Tenet

This review may contain spoilers!

This has taken the spot of my least favourite Christopher Nolan film for sure. I would give Tenet a 6/10.

Tenet is a sci-fi thriller that follows the exploits of the 'Protagonist' and the shadow organisation that recruits him as they attempt to stop a future World War before it transpires. This is a feature that has quite a few facets to it and the ones that work well are far more remarkable than the ones that don't. Specifically this film has a strong emphasis on being an espionage-type thriller which really brings a fine level of intrigue to the piece. The cloak and daggers game of trust and betrayal between the Protagonist and the film's antagonist, Andrei Sator, is quite gripping to watch. The Protagonist plays a game of infiltration and is equally capable at talking or punching his way out of a crisis. Yet the conflict is heightened by an antagonist who seems to have a more calculating intellect and makes use of his vast pools of resources to keep his edge for almost the entire narrative. Deeper than this main running espionage story is a more personal conflict between Andrei and his wife, Kat. This was a really gripping personal drama in which Kat has become trapped in her own life, blackmail and threats have tied her forever to her husband and the film does a great job of exploring their entwined struggle and her efforts to escape. The cinematography for this feature is the incredibly polished high-grade style we've come to expect from a Nolan feature; this movie feels sharp and the camerawork flaunts the expensive sets and set-up that go into crafting a blockbuster of this scale. The score for the film is very gripping and terribly foreboding; the intense atmosphere set by the music is guaranteed to have you on the edge of your seat in a few key scenes.

Kenneth Branagh, who played Andrei Sator, provies once again why he's one of the best performer out there as the antagonist for this feature; Branagh's extreme burst of passionate rage coupled with the devilish cunning he brings are absolutely terrifying to watch. Michael Caine, who played Michael Crosby, is a firm staple of Nolan's filmography for a very good reason, Caine is very effective as the smug, yet proficient upper class businessman. Martin Donovan, who played Victor, is one of the few performers who actually handles exposition really well; Donovan has this delivery that leaves you with a sense of foreboding of what's to come.

However, the best performance came from Elizabeth Debicki, who played Kat. This role was so completely engaging to me because in a film with time anomalies and guns that catch bullets we had an incredible female protagonist fighting to escape the trap her life had become. Debicki is all class from the moment she arrives on-screen, she has this easy sophistication about her that makes you see her as being comfortable within her life of luxury. Yet as we come to see her more within the film you see the terror she lives with, her fear and intense reactions to Branagh are absolutely staggering. All throughout the feature you watch this woman rebuild herself, from being terrified of her husband to becoming the retribution against him. Debicki probably has the most satisfying and fulfilling character arc to come from Tenet and while I didn't know it at the time, she was why I paid the price of admission.

Christopher Nolan is an incredibly intelligent man with the capacity for killer screen writing, but even a great writer/director slips. Earlier I mentioned the many facets of Tenet and this was a pretty important statement, Tenet is a very busy beast of a feature with a number of plots relying upon one another to make the whole. Unfortunately, the selling point for the film, the sci-fi time element, is one of the film's worst aspects. The writing for the various time theories feels like it was written by someone with a very surface-level understanding of the core concept applying said theories to a narrative that doesn't really bring out their strengths. The movie backtracks and contradicts itself constantly in order to set-up a plot twist or introduce a new time theory to discuss. When we started talking about the Grandfather Paradox or the Protagonist survives a car explosion because he's 'inverted' you have to start wondering if Nolan knows what he's talking about. The film pushes the obvious time travel plot twists of future selves interacting with past selves or current selves going off to die because it was foreshadowed earlier in the film. This is a movie that constantly tries to pass itself off as rather clever while unashamedly utilising all the worst qualities of a time travel blockbuster film. The dialogue for the movie is also remarkably poor, with empty philosophical statements, long drawn out exposition and hastily delivered quips that seem very out of place. The special effects style for the film is also pretty terrible, the way inversion is presented is by no means appealing to the eye and might be the worst looking effects work I've seen in such a high calibre film.

Robert Pattinson, who played Neil, just kind of inexplicably shows up near the end of Act One and proceeds to stage whisper every single line he has in the film; Pattinson doesn't really push a lot of emotion or effort into his character which makes him rather dull to watch. John David Washington, who played the Protagonist, starts off the film with a good footing but grows steadily monotonous as the film goes along; Washington has little to no range opting to coolly throw out a one-liner or uncertainly ask questions as opposed to feeling like anything resembling a character. Aaron Taylor-Johnson, who played Ives, enters the film out of nowhere spouting some of the most nonsensical dialogue thus far; Taylor-Johnson's tough military persona just feels generic and shunts him right into the background. Clemence Poesy, who played Laura, seems completely drained of energy; Poesy has some of the most important exposition to deliver but she feels tired and deflated to listen to. Himesh Patel, who played Mahir, comes across as more of a comedic role which really clashes with the overall tone the film is going for; Patel is like a piece that just does not fit in the big action sequences. Dimple Kapadia, who played Priya, does not have very clear line delivery and really suffers as the one who seems to be the most clued into what is going on; her cryptic yet wise delivery feels pretty played out and she is consistently in some of the most boring scenes in the film.

Project Power

This review may contain spoilers!

Sometimes you get a sharp reminder that 'original streaming service film' can mean the same thing as what we used to call a 'direct to DVD/Blu-ray film'. I would give Project Power a 2.5/10.

Project Power takes us to a world in which people can take a drug to get a random superpower for five minutes. This drug is flooding the streets of New Orleans like wildfire and ties together our three protagonists, a pill-popping cop, an underage dealer and a drifter searching for his daughter. The first act of Project Power is where the strength of it lies; the introductions to a superhero world that is a little different and promises a blend of gangster-crime feature. We get to see how a superhuman drug works on the streets, how street culture reacts to it and how the police/crime element shifts sharply to such a violent new chemical at play.

The best performance came from Joseph Gordon-Levitt, who played Frank. I liked this character because he had some degrees of complexity to him that I thought were quite well explored. Gordon-Levitt presents a charismatic police officer who tends to operate in a very morally grey way, taking the same Power drug the criminals he's pursuing are. I liked watching the lengths this character would go to do what's right for the people of New Orleans, he gives all characters he encounters an equally fair measure and stands as one of the more noble figures in the feature. I also enjoyed seeing how Gordon-Levitt played to his character relying on the drug to protect and serve, his need for Power in order to combat Power is one of the more compelling conflicts in the film.

Project Power rushes before it even finishes laying down the groundwork, we barely establish the Power drug scene before we're catapulted into the main protagonist's story. The main character for this film is an underage drug dealer who pushes the Power product, chiefly selling to protagonist cop: Frank. This main character, Robin, is a really loose binding thread between all the storylines and characters in the feature but it's often hard to understand what purpose she serves. Her whole role is warped between being a hardass drug dealer, a genuine good human being, a wannabe rapper and a downright nervous individual. She seems to be torn between what the film needs her to be and what the creators of the film want her to represent and they never find a nice point in which these things meld together. Likewise the introduction of Art/The Major is very frustrating. He enters the film in true action movie fashion, all stunts and little dialogue. It takes a very long time for us to have any idea of Art's purpose in the film or what even motivates him as a character, but by delaying this information the feature feels more and more like a hollow action piece. Once we get the big reveal that the Power drug is a government experiment being used on the New Orleans populace and that Art's daughter is one of the sources of the drug then the film really takes a convoluted turn for the worst. The film becomes more and more about poorly constructed action scenes being slogged through in order to save the kid and tear down this really vague government threat. The cinematography for the film felt like someone trying their best to make a cool looking film without any idea how to keep to a consistent style, it was like watching a music video in which there's a lot of showy visuals but the style isn't very complex. The visual effects for the film were horrendous with some of the worst CGI I've had to struggle through in a while, the film spends a lot of the time cutting away or using camerawork to hide visual effects shots. The score for the film was pretty tame and never amped up the action, the soundtrack also had quite a toned down style and boasted some pretty unappealing hip-hop.

Jamie Foxx, who played Art, is a surprisingly bland protagonist for this film; Foxx is so obsessed with playing to this monotonous, yet cool tone that you don't really feel like his role has any emotional range. Dominique Fishback, who played Robin, was a character I really struggled to see the point of; Fishback's intermittent rapping felt like a really forced aspect of the story that never added anything to the plot or her character. Rodrigo Santoro, who played Biggie, really oversold his role as the supplier of drug product; the way he is constantly selling or grandstanding feels melodramatic to the extreme. Courtney B. Vance, who played Captain Craine, looks bored to be in this feature; he lacks subtlety and the big reveal around his role's true intentions comes as no surprise. Amy Landecker, who played Gardner, was the worst of the antagonists we had thrown our way; Landecker is poised as the big final villain but she comes across as stoic and emotionless which undercuts the significance of her role. Machine Gun Kelly, who played Newt, has been diminished in the types of roles he plays for a while now; this role is one of the blink and you'll miss it special effects characters that appears in quite a forgettable scene. Kyanna Simone Simpson, who played Tracy, really plays to the stereotype of captive daughter; a lot of grateful tears at getting 'rescued' but no real connection between her or Foxx to sell it. Rose Bianco, who played Matriarch, seemed a little overwhelmed with the scenes in which she portrayed a buyer for the Power drug; Bianco almost seemed to shrink away from the tough role she had to portray.

This Town

This review may contain spoilers!

This Town is by far one of my favourite comedies of 2020, and more importantly, one of the best New Zealand films I've seen in a while. I would give This Town a 7.5/10.

This Town follows Sean, a young rural New Zealander who is the last surviving member of his family and the former prime suspect in their murder case. As an innocent man with accusations of murder haunting his life Sean wants little more than to find love and carry on with his life; and while there is hope he might just wind up happy, former police offer Pam is relentlessly trying to prove his guilt. This is a mockumentary that achieves something I haven't seen from the medium in a couple of years, we get a fresh comedic spin on the genre and a gripping narrative that has heart to spare. What I love so much about this film is that there's something in it that every New Zealander is going to see and recognise; you might not live exactly the same but the mannerisms and cultural norms that are parodied are spot on. This film really has some diversity in its comedic storytelling too; you'll have one scene with a very stoic cop and then jump to our charismatic if not somewhat awkward protagonists and then across to these vain, gossiping editors from a That's Life-esque magazine. Any time you think This Town might be getting laboured and have to drop the ball on its sense of humour it takes a moment to find a new angle so that you never get bored of just how funny this film really is. I also thought This Town navigated the complexities of an accused murderer living within a community really well; there are of course similarities to the infamous David Bain case but the feature makes marked strides to isolate its own take. The exploration of how guilt is perceived and judged even after a trial gets very honest within some scenes, making Sean as much a victim of mob mentality as he is still a suspicious character for the audience. The ingenuity of the narrative is making you as invested in Sean and Casey's Storyline as you are in Pam's, in fact a lot of the film makes you consider Pam's perspective and leaves you puzzling if Sean really is as charismatic as he seems. The film is a really satisfying journey of realised potential, it's hilarious and holds your attention consistently. The cinematography feels really stylised towards the mockumentary genre, but it also manages to capitalise on some very comedic props and the exquisite backdrop of Kiwi scenery. The soundtrack for the feature is beautiful, containing tracks that enhance the comedy of some scenes and the romantic nature of the protagonists' story in others.

David White, who played Sean, makes for such a great focal point as the films protagonist; White is comfortable with setting the awkward comedic style and generates a charismatic lead throughout. Alice May Connolly, who played Casey, has a bunch of chemistry with White and develops an on-screen romance that feels genuine to watch; I like the amount of heart and optimism that comes from this role. Rima Te Wiata, who played Janice, is hilarious as the shallow smalltown reporter looking to make her bestseller mark; the ability Te Wiata has of taking the spotlight effortlessly and with a little bit of deliberate force makes the character all the better to watch. Byron Coll, who played Tony, is one of the characters who is almost consistently stealing the show; the way Coll lifts up Malcolm's character consistently or is confessing how much he toes the line in his police duties makes this role a delight. Peter Hambleton, who played George, grounds the film as a weary husband to Malcolm's obsessive role; watching Hambleton delicately and insistently navigate scenes in which he explores how the case has impacted their relationship is brilliant. Jeremy Randerson and Gabe McDonnell, who played the Magazine Editors for Women R Us, are one of my favourite comedic duos in the feature; this pair manages to inhabit the shallow, vicious and ironic nature of the gossip rag world.

However, the best performance came from Robyn Malcolm, who played Pam. I really liked how seriously stoic and fixed on her target this former cop turned private investigator/adventure park owner was. Malcolm really found her way into this stubborn mindset of doggedly pursuing a goal and letting that invade every character moment she had. There are several scenes in which Pam is in a situation not necessarily suited to her straight-edged demeanour but it is this point of difference that enhances her comedic value. I also think Malcolm's skill as a performer lifts the dramatic narrative too; you see this when she emotionally re-enacts the crime within the former crime scene, providing commentary and reactions as she goes. This is a role that inspires some of the best humour in the film but also marks this feature as a step above any other comedy you're going to see this year.

This film really takes it's time feeling out how it presents comedy at first, tending to linger on long pauses for the sake of ensuring the audience absorbs the joke and enhancing the awkward tone. However, there are a number of times when the film doesn't always manage this timing well and it can result in scenes that drag on and in some instances, you lose the power of a punchline. The editing follows this on-again, off-again presentation; sometimes hitting a perfect flow and other times not really knowing when to make a cut. I also thought The Town lost itself in its dramatic narrative at one given point, trying to present conflict within the film with a pregnancy scare. While it handled themes of abortion appropriately, I really felt the film muddied its two main characters with a storyline that felt more soap opera than clever storytelling.

Aaron Cortesi and Loren Taylor, who played Alex and Jules respectively, are the de facto 'friend' characters to the protagonist but he relationship isn't very well explored most of the time; Cortesi and White don't do anything to make their interactions unique or exciting while Taylor's role never gets the opportunity to be explored in great detail. Amelia Reid, who played Amanda, really struggles to play a character with any trace of subtlety; Reid's scene was led entirely by Malcolm and she (Reid) clearly struggled to keep up. Jack Sergent, who played Harold, really didn't do much to hide the fact he was the films ultimate antagonist; Sergent played a toneless, flat character that held little energy around Malcolm and Hambleton's performances. Catherine Wilkin and Peter McCauley, who played Grandma Ruth and Grandpa Robert respectively, tended to stray towards the generic when it came to the estranged elderly relatives; Wilkin in particular, had a scene that just felt very stilted in which she reunited with her on-screen grandson (White).

Unhinged

This review may contain spoilers!

Not even Russell Crowe can carry this bland, generic thriller across the finish line. I would give Unhinged a 3/10.

Unhinged follows Rachel, a young mother who is trying to hold together a stressful life when a confrontation with a psychotic individual at an intersection turns her into a target for his twisted revenge. While I do not think the film did a good job of it I have to commend its attempt to run a narrative around the increased stress and anger people face or internalise in their day to day lives and how this is released into the world, there was a real push here to make something grounded in a setting that is familiar. This film really exemplified itself with how it presented violence, the degrees of carnage the main antagonist causes with a couple of cars and household objects is pretty terrifying. Violence is sudden in this film and almost unavoidable, the nature of how inescapable the killer's particular brand of destruction is makes those high stakes scenes so worth watching.

The best performance came from Russell Crowe, who played the Man. I know, insightful character name. Getting past the lack of identity to enhance the paper-thin theme of the plot; Crowe's performance is one of the genuine saving graces of the film. When this role is idle he seems haunted by his own mind, his pain and experiences have really hollowed him out and left this vindictive creature in his place. There are multiple moments throughout the feature in which the Man comes across as very charismatic, offering a moment of connection or blending in with the local patronage of a diner. But the strength in Crowe's performance is how he either steadily descends into the violent persona we are commonly confronted with or he will swiftly switch to this, which really ramps up tension in a scene. This isn't going to be one of the most well-remembered thriller antagonists but Crowe gives more to this film than it really deserves.

This movie never really promises much to begin with, the film premise is quite simply 'what happens if road rage bred a psychopathic killer?' I think that alone already sets up a pretty simplistic thriller but when the feature starts trying to be smarter than it is by incorporating some kind of commentary about the state of society and the boiling mental and emotional pot we're all living in. There is this long montage showing road rage clips to the backdrop of radio/TV presenters talking about the big commute and mental health right at the beginning of the film. It's a sequence that has a really obvious message behind it but it hasn't really done any work to construct a very convincing theme. The film then proceeds to bore us with the most strained attempt I've seen to create realistic and grounded characters who struggle with divorce or have kids that play Fortnite. The film is so insistent that this takes place in 'the real world' that the situation already begins to feel a little stilted long before the Man and Rachel interact. Once the antagonist does enter the scene however, we descend pretty quickly into stereotypical territory. Long drawn out moments of suspense and paranoia, a climbing kill count, the antagonist is near unbeatable and they both shout the same threats and pleas we've heard in every other thriller before. The film fizzles out by taking our vehicle-heavy story off the road and into a simple house confrontation that never manages to achieve a satisfying finale to the journey we go through. The cinematography for this film shows everything to an annoying degree; we get shots of every little detail or exchange within a scene to an annoying extent. This is a film in which you can only make the same shots of your characters driving or clog a scene with a setting from twelve different angles so much. The film doesn't feel polished or edited enough, there needed to be more work done to craft a stylised end product. The score for the feature in non-existent, opting instead for a dull, warbling drone that feels more repetitive than ominous.

Jimmi Simpson, who played Andy, is a bit of a strange appearance in this film; Simpson is caught in such an unassuming background role that I was confused with why he'd even bothered with the part. Caren Pistorius, who played Rachel, really puts her all into this film but it isn't enough to escape such a poor script; Pistorius pushes out generic line after generic line and never finds away to make her protagonist unique or interesting. Gabriel Bateman, who played Kyle, plays his role quite timidly and as such becomes a bit of a wallflower in his scenes; Bateman and Pistorius aren't especially convincing as mother and son which is another big fail for the feature. Austin P. McKenzie, who played Fred, seems so entirely disconnected from the rest of the cast I had trouble reconciling him as a family member relation to Pistorius and Batmena's roles; in any teen-thriller McKenzie would have been the comedic stoner role who probably died first.