Tenet

Many reviewers say you have to watch this movie multiple times to really get it all. No, I won't do that. I say a good movie is understandable with one viewing where the viewer is paying attention.

This is a relatively simple story, told in a complex manner with lots of special effects and aggressive sound track. Our future civilization has figured a way to interact with the past and now, in our PRESENT they intend to correct a problem we caused them, and if necessary destroy the world as we know it. So the PRESENT day leaders have to prevent that.

My wife and I watched it on a 2-disc DVD set from our public library. Much of the dialog is difficult to understand because the actors often fail to enunciate, so I had to turn on subtitles about half-way through. The second DVD is filled with extras.

It is a pretty good, entertaining movie, but often very confusing. I would not put it in the top tier of favorite movies. Nolan's "Inception" for example is a much better movie.

Trying to take my bias opinion away from my critical, logical opinion. Few people comprehend the immense detail with the story, I don't even comprehend all of it, but now I understand enough to believe that this is Nolan's most elaborate story yet. This is a complicated movie, and complicated in a good way. If you (as an audience) don't enjoy or understand this movie I understand why and I don't blame you, but on the contrary if you do enjoy this movie, if you understand the story, then I understand why you may believe this to be one of the most intelligent films of all time. (BOLD claim). We already knew what to expect with the quality of cinematography, visual, score, and even to a certain extent, the wild plot that Christopher Nolan ALWAYS delivers because he's consistent with all his films. What we received with this film though, was simply unexpected. This wasn't a film like the dark knight which provides authenticity to a sci-fi world, or even inception which provided clarity after simple attention. This is a film that is intended to be searched, discovered, thought of, looked at, and inspected in every way possible. And yet, this a film intended to give no easy answers, no simple clarity, no instant gratification. This is a film that wants to defy the odds of films by building curiosity over time rather than losing it. Overall I have a lot to discover, a lot to learn, and a lot to understand from this film, yet I'm extremely pleased with its performance in most categories a film has to offer.

Straightforward review:

Plot: Feels forced, cliche'd and had me facepalming in embarassment at several moments. Badly written villain, tired subplot of a damsel in distress. Its also not as complicated as I was led to believe, it's pretty straightforward actually. I saw comparisons to Primer, which in my opinion is a much better time-travel tale. This feels more like a James Bond movie with a time-travel element added to it.

Effects are done well, technically the movie is very well made. But it feels a bit over the top, almost Michael Bay-like at times.

Acting ranges from excellent to okay, the script doesn't help in this case but the actors do a good job considering. Pattinson is the standout for me.

All in all its not a bad movie to waste some time on, it's interesting enough to keep you engaged (was struggling to finish the last 30mins myself though). As far as mainstream blockbusters go it's decent.

I'd suggest people read the synopsis on Wikipedia before watching the time. Otherwise it would be too hard to follow. If you're the type of person who enjoys watching a movie multiple times and dissecting it then you'll enjoy Tenet

I'm not gonna lie, first viewing was a big letdown. As a Nolan fan myself, I was shocked to see what I considered "annoying bad" writing and sound design. The sound design still is a problem as of writing this, but upon second viewing, it was like a little switch flicked on every time I saw something I didn't understand from the last viewing. The little details that I considered bad writing suddenly seemed like an obvious answer. The cheesy parts I thought were, well cheesy, had so much more depth. I'm not going to spoil it, but thinking about The Protagonist and Neil makes me feel so many emotions that upon second viewing never made me feel the way I did, truly beautiful. No movie is perfect, this one definitely isn't perfect. This is no Dunkirk or Inception, but I guarantee this movie will make you use your brain.