit, I do like the idea of event movies that aren't just piggybacking on existing properties. And honestly even when Nolan *did* do that with the Batman movies he did it in such a way that made just as much of a cultural impact as Tim Burton's did, if not bigger. So if I'm being honest, I'd rather have a bunch of pretentious shell game twaddle that aims big and falls short than not. I mean, yeah, I'd still rather have a *good* movie first and foremost, but Nolan's not the only dude letting anyone down on that front.

I'm sympathetic to the new editor of Sight and Sound trying to grow - or even retain - a readership, but this cover is the absolute pits. Saviour of cinema, even with a question mark, fuck off.

https://i1.wp.com/thumbs2.imgbox.com/64/89/Vj6T0KQv_t.jpg?ssl=1

I mean, only if he literally means keeper of 70 mm or whatever.