teneT

[00:00:02] And as always I'm pretty sure I already did this bit on the Memento episode Tune in next week for Wonder Woman 1984 Go to our Shopify page for some real nerdy merch Go to Blankies.Reddit.com for some real nerdy shit

[00:00:20] Thanks to Joe Bowen and Pat Rounds for our artwork Thanks to Lea Monk for our theme song Please remember to rate, review, and subscribe Yeah, great. I never say anything at the end I was gonna join in Look, this episode's a little bit inverted, it is

[00:00:40] I just don't have an ending thing You don't, you don't I mean, you know, that's fine Sure, sure, sure, sure It's fine, the thing that you do at the end is realize that we've been friends This entire time

[00:00:59] You know what I'm saying? You realize we've been biffles this whole time For me, this is the end of a long and beautiful friendship I can't remember the line exactly, but whatever that is Yeah He says, I think this is the beginning of a beautiful friend trip

[00:01:16] And the rap pattern goes, no, no bro, it's the ending I don't know Hello everybody We're talking TeneT TeneT We're doing it, it's a rare occurrence It's an odd occurrence to talk about a new release film This many months after its release

[00:01:40] There are a couple times where we've been a little out of sync with the director we're covering So Dumbo was a little bit late and Detroit was a little bit late But now we're doing this more than a little late

[00:01:50] And The Witch is more than a little late It's like our podcast is untethered from the time stream I'm doing like a backwards I'm walking backwards David's doing a backwards man He can go backwards as fast as you can TeneT guys Here, so yes

[00:02:16] Blank check, come on, let's introduce this show guys This is very exciting David, I can't introduce the show, I just ended it Okay, fair enough Well, I'm still David Sims And Griffin Hammond This is a podcast where we discuss directors' filmographies And we once discussed

[00:02:36] I'm not getting everything out of it But we did once discuss The filmography of Christopher Nolan We did We have Right, and it was in 2017 Before the release of his last movie And then in 2020 he released his new movie TeneT And it saved movie theaters

[00:02:56] Right, it totally saved movie theaters and went over normal And so that was great And here we are to review it Because of course we wanted to wait until it was available on demand Because you know You know, things are normal But you know

[00:03:15] Maybe not everyone got to see it in Labor Day We should say a couple of things First of all, things are not normal Second of all, we should say right up top We went and saw this in a theater David, you saw this as a critic

[00:03:31] The Atlantic rented out a theater for you Back in whatever it was, August, September Yeah, late August, right before Labor Day Because it came out Labor Day weekend We went and saw this at a theater in New Jersey

[00:03:44] We got a screen just a couple of days before it went on to VOD We sort of, the last window maybe of it playing in theaters I was overcome with the impulse to see it I have been barely doing anything all pandemic

[00:03:59] I don't say this as justification as I've earned the right to go Break some rules, but it was one of those things where I was like Fuck it, this is my thing This is my one cheat this year Is one cheat too many? Perhaps, I don't know

[00:04:14] But I've also been doing less than almost anyone I know I barely see anybody So we rented out a movie theater in New Jersey for $150 It was astonishingly cheap We were in the swamps of Socacus We were in the swamps of Socacus

[00:04:31] It was a nice little theater, I gotta say I was kind of into it, little is maybe not the word But it was like an indie multiplex It was an indie multiplex It was like a chain that got largely bought out by AMC

[00:04:46] And most of their theaters were converted to AMCs And this is one of the few that is still owned by the original family They didn't get this location Kerasotes, the chain is called Kerasotes That's the name of the chain? I was trying to figure that out

[00:05:00] So that's just a family name, right? That's the family name and there was a video before the movie From Mr. Kerasotes Am I wrong also in thinking that Mr. Kerasotes Is the name of the guy who eats too much and then explodes in vomit

[00:05:11] In Monty Python in the meaning of life It does sound right I don't think it's quite that, but... Alright now I have to look it up Monty Python Vomit guy Vomit scene, sure Right, it's Mr. Kerasotes Kerasotes Very similar Okay You know that scene

[00:05:33] really freaked me out when I was a kid Is that normal? I don't know, it's funny I feel like I'm the one who usually talks about things having freaked me out when I was a kid I just thought that was one of the funniest scenes ever made

[00:05:45] It is funny, like I think even as a kid What's it, Waverthin, you know I just remember it's so gross and insane I think when I was a kid I was like overwhelmed by it That scene always was hilarious to me

[00:06:02] and I'm the guy who was terrified of Austin Powers the first time I saw it Right, because he was frozen Too scary Too scary This Kerasotes chain, yes They got bought out by AMC They now have only a very small selection

[00:06:20] They operate six theaters in all of the United States And one of them is in Sokakis, New Jersey The point here is they played a video It's four of us in the theater Okay, Griffin, David, Ben, Ben Signifiguenother We're in the theater alone

[00:06:36] We pay $150 for the four of us to see it Did not seem like there was a single person seeing one other movie in the theater Right You know, literally there was a person outside the theater like, and Ben enjoyed this person

[00:06:49] And she like basically like unlocked the door I mean to the front of the movie of the multiplex to let us in She was like, wait, what are you here for? And we were like, oh, we booked a theater and she was like, right, okay, okay

[00:07:02] You know, come on in Like they were almost hoping that no one would show up Right Yeah And there was like passive aggressive energy For sure Which I sympathize it's a strange time to be operating in multiplex obviously But yes, no, Griffin, Tenet The film by Christopher Nolan

[00:07:21] came out in Labor Day You didn't see it You know, I think you flirted with it a couple times, right? Well, let me unpack this a little bit, okay? Sure I was very staunchly against theaters reopening I've been very against most things reopening

[00:07:36] even though I understand the necessity of people having to work for a living I do find this to be this capitalist hellscape of how America has thrown people into the furnace in order to keep our big industries alive during a pandemic

[00:07:55] It just felt like a movie theater is a thing that's fundamentally going to be unsafe to do why reopen it And I also had the fear that reopening prematurely would doom the businesses low grosses would Oh yeah, so it'd be bad news, right

[00:08:08] The death of it as a business Which freaked me out because movie theaters are one of the only things that I like in the world And so I was like very against it and very much like I'm not going to go to a movie theater until I'm vaccinated

[00:08:22] I cannot see a thing changing my mind on that And then a couple of things happen One is the reopening of movie theaters was a disaster People have not been going Right, people just weren't going Which, look, on one hand I understand On the other hand

[00:08:37] You hear that? It's like a ding Is that just me? Yeah, no, I hear that I kind of heard a buzzing There's a weird kind of inverted noise One of those classic inverted noises I know, I don't know what that is I don't know what that is

[00:08:54] I don't know what that is I'm marginally confused by how movie theaters are the thing that people are really reticent to do and so many other businesses seem to be immune in terms of idiots throwing willful abandon towards having fun in the short term

[00:09:15] Right, because in a movie theater you ostensibly sit silently which would seem to be less But anyway, whatever Which, look, I guess I get the fear It was the fear that drove me at the beginning which was like

[00:09:30] I don't want to go see a fucking Christopher Nolan movie opening weekend with a packed crowd with a bunch of people jammed in like sardines and in the middle of the movie the guy next to me takes off his fucking mask We've all experienced bad behavior from moviegoers

[00:09:43] but as the months were on and it became clear that people were not going to movie theaters the idea of going to a movie theater to see a tenet became more and more appealing to me because I was like I weirdly feel There will be there

[00:09:56] There's less risk than going to a restaurant Like, I absolutely I have really struggled to get my head around even outdoor dining let alone indoor dining When I walk by bars and restaurants that are open people are just there with their masks off it fucking breaks my brain

[00:10:10] and I'm not someone who's been like hanging out with people indoors with masks off or anything I've been so overly cautious but it was just sort of like something about the wild failure of movie theaters reopening makes it now feel like movie theaters

[00:10:22] are one of the safer places to be and we were also renting out a screen at a theater that's a little bit isolated off the beaten path so it just felt like oh, there's probably not going to be anyone there My fear the entire time

[00:10:36] was some guy walks in after seeing a fucking 215 war with Grandpa and sneaks into the second half of tenet and sits right down next to me because it was four of us sitting at different ends of the theater with our masks on, right?

[00:10:49] Yeah, but there's no one around I mean it was the same thing that happened when I saw it the last time There's just no one around No one's even thinking of going It's just not a thing I thought about it a number of times

[00:11:02] and one time I even booked screening and then I took a nap and then I woke up and I was like, I'm not going to take a path train to go see tenet in New Jersey by myself but I finally talked to you guys into doing it

[00:11:15] and so we did it It's one of these weird things where it's like I feel somewhat hypocritical because I'd been so anti-movie theater going and I've been such a fucking COVID scold about everyone's behavior all the time and it's not like I endorse it

[00:11:30] but I also did walk away from it being like it feels more safe than most things right now I mean, I try not to scold anything because for this exact reason because it's everyone's different you know, whatever I can't worry about it I'd go crazy

[00:11:45] Well that's my choice My choice is that I'd go crazy Your choice has been to go crazy Right But I will say both times I did it certainly right My anxiety was not particularly high Ben, I don't know how you felt but there's just no one around

[00:11:59] We were all safe like I don't know we just did all the things you're supposed to do It was just an opportunity to do something that I hadn't done for so long and feel just a little bit normal I felt a little bit normal That's the thing

[00:12:12] You drove me, Ben and that's what we talked about in the car ride back is just like your significant other was like I feel high right now and I was like, I don't even feel high I feel even This is the first time I felt even

[00:12:26] I've been in withdrawal for the last nine months ten months whatever and now I just vaguely feel human for the next handful of hours Yeah I got absorbed into a movie and forgot about everything for however long this like two hour movie It was great it was daylight

[00:12:44] and then it was night when we left and I was trying to figure out what the hell I was watching Right, like we went to a dark room We were all in that room together but we weren't talking to each other

[00:12:56] We were sitting in different parts of the theater The lights went down We turned our phones off and for two and a half hours we just thought about gobbledygook We thought about Christopher Nolan and his pretentious goofiness and it was great and you said it so well Ben

[00:13:13] where you were like it was so nice to watch a movie about people trying to like stop an apocalypse Like it felt like a relief to be focused on a fake phony baloney bullshit end-of-the-world threat rather than all of the real end-of-the-world threats

[00:13:30] Like to just have this complete escapist experience to just be engulfed by this screen and his weird inaudible sound mix Yes For two and a half hours plus some trailers I don't know, I just felt so good that to some degree I throw this all as a preface

[00:13:47] I don't even really know what I think of this movie Like I certainly enjoyed watching it I think I understood 20% of it at most I was just fucking vibing on this thing so hard partially because A, it's the first hit I've gotten in almost a year

[00:14:04] of my main fix Right? And B, because it is such an elemental fucking Nolan movie of just like sound and movement and imagery and shit and fucking suits and explosions and vehicles and whatever that I just had the distinct thought at several points like

[00:14:24] I would be very happy if this went on for 12 hours I barely know what's happening in this movie I would just be happy watching this as like just a feed just as a raw feed for a day I wish this were Andy Warhol's Empire

[00:14:36] I wish this was just endless But David, you've seen the movie twice now No, no, no No, no, no Well, I watched it again before, you know since we went to the theater Oh wow, so you've seen it twice in theaters and then you bought the steelbook

[00:14:54] and you've watched it once at home now That's correct And in between your first and second theater going experiences you spend a lot of time on like a Reddit and uh I don't know about a lot You had a little time I just snuck around

[00:15:11] Do you dug into the rabbit holes of people trying to crack this movie, right? Definitely, definitely Definitely Like, watching it for the third time at home how much do you feel like you get what's going on while you're watching the movie Oh Yeah, I totally get it

[00:15:28] I love this movie This movie rules I, yeah The final sequence is the one where that's gonna take me a while I feel like there's just in terms of geography just in terms of what's supposed to who's doing what when during the big fight but apart from that

[00:15:48] Oh yeah I mean like, look I mean Ben basically said this when we left Forky said this after we watched it at home She was like, he just made a movie for you It's for you It's really for you It's just a movie that Christopher wanted to watch

[00:16:04] She was like, you know pretty into this I would say for, I don't know, maybe an hour and then after that she was just like No, I can't And I feel like that's been a lot of people's reaction to Tenet, right?

[00:16:17] There's some point in which they're just kind of like No, I don't I don't care enough to do the really hard work of trying to keep up with everything here So I'm gonna kind of mentally tap out at this point

[00:16:29] Right? Like that's the negative to hit on Tenet It is absolutely a movie that makes you do the lion's share of the work in a way that is very unusual for a film of this size Right, although it also it's trying to do the advice of Swish

[00:16:44] just like, don't worry about it just feel it, it's gonna be you know, like there's that early sequence where she's but yes, yes you are correct But I also to me, to some degree like A, it feels like this movie is a present for David

[00:16:59] It's a movie all about rules and the movie's a puzzle And to another degree this movie feels like Nolan's response to everyone clowning on how much of Inception is spent explaining Inception Right? He's like, yeah, fuck you it'll be the whole movie next time

[00:17:20] But it's almost the opposite Inception is just like you're very clear emotional stakes for each character, right? We understand who these people are There's like a lot of sort of personality in the little scenes there's a ton of setup before you actually get to the shit going crazy

[00:17:36] and there's so many scenes where people like take the time to stop and with a chart explain everything that you're going to see before you see it And everyone made fun of how much of that movie is like seminars Oh, so right, so you're saying this time

[00:17:50] it's like fine, whatever I'll just yell at you a little bit and then throw you into the next set piece Right, he's like, oh, you're telling me you don't like how much Instruction manuals Right, right, fine Absolutely, I'll just throw you into the deep end

[00:18:04] I'll have people yell shit mid-action You know Which I do think we have to talk about all the different elements to this movie and it's already weird legacy but that Nolan very much positioned this movie as like I think this can be the movie that saves cinemas

[00:18:22] Right, and aside from the fact that he made his move very prematurely it also is not the kind of movie that was ever going to function that way I think this movie was always going to turn people off a little bit especially in relation to his other movies

[00:18:40] Yeah, this was always right if this had just, if 2020 had been regular old movie season I don't know, the movie would have made money people would have seen it Warner Brothers gave it the appropriate tent hold you know, push but yeah, I think it would have been

[00:18:57] a more minor People would have been I think somewhat disappointed by it and now it is saddled with just like unrealistic expectations, right? circumstances that were designed to make it look like a failure no matter what and I've even just seen in the last

[00:19:15] whatever it's been four days since it came out on home video I think it's been four days from the time where recording to when it came out on home video that and then VOD and what have you that there's already been the sort of like people being like

[00:19:29] that's it, and the backlash to the backlash and all that shit There was a tiny backlash on its theater release but obviously most people but there was a little bit of that in September and now there's more, right and I think that would have been the reaction

[00:19:43] it's like black hat, it's like you know, hardcore fans would are going fucking wild and hooting and hollering but a lot of people would have been like no, he's up his own ass, I don't know what, like that's the other thing That's the other thing is this movie

[00:19:57] feels the most Michael Manish to me of all of Christopher Nolan's movies and people talk about how inspired he is by Michael Mann we certainly have talked about it but I feel like Nolan does have that kind of populist streak in him where he wants to make movies

[00:20:15] that are accessible and enjoyable to the masses, right and like whereas Michael Mann has that like I don't give a fuck if you don't understand what these people are saying kind of thing to him and this feels like him applying that sensibility

[00:20:29] to the Nolan thing where it's just like I'm dropping you in, I'm not slowing down I'm not holding your hand I'm fucking going for it I also think those types of movies are particularly best seen in theaters with total immersion and I just like the entire

[00:20:47] time I was watching this I went like I'm so thankful that I pulled the trigger on going to the fucking Kerasot's theater with you guys and it's last week of release because I would not want to have to watch this movie at home for the first time

[00:21:01] if there's anything distracting you away from the screen it is so easy to just feel completely lost with this movie as opposed to just sitting there in a theater and going like I get that I'm not gonna get all of it whatever I'm just I'm handing myself

[00:21:17] over to this thing Yes, I want to say several things okay one because I've seen a lot of this on the internet Christopher Nolan definitely is a hubristic creature who thought that he could save cinema I don't think that's or whatever who wanted the movie in theaters

[00:21:38] thought maybe things could rebound in the summer like that is definitely a part of it sure it's released but I do feel like people have forgotten that theaters were begging studios to release big movies and really wanted to reopen in my opinion possibly

[00:21:58] foolishly like right you know like they were like it's fine we'll do a video of us spraying down the seats like which is what we saw we saw Mr. Caruso the world's least charismatic man sitting dead-eyed in a theater saying like it's safe

[00:22:12] the cue cards in the corner of the screen yes right right while I was like people in hazmat suits spray around him and of course also this movie did far better in Europe and extremely well in China in you know countries where especially during the summer COVID was

[00:22:30] really subsiding and of course America I'm not going to I don't think we did a very good job I'm just gonna say I think we did a kind of a shitty job no good very bad doon dust yeah so there was that issue as well

[00:22:48] just because I feel like I've just seen a lot of like well fuck that movie I mean Chris Fernol and single-handedly killed the theater business I'm like I know the pandemic is issue A obviously and killing the theater business and some fucking studio was gonna try this shit

[00:23:04] like yes someone was gonna throw a movie out there most likely a movie like tenet that was planned for early you know like for a summer release yeah and they didn't want to delay it for a year you know like and some and of course

[00:23:18] Nolan was like yes of course theaters I am the the saint of theaters like this is my clarion cause we will have right we gotta do it yes I think you're right it could have been Mulan just as easily it could have been one many other films

[00:23:34] there's something about the fact that he is such a as you said like the patron saint of the theater and and sort of the old-fashioned big screen experience and all of that but also it was like you know reported that he internally was

[00:23:48] like I think this is the movie that can save theaters I did buy all accounts have a little bit of that Tom Cruise like you don't understand everyone's looking for me looking to me to save this you know who saw this movie Tom Cruise big movie big screen

[00:24:04] yeah he said I love the movies blanket thank you no it's true look it could have been another it could have been another movie but the difference is if it had been Mulan or it had been anything of that sort if it had been crudes a new beginning

[00:24:18] or whatever they would have just been like oh this studio fucked it up with Nolan it was so clear even just to like the day after the HBO Max announcement I posted on Twitter this video that he made the India video

[00:24:34] right because it's finally opening in theaters in India being like it's ready it's safe you can all go this is how movies meant to be seen on the big screen like he was really trying to be like the ambassador of it's safe again we can't

[00:24:46] let this thing die and I think a it was not the right movie to pin those sort of hopes on and be it was way too early way way way too early and the reality is I think the only way that movie going feels safe is doing exactly

[00:25:00] what we did I say feel safe because everything is only safe on a relative scale when there's a fucking invisible virus in the air that could kill us all but ultimately that's not a sustainable model for these theaters to just be renting out screens to for dipshits

[00:25:16] it's just the best they can do now because like it's either that no ticket sold it was I think it was one of those things where they were like more right like you know we will find a balance there's levels of survival were prepared to accept

[00:25:30] to quote agent Smith and then they couldn't even pull that off right because people didn't want to go because this is a virus and because America fucked it up and it was just still there and obviously the best way to deal with any

[00:25:46] of these things is to pay businesses to stay closed and pay people to stay in their homes and of course we didn't do that and I don't know if you know this but the president was was and still is Donald Trump yeah who I you know I just

[00:26:02] think has had a really mixed record as the leader of the country the release of tenant and of itself an absolutely insane thing that will be disgusted puzzled over for the rest of Nolan's life right yes absolutely and and also I mean you know with the

[00:26:20] the full ripple effects of like him calling HBO Max the worst streaming service on the planet it's like no problem with that but it's like there's a really good chance this is the end of his relationship with Warner Brothers as well and Warner Brothers

[00:26:34] was one of the more traditional movie studios still in existence that seems to have gone by the wayside and you have to wonder what the rest of his career is gonna look like like to some degree it is perhaps not fair

[00:26:48] like it is not an accurate sample size but I do think that executives are gonna look at tenant and go like maybe that type of movie is over maybe the Nolan thing doesn't really make sense in a current business model

[00:27:00] and I did watch this movie and I am so grateful that it is a movie but I could see people like now being counters looking at this and being like why would we spend over 200 million dollars for one two and a half hour thing

[00:27:14] that isn't gonna become a franchise when we could give him like 200 million dollars to make 10 episodes of a TV show or whatever the fuck and the answer is... Well he's not gonna do that No, no but I'm just saying for them there'd be like

[00:27:26] why would we green light this for that amount of money it should be a season it should be a miniseries Nolan is on the Tarantino level where he... David I am not saying that Nolan is ever gonna take that offer I'm saying I think to certain degree executives

[00:27:42] are gonna go why would we ever make that I think... No, I just agree with you like he is on the Tarantino level if... were he were he released from his Warner Brothers deal which I don't know if he can be and he was like

[00:27:56] open season who wants me they would fall over themselves to get him it doesn't matter because this movie still made almost 400 million dollars during a pandemic sure but let's call it during a pandemic it wasn't even that well liked like no people I mean Tarantino made the hateful

[00:28:14] late had worked with Harvey Weinstein for his entire career yes and after that falls apart he was like who wants me here's how it's gonna work I get the rights I get final cut I get so much of the money and my movie costs so much money and

[00:28:30] like every studio bid on him every studio was like yes please very aware and they are in many ways sort of like the last two excuse me that's an old model yeah but I mean right but everything you just said in terms of like Tarantino's deals

[00:28:52] that he set up Nolan is like that times two I mean his budgets are just so big you know this one was big this was a really expensive movie but Dunkirk was not that expensive like you know he can make a movie

[00:29:06] for a hundred million dollars you know I mean like you know whatever he'll do it in a smaller movie the three Batman I don't know I don't know I mean all this is curious and hard to predict but I wonder if they're gonna ask

[00:29:20] him to tighten the belt next time that's my maybe I mean I also don't know what does he want to do next time like it feels like and if we should talk about the arc of Nolan because of course this is blank check and we've spent a whole

[00:29:32] series doing that if like inception had elements of this but like this is the Bond movie that he's always dreamed of and as he said he's like worked on this movie like what he's had the idea for this movie since he was like a kid which you know

[00:29:50] it's sort of the vibe of the original Nolan projects often like the 12 year olds to you know mental toy box like in the hands of a visual master well also this thing I love about Nolan of just like this very sort of sophisticated

[00:30:06] British man with the slick back golden hair and the finely tailored suits saying something as if it's really profound and if you read it on paper you're like this could be a five year old saying like I think it'd be cool if cars went backwards exactly well

[00:30:22] this is the thing about tenet it really felt like it's like even Dunkirk was a huge hit right like you know right like so it's like they were keep just gonna keep giving him the money and so tenet even after the dark night if he had walked into

[00:30:36] a studio and he sold them an inception which was but if you walk to the studio and he was like alright listen guys okay so like you go backwards if you go through this machine and the guy is gonna go for

[00:30:48] he's not gonna have a name you know like if he tried to pitch them on this thing I think they just sort of been like oh I don't know and so inception is like well what about the dream thieves

[00:30:56] movie and they were like yeah I guess that one's easier to handle let's do the dream thieves movie right like this feels like apotheosis of wild-nolan pitches it's like inception has the basic pitch you can give which is like it's a man who like

[00:31:14] operates in this weird sci-fi concept he lost his wife to it he's been locked out of the country where his kids are he's desperately trying to get back to him this mysterious businessman comes to him offers him a deal that would allow him to clean the

[00:31:28] classic Hollywood formula there embedded there even without the time travel there's a thing right one last job he's gonna be able to be with his family right classic Hollywood story man forever haunted by his dead wife and this one no lens like first of all

[00:31:44] wife's alive the twist on this movie is the wife doesn't want to be killed in the future just now this movie is everyone's trying to kill the wife and I won't let it happen right and the wife is married to the bad guy

[00:32:02] the good guy is trying to stop the wife from becoming dead but also he's like you know like I just imagine him at the end and he's like and the ultimate ultimate thing that was going on is he's actually been friends with Robert Pattinson the whole time

[00:32:18] it's the doofus twist and I'm such a sucker for it right you're like so here's the idea okay these characters barely have names the main guy is literally just called protagonist they seem to not care about each other at all and the twist at the end

[00:32:34] of the movie is oh actually they used to be pretty tight hey who knows he likes diet you know he likes to diet coke yeah that's some personal shit right there that's some personal shit this is what I'm God I love this movie it's so good

[00:32:52] when are people gonna figure it out I'm really into this movie too I saw someone on reddit predicting that I was gonna hate it because it doesn't have like characters and emotional arcs I almost got in there and started yelling

[00:33:04] I was just like I think he likes it but then I was like I guess I should wait for the episode maybe Griffin does hate it even though you had good vibes coming out of the theater yeah I had really good vibes coming out of the theater I

[00:33:16] ordered my steelbook it hasn't arrived yet I mean I'm like into this movie but to some degree I have a hard time like extricating my feelings from the larger feelings tied into the experience of being able to go to a movie theater for the first time whatever

[00:33:32] and what have you but also I just think like you know when I like voice my frustration with something like Rogue One it's because I feel like that is a fairly conventional movie that is lacking in character arcs and that sort of like intimate emotional kind of stakes

[00:33:52] whereas this movie is mostly just a like wouldn't this be a cool thing to see a movie do kind of movie which is enough for me to get on board like I guess what seeing Shaco backwards is really fucking cool it turns out it rules and there's

[00:34:14] something just about it being the most analog special effect in the world right that's what I love about it one of the earliest things people realized is like oh you could roll the thing backwards and then shit looks crazy and he's like here's the idea it's just that

[00:34:30] I have the stat here but the number of special effect shots in this movie is 280 which is just to be clear very few for a movie that cost $200 million and is enormously elaborate right is less than most romantic comedies like Dark Knight you know 12 years ago 650 shots

[00:34:56] Dark Knight rises 450 Inception 500 Dunkirk 429 so like Dunkirk was thought of as like a pretty scaled down movie for him this is 280 that is actually incredibly impressive I didn't realize it was that is wild right and even to the greed I just noticed like several scenes

[00:35:18] several shots several close-ups in this movie where Elizabeth DeBecchi is clearly having like a breakout on her face and there's like basic concealer done to try to like patch up her her zits which nowadays just is always CGI'd out it's always CGI'd out you just airbrush everyone's

[00:35:38] faces right and it's just like her complexion is different in a couple scenes there are a couple scenes she has different bumps on her face like he's going out of his way to be like I'm doing as much of this in camera as possible

[00:35:50] even if it fucks up continuity and again especially on the big screen it's really cool how everything feels very real I would say and I'm sure you would agree things like the crazy stunt of them climbing up a building or them driving airplane into a warehouse

[00:36:14] those are just things they did like it's great dropping gold bars right dropping bars it's also just that thing that I like I hadn't forgotten about but I have now gone so long without I mean for me where I'm usually seeing like several movies and theaters a week

[00:36:34] you know to go 9-10 months without any of this to just be like I sat up in like the second or third row I sat up really close and you guys were like you want to sit that close and I was like I just want to be completely

[00:36:48] overwhelmed by this thing I want to be so fully immersive my neck was craned up it was like extended beyond my immediate plane of vision and just like anytime in any shot just getting so caught up in the different textures of everything you know

[00:37:06] just like every new environment and the way the light hit everything and the different materials of their suits and as you said like the shininess of the gold or whatever it's just it's a very tactile movie and it very much is an argument for that kind of like

[00:37:24] analog tactility I fully agree it's got a vibe like I can't figure out it's cool like for him just like slick I think it's also that he's playing it cool Ben like I think it's that part of what we like about Nolan

[00:37:44] is that he's a big old dork and he like cannot help but put these like very goofy broad emotions into it that his movies are always just about like man I really love my family right and that he's like so proud to show you all the work

[00:37:58] he did and this is one of the only times that he's sort of like held shit back you know it feels like he's really yeah but it's a little more help back or a little less hard on sleeve or whatever yeah which to be fair like I

[00:38:14] like the sentimentality of Nolan but it is interesting to watch him like this movie just feels like a bunch of different exercises that he's doing like I want to see if it's possible to do a movie like this if it's possible to write

[00:38:28] a script like this if it's possible to tell a story this way also entertainment too of course but that almost feels secondary like it almost feels like he's figured out how to make something that's entertaining to people right but then

[00:38:42] the eggheads come in and they note him to death so he's just like what if I put out of my mind that basic people pleasing gene that I have right what if I put that on the bench for a little bit and just try to like almost construct

[00:38:58] this like an intellectual exercise I think there's thematic stuff going on but we'll talk about it there's thematic stuff going on but it but it's that's the thing it's it's more very little of it is terrestrial um we're gonna we're gonna he ten this villain is he is

[00:39:20] the idea of him is crazy I like I've really been that's something I've been caught up on where I'm like this guy is like I'm taking everything with me what a fucking nut yeah and I believe it man I believe that could happen if you gave

[00:39:40] the wrong evil motherfucker the power I also love the scene where he is like so how does he figure in this and it's like absolutely just right guy right place right time right like this guy has no importance in and of himself he just dug up a

[00:39:56] thing right it just popped up yeah a cruel society through this guy into the gaping maw of like cleaning up the wreckage of you know nuclear destruction and he happened to be the guy who found the suitcase full of gold and unlocked all this shit hell yeah

[00:40:14] hell yeah he did so tenet Griffin Christopher Nolan's tenant he said he conceived of the ideas over the course of 20 years I genuinely think this is a thing he thought up of as a teenager yeah right he he was watching meatballs to on VHS and he rewound it

[00:40:34] the title of course is inspired by the se tour square as are all the things in the movie do you guys know about this no have you where where's that it's a famous fuck I can't get it all in there

[00:40:48] but it's a famous Roman here I'll put it in the chat like word puzzle that pops up in a lot of Chris early pre-Christian art that's just it's just words that go backwards and forwards it's really it's like here how do I how do I do this

[00:41:06] stupid chat there we go um and so it's the word say tour a repot tenant opera rotate it and like everything's backwards if you look at it like it's it's a it's a I don't know I don't know if it was for

[00:41:22] children I don't know if it had I think there's weird sort of religious things going on with it but do you guys see it yes yeah right so that's where he gets the name say tour the company is called rotas there's an opera scene right a rapos the

[00:41:38] guy who did the fake painting and then tenant is running through the middle right it's a palindromic title backwards and forwards tenant this movie griffin well he makes dunkirk obviously it's a really big deal yeah gets I can't remember how long we had to wait but

[00:41:58] I don't know six months later or whatever right this gets announced like no next project John David Washington Elizabeth Debicki Pattinson right like that was right because that was that same Oscar season was black clansman and Dunkirk right I feel like before the ceremony the

[00:42:14] announcement came out like the rumor at least came out of like Nolan wants John David Washington as his new lead he's going to be a new protagonist and I really apart from that I feel like we knew nothing like yeah it was just one of those things where

[00:42:34] even by Nolan standards you know you would be whatever someone would interview Pattinson he'd be like oh I really don't know what it's about it's very confusing there was like there was no we kind of knew it was like a secret agent thing right you know and

[00:42:50] it would take place around the world and use iMacs cameras and all that I think they just kept on being like global massive scale and it was known that there was some backwards shit going on I'm trying to remember what movie it was that Ben

[00:43:04] and I saw together where the trailer came up the teaser came up which was mostly just like shit going backwards and forwards it was right it was them in the um that you know in the hallway with the bullet holes smoking it was very brief right

[00:43:20] but there was the proper trailer too right and it was one of those things where they like put the teaser out didn't put it online you could only see if you went to theaters but the marketing campaign felt somewhat similar to Inception

[00:43:34] there was very little known about Inception before yeah that side of just that the cast was so big right we just knew something about dreaming something about your mind right yes no it's true it's true and just a blah like that's pretty much what we knew

[00:43:48] right um so Tenet yeah this is the other thing it's like unlike some of these blockbusters they were in their marketing when everything got fucked up yeah so they were every postponement apparently cost them like a million dollars just in marketing fees and whatever anyway um so

[00:44:08] the film comes out I swear to god I feel like people were like is he actually James Bond is that what the movie is about you know what I mean like there was all that kind of wild rumor mongering of like did he really secretly make

[00:44:22] a James Bond movie or something I remember there being maybe I say remember maybe I was just sort of like personally attached to this theory but that it was in some way connected to inception that it was right yes that too right it would be

[00:44:40] right right I remember that too right because even the trailer had that weird thing where it said like it's time it's time for a new protagonist right and I was like is he saying a new protagonist in the inception universe and it's like no he's saying that

[00:44:54] this guy's name is protagonist and the movie doesn't even give him a proper nope but I think that's I think that's one of the many crew I mean like I don't know if he wrote I don't think that's a negative no no I know I mean it's look

[00:45:08] someone I believe it was Jordan Ropp I want to give him credit for the film stage you said that like it feel this movie sometimes feels like a five hour movie where Nolan cut all the fat out because it's not like this movie is short but it does

[00:45:22] just kind of move and like go from scene to scene and go from location like right like it's it is kind of breathless yeah and it does feel like so much of like the sort of detail has been stripped out he's

[00:45:33] literally just called the protagonist right like you know right um and which you know what's again feels like an exercise in testing the opposite of what he already did with inception yes right exactly because we've talked about like inception has to spend that much time talking

[00:45:51] about shit in the first hour so that the last hour and a half can just be sort of like operatic but they've loaded everything into your brain and this movie is just asking you for like full submersion from the get go without a lot of grounding it begins

[00:46:09] you know with kind of like a big hammer blow action scene like everyone sits down at a fancy opera house in Tallinn or in a Ukraine or something like I think it's in Tallinn I think this very cool opera house

[00:46:25] I don't know it's the key no they're right they wanted to use the key of opera house but they they used the one in Tallinn because it's brutalist like it's got that crazy industrial look on the outside and it's so pretty on the inside it's such a cool

[00:46:39] location yeah it is now unfortunately a weird upsetting way for the movie to begin to see like a bunch of people sit down ready to watch a performance and then a bunch of ass guys come in and they all fall asleep and these guys

[00:46:57] come in with guns and like hijack the entire situation there's something just eerie about it and I even remember like when the trailers were coming out over the summer when the movie kept on getting pushed back and it's like really that's a set piece in this

[00:47:11] movie is a bunch of people sitting in an audience wearing suits nodding off while people run around the theater and like swat gear and they're trying to convince us to go to see this I went and I loved it I did it twice yeah once again we

[00:47:27] did it away from strangers yeah but I don't know whatever come on it's just a very yeah I'm just saying it's arresting I still found it unnerving I'm not saying this in a negative way but it definitely like at this point in the film I'm still on edge

[00:47:49] about being out of my apartment let alone in a public space like this and knowing that I'm going to be there for the next two and a half hours the opening scene I found upsetting but in an effective way I mean the fucking train yard

[00:48:03] right and then the train yard is great that to me where he's getting tortured oh my god that's the maybe one of those scumier things I've seen in a long time that guy what's his name Andrew Howard he has like a really boring name

[00:48:19] yeah Andrew Howard the guy who's like maybe you looking last another hour I don't know I'm going to pull it two thou he's just a guy driver driver is his character's name so the protagonist is part of this big operation to try and

[00:48:37] avert a terrorist attack it's really a cover for their trying to steal something from somebody the protagonist gets it but then he's caught and he kills himself he takes his cyanide pill his metal cyanide pill and he thinks he dies

[00:48:51] but no he wakes up and who is there to say hey you passed the test you're a loyal guy Hap himself Martin Donovan apparently his character's name is Fay I guess we didn't hear that said out loud but I really like nice to see Hap

[00:49:09] nice that he brought him back 18 years later I feel like there's been a nice little Martin Donovan reclamation project going on like inherent vice and this Ant-Man remember he popped up in Ant-Man right big little lies like he just is one of those guys we've kind of

[00:49:27] taken for granted it's always good he is always good he's a very solid creep or boss or you know whatever functionary older guy he's a guy who knows how to use his innate awareness to great effect apparently he once played Jesus I can see that

[00:49:47] that's sort of crazy in like a TV movie no in a how heartily movie the book of life oh yeah well yeah how heartily regular yes so and he's basically like look okay so you passed the test everything's chill sorry about your teeth getting pulled out anyway

[00:50:03] your next mission there's a word there's a word tense gonna open some good doors maybe some bad ones too that line you say it all the time I like it whatever the line is yeah it's basically yeah you have to do this

[00:50:17] you have to put your hands together the synergy style right and say tenet and it'll open some doors and that's it right that's all he tells him because the whole thing is like everyone has like one one fifteen of information for you

[00:50:35] and you got to talk to everybody and put it all together much like the doomsday device it's like you kind of just yeah I know nobody knows everything but if all together it's crazy but it feels in so many ways this movie feels similar to inherent vice

[00:50:51] for me a film that I found endlessly frustrating the first time I saw it and now I love but yes that movie similarly is sort of saying like just don't even get hung up on anything right right like just

[00:51:07] with this right at by the end of the movie you'll understand what you were supposed to understand but if you're getting too hung up on details in the moment you're absolutely going to end up driving yourself mad right that is the advice given by Clemont's posey hmm

[00:51:27] Fleur de la Cour herself let me let me say Clemont's posey in the pasta dinner hollow fame I just want to oh you're a fan I'm a fan I like her too I would gladly pick up the bill on a plate of rigatoni

[00:51:47] Ben are you hearing a noise yeah it's super weird I don't know what I don't know what that is another one where you're like oh like it's not like she's an actress I'd you know I know her but I hadn't thought about her in a while

[00:52:01] I'm not sure why are these guys crossed and she's frosty exposition lady she's this is a bullet it's inverted it goes backwards she's here to explain basic backwards things this is where I'll disagree with you a little bit I don't even think she's mostly frosty

[00:52:23] I think there's something very delicate and quiet about Clemont's posey that goes against the types of performances you usually have serving this function she seems yeah what's the word for it because right because she's like her job she's a scientist she's examining this stuff right like

[00:52:43] she doesn't care about the larger implications she knows there are doomsday implications but yeah there is this sort of mournful moment where she's showing him how the bullets work and you're catching the bullet okay that's cool and then he's like but who cares this doesn't seem

[00:53:01] disastrous this just seems weird and she just leads him into this big room and she takes out this other equipment and she's like this is like the detritus of a war that's gonna happen like just sort of like washing up on shore

[00:53:15] but it's essentially just like evidence that something terrible will happen in the future right there's something very rueful about her here rueful rueful but yes that's sort of the movie's big conceit is this sort of backwards forwards timey-wimey stuff is not sort of unmoored it is very much

[00:53:43] a cause and effect thing where they can only do shit backwards if it's already been done forwards in the future as I put it to Ben at the end of the movie it's Chris Fernol and being obsessed with the moment Bill and Ted's excellent adventure

[00:53:57] where they say let's remember to give ourselves the keys in this bush later and then suddenly the keys are there right? yes that's exactly it you said this and I loved it that is his conception of time travel not back to the future not primer

[00:54:13] right and there's the moment where he puts the glove on the bullet and she says the bullet's been imbued with this ability to move backwards in time you don't know exactly how it's probably the byproduct of some radiation thing but try picking up the bullet from the table

[00:54:29] and he does it doesn't work and then she goes like no it only works if you have already dropped it hell yeah it's a frame of mind thing right we think about time in such a linear way man we're such squares we only move forwards

[00:54:45] but that's just one way to look at it yeah I mean Chris Fernol today given time is thinking about two even three temporalities oh my god there's so many temporalities he's such a dork I love what a fucking dork he is

[00:54:59] I love that what a fucking dork he is that he gets all this money to make these very you know crowd focused action movies but also he has to say like alright Aaron Taylor Johnson temporal pincer movement like that's the line like let's say it back to me

[00:55:17] um so yes but no I also just love and this is one of the things thematically that I love about the movie right is that the villains are us much like an interstellar where the aliens are just us right except in that they're good

[00:55:31] guys they're you know us in a better world but in ten it's us and it's just hey all this is just gonna get worse and worse and worse yeah and it's gonna get so bad even though we get more advanced and we fucking discover

[00:55:45] how to go backwards it's gonna get so bad that at the end as things are really getting bad we're gonna be like well what if we just blew up the past like is that the only way out of this now there's no way in the future

[00:55:59] yeah like what if we just go backwards and I was I was just thinking about the more I think about it the more I watch this movie I'm like that is a very distressing and pessimistic but also like kind of cold eyed and clever

[00:56:13] way of thinking about our place in the world and it's a very griffin Newman worldview when you and I talk about things off microphone it sure is that's true I'm not calling myself a satyr I may be more of a Clemont's posee but

[00:56:27] but here's the things I've been thinking about with this yeah okay so do you eat backwards do you watch movies backwards do you know what I'm saying you have to do the movies go into your butt like these are the questions I have because I understand the advantage

[00:56:45] of like using the information you can get in the backwards world and then use that in the forwards world but there's stuff like that experiential stuff where I'm like well that's not enhanced or better this way it's worse I can't believe I'm only now

[00:56:59] making this connection but there is of course the famous backwards episode of Red Dwarf which David I don't know if you know this but Red Dwarf is a comedy show from the United Kingdom it's like a sci-fi comedy show that aired on TV in UK

[00:57:19] I sure have heard of it did you you watch it on like BBC America or like the Britbox streaming service or something I have subscribed to Britbox in the past I can't remember why oh I remember why I wanted to watch our friends

[00:57:33] in the north have you ever heard of Alan Griffin no oh you might like it Chris Freckles and Daniel Craig Mark Strong Gina McKee 90s Melodrama I was gonna say the Red Dwarf episode which maybe was a big influence on Nolan for this movie they land

[00:57:51] on a planet where everything is backwards and most of the episode happens backwards and two of the characters start a comedy vaudeville routine as the amazing forwards brothers right and their whole gimmick is that they just do stuff forwards but the great final

[00:58:07] bit of the episode is that cat goes out to a field to go to the bathroom and then he makes this really shocked face and you realize it's because the poop went right back up his butt it's a perfect a perfect final joke

[00:58:21] and of course poop is a palindrome it goes backwards and forwards it went right up his butt he went he dropped his pants he crouched top some grass and went up his butt anyway I think that was Chris Nolan's main influence on this movie

[00:58:39] was the poop going back up the butt it might be, maybe we pinned him down he'd be like look it was Bill and Ted in that one red dwarf episode you got me it puts a James Bond on top of it yeah he grew up in England

[00:58:51] but yes I think that's one of the things I find very potent in this movie is the idea that this sort of like the palindromic riddle of it of like we're making it very clear it's not that certain people just have the magic ability to do things backwards

[00:59:09] it's that people have the ability to play and reverse things that have already happened right that are going to happen or that have happened in the future they've happened and they can move backwards through the things that have happened they grab this guy protagonist

[00:59:25] and they're like look it's really important you have to stop the end of the world they're like we don't know but we know it's severe because you have to stop it and he's like what do you mean and they're like well it only

[00:59:37] the fact that we know something is going to happen means that something bad has happened because you now have to I'm already confusing myself trying to explain it but I just like that it's such an abstract threat right

[00:59:53] that there's like something is going to go wrong in the future and we know that the proof is the fact that we're telling you right now to stop it and yes and Sator does eventually sort of talk about the villain of the movie played by Ham Browner

[01:00:07] and we'll talk about him plenty he's on a yacht in the middle of an ocean of Ham he's sure yes he's on the USS Ham that's right the Ham Cruiser let them all talk but it's just the queen married going inside a pig what a good pitch

[01:00:25] but he eventually sits on the lines of like their oceans rose you know he eludes to like climate catastrophe and so on but yes we don't really know what it is except the world has ended or his ending is in some dire state

[01:00:37] and Sator the villain of this movie is someone who is nihilistic about it like Ben is saying like he'd say it's over and I'm dying as well he's dying of cancer because he fucking grew up inside a radiation and so he's like when I

[01:00:53] go down as you say Ben I'm taking everything with me and then the protagonist and all these people who barely know what it is and barely know even like who they're fighting against and what time they're from but they are like well doing something is better than

[01:01:07] giving up so you know it is that very basic hero thing of like they won't be nihilistic about it like just because it happened doesn't mean it has to happen well and their question is like are we trying to stop something that's about to happen or

[01:01:23] is it something that has happened and we're fucked let's hope that it's something that hasn't quite happened yet on the time strain and we can stop it right before it's gonna happen and the hope is better than the giving up even whether or not the hope is well

[01:01:39] founded right like that's just the Sims approach the more sure yes so he gets recruited to tenant he goes to he sees these bullets from Clements posie he goes to India and where he meets Neil played by Robert Pattinson mm-hmm in just full just dreamboat

[01:02:05] I mean come on just oh yeah outrageous charm he has just become such an incredibly compelling screen presence and I really don't think he always was like he was a disaster but I really think he has grown just in terms of his natural on-screen talent yes

[01:02:29] I have always been a big defender of his performance in the first movie which I think is really good and then I think in the following Twilight films he is completely overwhelmed by the weight of what the whole thing has come to represent

[01:02:45] the fandom of his character and I think a lot of the rough edges get sanded off the weird thing he was trying to do in the first movie which is really look at like on paper this guy is fucking bizarre right he's more

[01:02:57] right you're good to good point he's more into the creepiness in the first movie because it is weird he's like you smell so insane to me you know like it's such a weird fucking this guy is like 180 years old and he's still in high school

[01:03:11] like I think he's I think he's sort of doing like a Peggy Sue got married in a cage performance in the first one and then in the sequels they're like you have to be hot yes yes and also the sequels it's just they ladle in more

[01:03:27] and more stuff there's more and more characters there's all this you know vampire werewolf but certainly that run of movies running kind of concurrent with Twilight like Water for Elephants and Remember Me he is not that really engaging I mean it's really like around the time of

[01:03:45] the rover and you know what yeah let's talk patents I guess is this the first patents and we've discussed I think it has to be right right right yeah no it is and yes this is the thing I will say I also should shout out

[01:04:01] he is actually really really good in the Harry Potter movie in the Goblet of Fire even though that's not a movie I like at all but I do remember just whatever it was like oh this is a charming guy

[01:04:11] but there's an argument you can make that he was like a good character actor right who then got saddled with this like you're a movie star you're a leading man you're dreamboats right and then I think he got overwhelmed by all of that and then it's obviously like

[01:04:27] Cronenberg starts to pull him that this is that was the one I was going to say right that's the fulcrum for now and I will say I will admit I'm going to admit this I'm ashamed to admit it I've actually seen Water for Elephants I'm sorry to say

[01:04:39] it so I can't actually say that he's bland in that movie I just feel like that was everyone's take it was for the elephants Griffin no it's fair it's fair and in that case you know I guess I'm happy they were marked correctly you know but right he's

[01:04:55] in that movie Little Ashes where he plays Dolly he's in remember me which I have seen and I remember him being pretty kind of you know whatever one note grumpy kid and teen and but it just has that insane twist right and then just like holy shit Bellamy

[01:05:13] yeah Bellamy I feel like Bellamy was like a screenplay that had been you know on like on the great unmade list for a really long time Little Ashes had been on a shelf for a little while right but then it's like Cosmopolis the rover maps

[01:05:29] to the stars people are like huh he's like pretty engaging in these then there are a couple that don't connect in a row right there's like Queen of the Desert the weird he plays Lawrence of Arabia Herzog movie that doesn't exist does never seem

[01:05:45] it was expensive too and right scene life the Anton Corbin movie right Dane DeHaan is James Dean right yeah and the thing right in that whole period it was kind of like oh is pat you know Pattinson's trying but like this isn't gonna work he just doesn't have

[01:06:05] the airshade right right and he doesn't have it and then and the Kronenberg stuff feels like outliers maybe this is the one filmmaker who kind of knows how to work with him and then he just starts scoring right like Lost City of Z that's the worst

[01:06:21] right you're just like wait can this guy just do anything on screen now like here he's got the less showy part he's sort of doing support he's pretty silent he doesn't have any tics right he's not doing he has no beard but it's like the guy is just

[01:06:37] so innately watchable that my biggest complaint with that movie has always been I resent that movie not having Pattinson in the lead role weird to complain about that movie seeing here that's against bylaws I just don't like Charlie Hunnam you know I had never liked him

[01:06:55] and then I saw Lost City of Z and now I love Charlie Hunnam forever and he's my baby boy I don't like Charlie Hunnam and I think Pattinson just smokes him in that movie but Pattinson also has in that movie the advantage of being the

[01:07:07] second lead so he gets to be quiet he is wonderful in that movie I had not seen Cosmopolis since it came out when I saw it I thought it was pretty good you know had stuff going on for it Kronenberg, Delillo

[01:07:23] it was not my favorite Kronenberg at all but I remember thinking that he was like yeah he's fine he looks good in a suit, I get it but not innately like oh I've turned around on this guy and I should rewatch it because I wonder

[01:07:37] I should rewatch it too Maps of the Stars is the one I remember being very like kind of sold on I think he's very good then but then when he popped up in Z I was just like holy shit but then he is in good time

[01:07:57] my fucking movie I watched that shit all the fucking time which by all accounts he saw a still image right? isn't this the story that he saw a still image from only God Forgives and was like who are these guys I'll do any movie they want to do

[01:08:17] and like reach out to them I'm sorry why did I say only God Forgives but he reached out to them and was like I like the look of your movie that I haven't watched yet write anything for me and I'll be the lead

[01:08:31] and that movie is just an experiment on to some degree just twisting his screen persona as far as they can his innate watch ability that's the thing so I'd seen him in Lost City Z that year and he has a big beard

[01:08:45] and glasses and I was like okay I get that he wants to you know he doesn't want to look like a Marquis Idol he's you know that's classic I was once a Marquis Idol behavior I'm gonna hide good time which is

[01:08:59] it had been a can and where I hadn't seen it but you know whatever I'm seeing it in press screening I'm almost going in annoyed at the sort of like okay Robert you know you're making your grimy movie oh he's getting dirty yeah like you know come on

[01:09:11] show me what you got and then I just walked out I was like oh look at this one that guy's incredible and then you know after that like the year after he had damsel which have you seen that movie? yeah I like damsel a lot damsel's not bad

[01:09:27] I like their other movie better but like this sort of joke of damsel is kind of what he's doing which I love I don't want to give away the twisted damsel highlight if he's fantastic it just became this thing where suddenly he's working with proper A-list art director

[01:09:45] art director light house another one of my favorite movies which is the lighthouse I'm a Pattinson guy man he's so fucking funny in that movie that is such a weird ass comedy you guys were the ones who were like

[01:10:01] Ben you need to see this and I was just like floored the whole time that's the other thing he's become so funny now and even just like I feel like people started looking back at all the interviews he did from peak twilight and they're like

[01:10:13] oh he just like makes up shit in every interview yes he would genuinely he would actually make up whole anecdotes it seemed like he was just like bored he was so uncomfortable being under the spotlight that he would just make up bizarre anecdotes and repeat them until people

[01:10:29] copy them as fact you know I interviewed him for high life and I interviewed him with Claire Denny who is a film maker who matters to me a lot and I love but is also a terrifying intelligent French woman

[01:10:47] who I did not want to be in the same room with because I just assumed she would look at me and I'd turn to stone which is pretty much what happened well exactly and like literally I've heard of her stories look she's like 80 pounds she's 75 years old

[01:11:03] and she like yeah she could just reduce me to rubble but yeah so but A24 was like well what if you talk to her and Pattinson together like that would be fun they were kind of like what if Pattinson interviews her and I'm like okay

[01:11:15] we walk in there and Pattinson's like so what and I just go out I very much you know whatever Pattinson was but he was such because she was so scary he was such a dream because he's just pulling on his vape Ben which that's

[01:11:31] you know he's just pulling you know brushing the hair out of his head and he's just like a kind of like chiller you know he just has this vibe of like whoa yeah whatever and just casually logging on to his all his all about Bulbasaur account

[01:11:45] and flipping off some hot film takes he just winks at me and says I'm brunt my favorite joke yeah no exactly like and like telling me like about how weird the lighthouse is gonna be and have I said it on right Claire Denny I'm eating a sweet

[01:12:03] no yeah I was hoping to tell the story right it's a funny story I don't think you told this on my 24 I don't think I've told it on my I come into a 24 she is sitting there and she's doing interviews all day obviously and they bring her

[01:12:17] a salad from sweet green the chain salad restaurant and you know they're like here you go you know and she's and she starts eating it and she's like I'm sorry I have to eat like you know I had to eat lunch

[01:12:31] and I go like oh no that's alright I always get sweet green and she just looks at me like I'm a fucking slug like just like looks at me like why would I care that you like this boring ass salad chain that I am

[01:12:47] merely eating to sustain myself I feel like the way you told to me the first time was that she looked at you with like resentment that she now had that information in her head like why would I ever need to know what fucking salad you eat

[01:13:03] as I was saying I was just like why would she like why am I trying to form a personal connection with legendary French director Clair de Nis over salad like this is not going to work I love sweet green yeah don't you just love the harvest bowl

[01:13:21] that's not going to be the next thing out of her mouth the next line out of her mouth was aren't you supposed to ask me questions which is a great withering thing to say and I like fell over and farted or whatever I definitely was like

[01:13:37] but it gets to the interesting pattern thing of just like for a guy to become this much of sort of like an indie sort of dream boat right I feel like he does not traffic in like pretension like he's got a little

[01:13:55] bit of that Nick Cage thing where it's like I'm working with otors but it all feels kind of like play you know like I'm just I'm trying to have fun I'm trying to see what I can do here but that's why it is interesting

[01:14:07] that this year he was in last year now and then of course he's got the Batman it does feel like he's finally like alright I'm now big enough that I can work in a blockbuster be weird if I want to be like do my thing

[01:14:25] I have some creative input probably I was going to say I think it's that he just feels like he has the sea legs now he knows how to hold his own against the machinery of these things you know so it's A. he's proven that that weirdo patencing

[01:14:39] can hit he knows that if someone's hiring him they know what they're signing up for and B. I think he knows how to like work within the larger system now you know which before maybe was threatening to swallow him alive

[01:14:53] it also I mean he said in interviews like Batman's the only one of these types of roles I've ever wanted to play it makes sense you know sort of aligned with like Michael Keaton working well in Batman that the psychology of that character is kind of interesting

[01:15:09] to him I think that movie looks cool I like Batman Batman means that he will get to do both you know it doesn't feel like it was just like well great I did my handful of 824 movies now

[01:15:25] I have my big franchise and I don't have to do that shit ever again the hope is that he'll jump back and forth between the two and that you know he'll be able to help actually get things made which he has for the last five years

[01:15:37] or so he's been able to help a lot of really good challenging filmmakers get their movies made because Twilight gave him so much box office juice over overseas and now Batman's just going to re-up that shit I mean people talked about like for how much

[01:15:51] fucking Twilight was clowned on Kristen Stewart and Rob Hanson have kind of kept the art house cinema alive this is this is the thing and we have to stand like it truly like I mean and I that's what I think he's doing I agree with you

[01:16:05] I think it's more that he's putting some money in the bank that he can withdraw again it's like right okay has Twilight finally kind of run out like okay you're not gonna just give anyone any okay then yeah I'll go be Batman

[01:16:17] and I'm sure he wants to do it and I'm sure it's interesting and exciting but like also one he can do well like it's like I you know I don't think he wouldn't have played Hawkman you know but it's like well actually good Hawkman

[01:16:31] have you seen the king no I haven't but I was gonna say that's the other category now where it's like if he does a performance in a movie that doesn't really hit his performance at least get some credit for being the interesting thing like the king and devil

[01:16:47] all the time where you're like he's doing shit yeah doing an accent in both and the king especially comes in before with 20 minutes to go and the movie is I think a bit of a snooze but yeah he's just having so much fun

[01:17:01] I've only watched patents and clips yeah they're good yeah but anyway in tenet yes he's really good he's really charming right I mean less not doing too many bits like not doing weird accents and shit but like just effortlessly charming but I think this is kind of

[01:17:19] the Nolan calculation which is like we got this protagonist guy who's kind of unknowable and there's a little bit of a cipher let's get a guy who's sort of more established at this point to be all the flavor you know to have the sort of swagger

[01:17:35] because John David Washington we haven't talked about him yet let's talk about JD Dubs yeah he's great yeah but he is he's fascinating like closed off it's very interesting because look you can't talk about him without talking about Denzel and because Denzel like his whole thing is

[01:18:01] he'll be in any movie and it'll just be some basic ass dialogue scene where so here's where the body was and he's like what's that choice right it's the best I love it but like John David Washington so buttoned down yeah oh yeah there's something very

[01:18:21] sensitive about him he's sensy Denzel sensy boy Denzel he's also there's something to like I mean just sitting there in a big screen watch and this guy for 2 and a half hours I was really trying to crack into like what his innate movie star persona is

[01:18:39] he's such a good listener and he also has those like very kind of striking sleepy eyes right like his eyes always seem kind of half closed yes there's something about him that seems weirdly chill with whatever is going on in the movie around him even if

[01:18:57] the circumstances are wild without him seeming blasé or above it all yes like there's something kind of vulnerable about him and modern about him and he doesn't really have this sort of mckismo that Denzel is usually trafficking in one way or another I do think like

[01:19:21] I want to say I want to be very careful with how I say this he gives a better performance in this than I will ever give him my entire life right I do not want to make it sound like I'm criticizing him

[01:19:33] you can criticize Jesus you're allowed to criticize him I think he rules in this movie I think he's good in this movie I do get the sense that he might just be like half a step too green to fully pull off what the movie is asking of him

[01:19:47] but I also think to some degree the movie is putting a lot of is distributing a lot of that weight to people like Pattinson and Branon even to Becky to a certain degree but I do think like there are times where how do I put this

[01:20:03] this thought was sort of more cogent right out of the movie but especially like this kind of thing which I feel like is so much of what defines like a movie star right it's like how convincingly can you sell bullshit

[01:20:19] and make it sound like it's not a big deal right is like that's the kind of shit they pay you $20 million for because it's just like how can anyone do that how can anyone make this dialogue sound like it's

[01:20:31] like a little bit of a battle and off the tongue and there are moments in this where I feel like the dialogue a little bit has the better of him where he just like doesn't he isn't totally in command of the star that he is

[01:20:45] clearly very inevitably and imminently going to be there are moments where I feel him wrestling with it a little bit to try to make it seem natural and there are moments where I think he makes it seem natural I've seen it three times

[01:20:59] there's also the thing of just that the dialogue is itself often quite ludicrous so yes you say right it's a difficult task I want to make it clear I think he's very very good in this movie but it is the reason why Nolan goes to someone like

[01:21:13] McConaughey doing the victory lap or DiCaprio like undisputed for a decade to be like I know you're going to be able to make this shit work and this is him testing out a new leading man to some degree well but this is also a question that I have

[01:21:27] that I don't know the answer to and you know maybe I'll ask Chris for Nolan when I interview him one day but like um he's a you know a black American actor Nolan's never had a black lead of a movie before but beyond that

[01:21:43] I don't know if the character was written to be black but he's presented and he's like as this outsider is this sort of like weird new you know thing in a tired formula there's all this stuff I mean there's the line where it's like we need

[01:22:01] you know where um Priya the arm soon we need a new protagonist but like and then he goes to see Michael Cain and Michael Cain is like you're going to need new suit you're getting you know like he's kind of trying to give him the

[01:22:17] it's a great scene I really like that scene but he has that sort of like unusual swagger to him it's okay like you don't have a monopoly on snobbiness like I could figure this out as well where I feel like

[01:22:29] he wants the guy to kind of stick out a little bit in in this James Bond universe of Pattinson is gorgeous scarves and Elizabeth DeBecchi so classy and Branagh the Shakespearean legend you know like you know what I mean like he wants

[01:22:43] this guy who kind of vibes a little differently I wonder if he really that my only question would just be like right did he go into this being I had really like this to be a black actor or maybe not I have no idea but it sticks

[01:22:57] out in a great way I it seems like the big thing was trying to find a new guy and it's not like he was brand new I mean he he's pretty and certainly cast black landsmen just that's his first lead in role it was

[01:23:11] right after this right he been in ballers I have not seen ballers oh I mean Liz and I have been doing a lot of marathons together Liz Dubbian Liz Dubbs that's I guess the point I was just making and it's like a performance

[01:23:27] I do still think is very good but like what we just talked about with Pattinson how he got sort of chewed up and then he figured out how to really hold his own be that engaging without feeling like he's over acting this is a

[01:23:39] character where there's not really anything on paper right you have to fill in all the blanks right on who this guy is and he's really asking you to just throw energy into it to find what the interesting energy is on a scene to scene basis

[01:23:53] it's just it's a tall order it's a big ask and it's usually a movie of this size that that ask is only extended to someone who has carried a movie of this size five six seven eight plus times already you know yes

[01:24:11] so I just felt like a certain points like he's doing a very good job it's a lot to put on him he's by and large winning and it kind of proves that he's going to be a real deal to stick around for a long time

[01:24:27] I was talking with Olivia Craig her friend Pastor Kinsher Guess and we were saying it's also to his benefit probably the only way he could be a superstar is that he doesn't look like Denzel Washington like not obviously looks like his dad a little bit but like

[01:24:41] if you google his mom he really looks like his mom yes and like we were like if he just looked like Denzel it would probably be too weird it would just be like this new younger it would be like whoa how is this pot

[01:24:53] you know like it's he's his own thing he sounds a lot like him though like especially this because Black Clansman he's doing the Ron Stallworth voice no but no he definitely sounds like him he sounds a lot like him he doesn't have the same sort of Denzel bravado

[01:25:09] but he's got the same vocal quality it is interesting in that like Michael Douglas Kirk Douglas way though where it's just like rare that someone is the child of someone this iconic and is able to sort of hold their own and both remind you of their parent

[01:25:25] and also function in their own way it's also another thing about this movie and it gets into this area of I think like Nolan trying to challenge himself in a bunch of ways you look at this film and realize that Nolan has pretty much reset his base

[01:25:39] of regular collaborators right so it's like this is not the second Branna and obviously you got Kane in one scene and Kane is like his standby but he's not using you know much of his like Martin Donovan or whatever but yes no everyone else

[01:25:55] is right but it's a guy he hasn't used since 2002 he's not throwing in Killian Murphy he's not throwing all those guys but also like this is now the third Hoidvan Hoidema after it is after Wally Fister embarked on a huge career of directing the Tic pilot

[01:26:11] you know just decided I don't need these rinky-dink Nolan movies I want to direct a half hour Griffin Newman episode right yes no but the other crew members are new he Hans Zimmer out the window well Hans Zimmer I believe was busy on Dune and so he brings

[01:26:29] in Ludwig Gronson this score fucking slaps and a half yeah I mean Ludwig is obviously a huge talent but like right don't you love this guy I mean I listen to this score all the time and Jennifer Lame who's the editor on this yeah yes well

[01:26:45] I want to talk about this okay so Jennifer I just think it's interesting that he's like shaken up most of the bag okay yes okay Jennifer Lame has only look at her credits her credits are you know Noah Bomback movies starting with Francis Ha Manchester by the sea

[01:27:03] the two Ari Aster movies those are her credits like as an editor she worked on before the W know your dad is like an apprentice but like her first big credit is Francis Ha and Nolan approached her and was like you're I want you to edit this movie

[01:27:21] and she was like I don't know anything about editing a blockbuster I've never edited an action movie I like you don't want to hire me and he's like you are the person I want to hire you and I'm like, you know I'm not going to hire a businessman

[01:27:35] or a bachelor or a bachelor by the sea is exactly what I'm going for emotionally like that that's sort of like recollection the way you use recollection in the past and like this sort of bluntness of like going back because we're a man and pre-dreamers by the sea

[01:27:55] this sort of goes back to the the pre oh yeah yeah line you're in, it takes you a little while into each scene to worry at yourself. Right, right. I think that weird abruptness. Isn't that interesting? I just love that.

[01:28:07] He's worked with the same editor for a year, Lee Smith, who's like a robust action editor. Yeah, but I think to some degree that's like a strike against complacency. You know, it's like you need to get new eyes into the ecosystem. You need to mix it up.

[01:28:25] You know, you can very quickly fall into I think very pedipatterns if you're working with the exact same collaborators every time and you're able to go like, you know, and then do the thing you know I like.

[01:28:36] I mean, even going back to like, you know, interstellar and stuff, you see him trying to like challenge Hans Zimmer and go like, okay, only use these types of instruments and avoid these sounds while together. But the greatest way to do that is to just mix up collaborators.

[01:28:53] Yes, totally. But it does have the hoit look that very clean, like brutal visual. I mean, I love it to be clear, but just now. And obviously, I'd love to have seen this film in IMAX

[01:29:08] that was not possible, but a lot of them shot with IMAX cameras. I'm sure, you know, when you watch the Blue Regal Sea, you know, from the aspect changes like when what's supposed

[01:29:18] to be in IMAX and it's a lot of it. I'm hoping there's like some fucking one week IMAX rerelease three years from now or something. I would imagine stuff like that will be happening. Are you seeing this part of the score features Christopher Nolan's own breathing,

[01:29:33] which was then manipulated into raspy sounds? Is that true? That's what I know it sounds fucking cool. That's cool. So okay, the next act of the movie, he is him meeting Sator and Kat,

[01:29:49] his wife and all this stuff. Well, because you have the early sort of high stuff with patents and the plain thing happens pretty early on, right? We're not getting no plain thing. Well, yeah, the plain thing is next, right? The plain thing is because

[01:30:01] protagonist is like, let me help you, Kat. There's that great fight scene in the kitchen where he's sort of acting like they have the better of him and then he hits the guy

[01:30:09] with the cheese grater and shit, you know. Oh, that fight seems so good. Yeah. That fight scene is great. Yeah. And you have DeBecchi in the car outside, like assuming the guy's being murdered. Well, because also the JD Dobbs was a fucking football player. Like it's that interesting.

[01:30:29] Yeah, it's an interesting thing where he does not move like an actor. And that scene especially, just the way you totally buy that this guy who's smaller than these people can just like knock him against a wall. But right. So he's like, I'll get

[01:30:44] the painting, this painting that you authenticated that's a forgery that he's holding over you. I'll get it out of where, where is it? She's like, it's in a free port. What's a free port?

[01:30:53] A free port is a real thing. Ben was delighting in this that is like a, you know, extra legal international water style holding place for rich people shit in airports where they can't be like taxed because they don't like technically exist in a country. Yeah,

[01:31:14] it's a real world. Yeah. Well, this is the thing that I think is because you've got the free ports, you've got the closed city, the Soviet closed city where the final action set piece

[01:31:26] takes like you've got these crazy yachts and these like futuristic fast boats that they're on when they're just, you know, going out for a sale. Like Nolan is like, this is my bond movie. This is

[01:31:38] like about like the weird world of the rich, like that you don't even know exists like where intelligence and all these deals are being done. That's like so beyond anyone's like conception. It's so crazy. And then we think about like, you know, time travel as like, oh,

[01:31:57] someday they're going to solve that and then it'll just be a public utility. But in reality, it will remain something that only the satin glove assholes have access to, to just the fucking rig the game more. And that's what it's like. What's happening is, yeah,

[01:32:11] they already know about time travel and they're using it. What? They have turnstiles all over the country. They're using time travel right now because the them in the future already has access to time travel and is setting them up for it now.

[01:32:26] Right. And they know the world is ended by the way. Don't worry about it. Like, this is, I love this. The Freeport scene is probably my favorite action scene, which is the combo of the plane crashing into the warehouse and Pattinson in Washington like, you know, fighting

[01:32:43] their way into the middle of this Pentagon museum thing and then fighting a backwards person. But, you know, they're in these great suits backwards man. Yeah. There's the weird. I love the weird clerk at the Freeport who's like, oh, well, of course,

[01:33:01] you know, you have nothing to worry about. Like we value your bullshit over our lives. Of course, you know, all that. But he plays it so well, like you have to really trust in this super weird business. Like, I don't know. He's like a real estate person showing

[01:33:19] like mansions or something, you know, like 100 percent right. That just right that weird, that weird vibe of like, as we all know, we live in an insane rich people universe where we just talk about these things like they're normal. So don't even need to acknowledge that.

[01:33:36] Right? Yeah. Do you like this whole, this whole set piece? Yeah, I do. Look, I mean, you've seen it three times. You're at a great, I'm at a disadvantage here. I still could,

[01:33:48] I could barely parse what was going on as I was watching it. It will take me more viewings to figure it out. But I was vibing on every single thing that happened in this movie. Okay. So that's all cool. They fight a backwards person.

[01:34:04] Which is great. They ask if daddy would like some sausage. Yeah. And they meet Himesh Patel, Mr. Yesterday himself. Okay. I want to talk about this guy for a little bit. I think Himesh Patel rules.

[01:34:19] I think he's great. I think he's so good. Right. I mean, you know, Chris Rinaldin tried to save the movies with Tenant. There's an argument that yesterday is the movie that killed movies that in fact, movies died.

[01:34:34] You're putting it all on yesterday? It died long before the pandemic. Yeah, I know. That was what did us in. We let that thing become a hit. But that movie, he's very much playing your classic Richard Curtis, like Hugh Grant, floppy

[01:34:49] haired, the street guy. He has a little bit of beard, but less so than, in Tenant, he's got a big Santa beard. But I'll say this, I liked him a lot in that movie. Especially because, you know, that character is such a fucking maniac and the script is

[01:35:07] such hot garbage. I was like, it's impressive that this guy's charming enough to overcome this script and actually make me almost like this guy. But my takeaway from it was, oh, this is probably some sketch comedy dude who's just innately kind of charming on screen.

[01:35:21] And then he shows up in this movie and he's playing like fucking Adam Goldberg, right? He's like this gum chewing asshole over it. American accent. He's doing an American accent. Yeah. He's got this. So goodness. He's so good. What do you mean American accent? Where is he from?

[01:35:38] He's from England. He is from England. He's from Cambridge. Are you serious? Yeah. Yeah, I believe he's of Gujarati descent. He's one of these fancy Brit boys, Ben. And usually I can tell if someone grew up in

[01:35:53] England, you can hear their voice. You can hear in their voice. That's why I was so surprised. Yeah. His parents ran a news agent there. He was in EastEnders for nine years. Yeah. He was a famous British soap opera. I don't know if you guys know about EastEnders.

[01:36:08] No, how would we know that? How would you know that? No, yeah. That's the only thing I know about. I grew up in Britain. I thought you guys knew that. What? No, you didn't. You weren't aware of that. I had no idea. Oh my god.

[01:36:24] So 2008 lived in Britain. I've seen a few episodes of EastEnders, let me tell you. I just think, I think Kamesh Patel, 30 years old with this movie and the golf between his performance in Yesterday and This. I'm just like, oh, this guy rules.

[01:36:42] I'm going to be watching him on screen for the rest of time. I agree. Now I'm thinking about him though. I now like your argument. He's been in three movies that arguably killed theaters. One Yesterday, which you just seem to

[01:36:54] argue like that thing being a hit was just that that was just it threw off the balance that upset the algorithm. Absolutely. Tenet obviously has it. We just discussed it. The other thing he was in was the Aeronauts.

[01:37:09] In that one he plays Eddie Redmayne's goofy friend who's helping him being an Aeronaut. Never watch that. Right. Well, here's the thing. The Aeronauts was a movie that was made only to be seen in IMAX.

[01:37:21] That thing is practically educational. It's like when you went as a school group to see the IMAX movie about Everest. It's just this gorgeous insane sky photography stuff. And then Amazon has it and they're like, oh, we have to release an IMAX.

[01:37:37] I guess we will, but just catch it on Amazon. So obviously nobody saw it. Well, Lisa, I'm very confused. Are you saying that Amazon did something wrong? That Jen Salki, head of Amazon Studios perhaps overpaid on Late Night and Brittany runs a marathon without knowing

[01:37:54] how to market either one because she had no experience releasing a film in theaters. And so when both of them over underperformed, her takeaway was, I guess movie theaters are dead. And so she took a movie that was designed exclusively for IMAX and put it on a streaming

[01:38:06] service because she refused to acknowledge that she was the one who fucked up the releases. Look, Griffin, all I'm just, you just, you can't deny that Brittany ran that marathon. She did. And the night was late and the night was late.

[01:38:19] No, you can deny everything about that one. But Brittany did run that marathon. The night was late. Just the thing at the end of Brittany runs, which I saw at Sundance, which I believe won the audience award at Sundance. Have you seen Brittany run some marathon?

[01:38:31] Yes. You know, at the end where it's like, and here's the real Brittany running the marathon. And I'm like, what do I fucking care? She's just a person who ran a marathon. Like stronger. I'm like, okay, the guy had no legs. Good job by him.

[01:38:45] Her. It's just like she ran a marathon. I don't know. I could, you know, whatever. Lots of people run marathons. They all get movies. It's weird how much they sort of centered the based on a true story in the marketing

[01:38:55] campaign of the movie where I'm like, yeah, I that was my guess. It was based on the director's friend. It just has that vibe. Right. It's not like he read in the newspaper like, oh, this is good material for a movie. There's absolutely reeks of,

[01:39:08] I could make a movie about my friend. Because it's like, oh, oh, she ran a marathon. Did what was she ill? Well, no, she's just kind of like a fuck up. Oh,

[01:39:17] was everyone in her family dead? No, they know it. She just whatever. She was just in her twenties and kind of annoying. She's like a griffin in the first act. And by the third

[01:39:26] act, she's a little more of a David. Oh, God. Anyway, so but good for we love him Eshpatel. That's the we love. We enjoy. We love him. He's great. Those are huge bars of gold. Yeah, they're real big. Like here's the question. What's up with that? Like,

[01:39:44] what do you do with that gold? Well, so okay, here's the question. Okay. And forking out we're discussing this say you're some airport worker. You see a bunch of gold. Do you take one? Definitely. But then what are you doing? What are you gonna do

[01:39:58] then you got to start asking around? Do you know, do you have a gold guy? You know, can I melt this down? Like, I mean, that's what I would do. Yeah, I see Ben just like putting in a frying pan and being like, well, this work is

[01:40:12] it's like taking it in my backyard and hitting it with the hammer. It's also such a creepy billionaire thing to be like, oh, money. No, no, no, that's bullshit. That's what poor people use. Right. I only use inverted gold bars.

[01:40:27] Right. Right. Because it's like, right. He's sending gold back to his poor young self because it's like, oh, this currency is never going to be out of style. But also there is this sort of

[01:40:38] insider thing where it's like, you got to be rich to understand how to spend the gold. Right. You can't just bring a gold brick into a Dwayne Reid. Go to a bodega. Like, can you break a bullion?

[01:40:52] Right. And there are all those weird strip mall businesses of like gold for cash, but they're waiting for you to bring in a hammock, a Shlemmer watch in exchange for like $40. So if you brought in a gold brick, they'd call the cops on you.

[01:41:10] So yes, they do. Right. The diversion for their airplane thing is they dump a bunch of gold on the tarmac at rules. But Kenneth Branagh as Sator, whatever you want to call him. As we said, he was in Dunkirk. Quite a lovely performance by him in Dunker actually.

[01:41:28] Sentimental Branagh. In this it's like, it's like Nolan saw his performance and Jack Ryan's shadow recruit was like a lot bigger, please. Your favorite performance. Yes. And that performance is fucking

[01:41:45] so much ham. And this just makes it look like the most nuanced, like fucking Dogman 95 ass, you know? It's a bit of realism. I mean, I really enjoy him in this mood.

[01:42:03] I don't know what you guys thought of his whole vibe. No, I do too. This is fine, finely cut, finely aged ham. I mean, it is just, I think he understands exactly what the movie is asking of him. I mean, his career has just become so weird now

[01:42:21] because of his resurgence as a director and the gulf between like, why did you do Artemis Fowle? Like have you now become really into Faberge eggs or something? But then he's doing an explicable one. Right, right. But then Jack Ryan too. I mean,

[01:42:39] the Poro movies it's like he wants to direct those primarily so that he can be Poro. Like it feels like he's far more engaged on the being Poro side of things than the directing

[01:42:50] Agatha Christie novel side of things. And he keeps on talking about how his Poro is like a younger, more viral Poro. You know, he's now the oldest guy to ever play Poro. That's the thing. And it was the same when he played Hamlet when he was like 44.

[01:43:07] You're like, isn't Hamlet supposed to be like 20? And he's like, yeah, but my fucks, all up in Kate Winslet's boobs. The guy has aged well. Right. Like he's still extraordinarily handsome. But every time he takes on a role, he's like, my take was to make him young

[01:43:22] and sexy. Like I want to be the sort of like not your grandfather sader, a kind of young, more virile sader. And you're like, motherfucker, you're the first guy to play sader. You don't have

[01:43:34] to constantly make it seem like you're sexier than the guy who came before you. I will say that is kind of the vibe of this performance where he's it's Nolan's kind of

[01:43:44] almost making fun of him because he's like so anxious that like the first thing he says to John David Washington is like, are you fucking my wife? Like they don't even say hello. Yes. He's so afraid of getting cocked. He's got that extended dialogue stretch that is

[01:44:04] it's the thing never before in Nolan's filmography have I had a harder time imagining Nolan typing these words out himself, right? Nolan probably working on some balls and I put them in your throat. Yeah, right. That I think you choke on your own balls.

[01:44:18] I'm just like, imagine Christopher Nolan by candlelight, you know, wearing like a long sleeping cap on some gas powered fucking typewriter typing in. Yes, if I cut open your throat and put the balls in the throat and you choke down your own balls. Yes.

[01:44:36] Yeah. Sator is for a billionaire who exudes class and sophistication. He's kind of a nasty little asshole. Right? Yeah. That's that's how I describe him. If Sator had his own character poster, it would be Kenneth Branagh, the nasty little asshole.

[01:44:54] Well, he's like new money, but like future money. Yes. New future poisoned radiation money. His money is so new it hasn't even happened yet. Oh my God. Because yes, that is the thing. He's just this Russian kid who dug up a bunch of

[01:45:17] gold from the future and some instructions on how to make time travel technology. But it's because he sent that to himself, right? I believe so. But we don't know. I mean, there's a certain point at which we're like God knows who originally originally originally.

[01:45:31] Yes. Yes. It's as you say, it's the it's the Bill and Ted. Right. If as long as I remember to send myself gold bars, then I'll have gold bars for the whole for my whole life, right? You know, right? Like it's interesting. There's stuff

[01:45:44] I know I didn't get in this movie. But then there's stuff where I thought earlier. I thought at an earlier point, oh, I guess we're supposed to know this as a given and then later

[01:45:58] it would be revealed. And I would be unclear as to whether I was ahead of or behind the eight ball. Okay. Like like very early on, I was like, Oh, the implication we're supposed to just

[01:46:10] ascertain that John David Washington is the one who hired Robert Pattinson. And then that's treated as something of a final reveal at the end of the movie. I mean, yes, it is a final reveal.

[01:46:26] I don't know if I think you're smarter or not smarter, but whatever. You're maybe more keyed into this than some. But yeah, like, but I want to make it clear. I was I also felt incredibly dumb watching this as a time shift. I absolutely did not get it.

[01:46:40] There is right. There's that sort of fun, puzzling idea of he's recruited into an organization. He found it. The movie starts with them being like, anyway, there's this thing called Tenet. And of course, right? The ultimate thing is he is Tenet.

[01:46:52] He created Tenet. Like he is the protagonist as he tells us. I guess that's I mean, that's the way, you know, like just watching Chris for Nolan movie. I'm like, he's not going to have any loose ends. He's going to tie everything in whether or not

[01:47:07] it makes logical sense. He's going to want this thing neatly arranged. So just any time there was any sort of lingering question I would just assume in my head that must loop back to the one thing that's already on screen, you know?

[01:47:20] Yes. So when there's a lot of business with Sator, DeBeckey tries to push him off a boat and Washington saves him. And then he's like, she didn't do that. I did that myself. Oops. Ha ha. Silly me. Like he won't even

[01:47:35] admit that his wife hates him. And eventually, whatever, Sator is like, go get me this fucking shit I want. He claims it's plutonium. We know it's actually just part of this doomsday device. And there's this crazy truck heist where they sandwich a fire truck or whatever. They're

[01:47:53] sandwiched to something and, you know, and they go in and get it, right? Like there's a heist that happens. It's a heist set piece with cars. That's fine. But then at the same time, Sator is like in a dark place being like, tell me everything that happens.

[01:48:07] And there's backwards cars going through all of this. Yeah. And then Sator shows up at the end of this car chase wearing a mask and being backwards. And you know, this is where the movie,

[01:48:20] you know, Memento style, and we should mention Memento obviously, one of Nolan's first movies, has kind of a forward backward structure and begins with a shot that is literally reversed. And all that. Like he's literally using these tricks he did on the cheap 20 years ago.

[01:48:39] But this is where the movie meets itself. And we have this crazy scene in the proving room in the red and blue crazy time tunnel place, this place. They were changing. Sator is talking

[01:48:52] backwards. And I think this is this is where a lot of people truly are like, okay, I don't even know what they're saying. Get the fuck out of here. And then of course, Aaron Taylor Johnson

[01:49:03] shows up right at the end of it. It's like temporal pincin movement, mate. And I think that some people understandably are like, can the movie end now? Well, now it's like he's got an elite squad.

[01:49:14] Here's this like they have this weird revolving door thing they start setting up, which is how you can right move back and forth, which to me just feels like do you remember the old

[01:49:24] like, of course, this is the thing I'm going to fucking invoke. But like the old Batcave play sets where like you could transform Bruce Wayne into Batman. And it was like, oh, here's a little

[01:49:37] fucking roundabout. And you put one figure on one side, one on the other. There there was something to that that I just found so endearingly goofy, where it's just like, this looks like a mechanism

[01:49:48] in like a Star Trek, like a holodeck play set or some shit or the Batcave. But it's done with like the utmost Christopher Nolan po faced seriousness. It is very po faced. I cannot deny

[01:50:00] it. I mean, there's nothing more po faced that I think that sequence is kind of cool in Night Merish where he's like yelling and then backwards and he shoots his wife backwards. But then

[01:50:08] it ends. And then Aaron Taylor Johnson bursts it is like, chill out, mate, chill out, mate. It was a temporal pincin movement, you know, and starts it and you're like, oh, we're like,

[01:50:17] oh, right. Chris Nolan is back like other Chris Nolan is back to talk to us again. But now like my whole sense of time in this movie is disrupted. Not just I'm saying the sense of the

[01:50:29] timeline in the movie, but also just like how long has this movie been going? I don't know if we're at the end or towards the middle or whatever. But this is pretty much like the midpoint

[01:50:38] narratively where the rest of the movie becomes about doing the flip side of everything you've already seen. Right. This is where the movie kind of folds. I talked to Alex Dressperry about this movie a lot and he was like,

[01:50:50] humble, right? And he was like, right. This is the moment where he was and he likes the movie, but he was like, yeah, this it is I can't he's going to do it again. Nolan's going to do the

[01:51:00] thing he did with inception and interstellar whatever where he has this sort of third act that falls into place, right? And it's like, wow, we're about to watch John David Washington go

[01:51:10] backwards through a movie we just watched and it's going to be so cool. Yeah. And so he does that he goes backwards. He goes, there's he's in the car chase again going backwards.

[01:51:19] That's cool. And then he gets on a shipping container and he goes to the airport and he's obviously it turns out to be the backwards man in that and that's cool too. Yeah, it's a great idea

[01:51:31] and I'm sure that's the crux of the idea that Nolan's always had, right? Like what if you had a movie you played it forwards and then someone went through it the other way. It does not feel

[01:51:40] it does not feel as a statically triumphant as it does an inception, but I also think that gets to the idea of just like this is to a certain degree this movie is him trying to be

[01:51:50] like I can do inception without all the emotions and the like overly dramatic character backstories but also I'm going to prove to you why that is a value in something like inception because this guy

[01:52:03] the only thing that's driving him is that Martin Donovan told him that he should do this shit, right? Well, and then you have this little bit of Becky character who's trying to

[01:52:11] talk about the Becky a little bit but like the Becky feels like him also Nolan doing this retort to I always it's always a dead wife. The main female in every movie doesn't exist anymore, right? And

[01:52:23] is just existing as a driving force for the lead man who is haunted by her whether it's Bruce Wayne's mother, you know or like his wife and obviously the Marion Cotillard. Right.

[01:52:38] Interstellar like you know has two female characters of note in the film but still is a guy haunted by a dead wife and how that fucks up his family dynamic and shit like that. And this he's like

[01:52:49] the wife's going to be alive. Trust me guys, I got it note taken note received the wife is going to be alive. She is haunted by the fear that her son is going to die. Right. And then

[01:53:00] the sun sort of becomes the wife in this and the sun is like supposed to be the emotional driving force for her and by proxy that's supposed to be the emotional driving force for protagonist who is trying to help her. But the sun like doesn't even register.

[01:53:14] He's just so fucking kid. He's just some fucking kid. It also does it once again keys into like a Nolan limitation where it's like he cannot think of a woman existing outside of a family structure. Absolutely. And also I mean there's this bananas line that you know

[01:53:32] would get studio noted. You know if you were a lesser director where they're like yeah you know if he activates this doom day device it's the end of the world and she's like including my son and

[01:53:41] it's like yeah including the end of the world. Yeah your son's in the world. You don't need to clarify that for the audience. We don't want him to die. Also potbelly sandwich shop will go

[01:53:53] into business like what do you want? We could stay here for eight hours extrapolating everything else it would be the end of. And she I do Becky is an actress I love we both love her.

[01:54:05] I think she's good in this movie. I think Nolan has a lot of fun letting her be near tower over. I was gonna say actors in the movie. He let's her be tall. Right there's this

[01:54:14] incredible scene where during the action sequence where she can open the front door of a car from the back seat by stretching her legs. Yep. I think she's I think she's really good. I think

[01:54:28] she's you know right rising to the challenge and all that but yes you know everything you're saying is accurate. He can't help but have kids and family and shit. I mean this is same

[01:54:43] as after yeah he it's not even just that it's the female. It's just like he can't it's just he's such a he's so basic in a way. I mean that's yeah it's the same thing like you and

[01:54:57] I've talked about this a lot but we find really fascinating about Apatow where it's just like these guys who just can't get over how much they love their wife and kids. Right. Right. Yes absolutely and like all of their movies are them showing you family pictures

[01:55:15] and being like I would die for them. And with Nolan he's like I'm gonna make this movie and it's going to be about heroes saving the world. Yeah it's also going to be about them saving

[01:55:25] their families like every time he makes some version of that but just like how Apatow is like you know there's this guy in here there's this person they're so interesting and their life

[01:55:35] is so weird and you know there's all kinds of crazy shit going on at the end of the day what they need to do is just kind of settle down and grow up a little bit you know like

[01:55:43] it's just he can't help but tail off to that. Right right and I also feel like people will will smack them with being like oh it's like heteronormative bullshit like they're so obsessed with like maintaining this conventional family unit. It's like I don't think they're upholding

[01:55:59] anything. I think it's just they're both incredibly strange guys who cannot believe that their wives are still with them. Like I do think there is a degree of that right. I mean you cure all these

[01:56:10] stories about Nolan it's like Nolan his wife is his producing partner right. Like they work together on everything he doesn't have a cell phone right he doesn't have an email he just lives in his

[01:56:22] little house to not have a cell phone. I'm with dinner parties everyone rolls their eyes they're all like when's he gonna say it it's like me saying I grew up in Britain.

[01:56:32] Yeah wait what? It's like everybody's just like when's Chris gonna say he doesn't have a cell phone and Chris is like oh I don't really know about that because I don't know and they're like oh my

[01:56:42] god we know we know sorry. But it also feels like that's I mean when I've read interviews with him where he brings it up it's very much about like maintaining like preserving the

[01:56:57] sanctity of his time with his family. Absolutely I mean I think by the way it's totally he doesn't need to have a fucking cell phone and it's great and it seems like he really cares about his family

[01:57:06] I don't mean to make fun of any of that. No it just feels like unfortunate that I think the genuine emotion he feels for his family always either gets pushed on to the female characters

[01:57:19] in his movies or the family is dead and the man is haunted by not having them anymore because that's the worst Twilight Zone scenario he can imagine. And Interstellar feels like a step forward

[01:57:31] honestly right because like Hathaway and Chastain have more agency is kind of crazy how well Interstellar has aged. I don't know about you but I just feel like people were disappointed when it

[01:57:42] came out and now I think it's commonly accepted as like we were too hard on that movie at the time. Yeah I think Interstellar and Prestige are the ones that like have you know grown the

[01:57:53] most mostly just because those were the relative quote-unquote disappointments compared to the insane success of the Batman movies and inception. Prestige is still my number one you've fully converted me on Interstellar though and it might be my number two now. So fucking good. But yeah that was a

[01:58:10] step forward Dunkirk has no women and then this movie it's like a real one step forward two steps back kind of thing for me. Dunkirk is one of those things that that's what it's like no

[01:58:20] that's not his best movie I suppose but it's kind of the best movie like that's a thing that's just unique in his filmography I would say and unique in recent movie making. That thing is incredible.

[01:58:33] But then this feels very much like following those lines right like Dunkirk gets into that like I mean at the abstraction of like character and time and narrative. Yeah no it's you're right it's true. Right and it gets away with that because you're like well it's

[01:58:47] like it's grounded in a very solemn real life event real tragedy real experiences so all the Nolan timey whimey bullshit doesn't feel like him just like getting off on his toys and then this is

[01:59:00] him trying to like apply the aesthetics and and the sort of construction of Dunkirk onto something like Inception. I'm very curious to see what he does next after this since this is obviously

[01:59:15] going to be such a big inflection point for him. I think it will be I assume so I also genuinely imagine he would be hard for him to go bigger at a certain point like after Dunkirk I wondered if he

[01:59:27] goes smaller and after this I wonder you know right like you know does he I don't know I don't know I have no idea. What if he's like oh god I'm doing World War Z two. Yeah right yeah. It's the way

[01:59:38] it's the one if you want to make a movie over 200 million dollars you got to sign on to do that at some point. I really want to explore the Green Lantern course guys it's just this is the time.

[01:59:48] I was looking at it. Do you know this whole fucking fan thing where when the movie was announced that there were no further details people were like he's doing it. Nolan is doing Green Lantern. John David Washington is playing John Stewart. What did they literally think that

[02:00:02] because John David Washington is black? Was there any other reason to think that? Probably not. I guess it's Warner Brothers. Robert Pattinson is Hal Jordan, Elizabeth DeBecchi is Carol Ferris. People spread that rumor. That's very funny you know what I rewatched recently? Green Lantern.

[02:00:19] That movie is so funny to rewatch because it is the end the absolute end of non-connected superhero movies and it's not good but it's so hilariously quaint where it's just like

[02:00:35] there's no stakes and it's just like ah there's a guy and he's gonna get a thing and he's gonna learn some lessons then he'll be a hero. Like I'm like and he's gonna defeat the villain the end

[02:00:42] like no stakes at all. But David is that not the most damning thing in the world that Oh I'm not saying it's good it's bad. No no but I'm saying that that shit has gotten so out

[02:00:53] of control that now whatever it is eight years later Green Lantern looks quaint. Yeah that is like everyone's criticism at the time was like this movie is so overblown these like fucking superhero franchises like they why can't these movies be kind of focused and fleet footed

[02:01:10] and now you look at it and you're like it's like this minimalist little object only because these things have gotten more and more overblown. The end of Tenet so okay all right so they

[02:01:23] they um Satchelor yada yada okay whatever they they run through most of the movie backwards but it's a lot more haunted and it doesn't feel as you know you don't have your fucking Joseph Gordon Levitt hallway fight you know pumping your fists like the score booming kind of

[02:01:41] moments everything feels less fun although I had a lot of fun watching the movie but it's like he's not looking for it's a cooler film like cool to the touch yeah no no it is it's cool

[02:01:57] it's a cooler film fire in the backwards world is oh sure yes fire backwards is cold it's icy cold I don't know if you notice but there's this character called Wheeler who is the lady who

[02:02:08] explains the rules of backwards to him when she's Fiona Derriff right it's Brad Derriff's daughter yeah and a good actress that I enjoy I'll say this I wouldn't know where you're gonna say sorry

[02:02:22] wasn't she in the most recent Chucky or uh uh she was in the last two Chucky films she was very good in both of them and I will say this zero chill I matched with her on Raya

[02:02:34] and I messaged her and I what I wanted to say this was a while ago I already fucked this up with the story I'm about to tell but I messaged her and I intended to say I thought your performances

[02:02:45] were really good in the in the Chucky movies and instead I wrote I thought your performances were really good in the Chucky movies and I just I couldn't recover from that I was so in my head

[02:03:01] I thought you were really good in those Chucky movies she's like what you're some cuck guy get the fuck Jesus no I meant Chucky okay all right and I already felt like does she want some guy telling

[02:03:15] her she was good in the Chucky movies but then I made it so much worse by making it seem like it was some fucking porn thing yeah she doesn't want either so instead I made the the slightly

[02:03:26] better things seem worse by initially framing it as the worst thing hey I thought you were good in the Chucky movies I mean Chucky but now that I mentioned it like that's what she thinks you're

[02:03:38] about to do right oh uh Accidental typo but uh have you ever considered uh anyway she's very goodness movie yeah she's good in this way I just but it's also one of these funny Christopher Nolan

[02:03:50] things where like I watch those movies I'm a fan of her work I watched this I did not realize it was her until the end credits because of the way this film is structured she's all you know in a right

[02:04:00] in a past and everything's moving so fast yeah Aaron Taylor Johnson who is uh traditionally one of my least favorite actors working today is just not my tempo but I've started to like him a

[02:04:11] little more as I think he's leaned into his innate unlikability I want to say this yeah because I have been really rude about him uh maybe I can't remember if I've done it on the podcast but certainly

[02:04:22] I don't I never like because I go off I am nothing but rude towards him um I've never really liked him I've always found him kind of smarmy on screen like I kind of liked him in movies like

[02:04:34] Anacorn and it that used the smarmy-ness but still like I just you know you know he's just never my favorite I was sort of relieved when he died off in the Avengers movie because I was like

[02:04:44] great he's not going to stick around that's fine because I'll just say up until this point the things like Albert and knobs or Anna Karen or whatever were they try to use the smarmy-ness

[02:04:53] I'm still like too much yeah right exactly and uh you know I found him to be an active dragon shit like nocturnal animals which some people liked him in um but last a couple years ago he

[02:05:07] was an outlaw king and now in Tenet where he's doing kind of the patents that he's bearded he's gruff he's not looking for star billing like he's kind of buried in the credits of both of

[02:05:19] those movies and I dig what he's doing and I don't know if he's just kind of like sanded some of this charm off or something I don't know it's good yeah I don't know I just

[02:05:29] always found him very mannered and self-satisfied on screen and this is one of the few times where I just felt like oh he's just he's just serving the movie absolutely uh he plays Ives right

[02:05:43] you know coins the term temporal pincer movement he says a really fun temporal pincer movement and at the end of the movie they do a temporal pincer movement because they need to get

[02:05:53] the doomsday device uh they need to get it before sey tor dies um they're gonna go to this buried secret city and grab it and they're gonna go forwards and backwards but unfortunately their

[02:06:05] enemy is also going to go forwards and backwards so even though they can find out what happened their enemy's also going to find out what happened and this thing looks like this whole sequence

[02:06:14] looks incredible god knows what they shot it but it's some you know insane blasted landscape there's all kinds of wild shit going on where buildings like blow up and then reassemble and then blow up again you know like there's all this crazy stuff happening I've seen this

[02:06:27] movie three times I don't really know what's happening like you know I don't know if I'm supposed to obviously it's like super chaotic it's pretty crazy yeah in the middle of all this John David Washington like has a conversation with Kenneth Branagh on a walkie talkie

[02:06:48] which is also just funny like in the middle of all this chaos he's like come on it's better to try and save the world and it's kind of like no I hate no it's a tove it's all over

[02:06:58] we're all going to die ha ha ha you know like that's just happening yeah Pattinson's character is at this point going backwards and forwards like multiple times through the whole action sequence he sacrifices himself to save the protagonist but also he's alive like there's all kinds you

[02:07:14] know and whatever I think that it's pretty valid to be like look for all the chaos you want to present I do I would like to know what's going on and it's very hard to know what's going on

[02:07:26] but I don't know I'm cool with vibes like I forgive it and also like in in comparison to a movie like Inception which makes you do all the work in the beginning so that you're just floating

[02:07:37] through the last hour this is a movie that every five minutes is like okay now take out your again absolutely absolutely um but still you know whatever I love it and more importantly well there's two that one I love Elizabeth to Becky shooting Kenneth Brown and then slip

[02:07:57] and sliding him out of the boat that's great that is great yeah um but two I just love the thing we already talked about the final conversation where they're like

[02:08:08] you know in the end of the day mate we're mates that's what's going on that's really what this has all been about yeah the real tenant was love between men as friends but maybe more who knows

[02:08:20] we get out of some stuff I have to say I'm a little worried because I know I tend to dive head first into this shit and you tend to avoid it but when you talk about like

[02:08:32] the cultural effect that movies can have right sure yeah right I mean the negative ways they can be interpreted you worry about this more than right yeah interpreted and then weaponized by a public

[02:08:44] once they're released from the hands of the filmmaker right and and the movie takes on a life of its own I do I'm a little worried about uh kids you know seeing this movie and trying to execute

[02:08:56] their own temporal pincer movements I do I do think that that could be potentially a problematic trend what could be a problematic trend now I gotta repeat the joke that didn't land just say it backwards and it'll be better this time there's just teenagers doing temporal

[02:09:21] pincer movements on tiktok insane person it was just one of those griffin jokes and I'm like he's now just enjoying how long it's taking to get to it like that now that's oh that he's just

[02:09:38] it's the problem I've been doing that bit where I make the wind up for the joke longer and longer and so I started doing the wind up for this one and five seconds and you were like cool I'm

[02:09:48] gonna catch up on emails and then I I made this wind up shorter to try to combat that but you were gone you were already checked out you had given yourself five minutes assuming it would take me

[02:10:00] that long to get to my punchline I was I was assuming look I'm not gonna say what I was assuming but what's important is we should do a temporal pincer movement on this podcast I'm gonna go

[02:10:11] backwards through it and tell myself everything about it just so I know in the beginning what to expect I think it's I think I saw we should do podcasts from now and I have a

[02:10:19] turnstile in my house of course for this very purpose I hope people weren't looking to this episode to have the movie explained can it explain look if you want to go on reddit there's all these

[02:10:32] fucking subway maps people have drawn where it's like here's you know what sator does and here's you know here's where they go backwards and here's where they go forwards again like you

[02:10:41] can see all that it's like primer or whatever like I don't know yeah and you'll watch it again but I'll say like primer is a movie I mean granted I saw when I was fucking 15 or whatever but that was

[02:10:52] a movie where I just threw my hands up and was like I can't I cannot I was absolutely my reaction to it but isn't it one of those movies that people like to try and solve like there is yeah

[02:11:02] there's like there is a way to figure out what's going on in terms of all the timelines of primer but this is a movie that makes me want to solve it like there's enough on a surface level that

[02:11:12] I'm vibing on that I want to do the work as opposed to the primer which just feels like a spiteful challenge by a spiteful man uh David is holding up his tenant steel book it looks great it's shining

[02:11:25] in the light I can't wait to get it I put in my order today it is interesting that the whole like second half of this movie is action sequences with people wearing masks which is supposed to be the big visual signifier that like oh they're from the other

[02:11:41] their other time stream they're backwards people but now it just feels like well yes they're wearing masks like all responsible citizens do that's how we know the good guys are isn't it weird that we

[02:11:50] wear masks all the time it's so weird it's it's so weird this is all it's so weird let's play the box office game unless there's anything else you want to say about tenant uh the suits look

[02:12:05] really good suits look incredible I love dimple capadia I think she's really fun yeah good energy yeah um yeah that's so that's cool I think all the reverse fighting is fucking awesome

[02:12:21] you just like a backwards fight it looks so weird like and I don't know how he choreographed it all I I I don't know I don't know how they did most this movie and I don't know what most this movie

[02:12:33] they filmed stuff forwards and backwards at the same time they did shit like that I don't really I need to watch like the special features on this thing I feel like they'll probably get into

[02:12:43] all that right David Chen was I think I saw on Twitter yesterday like trying to cut the movie together every time they do you see a scene from a different way to sync up the two versions

[02:12:55] with each other uh so maybe by the time we've uh released this episode he's posted that online I'd be interested to watch like fan cuts like that this is the thing right the surface has

[02:13:06] only been scratched in terms of like the nerdy fans who are going to get all over this thing because it just came out on fucking DVD and all that so right like yeah it's just also so weird to have

[02:13:17] a movie of this size that people want to like crack into that just sort of like kind of came out four months ago you know it is weird it's very weird it's crazy to me too that Christopher

[02:13:30] Nolan has made a career on being part of the conversation for college kids and stoners do you know what I mean yeah whereas just like he's he just he has this whole filmography where it's basically

[02:13:41] people are just like man you gotta fucking like you got to read into this fucking thing man it fucks with your head and he himself seems like the least trippy guy in the world yeah

[02:13:55] uh yeah for sure he it's true that's the that's the funniest thing about it all he is this fucking British garden gnome I mean he's a you know good-looking guy who wears

[02:14:04] a nice jacket but like it's like he's it's so crazy to think about him thinking about fucking turnstiles that make you backwards balls in your throat balls yeah the balls that's that's the one I

[02:14:16] can't get over okay let's play the box office game uh it's just weird to think about like I just remember reading box office projections uh the weekend before the week before this movie came out and people were like estimate I don't know 10 to 50 million dollars

[02:14:34] the final total 60 to 300 like people just had no sense yeah absolutely I mean this thing ended up making about 60 domestic 360 worldwide it did very well in China it cost 205 it's I think

[02:14:49] the most expensive original film of all time hell yeah fuck yeah um and it opened you know on labor day weekend to 20 million dollars but that was actually like a week's worth of previous screenings

[02:15:05] getting folded into it right you know wasn't just a four-day weekend they kind of resisted revealing the number which is when you realize like oh they're clearly uh underwhelmed because they had put it in Canada a week earlier and then they sort of soft released it on Monday

[02:15:21] and their plan was to roll all of that together and and present that as the opening weekend and the hope was that it would be something well over 30 and then it kind of just came in right under 20

[02:15:33] right and then it was number one for five weeks in a row I mean you know again in a world where the fucking pandemic did not surge again which is not the world we live in yeah maybe

[02:15:44] you know there was all this notion from the analyst so yeah it'll be like a road show like people see it in different places at different times as things get better and it'll just play

[02:15:53] in theaters for months right this is the plan right that was the question was like can it make 10 million dollars a week for three months right and then people would have been happy but Nolan

[02:16:04] also had all these weird rules where he like didn't want it playing a drive-in theaters and shit he he didn't let it play at drive-ins where there weren't theaters so like it didn't play at

[02:16:14] New York area drive-ins it's so you take New York in L.A. out of the equation which are traditionally the two biggest movie going cities in America I mean obviously you're not going to make

[02:16:23] much money on a drive-in I mean the other thing is that I can't imagine seeing this movie to drive in it's it would be incomprehensible but yeah but who cares there was a weird

[02:16:34] touchiness about the release of this movie that was a bad idea considering that you're trying something here like the worst thing to be if you're fucking trying something is to have all these rules

[02:16:46] but Chris really loves rules I think people were really caught up on this idea that like there's going to be some weekend where it's safe to go to the movies again and there's going

[02:16:56] to be so much pent-up demand and everyone's going to go to the theater with bells on and they tried they said like maybe that weekend we'll be here by like September and then when it was clear

[02:17:06] that it wasn't they were like what if we can just make it happen right well the other thing that happened um and again this is sort of hard to remember I would hardly crazy to think about

[02:17:17] is that international theaters were screaming more than even more than American theaters for releases because they were like and we are open like we need to show movies our cases are down

[02:17:27] right that was the big thing was like could we have a major blockbuster come out in Europe and just be undated in America right and so there and then there's all this worry about piracy or

[02:17:39] whatever but like you know but yeah no that's the whole thing and so they were like okay they announced it they were like we're going to release tenet in mid august around the world

[02:17:46] we're going to release it in America on Labor Day so the theaters have time to get ready and it'll open wherever it can in America and America because it was mostly states run by maniacs who wanted to please Donald Trump we're like everything's open everyone can do whatever

[02:18:02] they want American theaters were like two extra weeks yeah yeah no they'll give us enough time two extra weeks I think everything will be good by then cool cool cool let's talk in two weeks

[02:18:13] so anyway it opened to 20 million dollars but Griffin what was number two at the box office number two at the box office now this is a little trickier because all the other clear

[02:18:23] blockbusters of the pandemic come out after this what is unhinged number two that is number three unhinged wow which uh was the sole hit of pandemic season in a weird way uh is number three because

[02:18:41] that came out late august I guess or early august I came it was the first new movie in theaters right and and solstice studios its distributor has now already started collapsing in real time

[02:18:53] that's funny I did not know I mean that's not funny there were like three different stories today on deadline yeah oh boy well have you haven't seen it yet I'm assuming Griffin I have not yet gotten

[02:19:03] unhinged no I want you to check out it's I think it's a somewhat deplorable movie but it you know crow just as a big man that you're afraid of yeah is pretty compelling um it's got

[02:19:19] sort of it's like a really shitty slashery movie but I don't know they're like it's just it's just that he's an A-list talent I guess uh yeah yeah and look it's it's all a dry run for

[02:19:32] Kong right for donkey Kong of course that's he really he is close to Kong physicality in that one he's you know anyway no number two Griffin is another blockbuster that was released um a week

[02:19:44] before tenet more of the classic uh covid movie thing uh where it was released almost so the studio was like yeah people won't see it good oh oh it's the new mutants right we can finally release this

[02:20:02] to nobody no one could ever know it exists it is so funny that that movie just came out in the middle of a pandemic and did pretty well all considering like that's the other one is that you're

[02:20:15] like the new mutants did one third as well as tenet which would never happen in any other timeline yes it did not do as well in other places where I guess there were other movies to see but

[02:20:28] it did look at tenet and they're like twenty three million dollars right tenet they're like sixty million domestic oh boy not in the middle of pandemic that movie would have sword past 200 and new millions people are like 23 domestic but they came out pretty well that's

[02:20:41] probably the exact amount they would have made not during a pandemic right I genuinely wonder what it would have made that's yeah there's a chance of me less there's a chance of me

[02:20:54] the exact same amount and if it made more wouldn't have been by much I need to see that movie yes it'll be on Disney plus or something at some point number four at the box office griffin

[02:21:06] is uh the third film in a series that we talked about on this episode is it a new movie or is it a re-release it's a new movie but it's it we talked about this

[02:21:18] series we talked about this series in this episode it's a new movie uh fuck fuck is it a horror franchise no it's a sci-fi comedy I think this is a really nice movie uh yes I agree with that it's

[02:21:37] Bill and Ted save the world face the music is face the music why do I can't fucking remember the tell yes but uh do you agree I feel like we've actually never talked about it but I thought

[02:21:47] this was a really sweet and nicely done movie and the Keanu and Alex winter are very like dialed in yeah I really like it uh I still feel like I've just barely processed it in my

[02:22:01] soup brain but I watch it the day it came out and I enjoyed it thoroughly I like this franchise a lot I think it's a good ending it's a good movie I just kind of already forgot that it existed

[02:22:12] but I don't think that's a strike against the movie I think that's a strike against this bad year of being a person um number five is a movie that I forgot came out but another

[02:22:25] blockbuster I think really only played in Canada save the world why do I call it Bill and Ted save the world okay well they do save the world I know but still uh it's a children's film

[02:22:38] an animated film it's an animated children's film that mostly just came out in Canada yeah I mean I was I assumed supposedly it was supposed to have a big come you know release but uh yeah

[02:22:50] is it SpongeBob yes SpongeBob yeah Sponge on the run right SpongeBob only came out only went to theaters in Canada is going to Netflix everywhere else in the world and Paramount Plus next year Canada is the one country where it was released in theaters I think

[02:23:07] and it's Canadian gross alone put it at number five in a box office kind of weird fucking time pretty weird yeah um yep those are the five yeah because this is before the really in you know

[02:23:22] lots of re-releases yeah so it's like personal history of David Copperfield another charming movie that you know just didn't get to be released uh words on bathroom walls train to Busan Peninsula the sequel yeah like it's odd that this 10 is like all new movies because

[02:23:40] after this point the theaters are open and the studios are scared and then it starts being like number eight at the box office is Girls Trip right exactly yes focus focus obviously I mean right

[02:23:54] there's yeah no it's weird there's uh that weird number two is Ice Age four there was that weird chunk before then when like relic was the number one movie for like a month mostly just

[02:24:06] playing in Drive-ins or like the Jesse Eisenberg Marcel Marceau movie yes it's like they was just like well we gotta show something have you seen like you'd like relic I haven't seen relic IFC had

[02:24:18] like 10 consecutive weeks at number one at the box office IFC I was the wretched was the other one which I watched it's not good relic is good is relic the the um uh no okay with it didn't

[02:24:32] Romula Garry do one of those movies that was number one at the box office she did it's called amulet it absolutely fucks so hard really and you would love it amulet rules I mean it's like it's got

[02:24:44] its problems whatever like it's not a perfect movie that was a movie I saw at Sundance because I had a gap and I was like didn't Romula Garry make a horror movie I'll check that out and like

[02:24:56] the opening seconds are just this like heavy metal font it's like amulet and I'm like all right cool whatever this is great and it's just Ben you would love it you would love it I don't want to

[02:25:07] spoil anything Carl Ajeure and Melda Stanton I had to see this shit it's good be Melda Stanton there's a scary none rules just watch nothing like the first three months of 2021 are gonna be

[02:25:20] just cramming nonstop for the Blankie Awards because all I've done this last year is watch sitcoms and cry watch the fucking Simpsons you maniac I've been watching Mary Tyler Moore now too well that's good show yeah show rules Luke Vance my fucking man oh god yeah Luke Grant

[02:25:40] rules I love Mary Tyler Moore god I have such a crush on her in that show it's wild I mean come on I'm a Rhoda guy well Rhoda rules but no I'm a Margenstern I just watched there's a big anti-Semitism

[02:25:53] episode in season three that's really good okay yeah I think we remember that yeah it's good it's called some some of my best friends are Rhoda's there you go so my best friends are Rhoda's

[02:26:06] uh tenet that's our episode on tenet and uh we've we've done it I hope you enjoyed a little break away from Zemeckis um I mean obviously this and Wonder Woman 2 and then

[02:26:22] we we go back into the Zemeckis stream and finish out that miniseries yeah baby but it felt like these these two big Warner Brothers blockbusters finally coming out for home viewing at the end

[02:26:35] of 2020 it felt like we should start off 2020 one talking about them I'm seeing Wonder Woman tomorrow I'll see I hope it's good are you seeing in a theater or are you getting sent to Link

[02:26:48] I'm no I'm seeing on my television no no theaters I never did a press screening there were a couple times people were offering and I was like no I don't want to because I just don't know who's

[02:27:00] gonna be in there with me you know that's my whole thing to I it's just like I don't trust anybody like the only times I've ever even considered like eating outdoors at a restaurant in my neighborhood

[02:27:10] is when no one else is there like it just even neighboring tables freaks me out yeah neighboring tables anyway I'm just realizing we should do an episode on Monster at some

[02:27:21] point too because then we can just be all in on Patty Jenkins I like that movie I think is a good movie I haven't seen since I came out it good to watch them I haven't seen them

[02:27:32] well folks this of course is blank check with Griffin and David I'm Griffin I'm David and it's a podcast about filmography is directors who have massive success early on in their career and are given a series of blank checks make whatever crazy passion products they want sometimes

[02:27:45] those checks clear and sometimes they invert baby this is a one-off episode following up on Christopher Nolan our miniseries on Christopher Nolan the pod and I cast from several years back and all I have to say here is I'll see you in the beginning podcast yeah