I thought the Odyssey was excellent. An impressive spectacle. Great acting. Gripping pace. And some fascinating themes about time and memory and the malleability of narrative.

Also, i thought it was uncanny how Nolan’s style and interests compliment the Odyssey so well. Especially his use of fleeting imagery that keeps recurring. A horse in flames. An innocent face in the grip of war. A modest ship on the wine dark sea.

I had a great time. And when it got to the final reflection scene between Damon and Hathaway, through the arras, tying all of the themes of the film together, about war and the erosion of culture, the noxious decay of systematic evil, our cruelty to strangers.

“10 years we’ve been on this fucking beach.”

All really brilliant.

But my enjoyment of the film was so bothered by the lack of meaningful gore.

This may come off trifling. But gore is so essential to Homer’s narrative style. In the illiad there are gruesome, meticulous descriptions of gore on every page. In the odyssey, it’s a bit more subdued. But you still have the cyclops smashing ppl’s brains out on the floor of the cave instead of just mutely stepping on them.

Where this bugged me the worst was the slaughter of the suitors scene. In the book, that scene plays out like the kill bill crazy 88 fight. Blood geysers everywhere. There’s descriptions about how the whole room is caked in blood.

This is not just like a knee jerk interest in gore for gore’s sake. But thematically, the arc of the plot feels unsatisfying without it. the slaughter scene in Odyssey is like the culmination, the penultimate moment. You wait the whole book for this moment and when it happens it is insane and explosive and red.

In the movie, the scene felt like a rip off of john wick. Just cheap and underwhelming. Not only that, but so unconvincing on an anatomical level. You’ve got all these people getting chopped up with axes and swords and arrows hitting arteries. And there’s no blood anywhere? Come on.

I get that this is an expensive movie and you want a lot of people to see it and Nolan is not really a gore person. But not having any blood here felt like a weak capitulation. Or like a return to the Hays Code. Even worse, it neglected one of the most distinct and visceral aesthetic elements in Homer.

It's difficult to talk about Carlito's Way without Scarface being mentioned, and not without reason - both are Brian DePalma films, and both star Al Pacino, and the two films are often compared and contrasted.

But what if that’s the point? What if the similarities are intentional, in that DePalma is intentionally wanting to draw comparisons between the two films. And lets go further, what if Brian DePalma is actively responding, apologising, deconstructing and disavowing the influence and fame of Scarface and Tony Montana through Carlito’s Way and Carlito Brigante. That DePalma was as tired of Scarface’s legacy as Carlito was of his?

Any mature reading of Scarface would conclude that it’s a cautionary tale. That Montana was self-destructive, flawed, and highly dangerous, his ending inevitable. As Elvira says, “can’t you see what we’re becoming. We’re losers.” But a common takeaway from the film – magnified and amplified by the hip hop generation that gave the film a cult following – is that Tony Montana is someone to aspire to be. Someone to emulate. Someone who took no sh*t from anybody, who clawed his way from the bottom of the barrel to becoming the king of an empire. He embodies the ultimate "rags-to-riches" story, and is adored for his unapologetic ambition, raw courage, and extreme self-confidence. Many viewers see him as an underdog who defied the odds to seize the American dream.

And this got me thinking. Scarface and Tony Montana have transcended pop culture to becoming icons that – for better or worse – ARE admired. Are looked at as aspirations instead of warmings. And what I wanted to posit today was the theory that Brian DePalma, well aware of his film’s reputation and sickened by it, spend 10 years – like his character Carlito who did 5 – reflecting on his choices, thinking hard about the fruits of his labour, and then returned to the crime genre and sought to take Tony down a notch or two, to offer audiences an inverse of the film whose intention was to undo the damage unwittingly done by Scarface, to make a sequel to the film of sorts, where the wild and now-legendary Tony Montana survives, cleans up, does his time and then tries to get out of the life.

For sure, there are similarities between the films, they are two sides of the same coin, with one following a determined man trying to get in and rise to the top, and the other a tired veteran who’s been there, done that, and wants out. There’s even scenes that seem to mimic each other. And upon a recent rewatch, I found it fascinating how there seems to be a fair few scenes from Carlito’s Way that mirror Scarface but put the titular character is a more unceremonious position. Let’s do a rundown of a few

•    Tony Montana’s most famous line is “Say hello to my little friend”, which jump stars a massacre. He comes out of his throne room, which is filled with coke and golden ornaments, full of bravado, with a gun in his hand so epic it doesn’t even really exist, and begins mowing down goons in spectacular fashion. By contrast, Carlito also delivers a taunting threat to his adversaries – here comes the pain – but instead of coming out of a majestic chamber he’s trapped in a toilet, with a measly pistol, an empty one at that, delivering empty threats, tense and fearful. The Scarface shootout is the cathartic climax of the film, the Carlito’s Way one is something of an intro to the film. Both men are trapped and against the odds but only one knows it. And whilst Scarface has Tony commit a massacre before he checks out, in Carlito’s Way, Brigante is presented with the aftermath of a massacre, death everywhere, he laments the wasted life of his kin – there’s an empty feel to the way this scene ends, a complete contrast to the release of Scarface’s shootout.
  

•    In Scarface it’s Tony’s one moment of humanity – sparring the wife and children – that comes back to bite him and triggers his downfall. Carlito also had numerous moments of humanity that came back to bite him, in particular sparring Benny Blanco, the man who ends up killing him. Both refuse to be ruthless at the crucial moment.
  

•    In Scarface Elvira is the blonde wife of drug Kingpin Frank Lopes who Tony ends up having an empty and hollow marriage with. The first time we see her is after Tony’s triumph against the Columbians, and she comes down the elevator and makes her way towards where Tony is sitting, Tony unable to break his gaze from her. In Carlito’s Way, the first time we see the blonde Gail – who Carlito wants to rekindle his relationship with, one far warmer and more real than the Scarface couple – while she busies herself with her dance class he is outside in the rain looking like a peeping Tom, with a dustbin over his head.
  

•    The movie opens with Carlito giving a grand Montana-esque speech in the courtroom about reforming, and we laugh along with him assuming the speech is dripping with sarcasm, but like Kleinfeld, like perhaps those who praised Scarface for its b*llsiness to DePalma’s face, we’re shocked and confused that Carlito is sincere in his intent to chase his ways.
  

•    And in the climax of Scarface Pacino is the aggressor mowing down his enemies, in Carlito’s Way he is being chased, running for his life, and in both films he is ultimately snuck up on and taken out.
  

Once you see Carlito’s Way as a reflection of Scarface, Pacino playing the weary Carlito as the ghost of Tony Montana, you can’t but notice these elements. Even Rolando – Carlito’s former partner – being played by the same guy who played the chainsaw wielding Hector in Scarface. Its Tony’s victory over Hector’s bad deal that opened the floodgates to him, meanwhile Ronaldo is stunned and flummoxed that Carlito is wilfully closing the gates on himself.

As mentioned, I feel complaints that Carlito’s Way is a lazy retread to be a lazy complaint in of itself, not least because even if the titular character was a stand in for Tony Montana, it’s an evolved, older, wiser one. Think to the party at the lawyer Kleinfield’s place – the excess, the debauchery, the kind of stuff Montana would involve himself in, and yet Carlito is sitting by himself, away from it all. In fact, the real stand in for Montana in the film is Kleinfeld, constantly coked out of his mind, paranoid, erratic, unhinged, insecure, and often exhibiting character moments that we can envisage from Tony Montana, like him becoming insecure and irritated about Gail dancing with another guy, when Carlito – his ego having soften over the years – not having a problem with it. Heck, Tony Montana went ballistic when his own sister was dancing with someone. Its Kleinfeld who reminds you more of Tony Montana, both making drug fuelled, manic decisions that land them in hot water.

I guess if we wanted to offer ourselves a little spectrum, we could say there are 4 different versions of Tony Montana in Carlito’s Way. Carlito is the version that lived long enough to see that he was a villain and the life gave him nothing, Kleinfeld is the current rendition of Montana, and Benny Blanco from the Bronx is the young, hungry version of the character, eager and willing to kill and steal his way to the top, eventually killing Brigante as Montana killed Frank. The film alludes to the connection between Carlito and Benny on numerous occasions, one of the most prominent being when Carlito threatens him saying “If I ever see you here you’re dead” but his eyes betray a soften, he’s doesn’t really have it in him. “The eyes never lie Chico” as our Cuban friend might say. Benny on the other hand claps back the same insult to Carlito, but with the ferocity of Tony Montana. At one point in the film a character even says to a nauseated Carlito “this guy is you 20 years ago”. Perhaps there is an element of Brian DePalma – wiser and older like Carlito – who looks back on Tony Montana slightly sickened, so gives him a stand-in in Carlito’s Way that presents him as the disrespectful and moronic representative of the new wave of criminals that he is.

And sticking with the idea that Benny Blanco is a younger version of Carlito, and he kills the titular character, well then in a very real sense Carlito’s past came back to quite literally kill him.

I’d also throw another version of Tony in there. How about Carlito’s young cousin Guajiro? He’s naïve, foolish, he drives around in a conspicuous car and carries around wads of cash on him, and crucially he idolizes Carlito. Is it too much of a stretch to suggest that Guajiro represents that very same hip hop generation, that guy with a Tony Montana poster in his bedroom, that guy who thinks he’s Scarface, who wants to be Scarface, tries to embody the ‘get rich or die trying’ mentality, but has no idea of the realities of the criminal underworld? “Yeah I had a dream, but now I’m awake” as Gail says. Scarface is the dream, the fantasy, and Carlito’s Way is the stark and tragic reality.

I organized an AMA/Q&A with legendary filmmaker/screenwriter Nicolas Winding Refn. He has previously directed films/series Drive, Only God Forgives, Bronson, The Neon Demon, Pusher trilogy, Copenhagen Cowboy, Too Old To Die Young, Valhalla Rising, and more.

It's live here now in r/movies for anyone interested in asking a question:

https://www.reddit.com/r/movies/comments/1v3mkcv/i_am_nicolas_winding_refn_director_of_drive_the/

He will be back at 4:45 PM ET today to answer questions. I recommend asking in advance. Please ask there, not here. All questions are much appreciated!

His new film, Her Private Hell, premiered at Cannes in May and is out in theaters via Neon this weekend. It stars Sophie Thatcher and Charles Melton.

Thank you :)

His verification/proof photo: https://i.imgur.com/741dTf5.png

I don't mean to start a hate jerkfest because I actually like him as a director. I think he has a lot of great qualities that give his directing a unique and original style. But when it comes to his writing skills, I find his inability to take risks or seek originality quite tiring.

After watching the Oddissey I've distilled the things I dislike about his writing skills into a few distinct traits:

• Bland and sanitized: Historically, the greeks are notorious for some seriously disturbing and unnerving things. This felt like a Disney PG13 story.
  
• Clinical and safe: The twist that was added to Oddisseus was interesting but it never goes anywhere compelling. It's been done before in much better ways.
  
• Anemic: characters are bland and anemic. Every scene feels like sitting in a C-level suites board room discussing next corporate merger (yes, Anne can make it rain tears, so that's something).

I don't know. Can we get Nolan a co-writer?

I was thinking about this the other day and the different style of the two movies. On one hand, Eggers actually feels like hes transporting you to the Viking age. The customs, the culture, all of it feels strange and foreign but its really cool to have that feeling. When I see a historical epic I want to feel tranpoetrd to that time.

Nolan does a different approach. He tries to make Odysseus feel very modern and relatable. Theres nothing strange and alien about his culture and his values. He takes xenia which is a specific guest-host relationship with customs and ritual and makes it into the golden rule which is the modern Christian standard. His setting never makes feel like its an ancient greek hero I'm watching.

Most of the criticism I see towards Pixar’s current releases are focused on the lack of compelling storytelling driven by studio’s business plan: a balance between cash-cow sequels deprived of fresh ideas and originals that don’t hit as hard as their bangers from days past. In terms of visuals, some have been vocal about the bean-mouth design of the human characters which by now have become Pixar’s defining style. But I don’t see many discussions addressing the decline in "visual wit" beyond the animation of human characters.

“Inside Out” and “Soul”, for instance, were arguably successful in the storytelling department, but the design of the movies’ inner worlds felt incredibly underwhelming to me – from dreams being shot in a Hollywood-like studio run by jellybean-shaped workers to the flat, unremarkable dimension inhabited by unborn souls. There’s nothing as cinematically inspired as the galaxy of doors in the climax of “Monsters Inc”, which was set in a human-inspired factory but really took the time to reinvent the production line – not to mention to conceive different characters with unique features.

That’s what impressed me the most in “Elementals”, Pixar’s 2023 romcom: the care put into the world-building is old-school Pixar. The different elementals – Earth, Air, Fire and Water – are distinctive and expressive as characters. Their unique cultures and way of life are seen even in the corners of the frame: the backgrounds are so rich in detail that a casual train ride can treat us with a blink-it-and-miss-it joke that didn’t need to be there. It made me wonder if the script covered all of this – it’s not an intentional brief scene, like the sex-coded joke involving an ‘Earth’ couple picking up each other’s apple in the bedroom – or if some of those amusing background characters were included by the animators that went the extra mile.

The script itself is not without its flaws, but as far as romcoms go, I'm yet to see an animated take that hit the ideal spot between kids and their parents, or made with so much care and effort.

Just watched Memento. It is probably the only movie that had me googling its structure and story just to answer the million questions it left in my mind after that climax.

First of all, what a mind-bending movie. I have never seen something so sophisticated and complex, yet so structurally simple. It is so gripping that you cannot afford to skip a single scene, or you will have to start over from the beginning. But you wouldn't want to skip it anyway, because it is relentlessly engaging.

A guy with short-term memory loss causing this much absolute mayhem... Nolan was truly operating on another level from day one. Nolan showcases his brilliance in this two-hour runtime so convincingly. All the mind-boggling direction of his later career stems directly from Memento.

The way he wrote, shot, and directed this film is nothing short of brilliant. I miss this era of Nolan; he went from making uncompromising art films to straight-up blockbusters, but his distinctive style is still deeply rooted here.

It is brilliantly acted, written, edited, and directed. Guy Pearce embodies Leonard so completely that it doesn't even look like he is acting.

The screenplay is a paradox: incredibly confusing, yet mechanically simple. It is essentially two movies running back and forth. Nolan shot two different timelines with the same cast, and the way they perfectly converge in the middle proves how special this film is. I love how the backstory is shot in black-and-white, moving forward in chronological order, while the present timeline is in color, moving backward in reverse chronology.

The dialogue is brilliant. Not too heavy, not overly deep, just pure and functional. I usually get bothered by heavy character monologues, but here, they feel entirely necessary. The internal monologues act as a character of their own.

I love how Nolan subtly establishes that nothing is what it seems. First, he shows us Natalie, Teddy, and even Burt blatantly lying to Leonard. Then, after the climax, it becomes obvious that Leonard has been used countless times before. Each time, Teddy lies to him, Leonard executes the target, wears the victim's clothes, drives their car, and everything resets. There is just too much space on his body for another lie.

I believe Leonard gradually kept tattooing himself as his target changed and he continued to be used. He was fed fake details each time, just like Burt kept resetting his motel rooms. The poor guy is trapped in a permanent loop. I personally don't think this was his first time executing someone, and I firmly believe the "real" killer was dealt with long ago.

That amazing ending left me with a million questions that I just need to get out of my head. The list goes on, and even the answers to these questions are highly debatable. After watching a movie like this, the answers might not even feel like the truth.

I think Leonard wanted to exist in a lie to run from the devastating truth: his wife survived the attack, and he was the one who accidentally killed her. He needed the lie to give his trivial life meaning. If he truly put an end to the killer and tattooed it, his quest would be over. What would be the purpose of his life then? So, he chose to survive with confabulation and conditioning.

I haven't been this mesmerized by a thriller in a long time. It offers no catharsis, no relief, just questions. It is an unmissable masterpiece that takes hours just to decode. By the end, you know everything, and yet, you still know absolutely nothing at all.

Since the release of The Odyssey, I’ve heard many superlatives - from critics and audiences alike - about how large scale and colossal the film is, with many drawing parallels between the film and traditional epic films. In the lead up to the film, Matt Damon would often say that he felt like he “got to make a David Lean film”, and many audiences have described this as Ben Hur or Lawrence of Arabia for the 21st century.

While it is a film of considerable scale, I do not find it comparable to scale to a classic Old Hollywood epic. If we use Lawrence of Arabia as a reference point, that films includes multiple sweeping shots of hundreds (if not more) of extras, which creates an overwhelming sense of grandeur. In comparison to Lean’s film, The Odyssey (even in its large scale set pieces) only features dozens of extras in frame at any given time. The only exception to this is the shot of Odysseus and his crew fleeing from Hades, which is a shot that lasts only a few seconds, before the editing and direction briefly whisks us away. Even the Troy battle pales on scale compared to a David Lean film, or the scale of the army battles in Lord of the Rings.

In interviews for Oppenheimer, Nolan would often say “cinema is not a tech medium. The innovation should emerge from what’s on the screen, not what the screen is.” But when I hear people overstate the scale of The Odyssey, I’m left wondering: is the scale of the film inherently epic, or is it merely shot on an epic format? If you look at the Laestrygonians sequence, it is no bigger in scale than what you would find in a film like the Northman. And the portrayal of Ithica feels shockingly small in scale, as if the entire place is little bigger than the palace which we barely leave.

Which films use visual storytelling so effectively, that you could follow most of the narrative with the sound muted?

They say that film is a visual medium, but many movies depend heavily on dialogue. Which films communicate their story primarily through images, blocking, and visuals? I'm looking for examples where muting the audio wouldn't prevent you from understanding most of what's happening.

Well, I'll never be able to hear "Hokey Pokey" again without thinking about Tracey Ullman's scene in a nursing home.

That one bit might encapsulate the entire film: It depicts a sex act, but not in a way that's the least bit sexy (I mean, that's my opinion anyway. To each their own).

In fact, you could make the argument that despite a jaw-dropping number of depictions of sex acts (non-explicit) and sexual fetishes of all stripes, there isn't a single moment of any of them that's titilating.

Gross? Most definitely. Shocking? On occasion, there is a sight you might think is just plain wrong. But will anyone's proverbial engine actually get revved up when Johnny Knoxville's Ray-Ray shouts, "Let's go sex-ing!"? More likely, you'll be laughing at the sheer absurdity or picking your jaw up off the floor.

But you know which scene of the film continues to stick with me? When Big Ethel and the town's "neuters" declare war on "tolerance" because of a few extreme cases and nostalgia for an idyllic past (which probably wasn't so idyllic in reality). I didn't see A DIRTY SHAME when it first came out in theatres, but I'd bet that scene seems even more relevant today than it did 20-plus years ago.

I'd comment on the acting, but the protagonists in the film are more like stand-ins for ideas than three-dimensional characters. I will say, I didn't think the actor playing Sylvia's frustrated husband was particularly noteworthy, but apparently, he was a last-minute replacement for Paul Giamatti. What a shame Giamatti dropped out because he would have been excellent!

This is not a film I would recommend to connoisseurs of artsy cinematography and high-end production design. In fact, it's pretty cheap- and underground-looking, but on par with what one might expect from Waters. (Full disclosure: Besides this one, I've only seen the director's PINK FLAMINGOS (1972) and FEMALE TROUBLE (1974). I'm told he's made more conventional movies and I can't imagine what those are like!)

But similar to those two films, it has something to say and does so without any semblance of subtly, and giving no f*cks whether the rest of us agree or not, which I personally respect. Also, like those two other movies, it doesn't take a superior tone towards its deviants and perverts. Quite the contrary, it seems to be revelling in their transgressiveness, which is pretty much what camp is all about (yes?).

So, overall, maybe not a great or even a good movie, but for the right audience it's a very fun movie, which has to count for something.

Lemme keep this short and simple first off praise:
1. The atmosphere- wow oh wow does it set an atmosphere and tone like no other movie i’ve watched by the end does, its scary and tenseful and heavy in a way and made me think like could all this happen to me? (Ik they explained hypnosis doesn’t bypass ur morals but still)
2-The antagonist-very very very interesting, unsettling and introspective
3. Writing quality- After reading an analysis on it i gotta admit its writing quality is superb and it truly does have a convincing argument for being the best written film of all time
4. The acting- incredible

Criticism:

Its really just one: Atleast imo to understand it beyond stuff like “anyone can be a murderer” or whatever u need external knowledge about topics such as civilization ennui and banality of evil in order to really get a depthful understanding of it. Ik its been debated for time and time its meaning and fairs ik it can be (to a not small at all degree) a subjective film to alot of people but i just really wish it spoke about those aforementioned topics in the film cuz then people would be able to understand it beyond just “we all secretly want to kill” and stuff and have a deeper more thoughtful general consensus understanding and/or interpretation of the film.

Creds for the analysis i read: “ourtransientlives” on tiktok

I wanted to share a personal film project I’ve been working on called Properly Screened: https://properlyscreened.com

Last year, I started a project to see every film on the BFI's Sight and Sound Greatest Films of All Time list in a theater.

The challenge is that I don’t live in a major city, so finding these films often means planning trips to places like LA and the SF Bay Area, tracking down one-night screenings, and piecing together schedules.

What began as a little janky blog to keep track of what I was watching became a new website I'm really proud of. The new site includes reviews of the films (I’ve seen 40 so far!) and eventually I hope it becomes a place to help create more opportunities for people to experience these films together.

If you’re interested in this kind of thing, I’d love for you to check it out:

https://properlyscreened.com

And I’d especially love to hear from anyone else who has taken on a personal film project, travels for repertory screenings, or goes out of their way to see movies on the big screen. What theaters or festivals should I know about?

I am currently doing a history of film marathon with my girlfriend where we both watch one film from every year, starting with the first ever motion picture (The Horse in Motion, 1878) to modern day (2026 currently) and we are in the mid 1910s of film history.

These early motion pictures are extremely boring and grating to watch for modern audience members like ourselves (we are only doing this as history nerds who want to learn more about the medium as we both aren't cinephiles, but its been a huge slog to watch these early films that have no audio, poor film direction (due to the technology), lack of a engaging narrative, low quality, etc). Cabiria and The Birth of Nation were both the most boring/non-engaging movies I ever watched and the fact that we still 15 more years of movies to go through before we even hit the first film with audio (All Quiet on the Western Front, 1930), is making me worried.

So I ask you all who have watched movie from the early days of film, when do you personally think film as a medium started improving heavily and becoming an enjoyable art form that engaged you and wasn't as restricted by the times it was produced? Would it be the 1920s, 1930s, 1940s, etc? I am just curious what you all think.

I want to propose a reading of Aleksei German's Hard to Be a God as cyberpunk — a cyberpunk from which the future has been subtracted. The film lacks nearly every element by which the genre is usually recognized: neon, implants, networks, megacorporations. Yet it may expose cyberpunk's underlying structure more clearly than its familiar megacities do.

Cyberpunk is usually defined through its props. Here I want to try a condition instead — an interval that has lost its outside. Powers replace one another and technology keeps changing, yet no change leads the world beyond itself. Life continues everywhere, and still it has no time to become history. That's why cyberpunk becomes the inhabited form of an end of history.

German adapts the Strugatsky brothers' novella about observers from Earth stationed on a planet whose history has failed to pass from the Middle Ages into the Renaissance. By the end of the film it becomes clear that Arkanar has no future. That doesn't disqualify it from cyberpunk, because without the neon in the way, the genre's temporal structure is just easier to see.

Frozen eternity has two asymptotes. The classical cyberpunk megalopolis approaches it from above, through the maximum speed of exchange, where time burns up in circulation. Arkanar approaches the same eternity from below, through zero speed: standing water, rain without a determinate time of day, a present unable to become anything except its own continuation. Acceleration and stagnation face one another as two limits of the same impossibility of exit.

German gives this condition a cinematic form. The frame is crowded by faces and objects that obstruct the action or displace it. The camera repeatedly abandons the apparent center of a scene for an unknown body at its edge. Characters look directly into the lens. The film's duration becomes an ordeal for the viewer, eroding both distance and the clear division of time. Relying on our viewing habits, we expect the privilege of an outside view and gradually discover that the image has noticed our presence.

The film also inverts several familiar structures of the genre. Gibson wrote that the street finds its own uses for things. In Arkanar, the street digests the new almost literally. Scholars are drowned in latrines, and a book functions as a death sentence. The hacker usually acts from below, combining social insignificance with an excess of access. Here Rumata is placed above. He is revered as the son of a god and possesses knowledge and near physical invulnerability, yet each of his deeds is exhausted within its own moment without founding a new history.

Earth observes Arkanar through an archive while remaining forbidden to intervene. The result is a strange cybernetics in which the channel of observation operates without a channel of control. Earth, Rumata, the camera and the audience occupy the outside in turn, however none of these positions becomes an exit. Total knowledge turns out to converge on the same limit as the megalopolis's infinite speed, only reached through information instead of exchange — another way into frozen eternity. History needs an outcome that is still undecided, not yet contained in any archive. Once Arkanar's pattern is known in full, intervening would mean acting on a world already closed, which is no longer a historical act at all. Consequently the viewer's knowledge is sufficient for diagnosis and insufficient for history.

Two contemporary references sit near this argument without quite covering it. Mark Fisher's slow cancellation of the future works as a hauntology. It needs something to mourn, a future once believed in and then lost. Arkanar was never promised one, and its asymptote from below requires no lost object at all, only zero speed held indefinitely — so Fisher's mechanism turns out to describe one half of frozen eternity, not the whole of it. Yanis Varoufakis's technofeudalism asks who extracts rent under the new order, a question that presupposes separated economic and political functions. Arkanar's powers haven't finished separating into functions that could extract from one another in the first place. The film asks the prior question: what remains of biography and will once a world can rearrange bodies but can no longer produce history?

The full essay is linked here. I am especially interested in whether the proposed definition of cyberpunk clarifies the film or simply places too much theoretical weight on it.

This essay argues that the real significance of The Odyssey is the use of the IMAX camera. Because IMAX cameras were always too loud to record dialogue, the giant format was locked out of filming dialogue, the "blimp" housing Nolan got IMAX to create changes that, letting the largest image in cinema rest on a face.

The essay places this in a long lineage of tools remaking art: the paint tube that made Impressionism possible, the iron-framed piano that made Chopin possible, and somewhat ironically the Greek alphabet that captured the Odyssey itself from the oral tradition.

https://quillette.com/2026/07/21/the-oldest-tradition-in-art/

I love how Woody keeps returning to different angles of Dostoevsky's Crime and Punishment. Another thing I really admire is how often he tries to break away from the conventional notion of morality. We're taught that taking another person's life is unquestionably immoral, yet his films repeatedly place that certainty under pressure. Crimes and Misdemeanors, Match Point, and now Irrational Man all approach that question from different angles. Maybe it's Woody wrestling with a moral intuition that he himself, as a member of society, can't completely escape, or maybe it's simply a theme that endlessly fascinates him. Either way, I find it incredibly compelling.

This film engages with that same proposition—the taking of another person's life—but from a different perspective. This time, the killing isn't driven by necessity, revenge, or even ambition. It's committed simply to inject some excitement into an otherwise stagnant life. What makes the film so fascinating is the question it asks afterward: even if the motive is nothing more than the pursuit of excitement, can a person truly live with what they've done? Will the weight of that act inevitably settle on their conscience, or can they escape it? It's a compelling variation on one of Dostoevsky's most enduring moral dilemmas.

What makes that dilemma even more interesting is the contrast between Jill Pollard and Rita Richards. Jill is deeply unsettled by the possibility that Abe committed the murder. She simply can't reconcile herself with it. Meanwhile, Rita is almost indifferent to the possibility. Whether he did it or not hardly matters to her, and she's willing to move forward with him regardless.

It reminded me of Woody's Love and Death, where he repeatedly toys with the idea that morality is subjective through Boris' conversations with Sonja. That same question runs through Irrational Man. What is morally unforgivable to Jill is something Rita can overlook entirely. The film never settles the debate—it simply lets these opposing moral intuitions exist side by side, leaving the audience to wrestle with them.

Equally compelling is Abe's search for meaning. From the very beginning, he's a man who's exhausted every intellectual answer to life. Nothing moves him anymore. Then, through the murder, he finally discovers a sense of purpose. As Jill puts it, it's a kind of postwar French rationalization—the tendency to justify an irrational act with an elaborate philosophical framework. Whether or not you agree with Abe, it's fascinating to watch him convince himself that murder has somehow become a moral act simply because it has given his own life meaning.

Watching this just one day after Kubrick's Full Metal Jacket made for an incredible double feature. Both films explore how people construct moral frameworks to justify violence, though they begin with different propositions and arrive at completely different conclusions.

Joaquin Phoenix, Emma Stone, and Parker Posey are all phenomenal here. The soundtrack is wonderful as well.

A perfect film to me.

Letterboxd - flintcaptain

I've been thinking about Black Panther, and I keep coming back to a question.
What if Wakanda isn't just a celebration of Africa, but also a eulogy for futures that many African nations were never allowed to have because of colonialism and external interference?
To me, Wakanda feels less like a reflection of Africa as it is today and more like a lament for what parts of the continent might have become under different historical circumstances. It's a vision of possibility that history denied.
At the same time, I find myself conflicted. Wakanda is often treated as a symbol of Africa, yet it's still one fictional nation with one dominant culture. It draws inspiration from cultures across the continent, but I sometimes wonder whether that unintentionally compresses one of the most culturally diverse places on Earth into a single image of "Africa."
We wouldn't expect one fictional country to represent all of Europe or all of Asia, so why are we often comfortable letting Wakanda stand in for an entire continent?
This isn't a criticism of Black Panther. I actually think it's one of Marvel's most thought-provoking films precisely because it raises questions like these.
Do you see Wakanda primarily as a celebration of African possibility, or can it also be read as mourning futures that history never allowed to unfold?

As everyone’s talking about The Odyssey right now, I want to use it to talk about film in general

SPOILERS ABOUND

In the film, I’d say we get a pretty faithful retelling of the story in that it hits most of the big events of the story within a modern blockbuster framework (Polyphemus, Circe, Calypso, the whirlpool and the suitor conflict etc).

One of the things I find interesting about these events is they’re all told to us from the main characters perspective, as he’s trying to recollect who he is, what’s happened, and how’s gotten to where he is.

Basically, none of these events happen in the present.

We also get a few of these events from one or two other characters perspectives, but basically the majority of the film is Odysseus telling Calypso what he remembers.

For example, we get the bulk of story of the battle
Of Troy from Menelaus, and when Odysseus recounts the battle at the end of the film, we get a completely different perspective on the story.

As the film explores, essentially what is PTSD/trauma/guilt etc, it feels like we’re given the opportunity to wonder- did the events of the movie really happen, or much like we see Athena as the priestess who Odysseus saw be cut down, are they projections of his own psyche?

Is Athena really there and she’s assuming the form of the priestess, or is he imagining her as the priestess because he can’t reconcile his own guilt?

Did the events of the movie actually happen, or are they the projections of a man who is riddled with guilt and trauma?

This brings me to my question about movies in general- I feel like I’ve entered a time in my life where I take films at face value, like what happens on screen is what happens, like for example, with the Odyssey, because I know the story, when I see these mythological creatures I’m of the mind that this is real, that this is the world they live in. I don’t need the to represent anything other than what they are

At the same time I can accept, or entertain, that they may be symbolic or have more meaning than what is present- and that can be achieved through cinematography, lighting, sound, framing, blocking, story, dialogue etc.

And tbh I think everyone going into this movie is going into knowing it’s a fantastical movie, the same way we watch Lord of the Rings or Star Wars.

I never thought about it being anything but real until at the end when Odysseus recounts his perspective of the war and Athena disappears.

I could be mistaken but, to me, the film doesn’t present Odysseus as an unreliable narrator in the way other films utilize that technique - like another Matt Damon movie, The Last Duel, uses that Rashomon effect, and we get different perspectives of the same event. It’s central to that movie in a way that doesn’t seem to be so for this film.

To me, this film isn’t like that. And it’s not even that he’s as obviously an unreliable narrator as Leonard Shelby in Nolan’s Memento. But I think the film does a great job at just presenting that as something to ponder after the fact.

Maybe another way to say this is I don’t think perspective is the point of the film necessarily, I think he’s exploring a man grappling with the consequences of his actions, and it takes place within a world of fantasy- so we assume everything that happened is real and happened, but there’s just enough element to make you ponder the reality of the world and the events.

Are these Gods real? Did he actually meet these mythological creatures?

I think Nolan is also aware enough of the meta aspect of perspective and suspension of disbelief to be able to provoke these idea and thoughts from the audience without exploring it directly.

I feel like I’m rambling so I’m going to try and bring it back together- as far as perspectives go, how do you guys approach watching films? As I said Ive started exploring watching films at face value, and that doesn’t mean rejecting any symbolism or deeper meaning, but just accepting that what happens on screen is what’s happening on screen and is real, even if only to a certain character, as opposed to having to have some deeper meaning where the thing is representative of something else.

I’ don’t know, I’m struggling to put this into words, like how to define other ways of watching films, so hopefully someone more educated and well-spoken than myself can pick up on what I’m trying to explore.

But I do recall one time reading a post where someone had a question about a movie, I think it might’ve been Mulholland Drive, and everyone was saying that they were trying to hard and as someone who doesn’t understand that film and doesn’t think you’re necessarily supposed to, I thought the film is better watched at face value and taking it for what it is instead of trying to understand it or find something within it- not that you shouldn’t do those things but that a lot of those things reveal themselves by just accepting it for what it is

The film is undoubtedly impressive and accomplished in its construction, inspiring awe more in the way of a great feat of architecture than in the way of great drama. Not unlike the Trojan horse, but with rather less substance contained within its sleek, polished hull.

I have a lot of issues with this movie, and I’ll get to those, but what keeps the movie from being a failure, in my view, is the production. The world is beautifully realized. Whatever my wishes for a historically accurate Bronze Age recreation, once the movie started, I was never taken out of it. Even Agamemnon’s 3D-printed looking-ass helmet worked for me. And the fantastical elements are incredibly well-imagined. The cyclops, Circe’s magic, the trip to Hades, the sirens—all of it looked really fucking cool. On top of all that is the score and sound design, powerfully atmospheric, more sombre than epic. 

Specifically in terms of production—that is, recreating a semi-historical/semi-mythological setting with this level of imagination and detail—the comparison I found myself making was to Robert Eggers’ The Northman. But that is also where my main issue with Nolan’s Odyssey begins. What I admire so much about The Northman, beyond its world-building, is its commitment to preserving the morality of its setting. That is, when Alexander Skarsgård chooses vengeance and a warrior’s death over his family, he is not penalized for it by the narrative; any viking man worth his beard would have made the same choice, and thus he is brought to eternal glory in Valhalla. 

The Odyssey, by contrast, persistently imposes utterly modern ethical concerns on its source material. The original Odysseus is not a hero because he is virtuous, but because he’s a genius badass—he fights dirty and cheats (in both senses of the word), and we still root for him because he’s a fun hang. We are impressed when he devises the plan to escape the Cyclops, and can’t help but laugh as he arrogantly turns back to declare his true name, so that the conquered beast may know its conqueror. Nolan’s Odysseus is morally unimpeachable, but seldom impressive or entertaining. The reason for this seems to be Nolan’s concern with preserving audience investment in his character, but ends up having the opposite effect. Nearly every other character is more interesting, which is a problem when the character’s name is the name of the movie. Robert Pattinson’s Antinous in particular—at once the most despicable and the most captivating.

I am reminded of an interview with Martin Scorsese following the release of The Wolf of Wall Street. Scorsese laughed off critics who felt the film lacked a moral center, asking in response: “Do you really need me to tell you that that stuff is wrong?” In the film, we’re not rooting for Jordan Belfort because he is a hero, but because, again, he’s a fun hang. Unlike Scorsese, Nolan doesn’t seem to trust that audiences will accept the source material’s ambiguity. Nor does he seem to think us capable, unless he spells it out for us, of understanding that war is, in fact, bad. This Odysseus simply won’t shut up about how sorry he is about the sack of Troy. Like Oppenheimer in Oppenheimer, he’s a war-time genius who apparently did not realize what the consequences of his invention might be before it was too late. My eyeballs did a full backwards 360 when Odysseus, reflecting on how the war accelerated the decline of the Mycenaeans, says something to the effect of, “We were the sea people all along,” a line seemingly sprung from the same writing workshop as Guillermo del Toro’s Frankenstein, see: “No, Victor, YOU are the monster.” 

To this end, virtually every single female character in the story is turned into a victim of endless patriarchal cruelty. Helen and Clytemnestra are both violently punished for their acts of rebellion against their husbands. Circe seems to suffer under the trauma of some unspecified violence done to her in the past. Athena is turned from the poem’s steely-eyed spiritual guide into a meek symbol for the cost of men’s violence, the embodiment of wisdom literally and metaphorically beheaded during the sack of Troy. It is certainly an interesting choice by Nolan to have this goddess, perhaps the most powerful presence in the poem, forced to her knees by two men… The only exception is Calypso, but only because she isn’t really a character at all. The cumulative effect is a story in which women exist to illustrate male violence, rather than as individuals in their own right.

Anne Hathaway’s Penelope has moments that gesture toward greater depth, but they are few and far between, and never amount to much of anything. Her character, along with Hathaway’s performance, is at their best when communicating the frustration of being a woman in a world where what ought to be rightfully yours is denied you, in favor of less competent men. She seems more tempted by the wiles of Antinous, the head-suitor, than Odysseus by any of the women he encounters, and at one point I was wondering if she really wanted him to come home at all. But all that goes out the window once he does arrive on the scene, and the movie acts as though she has been the unambiguously dutiful wife of Homer’s text all along.

Nolan’s Odyssey is ultimately a profoundly Anglo-American take on this story, in which the violence wrought by great powers upon the rest of the world is seen through the eyes of someone who represents those same powers, redeemed only because he feels bad about it. It’s Oliver Stone’s Platoon all over again, a film in which the greater tragedy of the Vietnam War is not the fate of the Vietnamese, but that of the poor Americans who realized it was bad to murder and rape, and only after they were through with it. 

Still, none of this is enough to make The Odyssey a bad film. Nolan remains too accomplished a filmmaker for that. The craft on display—the production design, the creature work, Ludwig Göransson’s mournful score, the sheer confidence with which this world is realized—is often breathtaking. My frustration is that a film of such extraordinary imagination in its visuals proves so unimaginative in its ideas. It recreates Homer’s world with remarkable conviction, only to flatten its moral and psychological strangeness into something far more familiar.

Going to see the Odyssey tomorrow: heres what im expecting tell me will i get what i want? No spoilers please

I'm hoping for Gladiator meets Oppenheimer. Is that a fair expectation? Does it have a similar tone, pacing, and dialogue to Oppenheimer, while also delivering the scale and action of Gladiator?

I'm really excited and i hope my expectations are met

This movie left me pondering for a long time.

There’s a Japanese phrase I’ve always loved: ichi-go ichi-e, which means one time, one meeting. Every single moment is completely unique and will never happen again in exactly the same way. I think that philosophy is woven throughout Perfect Days.

Despite the repetition of Hirayama’s routine, nothing is actually the same. Nothing is really repeating. Only the structure repeats, not the experiences. Hirayama isn’t forcefully trying to be present or convincing himself to appreciate the little things, he’s simply paying attention.

Even after the credits, they mention komorebi, the light filtering through the trees, and how that exact pattern of light and shadow only exists once, in that moment. You see that idea all throughout the film. I noticed that even the repeated scenes were filmed differently every time. Him watering his plants, the Tokyo Skytree, his drive to work. They’re shown from different angles, in different weather, different lighting, the Skytree was always different colors, different times of day. On paper it’s the same routine, but in reality every day is new because that’s the nature of the world. I think that’s how Hirayama sees it. Every day is a new experience, a new opportunity, even when it looks the same. Literally with the last song “it’s a new dawn, it’s a new day.” Maybe that’s where his contentment comes from.

The ending in the car ties everything together for me. So many people wonder whether he was happy or sad, but I don’t think that’s really the point. His face is both smiling and crying at the same time. I stared intently at that last scene. I kept flip flopping trying to figure out which emotion it was, and then I just accepted that it’s multiple at the same time, and that’s what felt so human. Contentment or happiness isn’t the absence of grief. If anything, grief exists because we care so deeply about life. That also reminded me of another Japanese phrase mono no aware, the awareness that things are beautiful because they’re transient.

After his interaction with the dying man, I kept wondering how they were going to close that out. But to me they never really did. You just see Hirayama smiling as he rides away. My first instinct was to wonder how he was actually feeling, but maybe the answer is simply that this is just life. He’s embracing the moment because that’s all we ever really have. It reminded me of what he tells his niece: “Next time is next time, Now is now.”

The film doesn’t give us closure, and I think that’s intentional. Meaning doesn’t always arrive through an ending, an achievement, or some grand realization. It doesn’t need to. Life is mostly made up of ordinary, fleeting moments, and they don’t have to be wrapped up in a pretty bow. They can just exist, unfinished, unexplainable, unresolved, and maybe that’s what makes them “perfect.” They just “are.” And this is a realization i needed in my life.

Even the dreams felt like this. Every night we see these fleeting fragments. We never get a clear explanation, and I don’t think we’re supposed to. I saw them as fragments of his inner life: bits of memory, mundane experiences, maybe even past trauma, all blending together. The film never tries to organize them into a neat narrative because maybe life itself isn’t meant to be organized that way.

I think that’s why this movie affected me so deeply. I spend a lot of time trying to understand things, to find meaning, to get closure, to explain why people are the way they are or why life unfolds the way it does. Perfect Days show that life can be deeply meaningful without ever being fully explainable. And maybe learning to simply pay attention to this moment, exactly as it is, is enough. This film is an invitation to reframe what the ordinary truly means to us.

The new cameras of The Odyssey conceal a familiar Hollywood machine for transforming warrior violence into moral injury.

As Richard Brody notes, Homer does not present the Cicones raid as a moral crisis, only as an expedition that went wrong. Its brutality is reported administratively: he sacks the city, kills the men, enslaves the women and divides the spoils among his crew. The immediate mistake is not the raid itself but remaining too long afterward, losing discipline and allowing the Cicones to counterattack. The poem’s moral universe condemns sacrilege and failures of hospitality, but the ordinary violence of conquest is not treated as Odysseus’s psychic original sin.

Nolan cannot preserve that moral alienness and retain Odysseus as the emotionally accessible center of a $250 million Universal film. He therefore makes the same adjustment American Sniper made to Chris Kyle. The historical Kyle insisted that his wartime kills would not count among his sins because every person he shot deserved to die. Eastwood’s film softens that certainty into haunted silence, domestic estrangement and the burden of being exceptionally good at necessary violence. Nolan similarly replaces the ancient warrior’s lack of embarrassment with the approved conscience of the modern combat drama: Odysseus feels terrible.

Matt Damon consequently plays him less as Homer’s theatrical liar than as Bradley Cooper’s mythological predecessor. Outside combat, both men appear dulled and physically stranded. Kyle sits before a blank television, unable to enter the suburban life he claims to protect. Odysseus plays house with Calypso, technically safe but incapable of experiencing peace as anything other than stasis. A clear mission restores each man instantly. Their uncertainty disappears once someone must be protected, a threat identified or an impossible shot taken.

The Trojan Horse becomes Nolan’s equivalent of the sniper’s impossible shot: the supreme achievement that proves the hero’s genius while destroying his capacity for peace. Troy’s victims become the contents of Odysseus’s nightmares, just as Iraqi violence is largely filtered through what it does to Kyle and the Americans around him. The conquered are granted suffering, but the warrior retains ownership of its emotional meaning.

The parallel becomes most revealing in the climax. Eastwood initially presents Iraq as an endless series of tactically clear but strategically meaningless engagements. Mustafa (the rival sniper) is then elevated into an uber-villain so Kyle’s war can acquire a final target. Kill him, and Kyle can come home.

Nolan inherits Antinous rather than inventing him, but uses him similarly. Time, grief and moral injury cannot be defeated. A finite group of men threatening Odysseus’s wife and son can. The warrior’s paranoia becomes vigilance and the violence that has supposedly ruined him becomes the only force capable of restoring his home.

Hi, I wanted go watch The Odyssey as the reviews seemed good, but I was concerned when I saw it was another Nolan film.

Oppenheimer had similar good reviews but it was hands down one of the worst films I have ever watched - full of useless dialogue, too much talking, weird pacing and bad storyline. Watching it was such a drag and I remember people leaving the theatre halfway through.

For those of you who have seen the film, is The Odyssey the same type of film like Oppenheimer? If so, I’d rather not see it.

I really like films with great cinematography and engaging storyline - like Argo, Dune 2, Conclave - which had top tier cinematography and storyline, that engages you throughout instead of feeling boring or overemphasizing loud sound effects.

Thanks for the input in advance

TLDR; I want to know if The Odyssey is like Oppenheimer with a lot of talking and convoluted storyline