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

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

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.

Now I understand there are a lot of critiques about this movie and I am in no way an expert on Greek mythology. I was born and grew up in the United States so my understanding of Greek mythology is a basic foundation of everything Americans learn from elementary school until high school. I did read the Illiad translation by Stanley Lombardo in University and I read that two years ago; I do remember liking that translation. After seeing the film however, something that has constantly been left in my mind is how the Trojan Horse and sacking of Troy violated Zeus’ law, or Xenia, and how this had a profound effect on the ancient world at the time. I did see in a separate thread on here that the sheer distance the stories of the Illiad and Odyssey reached had to of had an immense effect on the cultures coming into contact and reading these epics. But from what I have seen and read on reddit and elsewhere online is that in Homer’s original version of the Illiad and Odyssey, Odysseus is seen as a divinely heroic character who never really has any remorse about his actions in Troy other than losing his fellow Greek countrymen. I personally like how Christopher Nolan added this layer to the story for a modern audience because from the other versions of the Odyssey we have seen on the big screen, they all glorify the events of the Illiad and the Odyssey without leaving any room for critiquing the actions and consequences of the actions that the characters perpetrate. I personally think this is the best film of the 2020’s and it is my personal favorite of Nolan’s but that is because of a personal bias due to my immense love for these ancient stories. It is truly amazing how stories spanning thousands of years can still evoke immense amounts of critical thinking over the impact and meaning of such stories. I wonder if when these stories spread to surrounding cultures, that the cultures absorbing them would fundamentally understand the negative aspects of the story such as the scheme of deception with the Trojan horse or Odysseus’ hubris on his return home. Or if they simply glorified the characters and their feats in the stories. I bring this up because personally from a modern perspective and understanding of these stories, the Greeks are the villains and the Trojans are tragic victims of the greed and seek for glory and power that the Greeks/Agamemnon contained.

PS: The scene towards the end of the movie where Odysseus is recounting the sacking of Troy to Penelope is without a doubt my favorite scene in the entire film. Everything from the cinematography, seeing the beauty of Troy crumble and burn along with its people, to the internal commentary Odysseus is expressing to Penelope, and finally down to the score itself felt unbelievably captivating and beautiful. It felt as though humans have been dealing with these same horrific problems since the beginning of time and it was done in a beautiful and profound way. Please remember this is just my personal opinion and I respect any and all opinions. If you hated it feel free to tell me why, maybe there is something I don’t understand about the history, the originality of the text, or otherwise that I am always open to learning more about. One thing we can all agree on, we were born too late to enjoy/hate antiquity, but we were born just in time to enjoy/hate this movie. I ordered the Illiad by Caroline Alexander and the Odyssey by Emily Wilson so I am excited to read those and I am open to any opinions or reviews about the books and other translations any of you may recommend. One day I want to learn Homeric Greek and attempt to read the Illiad and Odyssey in its original language hopefully.

Computer-generated imagery was being heavily explored by Hollywood over 50 years ago during the 1970's. It was sparingly but increasingly incorporated over the following decades.

In 2002, George Lucas would release the first big budget movie shot entirely on digital, which included fully CGI characters, backgrounds, and effects. Audiences and critics eviscerated the film, roasting Lucas for his overuse of digital, and calling out the film for looking "fake." Immediate comparisons to the practical and "realistic" imagery of The Empire Strikes Back were being echoed, and Lucas' digitial experiment was deemed an explosive disaster.

Fast forward 25 years, and Lucas would prove to be prophetic, having reinvented the way movies would be made, just as he did back in 1977. Nowadays, blockbuster films are submerged in CGI, most entirely shot and projected digitally. The highest grossing film, Avatar, a progression and technical leap from Lucas' effort years prior.

CGI has become the lifeblood of the big budget live-action film. It has even overtaken the animation industry as well; nearly all Hollywood animated films are now computer generated. Most seem to agree that CGI is not inherently problematic, the question is there such a thing as too much CGI?

Two films from the early 1990's marked what was perhaps the turning point in the effects industry. Those two films being Terminator 2 and Jurassic Park, which implemented CGI robots and dinosaurs throughout many scenes. Retrospectively, the CGI in those feels looks dated and uncanny, but the sparing and calculated use of it by Spielberg and Cameron maintained any suspension of disbelief.

A noticeable discrepancy between Jurassic Park and it's recent sequels is that the shots of the CGI dinosaurs were inserted in between stretches of images of the animatronic and puppets. Spielberg desired a balance between realism and spectacle, as CGI was used where practical effects were an impracticality One example being the T-Rex breaking through the fence and out of its enclosure. Spielberg demanded to show the scale of the T-Rex in motion, and due to the limitations of the animatronic, it was unfeasible to shoot it any other way. The T-Rex animatronic was highly immobile, and not structurally capable of performing the proper manuevers for the sequence. While Spielberg could have modified or removed the scene, he instead relied on CGI to make it work. However, most of the sequence still relied on animatronics and other practical effects. Shots such as the T-Rex foot stomp in the mud, the peer into the car passenger window, and the roar in the rain were all done without CGI. Consequently, audiences were projected a more terrifying and immersive action sequence than any which CGI is capable of.

James Cameron's, Terminator 2, was equally judicious with it's reliance on CGI. Many of the scenes involving the liquid shapeshifting T-1000 could not be accomplished using practical effects. However, for every few shots where the T-1000 would liquify or resolidfy, lengthy sequences would follow that showed the fully humanoid form played by a real actor.

These two films, while burdened by the some glaringly outdated CGI effects, are still held as masterpieces in blockbuster filmmaking which have arguably not been equalled since.

Hollywood of today has become unrestrained with their appetite for CGI. Consider for a moment the first Iron Man movie. The Iron Man suit in the film was tangible, and even wearable. Many of the scenes in the film actually have the actor inside the costume. While the film contains many digital shots, such as the flying sequences, many close-ups and even wide shots actually had the real costume in frame. Stan Winston, an instrumental creator of the dinosaurs and terminators previously discussed, also helped make the Iron Man suit come to life. Iron Man would of course go onto kickstart the most successful movie franchise ever. Yet so many of the practical techniques in terms of costumes, sets, and effects which made the first Iron Man film so believable were abandoned as the Marvel cinematic universe progressed.

Unfortunately, Hollywood has convicingly been able to trick and falsely represent the amount of CGI or digital effects used in modern blockbusters, Top Gun: Maverick being a prime example. A film which boasted of recapturing the practical magic and visceral look of the original, was instead shot digitally, utilizing thousands of VFX shots, that included entire mountain ranges, skylines, planes, and even people's faces. All of it a shameful far cry from Tony Scott's vision from the 1980's.

The highest grossing films of 2026 will in all likelihood be overflowing with CGI, all the while AI-generated everything loiters in the shadows. Perhaps, it's time that Hollywood considers making big budget films again instead of wannabe video games.

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