Review

The movies are back! And who better to bring it back than Christopher Nolan. But how does one describe a movie like Tenet? It’s like Christopher Nolan made a Bond movie, except with a more diverse cast. It’s like Inception met Interstellar at a really loud party hosted by The Dark Knight Rises. It’s worth seeing it once in the cinema, but you’re going to want to watch it a second time at home some time later so you can (a) pause it to figure out what the heck is going on, and (b) turn on closed captions so you can figure out what the heck the characters are saying I’m going to go spoileriffic from here. Read on if you’ve watched it - if you haven’t, come back when you have! ...

What does one say about a series like Star Wars that you haven’t already heard? It’s such a pop-culture phenomenon that you’d be hard pressed to avoid it in any English-speaking country. The revival of Star Wars by Disney’s purchase of the rights from George Lucas was huge, and with Episode VII, The Force Awakens, we can see just how huge the juggernaut can get. I went to watch it on Friday, a whole 42 hours after its release on midnight Thursday, and I already felt like I was out of the loop for almost two days. Still, the experience is unique in its own way: the lights go down, the trailers end, the screen goes dark… and then those words appear - A long time ago, in a galaxy far, far away… cue the fanfare. The Star Wars experience is as codified as a fairy tale starting with “Once upon a time”, and the rush of seeing it in a full theatre is equal for fans and non-fans alike - you can’t help but be caught up in John Williams’ score, or the scale and scope of the visuals that march across the screen. This is a sign the fun’s just getting started. The Force Awakens starts with a thirty year jump from the end of Return of the Jedi (and in the real world, it has been over thirty years since as well, so this is only too apt). Luke Skywalker is missing; the galaxy is not yet wholly under the New Republic; the Rebel Alliance still relevant as the Resistance, who fight the remnants of the Empire in the form of The First Order. Leia is a general in the resistance, and sends a pilot, Poe Dameron, to track down a map to the whereabouts of Skywalker. He’s being tracked by The First Order, who want to prevent the return of Skywalker as much as they want to re-establish control over the Galaxy. Since it’s still so close to the release, I’ll tuck the rest away under a break for spoilers… ...

It was always going to have to come to an end. Bond actors don’t last as long as you think, though it’s been 9 years now that we’ve had Daniel Craig as the image of Bond - from his reinvention of the character as a gritty, conflicted type in Casino Royale, a vast gulf separating the reboot of the character from Pierce Brosnan’s portrayal through the 90s and early 2000s. Handily, the plot in Spectre serves much the same - a sense of an ending is present very early on. ...

Yesterday, the NYSE went down for a couple of hours, and the fascinating thing was while it was out, stocks rallied… as soon as it came back, it plunged. Well, I guess “fascinating” is a word I can use because I’m not invested in the American market in any meaningful way, but for those involved, this kind of weird stock market behaviour makes for wondering as to what on earth is going on in the American market. ...

Sherlock Holmes 2: A Game of Shadows: If you want to watch a Guy Ritchie movie set in the late 19th century starring a character whose name happens to be Sherlock following a plot that approximates Conan-Doyle’s writing in the way a Big Mac approximates a steak, watch this movie. If, on the other hand, you want to watch Sherlock Holmes in action, go watch the superlative Sherlock from the BBC. ...