Tenet

Foreign.

Ladies and gentlemen, welcome back to the Movie wars podcast. Exciting day for Seth. We're covering a Nolan film. Oh, I'm so excited. Yes. And we'll get more to that a minute. We have a new friend here. Our friend Junior Robles here, co founder and co producer of Dare to Fail Film. Tell us about you and tell us about Dare to Fail Film. Thanks. Thanks, Kyle. Thanks, Seth, for having me on. And so, yeah, with Dare to Fail, we are a Nashville film, I guess, activity community kind of thing.

We started a few years ago, three years ago, and we put out a prompt every month. It's a monthly short film showcase and we put out a prompt to filmmakers, anybody who wants to do it. You got kind of got to be local to Nashville to really do it, though. And we put out a prompt, a theme, and you make a one minute short film for that theme and then we screen it that month. And in order to get it screened, you got to show up to the showcase.

Nice. And. And buy it like a tickets, like five bucks to the show. But other than that, that's the only, like, barrier entry for it. And so five bucks and you get to screen a film that you made and you get to meet and hang out with other filmmakers in town. And that's. Yeah, that's kind of the sum of it. Wow. Yeah, it's been great. Three years in and we've. We've grown a huge community in town and a lot of great films, a lot of fun projects that have gone on to.

To be in festivals and things like that too. So. Incredible. Yeah. And. And me and my co. My. My partner, Steve Parnell, we start. Yeah. Like I said, we started it about three years ago and we're gonna go into season four of it this year. Well, in 2025. And we. We do our show at Third Coast Comedy Club and Pretty much very familiar. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I bombed there so many times. Yeah, I've bombed there a couple of times myself, so.

But yeah, it's a, it's a. It's a great time and hopefully if you're in Nashville, come out. I was gonna say it sounds like an open mic for short films, but it sounds better than open mics because they only pay $5. Yeah. And somehow after a bad set, I'm out twice that in beverages. Yeah. So. Wow, that's. That, that's. That's like one drink. Yeah, I know. And these days. I know. Well, that's awesome. How can people find you socials and website and all that? Yeah, yeah.

Most of our Online presence is on our Instagram. It's dare to fail film with underscores in between each of the words. We also have a website that is under construction. It's daretofailfilm.com. Sweet. Well, I love anything that stimulates film at an independent level, so that's really cool. Check it out. Today we are doing Is he favorite. Director, would you say, or top three? Top three. Top three. I've been aching to hear Seth talk about Nolan.

And if you were to believe the critics today, we would be dumpster diving. In the Nolan collection, his worst rated. Film, which is on Rotten Tomatoes 69. Yeah. Which is fantastic. Honestly, it is. It is pretty crazy because you sent me the screenshot and I was like, it's like there are so many great directors who have, like, really bad. But Nolan, this is his worst, is 69%. And he has this. What is. He has 11 now. Oh, no, this is. That. That was his, I think, 12th film.

Yeah. Yeah. So we'll get to. To your love for Nolan in a minute.

But you know where I want to kind of start off is that this movie, to me, kind of has to get a bogey in some ways because when it came out, it came out at a very tumultuous time. Right in the middle of the pandemic. I went and saw it on imax film, the 70 millimeter film. In the middle of the pandemic, there was me and eight other people in the theater. We were all masked up. Yeah. Not a single one of us had popcorn. We all just sat there for the whole thing. And that was it.

Like, it was raw dog and tenant, literally. This is so good. And this is early 2020. We hadn't, you know, we were still in the thick of things. Yeah. This was, I think June or July, so three, four months in. Yeah. And, you know, Nolan. Not that Nolan ever said this, but there was almost this messianic perception of Nolan that he felt that he was going to come out with a big budget film, he was going to revive the theater again. People felt like maybe he was either arrogant and that.

That maybe he was taking too big of a risk putting this movie out in the middle of the pandemic. I admire it because obviously Covid crushed theater. Yeah. And we still haven't really recovered. It was kind of going down anyway. But, yeah, Covid really, really hit it hard. Yeah, it did. I remember. And I remember me and a select group of people online were like, trying to evangelize people to go see the Northmen because we were Such Eggers fans. And it's technically a flop, you know.

But we were just, like, also, like, sad, because that's one of. I mean, of the. The four now movies that he's put out, I'm seeing Nosferatu on Monday. Of the three that I've seen, it's. It's so good. Yeah. The Northman is insanely good. That last duel in front of the volcano, as far as lava duels go, rivals. Revenge of the Sith, in my opinion. Yeah. So oily, so shiny. Incredible duel.

Yeah. But we were like, please don't let this movie flop because of COVID And it still felt it fell a little short, but I just remember, like, just actively as a movie pod, just cheering people, like, let's do what we can. Yeah. I know. It's. Stay safe, be safe. Yeah. But you can get out there. Let's not let this art die. Yeah. And so. And then there was. You know, it's funny because the screening of the Dark Knight Rises had this too. But there was also complaints of audio issues. Yeah. Which.

Seeing it at The Opera Mills IMAX, which is one of, I think, 19 in the country that actually can still do IMAX film. It was perfectly calibrated. I had no problem understanding anything that I needed to understand. A lot of times people like, oh, I can't hear every single word. And the way Nolan tends to work with his film is if you can't hear it, it's probably because it's not important. It's just words people would say in the middle of a gigantic scene like that. So I know. I don't know.

I know people had issues, but I have a feeling that at that point, it was theaters not calibrating their sound systems correctly. Yeah. Could have been to expound that people would leave the film complaining that they couldn't hear a lot of the dialog that the. That the background noise, like airplanes or whatever is in the scene was drowning out the dialogue and they felt like they couldn't hear. Harrison Ford's here. He's made an appearance. The cat's name it is.

He didn't make an appearance last time. He didn't. It made me sad. Yeah. But now he's like, probably on camera. That's awesome. Hey, buddy. But, yeah, so it's interesting. And then we. We get into this idea that, you know, the. The physics, the complexity and not subject matter. That outside of the Dark Knight, and even in the Dark Knight a little bit, or the Batman series, he. This is not subject matter. He shies away from, in fact, he. He's infatuated.

Yeah. With time, with, you know, metaphysical things. So, you know, this is him really seeing that to the nth degree. But I want to get. Turn it over to you. Tell us about your Nolan love and. Oh, yeah, and you are a. You're a defender of this film. 100. On top of everything you just said about the film, it. It also, when he first was announcing what it was about, he made it very clear this is his love letter to the James Bond movie. He wanted to make a super spy movie.

And this, I mean, you can see through so many different. Even just down to certain shots that he used, you can tell he was really trying to give his love over to Sean Connery and Daniel Craig and like, kind of take that old school spy mentality and mix it with his normal convolution of time trying to figure all that out. I love Nolan, especially with this movie, because he. He does everything in camera as much as he possibly can. A lot of people think he's anti cgi. He's not.

As we've seen with Interstellar and Inception and. And plenty of his other movies, he'll use as much CGI as he needs to to make the movie happen. But he is pro in camera. Whenever he can do something in camera, he will. To the point that this movie only had 280 visual effects shots to compare. Your average ROM com is probably going to have about a thousand visual effects shots. Wow. And Avengers Endgame.

I think out of the 3,000 ish shots that were in the movie, 2,700 of them were visual effects shots. No wonder I hate those movies so much. Yeah. On top of this, there was no use of blue or green screen in this entire movie. So every time you're seeing people fighting and running around in different time directions, all of that is happening at the same time in camera. That's wild. Yeah. Like the whole fight scene between John David Washington, spoiler alert.

And himself, none of that was done through green screen. It was all done on set with a guy based. The stunt guy being like, all right, so this is how I would fight in reverse, but also still react and attack him while I'm going in reverse.

Yeah. So just so much underrated stuff in this movie, even down to my favorite shot of the whole movie is right at the middle of the temporal pincer mom like moment at the end where you see this tower and it rebuilds itself in the bottom and then blows up in the top and then swaps around and does the exact opposite Thing that was all done in camera. And literally each of those shots was just two shots that he melded together. Like, everything that he could do practically, he did.

And I think a lot of things kind of got lost in just how big this movie was. As far as the scale of what he did. It's a crazy technical achievement. Oh, my God. Yes. I put out a Reddit post a couple years ago where I was saying, I think Tenet, as far as a technical level, is the greatest achievement in film thus far. Say what you will about the story, say what you will about the acting. We'll have those discussions later as well.

But as far as the technical side of films, doing things in camera, I think it's the greatest thing we've ever seen. That's why the sound didn't bother me, by the way. Yeah. Like, because. And maybe this is the benefit of having seen it a few years after it came out and kind of hearing about it, but

I heard a lot of the complaints about the sound and everything. The sound issues people didn't understand. Yeah. But like, watching it just today, which is the first time I watched it, like, to me it was like, those were intentional things. Yeah. And so I don't know, for me, when I see stuff like that, it's like, well, rather than just trying to say, oh, I was uncomfortable because I couldn't hear, like, it was more about, okay, why did. Why did he make this choice? Exactly.

And like, thematically, it makes sense. Like, you've got these two reverse timelines going on. Yeah. And so. And kind of establishes the rules of that sound, of why that's happening, because, you know, the physics of everything are just different in the other timeline. So. So, yeah. I mean, I really kind of love that choice. Yeah. And I always tell people, if you.

If you don't pay very close attention to the first 15 minutes of that movie, you're not going to get anything else that happens after that. If you're not paying attention to when the scientist is explaining to him the. The physics. And we can get into that.

I've said a bunch of stuff about this in the past, but if you don't hear her explain the physics of how you have to catch or drop the bullet in order for it to actually do its thing, you're not going to understand anything that happens for the rest of the movie. People love getting a college lecture. 15. The first 15 minutes into a movie. Yeah. But I mean, if you're doing a science fiction movie, you have to understand the rules of the universe.

It's something we've discussed with other movies is that this is one of those movies that I throw everything I know about the real world out the window and I listen to their explanation of the rules. And I only follow those rules for the entirety of the movie because those are now the rules of the universe that we're following. We're not trying to make this movie fit into what the real world would be like.

We have to accept the rules that he's established within that first 15 minutes of the movie. Seems like maybe that's why it got. One of the reasons why it got a lot of flack, though, was maybe something like that. And I feel like that happens in a lot of Nolan movies, though. Like you have somebody. It's like it happens with Michael Caine in Inception. Yeah. Where like he kind of explains, hey, here's how the world is exactly.

You know, and like when he's explaining the different layers of time, how time slows down with each dream, that in. Yeah, he, he, he does create semi complicated worlds in what he's doing, but that's just what he's doing. Like you, if you're gonna go watch a Nolan movie, you should kind of expect that it's going to be more complicated than your average superhero movie. Yeah. And he also has varying levels of reality baked in in his movies like Inception.

He was very clear that he did zero research for that movie. Yeah. Like he was not interested in making that one. Whereas this one, he and I have a rando about this. But he worked with a world renowned physicist. Yeah, exactly. You know, he still took a lot of liberties, but he's had varying levels of interest in what it would look like. Well, I mean, Interstellar literally won scientific awards for their representation of a black hole because no one had ever done that before.

He took all the mathematical calculations that go into what it might look like, put it through a computer, that's what it spat out. Five years later, they take a picture of a black hole and prove that it's exactly what it looks like. So, yeah, that back 10 years ago, Interstellar won tons of scientific awards for that vision or visual of the black hole. So, yeah, he goes through science when he wants to and when he doesn't. Seth, I love how much you love Christopher Nolan. I love it too.

I love it. He's one of the few arturs that are genuinely keeping the art of filmmaking alive. I actually just read a statement that was put out by Netflix. Apparently they have been telling their filmmakers to have all of the characters explain what they're about to do for the people who have it on in the background. Yeah. It's a new genre, actually. It's so dumb. Wait, do what now?

So literally, Netflix is saying that directors and writers need to make sure that characters almost narrate everything they're doing so that people who are cleaning their house with a Netflix movie on can still pay attention without looking at the movie. Like, they're literally making movies for people that aren't watching movies. They're making movies for background noise. Developing it as a genre. Almost like it's almost being described as background movies. Yeah. So absurd.

Christopher Nolan wants you to put your phone away, sit down, and watch the damn movie for the whole two and a half, three hours that he's got it on screen. Well, if you got a Christopher Nolan fan in your life, make sure you share this up. Yeah, I know you got a friend in your life. Please do. If your grandma. We always talk. We don't ever. Leave the grandmas out of this show. Grandmas love Christopher Nolan. Grandmas love the Nolan. They love it. Enemies, too.

If. Enemies, like, yeah, love thy enemy. If. If someone hated the sound of this movie, you should just send them this podcast. Yeah, yeah. Subtitles are a thing. Yeah. In fact, in the edit, he's gonna put nothing but rumble over our voices so you can't hear what we're saying. Even though it's gonna be audio. I'm gonna put subtitles on it. Yeah. All of my dialogue is in reverse. Yeah. Yeah. We just had to. We had to. We had to re. Reverse it. Yeah. Entropy. The questions, the questions.

Yes. Is there an easier way for these future criminals to get back at civilization than this? I'm just thinking, like, the Terminator is one of my favorite movies. Like, I just feel like sending a robot back was a pretty. A pretty, like, feasible. Yeah, sure. But these future criminals, like, got very creative. They just jumped right in. Yeah. Just like, wow. I mean, here's my assumption.

My assumption is this movie is technically a prequel to Interstellar because they talk about how basically the entire environment has fallen apart, and that's why they're doing all this and sending all this shit back in time so that they can destroy the world beforehand. I feel like that's why they. They. Someone created this time, you know, time manipulation shit. Somewhere between now and then and now, they're just like, well, this is all we got.

So we'll just send something back, you know, however long ago and make that happen. But, yeah, I think. I don't know. It's Kind of a prequel to Oppenheimer, too. There's a little shout out to. To Oppie in the. In the movie. Yeah, a prequel to the. The movie that happens in World War II. But, yeah, we're going backwards in time, so that makes sense. Yeah. On one of the various loops, it. Works in the tenet, sort of time rules. Absolutely. They always just say, that's a loop.

Oh, I've been playing this game, death loop. Have y'all played it? I played. Have. Yeah. It reminded me so much of this movie or the. The movie reminded me so much of. Of the game. Like, just with the. The different time things that are going on in that game and also sort of the vibe of it, too. But. But as far as, like, being an easier. An easier way for these. I don't know, maybe just, like, try to do something about the climate. That would be. Yeah, probably. Yeah. We have to nuke the world.

We have just, like, change something. Like just maybe Bill Gates doesn't buy all the farmland. It really is like an angry ex girlfriend approach. Yeah. Instead of solving the problem of aggressive bullshit. Yeah. Instead of solving the problem, let's kill people and beat people around and spread gossip about them, you know, and post about them on social media. Gosh, I love it. Yeah. Just a little more.

Yeah, a little more climate stuff would be probably a lot easier than sending, you know, multiple people. Or they could have just sent back the cure for cancer so that Kenneth Branagh didn't have to, like, be pissed off, you know, wife and everything. So is that. Is that transporter thing? Is it like one of those things at the bank where you put the tube of your check into the thing and it basically. But through time. Yeah, I love that. That's. That's pretty cool. Yeah. Yeah. It's crazy.

And, you know, you can. I mean, you got to wonder the impact on your body after you do it so many times. Right. Because maybe that's what gave him cancer. Yeah, could have. Oh, wow. It wasn't. Wasn't him digging up nuclear sites in Ukraine.

The decades of radiation exposure. No, it was. That was time travel. That was the cherry on top. Next question. Does Michael Caine have dirt on Nolan? He literally just. Same. Same suit. Yeah. Same character. I mean, different names, doing some different things. But, like, there's like, three. We're going on, like, what, four? No, that was six. Six movies with Michael Caine. And I. I know he. I know Alfred's a bigger thing, but still very much Michael Caine. It's like he. Inception in this one.

Very Much. That was seven. Seven. Because he does have a little audio cameo in Dunkirk. Okay. Yeah. If I had. If I were a film director of any weight and I had a chance to put Michael Caine into a movie. For much seven movies, I would just. Do it and figure out something that's kind of. That's kind of my thought. But he might have dirt on Nolan. Yeah, he just, he's. He's got like a cadence. Or does Nolan have dirt on Michael Caine? And he's like, you will be in all of my movies.

I think whoever put Michael Caine in Jaws for the revenge had dirt on Michael Caine. That's. Yeah. A zero percent on Rotten Tomatoes. I definitely. They. If anyone had dirt on Michael Kane, it was those both. The fact that he's in that movie is the dirt on Michael Kane. Yeah. His agent. Do you think he killed. I would have killed my agent. Yeah. Like, I don't think about killing people. But if I'm Michael Kane. If you are like some iconic actor.

How do you go from the original Italian job to Jaws 4? I know. You know, a couple million bucks probably helps. I have a feeling that's how much they spent on the entire. Maybe that's the problem with Jaws 4 is they spent all their money on Michael Caine. And then they were like, oh, we probably should have written a script first. The shark ate the script. Yeah. I don't know. I love having Michael Kane in as many movies. I mean, he's fully retired now. That's why he wasn't an Oppenheimer.

So I mean. Yeah, it's. Yeah. I kind of miss. Miss having him around. And he is one of those actors that has like a like aura. He just. When he's on screen, you're like, that's Michael Kane. Secondhand lions, I love second hand. So good in that him and Robert Duvall together are just perfect. Yeah. Yeah. My third girlfriend and I went on a date to see secondhand lines. There you go. It was, it was fine. You got them number. You got the number.

You have like encyclopedias with numbered girlfriends out there. Like, this is the book of Trish. Yeah. Well, this is the book of Deborah. Yeah. One of those books is really long. This is the book of that. Yeah. This is coming from a guy that had one girlfriend before I met my wife. And that was like a four week relationship. You. Oh, yeah, man. Well, I, I have commit. My commitment problem is if I'm not getting. I was. If I wasn't gonna get married, I wasn't gonna do it.

I wasn't Gonna date now. So most people, like, I don't really want to be in a long term. I was like, I only want the longest term. Yeah, I love it. You stuck to your guns. I did, I did. I also was just not good at dating. I'm also. I don't have a lot to work with here. Hey, man. I think you're pretty hot. Oh, thank you. I know there's. There's a lot of hotness going on. Yeah, I agree. Almost as hot as Kenneth Branagh on this movie.

Seriously, though, that was the greatest text I've ever received from you. He text me like, two hours ago, and it's literally just like, what did he say? Also, Kenneth Branagh looks great. What the fuck? This might be the hottest version of Kenneth Branagh. Yeah. I stand by it. Yeah, Yeah, I agree. He took his shirt off at the end there. I was like, fuck. Okay. All right. He's been working out. Jacked. Dude's vindictive in this too. Yeah. He starts slapping her around. Oh, my God. I was pissed.

I was like, damn. This dude, he's. He's angry. He literally had, like, the Persona of Bane, but. But like, in a Russian oligarch. Yes. I think he's my favorite thing about the movie. Same. Great. Agreed. 100. And there's a lot of great stuff about. But I think his performance and his choices, just amazing. Amazing casting choice for this guy. And just he was menacing and complex, and you could still kind of see. You could still kind of empathize with. With him. Like, it was.

I think he was a really beautifully built character. Yeah. And an amazing performance by this guy. Agreed. Yeah. And. And one thing I love what Nolan does, and this is another one of his obsessions is sickness. Like someone a character that has a disease, Terminal disease. And terminality messes with fate. And he loves that. But I love how, like, the trajectory of his characters, he's so good at without over doing too much exposition.

Like, I love that glimpse of him as a young man digging in the dirt because it's like, oh, he is who he is because of what he's experienced. Like, his trajectory, like, it just. It hits you. And the way no one delivers that, it usually punches you in the stomach a little bit, like, oh, shit. Like, he's a bad guy, but he's a survivor. Yeah. You know, reason he's a bad guy, because he's been fucked over by the world. The way he's trying to fuck over the world. Yep. Yeah. Heroes. Heroes never die.

They only live long enough to Become villains. Like, I could see that character in an Earth, earlier version becoming someone that you really root for. Yeah. And I think it's been settled in a lot of places, but those are the kind. That's the kind of villain character. That's the kind of way that you want to build a villain. If you're going to create something like that is.

Is to create somebody that could have been a hero at some point, you know? Definitely. And yeah, I love his performance in this so much. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I will say one of the biggest criticisms I do remember about. About the movie is the casting of John David Washington. A lot of people said that his performance was just very stale, very stilted. I think they kind of missed the point, though, of what his character is supposed to be.

He is supposed to be like the number one agent at the CIA, which basically means you're an expert at not showing your actual emotion, at creating whatever emotion you're trying to portray to whoever you're trying to over. Right. And like, I. I don't know. I think he did that perfectly, especially with his character literally being named the protagonist. Like, he's not supposed to be someone that you want their background on.

You're literally supposed to be dropped into his story right in the middle. I mean, literally the first moment we have is that opera being attacked by terrorists and he's just sitting there waiting to go in. Yeah. And it's like, I don't think this particular character is supposed to be like Cobb in Inception, where you're supposed to get his tragic background and you're supposed to understand why he's in this. He's the top of the CIA. You're.

You're supposed to see him as anonymous as the rest of the world would. Yeah. And I think. I think if. If this traveling through time and this entropy theme is the thing you need, like this almost entity. Yeah. I look at him as almost a God, like a godlike entity. I know that's not who he is, but metaphorically speaking, he is in this world where we're. We're subscribing to try and travel and reversing of time. Like, he is this entity, and so he has to be almost this consistent.

Like, because that's what. That's what entities are. You know, they're consistent. They're, you know, they're. They're unchanging, you know? Exactly. So, yeah, I think he is. I think he's. It's not that much of a metaphor. Like, he really kind of is the God of this timeline. Thing. And it's a part of. A big Part of the. The plot of the movie is him kind of figuring that out. Exactly. You know, and I did like the choice of him, you know, there. I think some of the critiques are fair, personally.

I. I do think he was a little bit sort of vanilla at times, but also, it's a really hard part. First of all. Yeah. And second of all, in other places, he's just insanely good. Like, the physicality that this guy needs. Like, you know, And. And also, I do like that he is kind of famous, but kind of also not super famous. Yeah. Yeah. He's Denzel's kid. Denzel's. And he sounds like Denzel, but. But like. But if you didn't know that, you would just see someone. Like, who is that guy?

Honestly, I didn't know he was Denzel's kid until I watched the movie. Yeah. Yeah. I think I. I'd heard a podcast with him on it, and he was about. Like, Tenant was filming at the time, and he just said that he's going to be the lead. So. So. So I kind of knew that was happening. Yeah. But, like, I. I think he. I. I think he does a great job with it.

And I. I think that kind of mystery about him is another layer of that casting choice where it's like that thing where it's like, I know that guy from somewhere. He's that guy. Yeah. You know, I don't know. Is he that big of a star now, would you say? Wasn't he in that. What was that Ku Klux Klan movie? He was in Black. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. He's kind of hit, like, the top level of the indie scene, but I feel like this movie was the first time he was in something blockbuster, like.

But then he was almost, like, he was almost blocked just because of when it came out. Like, it should have been significantly bigger than it was. And it kind of, I feel like, may have set him back a little bit just because of when it was released. Yeah. Also, I love the fact that Robert Pattinson in the movie is the only one who knows anything about what's happening. And yet on set, he's literally quoted as saying, I had no idea what the fuck was going on. Yeah. I knew nothing.

I had read the script, and I still was like, what are we doing? He was the only one, though, in the movie who actually knows everything. That's actually my first one, Rando. Oh, is it? Oh, sorry. It's a perfect segue. I think it's so funny. Rando. Rando. She got to say it. Say it hard. Okay. Rando. Oh, yeah, that's good. That was hot. I need a sweat break. You got a towel, Harrison? Yeah, bring me a towel. He's under the table. Oh, he's chilling, dude. He's chilling, bro.

He's usually opening the curtain over there. Sometimes during the video, you see this fluctuating light. It's amazing. He's like. It's like in a movie. Like in the Overlook Hotel. Like, is a character in a movie. Like, the curtain is now a character in our movie wars movie. Rando. Rand. Great, great segue.

So the secrecy in. In Patson is. This is the reason there was a lot of secrecy, first of all, about. This is kind of what played into the movie, also struggling in theaters a little bit, was that people didn't know what it was about. Like, because the. The trailers were super, like, ambiguous. Like, Nolan didn't want. He wanted complete mystery. Yeah. So much so that, like, Michael Kane was only allowed to read his. His lines. Yeah. His section of the script.

He was not allowed to read anything outside of his dialogue with other actors. And saying Patinson and John David Washington, they got to read the full script. Yeah. But they had to read them in locked rooms, apart from each other, at Warner Brothers Studios. Crazy. So when Patson says he didn't know, it's because. Yeah. They were all kept away from each other. I don't think there were table reads. Did they talk about why? I think.

I think if I had to guess, I don't have that part of it, but if I had to guess, it's because that is actually what's in the movie. I think you have actors, and you could call them actors almost in the movie. The characters are actors in this, and they're not supposed to know. Like, John David Washington isn't. He's not supposed to know that he actually is who he is. Yeah. And then on top of that, Christopher Nolan just.

He likes having an air of mystique about the movies that he puts out, especially his original works, when he's not adapting something. He doesn't want people to think they know what's going to happen when they first go in. And so he tries to keep everything as vague as possible and let the movie speak for itself. Like, that was kind of what happened with Oppenheimer. He. I don't think he even said it was based on American Prometheus until, like, right around when the movie came out.

Yeah. So, yeah, you're. You're kind of sitting There wondering like exactly what it's going to be. And then when it happens, instead of taking your own presupposed ideas of what it should be, you're just watching it for what it is. Yeah. I have a bit of a theory about Nolan and I'm not as well versed, I think, as maybe you guys are.

But, but like I've seen most of his movies and I kind of figured out after Inception for me that like pretty much to me all of his movies at some level are about what happens to us when we watch movies. Kind of. Yeah. And like what, what we go through like the experience of like deciphering a plot, deciphering what it means to us and just like how the movie going experience can even in a tiny, tiny way can kind of transform us when we're, when we're done watching that movie.

And I kind of went into watching this movie kind of thinking about that especially because the, the guy's name is the protagonist. And honestly it's one of my critiques of Nolan sometimes is that yeah, he can kind of be a little heavy handed with like, hey, here's how much I know about movies, here's how much I know about storytelling.

Which, you know, that's fine but, but like, but it does kind of get like, I don't know, it feels a little, what's the word, shall we say, pretentious sometimes self indulgent. Yeah. But then again you think about it at its, at its core level. If you're making art, if you're not doing a Marvel movie where you're, you're strictly following a plan that's been set out in front of you. All good art is self indulgent at times because it is the purest form of self expression.

Like you're literally putting a piece of yourself out. So yeah, you should be a little self indulgent. But I get, I get where people have the critique that it might come across as pretentious, but it's like what, what great artist doesn't have a little twinge of pretense? It doesn't bother me at all. I feel like he should totally flex in each one of his movies cuz like they're masterpieces. Right.

But like, and so, but, but what you're talking about with like how they were part, the actors were partitioned with reading the screenplays and could only read certain parts of it. Like sometimes that gets under my skin a little bit because I'm also an actor and I, and I kind of have some experience with that. Too. But I. I kind of feel like it's okay for directors to just trust their actors. Sure. Do you know, you guys, was it the Hateful Eight where.

Where Tarantino, Tarantino, Jennifer Jason Lee and Walton Goggins. Yeah, Walton Goggins. They have that guitar. Yeah, yeah, yeah. With Kurt Russell. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And they swapped out the guitar for, like, this art. Like this. An original Holy Grails Taylor guitar. Yeah. Oh. As a Martin. Martin guitar. My bad. It's like a holy grail of acoustic guitars, right? Yeah. Literally, like 250,000 ish. I think maybe even up to a million that they had it insured for, but it was technically priceless.

Yeah. And so. And so they were supposed to use the dummy guitar that Kurt Russell was supposed to smash and Tarantino's like, use the real guitar, man. And see, I've heard that. I don't. But I've also heard that it was completely an accident. Well, maybe. Yeah. Well, this. This. This is what. What I've heard. I've heard that Tarantino did. I don't. I don't want to besmirch. Yeah, yeah. You know, I don't want to get in any, you know, problem.

But, like, either way, like, the reaction that Jennifer. Jason Lee had to that guitar smashing was not just, oh, my God, the character, but it was like Jennifer Jason Leigh seeing that guitar. Yeah. Get destroyed. And she had sort of developed a connection with the guitar. It was really messed up. Right. Yeah. And I feel like sometimes directors don't trust their actors enough, you know, like, just. She could totally just act that. Oh, definitely. And I don't know.

But with this one, I don't know if I feel that. That way about the story, but I do kind of feel like you could totally just give your actors these scripts and just let them read it and figure it out. But while I do agree with that, what I know about Nolan, like, Gary Oldman just recently did an interview where he was talking about how Christopher Nolan has only ever given him one note. In every movie that they've done together, he's only given him one note.

And that one note was simply in one particular scene, he just stopped and said, hey, the stakes are higher. That's the only note he's ever given Gary Old. And. And so to me, I think. I think Nolan's method, and. And I. I only know so much. Haven't met the man. I haven't watched him work in person. But I feel like Nolan's method is to put the actors in the situation as much as he can.

Because if you remember, in this whole movie, John Day, the protagonist, John David Washington, doesn't trust Robert Pattinson. He doesn't trust, really anyone around him. And so by purposefully making sure that they didn't bond over reading the script, I feel like just added a little bit of emotional layer to that where because they haven't formed a bond, they don't fully trust each other until the end of the movie. That is super cool. So that's. That's my assumption. And there's definitely.

I. I agree with what you're saying. Both of you. Both are interesting and. And there are more demented. We just covered the Shining, and there's, you know. Nice. Kubrick is more demented in this way. Like, one of the reasons he loved Nicholson is because even when someone would screw up, Nicholson would finish the take. Yeah. He always finished the take. Even if it was the 130th take and he knew it was a dead take. He did it because he knew Kubrick wanted a palette. Yeah, he.

That was the version of a painter's palette. He wanted options. Yeah. But Duvall didn't know how to do that because she was in. You know, she was olive oil. She had done, like, some pretty. And. But she was out of. She was a fish out of water. It's rough for her, man. It was rough for her, and she would never finish take. And. And she felt intimidated by Nicholson because he would go all the way to the end.

And Nicholson was frustrated with Duvall, and she was already being punished by Kubrick on a regular basis. So there are more demented. Yeah, it really depends on the director. Was. Tarantino is incredibly collaborative. He is. He creates and he's talking a lot and talking to them, but he's always trying to empower the actors to find their power on set. So it's interesting. It's very much director to director.

Yeah. Also, I feel like Nolan is just at a point now where if his script gets leaked, he's fucked because it just ruins all mystique around the movie. And I feel like Tenet. Especially if that script had gotten leaked before the movie had come out or if story elements had come out, people would have really gone into it expecting something that. It wasn't the only insight, because I did a project with somebody who was in a Nolan movie. Oh, nice.

And I don't know if I want to say it, because, I don't know. I don't think it's a big deal. But. But it was a recent Nolan movie, and he did. He was a day player on this movie. Okay. And he kind of just told me how it went and apparently it was a really super professional, like, really efficient, oh, yeah. Kind of thing. And. But yeah, this sort of firsthand experience that I've gotten, like, this guy was just loving the whole experience. Oh, yeah.

He was a really great director to work with as an actor. So. Yeah. I mean, there's a reason why every single actor that works with him wants to work with him again and will literally take massive pay cuts just so they can be in front of the camera with him. Like, he's just that respected by his actors. Randos. Randos do that to you? I love randos. Randos. They'll bring it out of you, baby. They will in life too. Yeah. They are the entity. What's crazy is the.

So I was wondering this because I hadn't done the research yet. This was my first watch. I was like, did they film and were they like actually doing this in reverse or is there some effect here? But they were doing choreography. So they had reversed choreography for fight scenes. And Kenneth Branagh specifically had to do. He not only was doing the Russian accent, but he was also having to learn those backwards. And so those lines are him actually talking backwards with a Russian accent here.

Yeah. Yep, bro. When he said lack of effects, we're talking like, lack of effects. Yeah, like, we're talking backwards. That's crazy. Yeah, yeah. Learning Russian and then learning it backwards. Yes, bro. And it sounded awesome. So good. Because in that. Isn't that the scene where he's like, I thought you said these. These were Estonians or whatever in the car. And he's like, they are, you know, but then they're like trying to figure out what the accent is.

And. Well, there's that, but there's also the scene where. Where he's on either side of the. The turnstile and so he sees Kenneth Branagh and the wife on the other side and he's threatening her, trying to get the information on where the piece of the puzzle is. Yeah. Wow. So good. That's the stuff that makes me excited. Kind of what you said earlier, people. All over this movie when it came out. I know. That's why I said my intro. Does this movie deserve a bogey?

It just came out at the wrong time. That's crazy. Like, and I did watch it just, just today. And so, like. Like, I kind of can't believe that reaction. I think it's one of those things that got like. Like just kind of mushroom clouded pun Intended, actually. But. Yeah, but like, over time, just like the one person didn't like it and then all of a sudden, I guess maybe people were in a surly mood anyway because Pandemic.

So, like, I'll say this as someone who absolutely loves Christopher Nolan, I don't think it's his best movie. It's probably top five for me. But I think people putting it at the bottom just either just did not understand it or were choosing to be part of that contrarian crowd that was just like, oh, it was for this reason. Yeah. No, this is. You try to come up with something like this.

You try to go in there and be like, no, we're gonna make you walk backwards, but I need you to look like you're walking forwards because we're gonna reverse this shot so that he's actually walking backwards. Like you try to come up with something. Yeah. This is one of the highest concept, high concept movies. Seriously. And. And yet at the same time, done for, like, incredibly low production value. Like, again, you're. You don't have all sorts of crazy computer effects happening.

Everything's done in camera. Everything's done using old school film techniques. Well, it's the trade off of every great artist, every great artisan. And that trade off is they. For the high art concept for. And. And they wouldn't call themselves high art. But. But those who are capable of generating high art in whatever art form that is, the trade off is they're not going to spoon feed you. Yeah. And that. They have no desire to spoon feed you. You come to the trough.

Yeah. And you take from it and they want you to interpret it. And even then Nolan kind of tries to spoon feed everybody more so than others. Yeah. He does what he can to explain everything you need to know at the beginning. Yeah. And then he's like, all right, if you don't understand it, you're shit out of luck. I'm sorry. Like, that's the trade off of Kubrick.

If you did a Kubrick film, Barry Lyndon, the Shining, and he wasn't explicit about it in the Shining, but if you were doing the Shining, you had to be committed and Eyes Wide Shut, you couldn't do anything else. You signed Nicole Kidman, Tom Cruise, they all signed contracts and said, you will do nothing else. Yeah. You are doing this movie for this amount of time and you're contractually obligated. That was the trade off. And that was the simplest version of this is, you know, and this.

You'll laugh at this. But the Soup Nazi in seinfeld yeah. Right. You suffer for your soup. Why would I expect any less from my customers? You know what I'm saying? And that.

But that actually in simple terms explains the great artisan dilemma, which is you're going to create this thing and. But I'm not going to spoon feed it to you. Come to me. Exactly. I present it and you take away what you will. Yeah. And that's. It's risky because some people won't get it and they're going to shit on it. Yeah. So it is what it is. Art is that subjective. Yeah. What was the rando for this one? I forgot. Oh, we were. Oh, they were working backwards.

The conversation is just so good. We keep going. Yeah. The lack of visual effects, people moving. And speaking backwards, learning Russian and learning talking backwards. So, okay, so when is when they do like the explosions in that last big set piece where they're in the desert and like they have the explosions that are exploding and then the explosions that are imploding because they're backwards in time. Is that. Oh, so I just bumped the mic. Is that all practical? Yep, that is it.

So that it's just like superimposed. That one shot that looks like, you know, the two shots. That's actually four shots put together. One of it exploding, but then going up so they can reverse it and then it exploding in forward time and then they swap to the other side where the top comes together and then the bottom explodes. That's four shots put together to look like two shots. That's wild. Yeah. But again, no green screen was involved in that.

It's just a miniature set that they blew up four times. So this is crazy.

They worked on the script and the screenplay for six years, but this was on Nolan's mind for 20 years. This concept he had had for 20 years. And he was kind of obsessed with this, these details. So it's really, you know, maybe this is the, the inception of this idea of where his time obsession actually began. Obviously Memento was kind of the kickoff, but this is, this is an idea that, that supersedes a lot of the movies he's released that revolve around these concepts.

Yeah, I feel like he started working on the concept for this around the same time as when he started working on Inception. Cuz inception was 2010, came out 10 years before this one. And at the time he was like, oh yeah, I've been writing the script for 10 years. Yeah. So I feel like he came up with the concepts. But like Inception, I think he was able to. To wrap his brain around a little better at first. And then that kind of was his stepping stone into being able to do this one.

Wow. Yeah. Also at the time, this was the largest budget. 205 million for an original non franchise film. Damn. So not a marvel, not something that's in a series original film. At the time. 205 million. It was, I think it was his. Second largest budget in general. Directly behind the Dark Knight Rises. Yeah. Yeah, that's a huge budget. Yeah. Dark Knight rises was 235 million. Is this the largest budget we've discussed? Maybe.

Because I don't think we've hit past 100 million yet on a movie we've discussed. What was the new crow one made for 50 million? Oh, yeah, 45 million. This might be. Yeah, this might be. Talk about high concept. Seriously. It makes sense though, because like he. I could see why he needed all of that. Yeah. For the. And another thing that I've heard about him is that he wants to be really efficient with his budgets. Oh, yeah. Like, so have you heard the story.

About the shooting schedule for Oppenheimer? Tell me. So the original shooting schedule was, I think like 87 days. And then they realized they needed another $20 million to physically build Los Alamos. Because he. To him, it was like, if we can't build the entire city of Los Alamos, it's not going to be worth it. And his production designer was like, we could build a few of the buildings, but we can't do it all. So he goes, give me a weekend. I. I'll find you your money.

And he comes back and he cut the shooting schedule down to 59 days and was like, we're going to do the whole movie in less than two months. Here's your 20 million. Go build Los Alamos. He inversed and went back in time and found the money. Basically went into the bank vacuum thing. Yeah. And. And was like, we don't need. We can put this on this day. We can put this on this day. We don't need all this time. Cut an entire month out of the shooting schedule.

Wow. And there was the 20 million to build what he needed to build. And this sounds cheesy, but that's probably my favorite thing about that movie. Is that set? Well, I mean, half the time. Yeah. Oh, yeah. It's incredible. And half the time, like whenever they're out in like a field or whatever, all the actors were saying, it was literally Nolan, Hoyta Van Hoytema with, with his IMAX rig and the sound guy. And those were the only crew members on set. Oh, I love that.

Yeah. Can I just say something about Oppenheimer, too? Yeah, yeah. This goes out to all you people who are bored by Oppenheimer. Just chill the out with that. The Bordenheimers. Come on, man. Just maybe just, like, watch the movie. Like, I don't know. And like. And, like, get over that. There's not always explosions. There's a huge explosion in the middle of the movie. That's probably the one of the greatest explosions you'll ever see. So many people criticize that. They say it looks fake.

As I'm like, did you watch the actual Trinity explosion? It looks almost identical. I also think, did they want to. Did they think it was going to be World War II footage? Like, was it going to be a World War II film? They were expecting that. That explosion to look like the megaton explosions that we're used to seeing in nuclear test footage.

Yeah. So when you literally go back to the very first, smallest nuclear explosion in history, everyone's like, oh, it just looks like a gasoline explosion. Okay. Yeah, it technically was, but it looks like the actual Trinity footage. Like, come on, guys. The coolest. Like, the coolest thing to watch in Oppenheimer is the acting, right? It's the actors doing the acting. Yeah. It's so good. It's so good. Like, and. And I think that's the hardest Josh Peck has ever acted in his life.

Yeah. Like, I think the whole time he's just like, I'mma do it. I'm here in front of Christopher Nolan. I'm going to push that button. Hell yeah, man. Well, the music and everything and the. The tension. The tension. Okay. If you were bored by Oppenheimer, okay, that's. You get to be bored by Oppenheimer, that's fine. But, like, it, you know, not, you know, it's. It's also fine to be really excited by seeing this really amazing piece of film. And if there's anyone to ding for realism. Let's.

Let's maybe leave no one out of that conversation. Yeah. For real. Yeah. This is the dude that spent millions of dollars on the cafe scene on air cannons. Yeah. In Inception. So that it was truly stuff exploding. And, yeah. They had one shot, and he argued to get a second camera. He did not want that second camera. Like, we have to get the second camera because we this up. Yeah. And he was like, fine, let's not argue about realism with Mr. Nolan. Yeah. For real.

Well, also, that movie is about maybe the most important moment in history, in modern history. Like, and it deserves to look at the people who made it. Yeah. You know, and so, I don't know. Like, it's not Inception, guys. Yeah. We're not doing the Dark Knight. It's a different kind of. It's a biopic. It's a human film. Yeah. It's not about the bomb. It's about the humans.

It's a biopic about a bunch of science nerds. Yeah. Yeah. So, yeah, a lot of your stuff, a lot of your action sequences are going to be at chalkboards. Yeah. I love what you said. Preach it. Preach it, brother. And lastly, this was my favorite thing I uncovered. So obviously, he took a creative Liberty. Liberty. Liberty. Liberties earlier on New Year's Eve. Yeah, yeah. His liberty hurts. Yeah, yeah. So in Inception, he. He says. Which is hard to believe.

I don't know if I believe him, but he does that. He did zero research for Inception on Dreams or anything like that. But this one, he partnered and became friends with and got feedback from physicist, renowned physics physicist Kip Thorne. Okay. And he looked at the script and he. They worked through these concepts together. And he's considered, I guess, an academic. Academic genius. I don't dabble in. Yeah. Physics. But I think he's also credited as an executive producer.

Like, that's how involved he was in this movie. That's awesome. Yeah. So he took a few liberties, but based on my research, he didn't. He didn't go too, too far. Yeah, yeah. No relation to Rip Torn, the actor. Or Richard Thorne and Omen 2. Oh, wow. Okay. Damn. Damn. Sorry. I just. I felt like I had to go back farther than you. I was like, how can I beat this guy? But I. Maybe they're all three the same person. Maybe they're ten versions each other. Yes. There we go.

Yes. Kip Thorne, Rip Torn, and Richard Thorne. Kip's kind of a weird scientist name. A little bit. Yeah, yeah. Yes. Eagle Scout. That's an Eagle Scout. I know some music musicians named Kip Napoleon Dynamite's brother. I've never seen Napoleon Dynamite. Oh, that's the next movie we should do. I don't know. Kind of like the reaction of people who. Who hear me say, I've never seen it before. I've never. Sorry. I've never. It's not on our list. It's funny.

We have literally almost thousand movies on a list that we want to cover, and that's not on there. It's because it was just in my face when it came up, people. The. The, The. The impersonations. Yeah. No, One would shut up. No one would shut up. And when I finally saw it, I was like, this is the dog that I thought it would be. Yeah. Might be the pinnacle of civilization for me. Nice. Well, maybe you should start a podcast. I'm just kidding. No, I could be convinced. Yeah, just like.

Just like everything else about. For sale. So I've been showing my kid YouTube videos of some of my favorite movies, but just the clips, right? Because you know, who has time to watch a whole movie, right? So like. So I showed her like some clips or it just came up on my algorithm on YouTube. The Napoleon Dynamite best of scenes. Dude, it was cracking her shit up. She's like an eight year old kid and she, you know, like. Like when I feel like that's who it was made for.

Yeah. Spoiler alert, Seth. But. Yeah, right, Spoiler. But like Uncle Rico throws a steak and it hits Napoleon, right? Oh, yeah, I've seen that, dude. She rolled on the floor laughing, like for three minutes straight. Maybe I should show it to my kids. I mean, maybe they'd like it. I'm teetering with that. Or Terminator for my son. So Terminator double feature, man. Yeah, double feature. Cover your eyes. Shall we manipulate entropy? Let's do it. Shall we inverse our materials?

Let's temporal pincer this bitch. Let's war. Yes. Let's. Let's do a. Yeah, that's better. Let's do a pincer. I love that, that just that word tempor. Spencer, that's just so good. Top Bill cast John David Washington and Mr. Robert Pattinson. Amazing. Killer. I again, I love the fact that Robert Pattinson supposedly knows everything that's happening and literally knew nothing about what was happening. Even after reading the script multiple times was just like, I don't know.

I just do what Nolan tells me. And again, I think for the character that was created for John David Washington, I think he. He did it perfectly. I couldn't see anyone else convincingly in that character. So remind me what the positive one is. Entropy. Entropy. And negative is a paradox. You know, entropy on this one. Boom. Oh, so we're doing like. Yeah. Oh, that's okay. So, well, definitely. What's the good one? Entropy. Entropy for both of them. They both rocked for me. But I think this was.

And I haven't followed Pattinson much. I didn't see him in the Batman that he did or anything. He was good. But. All right. But this is like one of the first things. And I watched all of the Twilight movies, of course. Yeah. But like, this is the first Time I've seen him in, like, an action sort of thing. Yeah, he's great. And I think he's got. And it's cool because, like, he's way more famous than John David Washington, it would say. Yeah. But he's like the number two guy in this movie.

Yeah. And, dude, I would. He just seems like a really great actor, someone really great to work with. Yeah. And the choices he made with. With that character, just. Yeah. I have no notes. He was excellent. Yeah. I totally agree. And I like jdw, too. Yeah. I did kind of feel like he was. I don't know, like, there were. I hear the critiques about how he was a little flat at times. Yeah. And I did kind of notice that, like, some of. Some of this.

The face acting he was doing, I felt could have been maybe a little more interesting. But. But I did like the choices he made, too. And again, I think part of that had to do with the fact that he is playing this anonymous, his character in the whole movie. He's trying to mask his emotions. So he is trying to have a little bit of a flatter kind of face with. With. With the emotional side of things, like you said.

I do totally get the criticisms, but I. I think it lended itself towards this character. Yeah, he was awesome. Yeah. Yeah. I totally. Yeah, I go entropy here. Love John David Washington. I think. I think there's. Should we. It's kind of surprising we haven't seen him in more. Yeah. I actually think I liked your point earlier, that he nails what he's supposed to, this kind of staccato CIA guy. He's an entity. He's not supposed to fluctuate emotionally. That's not why you.

That's not how you become the number one guy at the CIA. And when he does, that's when goes wrong. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. It's the moments where he's cowering to his. His feelings towards Cat. Yeah. Or is that. That's her name. Right. Another thing about that sort of flatness is he is literally the protagonist of the movie. And. And he's called that.

And it kind of gets back to what I was saying earlier about how a lot of Nolan movies are about, like, the experience of watching a movie or the experience of getting a story. And I think with a protagonist, a lot of times as viewers, we project ourselves or we project our. Some version of ourselves onto this person and, like, that choice to be sort of. I don't know if flat is even the right word, but, like, neutral in a lot of moments.

Yeah. I. I think maybe there is something to that, like, underlying subtext of, like, you're. You're projecting something onto him and he's allowing it to happen. Yeah. So. So I like it in that sense, but I do think, like, in certain moments, I did kind of feel like I wanted a little more from him sometimes. But. But in retrospect, I really love what he did. If this is really a love letter to Bond, think about every Bond.

I know. We think of Sean Connery as this wily guy and eccentric, and he has been. But if you go back and watch those. The Bond character, whoever's playing Bond, is very consistent. Yeah. Like, I would say Craig shows the most volatility of all of them, but that's because it was made for this new generation of, like, every. Everybody's got to be an anti hero. Everyone's got to be darker. Yeah. But. But up until Daniel Craig, the Bond character was very staccato.

Yeah. Yeah. So literally, like in. In Liter, if you study literature, like, a flat character is someone who doesn't really. Kind of keeps the same characteristics and doesn't really change over the course of the movie. Yeah. They are who they always were. And Bond is like that. And I kind of think the protagonist in this movie is kind of like that, too. Yeah, I agree. Yeah. Not a whole lot of change. Yeah. Yeah. Go back and watch. If you don't think so, go back and watch old Bonds.

Yeah. People, and you'll see it. You'll see all the old. And one more thing about Pattinson, one thing I laughed about watching this is that a lot of people I talk to about the Batman, they like, oh, Pattinson's coming out party. He is a good actor. I'm like, you know how much shit he's done. Yeah. Since Twilight. Have you seen House? Cause Cosmopolis. Yeah, he's. I haven't seen that, but I've heard about it. Yeah, he's just. He's like. You just haven't been paying attention.

Like. Yeah, he did Tenant. He did all these other things. Like, the dude, he. Yeah, Twilight was over a long time ago. He's been doing some shit. He's really good. He was really good in Twilight. Sure, he was. I'll take your word for it. Look, he. He had some interesting stuff to work with. And he was also really young, but, like, he did exactly the thing he was supposed to do in Twitter. I bet he did. I will say, here's the one positive thing I'll say about Twilight.

This is the mark of great Actors that they can dip into complete pop culture mass hysteria and do that, and then they can go do a Nolan film. It does speak to a range that not everyone has. You know, Nicholson has that range where he can go, you know, with that Diane Keaton movie he did. It was after as Good as It Gets. But, like, you know, he can go. He can go total pop culture and. He can go do the bucket list and then. Yeah, and then he can go do Scorsese.

But he was also in the Shining and, you know, all these great indie films he used to do. So a Knight Rider, you know, so, yeah, it is one to zero. We are experiencing entropy. I hope our cellular counts are doing okay. God, I gotta get better at those supporting cast. Am I saying this right? Elizabeth Debecky Debiki? Probably. I think it's Debicky. This is the only character in the film who was specifically that role was written for. So he had her in mind as Cat. Loved this actress.

Dimple Kapadia as Priya. Yeah. Bollywood legend. Yeah. Michael Caine is Sir Michael Crosby. He's all right. Yeah, he was Douche Blood. Blood money roll. And then, of course, the great Kenneth Branagh, who was, by the way, way down on the pay scale for this movie. Like you. I had to. I had to click into the cast list. Yeah. On night because, you know, they had the front cast list on IMDb. You have to expand it to even get to him.

Yeah. I mean, this may have been his third, but definitely his second time working with Nolan. He was in Dunkirk as, I think, an admiral. I didn't see Dunkirk. Oh, it's so good. Yeah, Very good. For a war film. A different type of war film. Yeah, very. Definitely. Is that the one that was in One Shot or. No, that's 1970. That's 1917. Okay. Yeah. No, this one. This. Oh, my God, it's so good. But it has incredible picturesque shots. Like, you talk about Nolan films and portraits. Oh, yeah.

The portraits in that, in terms of still shots are just also, it proved. To me that if you have a good director, anyone can act, because Harry Styles, that was his first movie. Oh, my God. And he. He killed it in that movie. He did such a good job. So. Yeah. But yeah, Kenneth. Kenneth Brana's Sader Sator Seder. I think every again, it's like, I. For a movie like this, for a spy movie, I'm not looking for this, like, intense emotional depth. I want enough that.

That you are your character and I. I feel the way I do about you. Kenneth Branagh especially, I think went above and beyond what any Bond villain has ever done. As much as I loved Mads Mikkelsen in, In the. The first of Daniel Craig's James Bonds, he's still kind of just an anonymous faceless guy that you only meet in the third act.

The fact that you're hanging out with Sator throughout the whole thing and, and really getting in depth on not only who he is, but how he's treating his wife and why he is so mad at her and using the kid to, to kind of hold it over her. There's so much depth to the character and I think every line he delivers, he really delivers that. I think Kat did a great job. I think Priya was so much fun to watch on screen. Yeah, I think everybody fucking killed it. I love that. What do you think?

Yeah, everybody was incredible in that. In that list. I guess A little more about Branagh, just real quick, I think. Oh, what was I gonna say? Other than your clear sexual attraction to him in this role? Well, I mean, that, that's. That definitely comes first. Yeah. But, yeah, he was jacked. He looked pretty jacked in this. Yeah. Like, I remember, like watching him in the Shakespeare movies in the 90s where he's kind of skinny, you know, and.

Yeah. Like, I mean, if you look at him in Dunkirk, literally, I think three, four years before this. Three years, maybe he's, he's not skinny, but he's not jacked either. He's just kind of a normal looking guy in it. So he, he clearly took on a physical Persona for this role. Yeah, but like, so a lot of times with a lot of people see sort of a difference between film acting and theater acting, where, like, in theater you have to be really big and broad and on film you want to be really quiet.

And Michael Caine talks about this. He says that acting on stage is like doing surgery with a scalpel and acting in film is like doing surgery with a laser. And that's the way he sees it. But for me, like, I've never really thought that, like, that it's really that different. Yeah. And a lot of actors kind of will kind of think that, oh, I have to be really. Like, I have to do a lot of whispering.

If I want to be menacing, I'm going to whisper like, Branagh goes balls to the wall at this point in both directions. He's massive. Like, and, but especially when he's huge, like, he really goes for it. Yeah. And I think the character deserves that. Yeah. Like, he's got to be Big. Because he's trying to destroy the world, literally. So, like. So. Yeah. And so, yeah. That.

One of the many things I love about Branagh is. Is how big he is in this movie. And. And part of that does come from probably his classical training stuff, but part of it is the choice of the actor. But I love Elizabeth Debicki in this, too. She's. Yeah, she's really pretty and everything, and. But. But she has a lot of depth. And what a character. Oh, my God. Like, y. Nolan doesn't know how to write women.

Like, watch this movie and watch the way that she is reacting to everything that's happening to her. Oh, she so good. And this absolves him of his Gyllenha hall sins. Yeah. Yeah. I love Mega Gyllenha hall in. I hated her. I hated her so much. I just wanted to trigger him. I know how he feels. I love M. Gyllenhaal. We can. We can fight about this. Yeah, that's a. That's a side pod. You. You said something that actually was exactly in line with my thoughts is that. Yeah, he's.

He's kind of jacked in it, Kenneth. But he's not tall necessarily. Yeah. But, yeah, huge. Yeah. Like, he is almost. The way I thought of is like, he is a boulder. Yeah. In every scene, he's like, the thickness of his dialogue and the things he's saying and his facial expression, there's a heaviness.

And I don't mean, like, in a bad way, but the heaviness that you should experience from someone who wants to end the world and has endured nothing but pain and hardship their whole life and is now taking revenge on the world. Yeah, he does that tfold. He looks like Zangief from the Street Fighter video game. Yeah, that's actually. That's actually. Yeah. But, yeah, I'm just like. There's just this heaviness. You just feel it like, oh, my God, this guy does want to destroy the world.

Yeah. And when Cat first walks on, I'm like, did Nolan, like, hire a supermodel here? Like, who is she? And then she just like, yeah, he did. In one scene, in her best scene, she. Was she a supermodel before she was actress? I think so. Seemingly. I mean, she's. She's got that look. She's six'two bro. That's insane. She's an in Shorter than I am. Damn. The last scene where she's having to pretend. Yeah. To love him. Great. She showed a ton of range. She went from, like, forcing that Love.

But you can tell it's kind of a forced love to. I can't do this. To saving the day. Like all within a matter of minutes, man. She showed the whole thing. I thought Priya is not a write off character either. No, not a write off at all. She was 29 when they shot this movie. Really? Yeah, she was born in 1990. Wow. Damn. I did forget she's in Guardians of the Galaxy. She's. She's one of the gold people in the second. You talk about Elizabeth. Yeah. Wow. Yeah. Blown away. Want to see her again.

Oh, and she was in Great Gatsby. That makes sense. Yeah. I'm not really familiar with a lot of Bollywood. I haven't dug into Bollywood a lot, but apparently I did just in my very half assed research doing this. But I did find out that, that what's her name. Dimples. What's her last name? Had it pulled up going back. My bad, dude. No, it's all good. Kapadia, Dimples, Capari. I. I mean I could see why she's a famous actress. Yeah, she was really just.

She, she had my attention every scene she was in. Oh yeah. She was effortless at the effortlessly menacing dude. He. Christopher Nolan, now that you say that, he loves dipping into Bollywood. Oh yeah, he. And he pulls great actors and actresses from there. Yeah. All right. It is 2 to 0. We are experiencing more entropy. Step into the reversing mechanism with me writing.

And I actually had a different, not a different way to approach the category, but I wanted to break this down because I was looking, maybe looking for differences here. So I broke this down by movies that he's written alone and movies he's written with either Goyer or his brother. Yeah, movies that he's written alone. Following Memento, Inception, Dunkirk, Tenet and then movies he's co written with Jonathan Nolan.

The Prestige, the Dark Knight, Dark Knight Rises, Interstellar and then with David S. Goyer being involved. Batman Begins. Dark Knight, Dark Knight Rises. Now obviously he has varying. Yeah, he also did Oppenheimer alone. He did Oppenheimer alone. Okay. Yeah. So I, I was looking for something like is there a different flavor? But when I saw that Inception and I was like, no, I don't really see that big difference other than Jonathan Nolan was in. Big involved in the, the, the trilogy. But yeah.

And Jonathan Nolan I think was involved in the story of Inception. But I think, yeah, the physical screenplay was. Was just strictly Nolan over like 10 years. Yeah, it's interesting. I guess I just, I mean you're the super Fan, and I love him, but I'm not the super fan. I just didn't realize. Oh, he actually wrote a lot of them alone. I always. I thought he had always written more with his brother. Yeah, it just kind of. Yeah, it depends, but.

So I think I'm actually going to have an interesting way of viewing this because I do think the reason this only cracks top five for me and doesn't hit top three or even best Nolan movie.

I do think the weakest part of this movie is the screenplay itself. The. The. The story and the plot, I think, are immaculate and incredible, I do think. And it somewhat lends itself to the spy genre. There just isn't necessarily anything unique necessarily, about the dialogue and about the script itself itself. But because the story and. And the setting and the action is. Is so well done. This does just barely squeak over into an entropy for me.

Like, I do think, overall, yes, it's a positive thing, but I can get behind a lot of the criticisms with the screenplay itself. As much as I personally love the I ordered my hot sauce an hour ago line. It is one of the cheesiest things I've ever heard anyone say on camera. It's so funny. But it's. It's also just like, okay, all right, whatever. Yeah, so, yeah, just barely. Again, we've had a couple of these where it's like 5.1 out of 10 barely squeaks over. Yeah, but, yeah, it is.

It is just a slight entropy for me. We should create a category for squeaky. Yeah, Squeaky entropy. What do you. What do you think? I'm trying to find a way to become a little bit more contrarian so far, because I feel like we've agreed on pretty much everything thus far, and I know that. Just wait till we get to Big Lebowski. Here we go. But no but war. I know that, like, also, like. Like debating and sort of friendly disagreements are.

Are better maybe TV or listening material because, like, people can interact with it more. But honestly, I think. I think the contrarian ness that I'm going for is actually what I'm about to say in response to how everybody else saw this movie. I thought the screenplay was incredible. Yeah, it was just great. And everybody all over it whenever it came. Yeah. Like, and. And I think that one of the things that happens with a movie.

Movie is, like, you, like, it comes out when it comes out, people react to it the way they react to it, and then that just becomes the discourse for ever. How long it is. And that's the cool thing about podcasts and stuff like this is that we can kind of contribute to that. It has a little more time to. To evolve over time. But, like, this is a really hard idea to come up with and if it doesn't always get executed perfectly. Sorry, guys, but like, it's kind of like when Lost.

You guys watch Lost. I actually have not seen a single episode of Lost. So, like, the first two seasons are, I think, incredible tv. Yeah, that's. The third season is kind of rough going and then the rest of it is like, really hard. So, like, like, and it has great moments, but, like, the thing about that show was, like, they were trying to do something that was impossible.

Basically, they were trying to tell three different timelines on network TV in early 2000s, when every season had to be 25 episodes. Episodes. Yeah. And like, it was just a really high bar. And I think this movie also is a really high bar to try to. To hit screenplay wise. Like, you're trying to tell this really complex story and really not just tell the story, but also get to themes that are really important.

And so, I don't know, like, if you're going to critique this, there's plenty of critiques to the screenplay, I think. But, like, overall, it's a. It's a total entropy for me. Total entropy. Yeah. Like, it's. It's an incredible achievement movement. Yeah. Well, leave it to me to be a true contrarian. Here we go. This. I love Nolan. I did go personally. Not that it matters. It's the majority rules here paradox. And the reason being is I. There's a lot of walking and talking going on.

And, you know, it's a spy movie. One of the things I do love about spy movie is that the. When I say cheeky, I don't mean it's always funny, but cheeky dialogue. Yeah. Sometimes there's a slyness to it. The only problem I. Like I said earlier, I do admire John David Washington's performance here, but they gave him a lot of things to say and there's a lot of walking and talking. There's a lot of moving and talking.

There's a lot of, like when he's got Priya or he's got a gun and they're, you know, and he's walking around pretty. Like they're always moving around. And it's. Because it feels like, well, if they don't. Like, we can't stand still. We got to keep. I'm just like, I didn't ever get that moment where it's still and that kind of cheeky sly, mysterious dialogue that you come to love in a spy film. Yeah, I was missing some of that, because I did.

I did feel like sometimes it's like, wow, there's a lot of moving around and talking going on. It's like, we got to be talking. And I get it. I agree with you as a complex thing, and I do give him credit for delivering the message. But I just was like, at some points, I was like, all right, let's shut the up. Yeah, no, I can agree with that. Which is why, for me, it's like, I have to look at the dialogue and the writing on top of the action, because the action is all physically written down.

I have the screenplay right over there. I've read through the whole thing, and everything that happens in the movie is. Is written down exactly as it happens. Like, yeah, he's planned everything out in such a meticulous way that it's like, I can't ignore that just because there's some cheesy dialogue in it. Yeah, Fuck you guys. I like how he was like, we should be contrary to the news. Like, fuck you. But I still agreed with you. It's still. Oh, yeah, I guess so. Still. Yeah. All right.

Three to zero. Entropy. And I hope we do not run into our future selves here, trying so hard directing Mr. Christopher Nolan. I mean, I think. I think we all know what I'm about to say. It's absolutely an entropy. Oh, my God. No one else could have done this. Yeah. It's very unique, a very singular kind of voice that he has. You hand this screenplay to any other director, and it would have just been a convoluted mess. Yeah, I don't care. You. You give it to David Fincher.

You give it to Peter Jackson. You give it to Kid Tarantino. Joel Schumacher. Joel Schumacher, absolutely. You give it to Kubrick. I don't think Kubrick could have done that as good. How would you. I don't know. Yeah, he did kind of steal that idea of some of these ideas from Time Cop, though. Sure. Yeah. A little bit. Yeah. Wow. I like that you guys just agreed. I've never seen Time Cop, so I don't know. I remember Time Cop. You remember Time Cop? Because I'm.

I'm obsessed with Arnold Schwarzenegger. Is this the Von Dom or is this. It's fun. It's Van Damme. Sorry. Von Dom. Son of a. Sorry. He. He also had a Time movie. Arnold Dead. Well, yeah. Terminator. Yeah, but there was another one's a Time Cop type thing. But no, sorry. Von Dom. Yes. I'm obsessed with Von Dom. Dude. Yeah. That whole thing where like, I guess they. I think they use the word entropy. This would be a really good one for us to do at some point too. It's probably on the list, right?

Yeah. Cop. Yeah. I didn't add it. Sorry.

We're about to. I do have a hard target. Really? A Von Dom? Yeah, bro. I do want him. I want him back. I want him back. In Popular. We. We need more vendor. But like the Expendables tried. But if you haven't. If you haven't seen Time Cop, like one of the. The rules of that movie, it does have to do with time travel too. And if you do encounter your future self, there is a singularity that happens. I think they use the word entropy there. I don't.

I'm not a quantum physics person, but I don't know. But like. Yeah. So. So that it's, it's. It's not uncharted territory. Sure. That no one goes into. But yeah, I mean like, as far as his directing, I mean it's. It's awesome at this. Yeah. He doesn't suck at this. No. There's a reason. People just give him a blank check and tell him to go for it. Yeah. This is an easy one for me too. I mean. And there's a reason why his worst movie is considered a 69. Yeah. Still better than, you know, it's.

He continues to be an autour. And one thing I will say as a director, even though I think this is not one of his best and it's. It's got flaws. He is also a guy that continues to try and pushes the boundaries. And he's doing it on with film. He's doing it with limited, Limited, like camera work. He keeps it the way he does it. He's continually like, he. He actually puts himself at risk without using multiple cameras. He does. He's okay with that.

And you are going to see dings and flaws in a movie where a guy is taking big risk. Yeah. And it far outweighs. I mean the, like the, it's. The. The flaws are. Don't even really matter in the long skin, you know? Yeah. You know, one thing I guess maybe I would say about it though is every time he. There would be a cut, maybe this is more about editing, but. But every time there was a cut, I always wondered if, like, what was going to happen if we came back. If and when we came back to that.

And I think Inception trained me to think about like the revisiting of a scene. And I don't know if it's, I don't know if this is a critique even, but like, I, I, it did kind of pull me out sometimes, like, where there would be a cut where like sometimes the door would be closing and it didn't close, you know, or something like that. And I would kind of wonder, okay, how's this going to resolve at some. Or what, what bit of information is being withheld?

Yeah. And I felt like sometimes that happened and sometimes it was just, I was just like overthinking it. So, like, I don't know. That is the thing about Nolan, though, is, is, is it keeps you guessing. Yeah. Keeps you on your toes. You did same with Kubrick. Like, people, the theories I have seen on what the open stroller versus the folded up stroller in Eyes Wide Shut is supposed to mean. Like, people, like, it's on, it's on screen. Clearly it had to be purposeful.

And I'm like, it's possible that they shot those scenes a week apart and some set person just folded up the. Stroller this time the chair that disappears in the shining. Yeah. In the room. Exactly. Like one minute is there and then like in the next cut, it's not there. Yeah. And it's the same conversation. Could have been put there on purpose, but also the curtains could just be blue. Yeah. Like, it could have just been the thing that happened. Yeah. Sometimes the cigar is just a cigar. Exactly.

Yeah. Sometimes Reddit is. You got to get off Reddit. Just get the off. Go, go touch some grass. Go. Look at this guy. Four to zero. Here we are cleaning up with Von Dom and Schwarzenegger being swapped. Here we are going to get ripped apart on Reddit for this thing. Getting, getting a good score from us. Yeah. If we are, I don't know about it because I try to stay off there. Although I did meet the author of that book on Reddit. Oh, nice. Of that Kubrick book I'm interviewing.

That's incredible. So Reddit has served a purpose. Hell, yeah. Love Reddit. Not really. Yeah, read it, been there, seen it, done it. Okay. Last regular category then. We got our bro categories coming up. Although we are. We have surpassed the, surpassed the threshold of a loss here. What's in front of us? Cinematography, production design, sound and costumes. Yeah. And editing, I think can also be. I'm actually. Yeah, you should throw that in there again.

280 visual effects shots, no one fucking does that. There's no blue screen or green screen. Everything that you see in front of you is actually happened in some way or another. Most of the visual effects shots were like erasing strings from when they were doing the bungee jump up the building, like that kind of stuff. It was very simple stuff. Anything that needed to be exposed, expand, expanded upon. Sure. I'm sure some of the explosions were visual effect shots, but it was nothing.

He wasn't fixing anything in post. He wasn't creating entire scenes in animation. It was all already there. And yeah, I just, I can't. I can't find a single flaw in the visuals whatsoever. Sure. People hated the sound design. Again, for me, watching it twice in the same IMAX theater, I had absolutely no problem with hearing the dialogue that needed to be heard. Even when I read through the screenplay, I was like, oh, yeah, this is a part people probably had a problem with.

But you don't even really need to hear what's being said here because there's a bunch of other shit happening. People are just reacting how they would react in real life. So, yeah, it's 100% entropy for me. Yeah. No notes. Really? Well, let's see. Let me think. Well, we did say that thing about editing and I did kind of feel like, you know, in the process of watching it sometimes some of the shots felt a little snipped a little too early for me. And it was disorienting. Maybe that was the.

I'm sure that was the intended effect. Yeah. For it to be. Maybe it's because you watched on your phone. I was telling. I was telling Seth God intended it. I texted him earlier. Yeah, I watched it just as Nolan intended it on. On my phone in 30 second, 30 minute intervals. Yeah, I was busy with all kinds of stuff. Yeah, I did watch the last 45 minutes. Minutes on a TV though. Oh, there you go. But no, I mean, yeah, I think technically everything looked great.

What am I going to say about the wardrobe, man? I mean, like, they, they looked. I like, I did like that note with. Who was it? Where? Oh, with Michael Caine. Where he's like Brooks Brothers. Brooks Brothers, bro. You gotta. We gotta get some better suits, bro. Love it. So that is something I have always loved about anytime Nolan does a movie and set in the modern era, the fashion is impeccable.

And if you watch him on set, he's literally in like a full suit and then usually has like a polo or a button up on. Yeah, like, dude just. Just exudes fashion. Yeah, it's like an NBA coach in the 90s. Yeah. My favorite was Levitt and Inception. Yeah. His wardrobe. Oh, yeah, dude. I mean, everyone in that movie was just so well put together. Watanabe was also really good. So you're going entropy. Yes, beautiful. Me. Yeah, me too. And it's just. This is just standard Nolan here.

I mean, this guy doesn't. Doesn't lower the standards ever. He doesn't. He's unwavering. He doesn't mess around. Yeah. He has expectations and he makes it as hard as possible with how he does it because he wants that end product to be perfect. And that way he does have you. I think you pointed this out, but Kubrick, that is where they kind of share. It's like they are relentless. And you can question the standard if you want, but they are relentless and upholding a very certain standard.

Yeah. And that in the modern era of let's, let's make background movies on Netflix and, you know, you know, just all the garbage, the remakes, the reboot, someone that's upholding the. The standard is what we need. And he does it here again. So I can't really say much more than. I just. I love everything I saw. Five to zero. We're winning. But we got two fun categories here.

This one is called Nolanism. Okay. Nolanism. Okay. And this is what we have been talking about. We've referenced it a few times, but this is his lowest rated movie. Yeah, but take 2020 out. Take the pandemic and the correcting of sound issues, all that. And let's just say this comes out today and, you know, does it take taking a fresh look at it? Does this belong in that top five? That is the question. I mean, it is for me, like, it absolutely is in the top five. For me.

It. Again, there's just so much that he could have done with visual effects and he, he just makes that decision to just know, I'm gonna do it in camera until I can't anymore. Yeah, I, I think time is going to be really friendly to this movie. Like, the, the more people come to it after digging into sort of, sort of the, you know, upper echelon, well known Nolan films, and they're like, oh, man, I want to explore this filmmaker more.

I mean, like 10 years from now, like, you know, kids in high school and college, like, trying to figure out, God, who, who do I want to model my cinematic voice after. Yeah. They're gonna see this. Yeah. And be like, oh, wow, that this is an achievement. Well, it's already happened with Interstellar because Interstellar was rated at 73 on Rotten Tomatoes, which is the dumbest thing I have ever seen in my life. To me, that is his greatest movie.

And I. I hope the Odyssey can exceed that for me, because I have very. He's doing an adaptation of Odyssey, like Homer's Odyssey. Yeah, that's. His next project is the Odyssey with Matt Damon, Tom Holland, Zendaya, Robert Pattinson, Charlize Theron, Lupita Nuongo, Anne Hathaway. Who. Who are these people? Lupita Nuongo. Who? I'm just kidding. Like, these are like. Yeah, but, like, I have high hopes for the Odyssey.

I always, no matter what it is, Nolan, I try to keep my expectations reigned in just because I want to see what he wants me to see. I don't want to see what I want to see. But as I was saying with. With Interstellar, it wasn't very highly rated when it came out, and 10 years later, everyone considers it to be his greatest film. And so I think Tenet is probably going to go through something similar.

When I saw it in the rerelease earlier this year in imax, everyone came out of that theater just going, this was insane. I wish I had seen it for the first time in imax. I think that happens with a lot of really great movies that are really high concept and with ideas that are really hard to wrap your mind around. Because a lot of times people. People want to go to the movies and just have some fun and, like, watch some stuff blow up. And I think that's great.

Like, I believe that people should go to the movies to just be entertained. Right, Right. But I also think that there's that stuff like this. If. If that's what you're going in for and you kind of get thrown for a loop on that, then maybe that is part of that reaction. And so. But I think if people want to think about what a movie means and how important it is to the art of it and everything like that, I think over time, people are going to love this movie more and more. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

So entropy. So what do you think? Okay. And just to add a little clarity for the listeners, We've seen this PDF, but here's the order. So Dark Knight 94, we're using rotten Tomatoes, even though it's a biased, garbage piece of. Well, it just. Rotten Tomatoes is the conglomeration of all of the critical recovery reviews. Yeah. So it's. It's just, if. If 94 of them said it was good, then that's what the percentage is gonna be. Yeah. But then recent years, they've definitely taken what.

What I love is that now they're, like, going back and reviewing old movies. Yeah. And re. Rating them. Yeah. Based on today's standards. And so they're like, giving, like, really? Some of my favorite movies. Dog. Reviews. Like, oh, well, this didn't have. It's like, shut up. That didn't exist when they made that movie. So Bloodsport is. Is not a 95. No longer a 95 helmet. I know, I know. That was Arnold too, right? I'm just kidding. I know. Yeah, I know. That was Mickey Rour. No, I love.

I love L wor. Here's the order. 94% for the Dark Knight. 94% momento. 93% Oppenheimer, Dunkirk. 92%. And to round out the top five is 92% for Insomnia, the Dark Knight Rises, 87%. 87% for Inception, which freaking boggles my mind. 85 for the Batman Begins. Boggles my mind the other way. 80. 84. 84 following. 77 for the Prestige, Interstellar. 73 second last. Yeah. Unbelievable. And then rounding it out, all of his movies, the. The bottom of the barrel here. 69 for tenant. Bottom.

The absolute bottom of this list, which is still extremely high. Yeah, I. I don't. I don't agree with most of this list. I think Dark Knight is his most overrated movie. Yeah, it just. It's not bad, but it's just. It's. It's nowhere near as good. If. If Heath Ledger hadn't died, I don't think it would have been as praised as it was. And I think Memento gets a lot of nostalgia. I mean, it. It genuinely changed the way people looked at editing back in the day.

Like, the fact that it was going back and forth, one all in color was technically going in reverse steps, and then the black and white was going forward. When. When I first saw that movie, I watched it probably four times. And then I found the chronological version on YouTube and I watched it that way. Oh, really? A totally different. I haven't done that. Oh, yeah. So the. He did change a lot when that came out. As far as how he did the editing. Yeah. I would take Dunkirk off the top five.

I would take. I would agree with that. I would put the Dark Knight at number five, and I would replace Dunkirk with Tenet. Yeah. I would keep Oppenheimer right where it is, and I would put Interstellar at number one as well. Yeah, I totally agree about Interstellar. So I'm not going to sit here and just try to recalculate this whole list, but I'm just talking about Why I am. Yes. Entropy. I put in the top five, and Dunkirk, for me, is the easiest one to take off the list, personally.

Again, not bad. It's a very visually striking war movie, but it is also just a straight war movie. Yeah. I would keep Memento somewhere. I don't know where, but I would keep it in there for the innovation that it has. But I. I definitely agree interstellar1 and actually put. I put dark knight down to 5, and I won Insomnia on that list. Yeah. So it's tempting to take Oppenheimer off there, but I can't let my personal bias towards it.

Yeah. Take away from the fact that Oppenheimer's freaking brilliant. But I loved Insomnia. That was my first Nolan film ever that I watched. Oh, nice. I need to revisit it because I watched it back in the day and it didn't really do it for me. I didn't finish it. So I need to check. That's fair. I mean, it is a direct remake of a Swedish film that Stan Skarsgrd was. That was another character. That was another thing about it, too, was it was a remake and it felt kind of weird.

It was called Epilepsy. Okay. Okay. You had me kind of got me on that one. I do that on the show. I will say I did watch a comparison of the scene where Al Pacino kills his partner by accident, comparing with the stale and Skarsgard version. It is a shot for shot. Wow. Creation of it. Like, he. That was. The level of detail he went into was like, nope, this is perfect. I'm just going to do it the same way that I love it. I love that Robin Williams killed it as the villain.

Oh, my God. That's probably his best role. It is. And. And also, if. If you are one of those people and there is a large crowd of people that don't think he can write. He doesn't write. Well, for big actors, that's a big. I think it's Pacino's top five. It's Pacino top five, easy. And Robin Williams, his best role. Yeah. Truly hands down, freaked me out. Yeah. Check it out. All right. We gotta round this thing out. 6 to 0. I wonder if this thing is beloved in the movie wars crew.

I call this one Dazed and Confused. We get it. But audiences didn't. And also, I will speak on behalf of audiences here. Usually I'm. I'm a little harsh on the IQ of those who challenge movies I like because I'm a dick. Yeah. And I'm pretentious. This has been established. Yes, this has. This has. But at the time, one of the things was people, they didn't know what it was. They knew they liked Nolan, but they didn't know what it was. And. But they also weren't in the mood to be challenged.

A lot of people, if you were going to theater, it was actually for escapism, and usually I would criticize that, but during the pandemic, I wanted to escape in other ways myself. I wanted to escape the planet. Yeah, so. So I get it. So that being said, the timing it came out, do you. Do you think it was presented in a way? I'm not just talking to movie itself, but the marketing and then talk about the movie and then think about the time it was released.

Do you think it was warranted the confusion that. That some moviegoers had about what this movie is? I understand where a lot of people were coming from, but again, I think. And having been following the subreddits on all of his movies now for the last year or so, people, for whatever reason, are obsessed with, well, what is he gonna do?

What do you think he's gonna do with this thing? And. And they'll pull out the most random, stupid things that they see in like a trailer or, or in some little thing that one of the actors said, and they'll be like, oh, what if it's this whole freaking thing? And I'm like, stop. That's why you gotta get off Reddit, bro. Yeah. I mean, yeah, if. If I had a different work situation, I would. That's the problem with people is. Is. Yes, it's fun to speculate.

Yes, it's fun to have theories, but you're going to ruin the movie for yourself. If you go into it with presupposition, if you go into it with a vision of what you want to see versus accepting that this is someone else's artistic interpretation of whatever it is they're putting on screen, you're gonna be disappointed. So. No, I understand where the confusion came from, but I. I also know that. That Nolan stands tend to put themselves way too much in what they think is going to happen.

Yeah, I think, I think my. So there was some aversion when it came out because a lot of movies were just going to streaming. Yeah. That were supposed to be released in. Theaters, and this was. The Warner Brothers tried to put this. They wanted to. Yeah, they wanted to. Nolan didn't want to. Right. Oh, yeah, Yeah. I. I personally think he should have waited a year. I think he should have said no, we're just gonna. It's done. It's ready to go.

I'm gonna start working on the next one, but we're just gonna put it out in 2021 one instead. Like, I kind of remember feeling like, I would love to go see this movie, but I don't really feel safe right now, just, like, going to the theater, like. And I had family reasons for that. And so. Right. And I. I looked at the seating chart and found out there were six other people there. And I was like, it. I'm going. And we're all sitting, like, 20ft away from each other.

Like, the closest I was was my friend who went with me, and even we had a seat between us. Yeah. And so, like, for me, it was like, man, why is he trying to make everybody go to the theater right now? That was. That was the one thing for me about this movie. That's why I didn't actually end up watching it until today. I was. It just kind of fell by the wayside for me. But when it came out, I was like, well, I don't want to go to the theater. I don't feel.

And I think that was totally valid at the time. That's why I think he should have waited a year. Yeah. Because then I think people would have been fine and would have gone and saw it and. And would have had a better reaction. Warner Brothers wanted to delay it, but. When I saw it today, though, I. I totally kind of get it now, why he wanted people. People to go. It's like, well, this is the way you really need to see the movie, man.

When you see it in the IMAX theater here at Opry Mills, it is just a totally different experience. I was laying in bed, watching it on my phone, just like, oh, that's cool. Yeah. Yeah. I wonder what that looks like. 50ft tall. Yeah. Literally, though, so. So, yeah, I guess. You know, pros and cons, I guess. But, yeah. But, yeah, I get the reaction to it at the. At the time, because that was part of my reaction to it too. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I. This is funny.

I'm the only one that went categories that were that paradox. I did actually go paradox on this. I do. Because I'm the same. I, I. It's not necessarily that I didn't go well. I, I guess none of us could do anything for a while during the pandemic, but I. I just didn't think going to theater was really an option. I was surprised that we could. Like, I was like, oh, I would have definitely gone to Some movies like done what you did with the seating charts.

But I was like, I just didn't even think about it during the out of time. Yeah. Because well, I also had kids. But fair. You know, I just, I. I wish I could have seen an imax and I'm sure they'll do another one. Another imax. Yeah. Yeah. They'll probably re release it in a few years like they did this year. I do think this movie could have. It could have gotten more love.

Especially because a lot of the movies that were made and released during COVID there are things in those movies that remind you. Oh yeah, this feels like a movie because there's just little things like the Batman. Yeah. There are things in that movie that are so like unnecessary and little mistakes in that movie. Like that probably wouldn't have happened in a non Covid. Yeah. Film production period. But this one doesn't have any of that.

No. And plus it was shot just before the majority of it was done. Yes. I mean, but I, I would have loved to seen this get a wider audience when it was released and seen the way it was because now people are watching it on their phones. You're not the only one. A lot of people. I'm a father. I mean I have to. I watch all the special features on my phone like 20 minutes before I go to bed. You know, that's, that's, that's what I have to do to get my research in. So. Yeah, I, I actually did go.

Not that it matters, but I did go paradox on this one for that reason. I wish it would have been given to the right audience at the right time. Yeah. Because it got, it got overlooked for that reason. I would agree with that actually.

Yeah. Yeah. Can mark me down as a paradox on this one. Whoa. Holy. I mean, no, I think we all agree there. Like it should have been. We. It should have waited here because it. Deserves, it deserves more accolades. There's no reason this. For this to be at the bottom of his list. So. Yeah. Wow. There we go, everyone. We did not give it a perfect score, so don't come at us on Reddit. It was that close and it is 6 to 1. I would love actually to hear from you all. And you're not.

Not that you are shy typically the Deftones. Yeah, the Deftones, the Shining, the But. Oh, and they Shining comma V. And then they. By the way, if you're one of those people that criticize my clip about toxic using they. When talking about. Because you think I was being anti feminist by not saying Mary Harrim's name first. Listen to the episode. We say Mary Heron's name probably 54 times. At least. At least. And they is two women. It's Guinevere Turner and Mary Heron.

Two females stuck on them titties. You are. You are the sexist for. For not knowing there was two females involved. Anyway, you. Yeah, I love you guys. On that note, I do want to hear because this is such a. When I say controversial, it's controversial in that this. The. The pretext around the release of this film, the reception and then kind of that five year, ten year later. Whoa. What did. What was this movie? Actually, I want to hear your thoughts. But anyway, you were awesome.

Loved having you on the show. We should do another one. And we are going to in five minutes. Oh, that's how the sausage is made. But love y'all. I'm Kyle. I'm Seth. I'm JR.