2026 - THE ODYSSEY, on the big screen is long and very loud

This is the big summer movie filmed in 70mm with a big budget and a big Hollywood cast.  It has it's good points and not so good points.  As a high school student who along time ago was forced to read the Robert Fagles translation of Homer's poem I can say that Christopher Nolan changed a lot of stuff.  But there have been so many translations and interpretations of this epic Nolan certainly has the right to create his version.  The biggest change is the addition of the Trojan horse and the siege of Troy which I believe are not mentioned in the poem.  Odysseus is also now a doubting leader racked by guilt about his role in the war and haunted by the deaths of his men  He's a candidate for some serious mental health counseling and maybe a prescription of Prozac.

The film includes all the greatest hits of The Odyssey.  The encounter with Polyphemus the cyclops (probably the best scene in the film) who munches on his crew like they were after dinner mints.  A battle with the Laestrygonians, some giants that attack and destroy his ships. We are spared the scene from the book where they also eat some of Odysseus's men.  Apparently one cannibal scene was enough for this film.  Circe and Calypso are here and there's a side trip to Hades.  The final slaughter of the suitors in the banquet hall is for the most part unchanged.  About the only mythological character Nolan missed was Bobo from Clash of the Titans. 

The cast much to my surprise was fairly decent.  Matt Damon isn't bad as Odysseus and doesn't look to silly with that broom helmet on his head.  Anne Hathaway is his wife the faithful Penelope.  She's actually very effective in her scenes.   Robert Pattinson is one of the suitors of Penelope he makes a good hissable villain in the great tradition of these "sword and sandal" epics.  Tom Holland an actor now in his 30's is also good playing Odysseus's young son Telemachus.  Every time he refers to Odysseus with the anachronistic name of "Dad," that played a little cringy for me.  Tom Holland's wife Zendaya is Athena the muse of Odysseus.  However Zendaya makes absolutely no impression in this very small role. 

Yes the production is impressive considering the challenges of filming with 70mm cameras.  The Odyssey does have plenty of fighting and battle scenes to satisfy the action fans.  For a 2700 year old poem a lot of the story still works fairly well.  The soundtrack on this film is very LOUD.  I actually sat in my car for a few minutes after the film to wind down.

I will give Christopher Nolan credit this guy isn't afraid to think big and go over the top in his film making.  If he doesn't always succeed with his approach at times at the very least he is trying to go there with his large scale approach to storytelling.  Nolan's in the great tradition of super epic filmmakers like David Lean and Sergei Bondarchuk, directors who worked on a large canvas. 

 The running time is 173 minutes, screenplay by Christopher Nolan.

2012 - THE DARK KNIGHT RISES, is pretty good

I'm not going to lose much sleep over the careers of multi million dollar film directors.  But Christopher Nolan must have had his hands full making another Batman film.  After the success of The Dark Knight the studio expected another big Batman film.  Nolan was aiming for something a little more serious than The Avengers but since the comic book movie bar wasn't set very high with that film it probably wasn't much of a contest.

Nolan co-wrote a story that was about terrorism, class warfare and the ethical consequences of vigilante justice.  All of this was stuck into the Batman legend with the expected fights and chases.  That the film is a decent entertainment is probably a tribute to Nolan's storytelling skills.  However this is still a Batman film.

OK on with the criticisms:

1.  Can anyone really understand what the growling Batman and the muffle mouthed super villain Bane are talking about?   The rumor was that Bane's voice was rerecorded after the film's trailer was released.  That's hard to believe and did anyone really listen to what was coming out of mouth of Christian Bale and did anyone understand half of it?

2.  The film is almost three hours long.  I could have easily lost the scenes in the underground prison with the well, they really added nothing to the film.  Also a lot of the film focuses on rookie cop John Blake, most of this stuff could have easily been dropped as well or maybe even The Catwoman stuff.  I suppose you could say it adds depth to the story but it also adds a whole lot of running time to the film. 

3.  The Dark Knight Rises presupposes everyone has seen the first two films and especially Batman Begins to understand what's going on in this film.   Batman Begins had a pretty stupid plot about vaporizing the water supply of Gotham City apparently the League of Assassins is still trying to vaporize Gotham City in this film.

4.  The ending is basically the same ending as Nolan's previous film Inception talk about lazy.  Nolan has proclaimed he wanted to wrap up the Batman trilogy but surprise surprise there is room for a sequel.

5.  Finally, this is a movie about Batman, this is not an epic tragedy along the lines of King Lear, this is Batman a comic book character.

165 minutes, written by Christopher Nolan and Jonathan Nolan.

2010 - INCEPTION, is a bloated mess of a film.

A team of crack agents have a machine that will allow them to enter people's dreams and steal ideas floating around in their heads.  This is just another spy thriller wrapped up in pseudo new age dream analysis junk with a lot of special effects thrown in.  Very ambitious and also after a while the dream within a dream within a dream structure is just a gimmick.

Christopher Nolan as the director/writer probably could have used a better director for his story,  he shows absolutely no ability to direct action scenes and while we are on the subject, his screenplay is very long and kind of sloppy.

When Stanley Kubrick did 2001: A Space Odyssey he jumped from the Stone Age to the 21st century in one cut.  Christopher Nolan has to draw things out explaining his world of the future for over an hour.  That's just bad storytelling. 

The cast is the best that money can buy but they really don't seem challenged by the material.  Nolan wants them to play it cool, but cool means kind of boring in this case.   Leonardo DiCaprio can't seem to work up any actual enthusiasm for his part of a cool spy guy and he's no George Lazenby.  And what is the point of Ellen Page?  She continues to get cast in films but she brings absolutely nothing to them.  If you really think about it her role could have been easily eliminated, probably shortening the film by 1/2 hour. 

The biggest problem with Inception is a little TV show from the 1960's called The Twilight Zone.  That show could mix drama, science fiction, fantasy and suspense in under 30 minutes.  Inception waddles along trying to do this for 2 1/2 hours long hours.

If you want to see a film that screws with your brain then rent any Luis Bunuel film.  There was a director who knew how to do this head tripping kind of stuff.

148 poorly paced minutes, written by Christopher Nolan.