Films II : The Filminator

[one-armed dwarf]

There's a pretty interesting write up here on the lack of ethics over where The Odyssey was filmed, in occupied territory in Western Sahara. Something I didn't know about: https://www.theguardian.com/film/2026/jul/16/the-odyssey-sahrawi-people-christopher-nolan-western-sahara

 

Quote

The latest episode of this colonial drama stars the Christopher Nolan blockbuster using parts of our occupied territory as a film set. Sahrawis are aghast that scenes from The Odyssey – an adaptation of Homer’s poem immersed in themes of displacement, family separation, betrayal, and the agonising, decades-long struggle to return home – were shot on our lands. The irony would be comical were it not so tragic: we, the Sahrawi people whose land was used to film parts of the Odyssey, have been living our own brutal odyssey for more than 50 years.

[...]

Our homeland suffered a brutal military invasion from the north and south in 1975, when Spanish colonial authorities handed over the territory to Morocco and Mauritania. Today, half of our people languish in refugee camps in the Algerian desert, while the other half lives under a suffocating military police state, separated by a 2,700km militarised wall built by Morocco and fortified with millions of landmines.

Such realities and stories will not make it to the big screen. In a world lured to fiction by the magic of the cinema, it seems easier to “excavate” a 3,000-year-old story of suffering, separation and betrayal than to see that today, those exact themes are daily lived realities by the Sahrawi people.

[...]

For Nolan’s Dakhla shoot, he appears to have neither sought our consent nor considered the ethics of in effect helping to prop up and legitimise Morocco’s occupation, thus making the space even more unsafe for Sahrawis living under it. He is actively participating in a state-sponsored PR campaign designed to legitimise an illegal occupation.

 

[one-armed dwarf]

The Odyssey (2026), this is a loud ass movie. Too loud, why did they make it that loud? 

 

There's scenes in this film with thunder and lightning that I couldn't even look at or hear. And I didn't even go to that fake IMAX showing I posted, the IFI had it in 70mm so I wanted to see what that was like. I couldn't tell you what 70mm does for a film tbh

 

Can't hear shit now, should have put wax in my ears 😵

 

I'll have to read the Emily Wilson translation at some point, maybe the loudness will make more sense then cause that's the most famous translation these days

 

Needs a health warning on it

[mfnick]

Can you actually hear people talking through the loudness though? I hated Tenet did my head in not being able to hear anything (this is a problem across all modern films tbh but it was particularly bad here). This sounds the opposite. 

[one-armed dwarf]

I probably heard about half the dialogue. I expected that tho tbh, I remember enough bits and pieces from the poem and it's a basic enough story anyway. The scenes where it goes super loud don't have much dialogue anyway, just tons of violence

 

To be clear, I really liked the film. I think it was really thrilling and the ending reminded me of

Spoiler

Harakiri

 

 

 

But I'd like Nolan to make more films like Oppenheimer, films about people in rooms talking to each other with less ear drum rupturing potential

 

But he's still the master of spectacle, and I like the non-linear framing devices plus use of flashbacks to bring the Trojan War into it. Its 3 hours long but divided into these episodic chunks with a massive spectacle in each one, you dont end up waiting long for the next bit of bullshit to come Odysseus's way. The Telemechas/Spiderman bits are perhaps the weakest parts but prevent it from being fatiguing, and Robert Pattinson is perfectly pathetic as the main 'villain'

 

When you think of it, it's not his first time translating mythical characters to the screen either, with his Batman trilogy

 

I kinda suspect half of the impact of the film will be left in the cinema though, not sure how it will work on a TV screen. Unless you choose to blast your head off at home, with a massive sound system

 

If I was doing my ranking, I'd have Dark Knight at top, Oppenheimer and Memento jostling for second position, then I guess this places behind. Though I don't really like the other films he made, not a fan of Inception, too much boring explaining. Dunkirk had the worst sound problems and was boring. Batman Begins I've gone off a bit, and TDKR I only liked the opening. Never got what people liked about The Prestige tho I might have to watch that again

 

But it's bottom of the good ones

[one-armed dwarf]

Thinking about The Odyssey a lot, what I like about it I think is the biggest director in the world taking one of the oldest, most elemental of all stories. A story which ancient Greek philosophers used to establish the fundamentals of how to even tell stories, as a culture, and Nolan still manages to make something really exciting out of it, in 2026.

 

Kinda can't get the film out of my head tbh

[Pikman]

On 17/07/2026 at 20:32, one-armed dwarf said:

I probably heard about half the dialogue. I expected that tho tbh, I remember enough bits and pieces from the poem and it's a basic enough story anyway. The scenes where it goes super loud don't have much dialogue anyway, just tons of violence

 

To be clear, I really liked the film. I think it was really thrilling and the ending reminded me of

  Reveal hidden contents

Harakiri

 

 

 

But I'd like Nolan to make more films like Oppenheimer, films about people in rooms talking to each other with less ear drum rupturing potential

 

But he's still the master of spectacle, and I like the non-linear framing devices plus use of flashbacks to bring the Trojan War into it. Its 3 hours long but divided into these episodic chunks with a massive spectacle in each one, you dont end up waiting long for the next bit of bullshit to come Odysseus's way. The Telemechas/Spiderman bits are perhaps the weakest parts but prevent it from being fatiguing, and Robert Pattinson is perfectly pathetic as the main 'villain'

 

When you think of it, it's not his first time translating mythical characters to the screen either, with his Batman trilogy

 

I kinda suspect half of the impact of the film will be left in the cinema though, not sure how it will work on a TV screen. Unless you choose to blast your head off at home, with a massive sound system

 

If I was doing my ranking, I'd have Dark Knight at top, Oppenheimer and Memento jostling for second position, then I guess this places behind. Though I don't really like the other films he made, not a fan of Inception, too much boring explaining. Dunkirk had the worst sound problems and was boring. Batman Begins I've gone off a bit, and TDKR I only liked the opening. Never got what people liked about The Prestige tho I might have to watch that again

 

But it's bottom of the good ones

I was with you until you stack ranked the others

For me Dunkirk is the only film he's made that wasn't top tier, it was just too piecemeal for me, more of a documentary than a story. Still very solid though. Nothing will ever beat Interstellar I doubt, it just nails it for me. Inception was ace too, I dunno, I think I just gel with his style really well.

I totally loved The Odyssey, incredible effort. It all just comes together so well. A proper cinema film that everyone should just go and see!

Also not sure how it'll work at home, I think we might need another sub or two to do it justice, the bass was just mental for many man scenes. (NB: we can't afford to do this ).

[one-armed dwarf]

Dunkirk is one I have on UHD and was going to watch again at some point. I live in an apartment though so blasting the sound is not an option.

 

I also have Tenet on UHD and haven't even seen it yet, it was only 7 euro. I guess that one was such a massive bomb that they were giving it away

 

I was reading online that people's apple watches were warning them that their hearing was being damaged during

Spoiler

Cyclops, storm and the suitors' massacre scenes

 

Anyway it is interesting when you go back and look at his older films how many of them have an 'Odyssean' kinda theme. Inception has a thing in it about Cobb trying to return to his family, Bruce Wayne returning to Gotham in TDKR to remove the 'suitors' (Bane's gang), Interstellar is an incredibly obvious one, and to a point so is Dunkirk. 

[radiofloyd]

Watched Alien Romulus, which I never got around to seeing in the cinema way back in…2024. I liked it well enough. A decent 7/10 sci-fi film.

[one-armed dwarf]

Christopher Nolan raids the Criterion Closet, for a guy who makes the loudest movies in the world, he speaks very softly

 

Fun trivia about the Testament of Dr Mabuse, and its influence on Ledger's Joker. I haven't seen that film, I know it got banned by the Nazis for making fun of Hitler, but I didn't know the Joker stuff

https://collider.com/heath-ledger-joker-the-testament-of-dr-mabuse/

 

Makes sense he would pick up a Lynch film as he did a whole film about dream logic, though very different to Lost Highway

 

[OCH]

Masters of The Universe (2026)

Well, well, well. I thought this was better than it had any right to be. While the CG wasn't quite Avatar levels and some of the Earth-based humour fell flat. But overall, the cast was decent (Jared Leto's best role to date). The tone was definitely in keeping with original 80's series. I enjoyed this and the three end credit sequences all tease quite a lot. Better than the original film by a mile. 7.5/10 

[one-armed dwarf]

Interesting, Emily Wilson (translator of The Odyssey) hates Nolan's Odyssey.

 

https://www.theguardian.com/film/2026/jul/27/odyssey-translator-emily-wilson-attacks-nolan-blockbuster

https://archive.is/VOO3p

 

One of her criticisms is not enough sex scenes. Which, tbf, wouldn't have hurt the film. The Calypso stuff is a bit underdeveloped, Circe as wel. Maybe he took criticism of the sex scenes in Oppenheimer to heart. 

[Maf]

I only just learned RT is not like Metacritic. If a movie gets 95% on RT that means 95% of reviewers gave it a ‘fresh’ score. Which could be a 6/10. What a lying ass way to do it 

[one-armed dwarf]

Yeah, it never made sense to me as a useful metric unless a film is really really shit, then it tends to tell you something

 

Best to just follow a group of reviewers/outlets that you trust, or just read Peter Bradshaw at the Guardian and if he says something is good, then it's actually bad, and vice versa

[one-armed dwarf]

French DJ Kavinsky has died, his earlier albums pioneered Synthwave apparently, but I mostly know him from the opening scene of Drive

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c204n74xyv3o

 

 

This film gets a bit of a bad rap for being a style over substance film, but I still really like it and this scene wouldn't have worked without his music, like a constant, ticking heartbeat

 

edit, this is wrong, it was the opening credits that they used his music in, the opening scene is by the Chromatics, d'oh

 

 

RIP

[Maf]

Maximillion_Dood is in the Street Fighter movie lol 

[DANGERMAN]

I look forward to the post for the film being him pulling a face

[one-armed dwarf]

Hero (2002) - One scene in Spiderman put me in a mood to finally watch this one, it's a Wuxia film (like, wire-fighting martial arts stuff, Crouching Tiger style) with Jet Li in the main role. It's about this guy who defeats three warriors and as a reward has an audience with the emperor, though there are twists and turns. It's like Rashomon, so you keep getting different versions of the tale, each of them color coded, the colours even matching the emotional tone of each version of events. 

 

Very pretty film, but at a certain point it abruptly hits that you're watching state propaganda. Still, it's a very pretty propaganda film, with flashy combat choreography. Not on the level of Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon, but still poetic in how it all looks and flows. One of those films where you could make a desktop wallpaper out of certain shots. 

[one-armed dwarf]

A second Emily Wilson critique of The Odyssey has hit the internet

 

https://www.nme.com/news/film/classics-professor-emily-wilson-doubles-down-on-the-odyssey-criticism-we-need-more-3961136

 

I liked the film, but online people are getting really fragile over an expert in the field thinking it's a bit shit, trying to argue that she doesn't understand movies when her literal subject matter expertise is rooted in storytelling.

 

I think some of it has to do with feeling like the film needs defending from all criticism cause of the anti-woke stuff from Elon Musk, or something. Maybe. 

[Pikman]

I don't know who the lady is but she seems pretty annoying to me 🤣

 

It's quite easy to critique something but I bet that making an engaging film is far harder. Yeah, I'm sure he could have made some changes but would it have still been an enjoyable film? Unsure...

[one-armed dwarf]

In fairness to her, she has been on the receiving brunt of her own share of criticism for her translation of The Odyssey, over the years, so she also has that perspective (eg, people think she uses too much modern language, and moralising language over ancient Greek's use of slavery, but I think the whole point of having multiple translations is having different perspectives).

 

I don't have an issue with disagreeing with it, it's just that backlash against this particular critique has exploded on the internet the past few weeks in a way that just feels really nasty and goes beyond just general disagreement and into attacks on her qualifications. It all just comes across weirdly insecure imo, like it's not about the content of her critique but more that she even dares to criticise it.