Man, that was a whole lot of movie.
Three hours long and covering a LOT of ground, watching this sprawling epic is not for the faint of heart. It's full of big cinematic images, massive action scenes, and genuinely tense encounters. It's huge, and you feel every inch of that scale across the entire runtime. Thankfully, it's also pretty good, mostly.
To get the bad out of the way: this movie frequently suffers from Nolan's maddening preference for extremely loud sound FX that are pushed so hard into the red that audible distortion pops all over the place. It makes sections of this movie sound like a shitty wash of noise. He's been on this extreme volume kick ever since The Dark Knight Rises, and it's just tiring at this point. I set our volume at 4.5 expecting this, and it was still overpowering. Thankfully there are some improvements: the dialog was perfectly understandable, and the percussive, odd score from Ludwig Göransson was kept at a reasonable level.
Now that that's out of the way, the rest of the movie is mostly flawless technically, with a great deal of it appearing to be shot practically. There are certainly visual effects at work in several sequences, but it's to Nolan's credit that it's rarely clear where the lines between full sized props, miniatures, forced perspective, compositing tricks, and full CGI lie. Yes, he allowed CGI back into the toolbag, and the results are all the better for it.
Acting wise, Maaaat Daaamon does as well as he can given the enormity of everything surrounding him. Anne Hathaway and Tom Holland fare a bit better, as their scenes are quieter with less distractions. Robert Pattinson's character is one dimensional, but he still seems to be having fun playing an absolutely slimeball. Everyone else fades into the gloom, with only John Leguizamo making any real headway in separating himself from the mass.
Audience wise this one seems to be doing pretty well. We might not have any more celebrity actors drawing in crowds, but Nolan's name looks like it's still bringing people in.
Three hours long and covering a LOT of ground, watching this sprawling epic is not for the faint of heart. It's full of big cinematic images, massive action scenes, and genuinely tense encounters. It's huge, and you feel every inch of that scale across the entire runtime. Thankfully, it's also pretty good, mostly.
To get the bad out of the way: this movie frequently suffers from Nolan's maddening preference for extremely loud sound FX that are pushed so hard into the red that audible distortion pops all over the place. It makes sections of this movie sound like a shitty wash of noise. He's been on this extreme volume kick ever since The Dark Knight Rises, and it's just tiring at this point. I set our volume at 4.5 expecting this, and it was still overpowering. Thankfully there are some improvements: the dialog was perfectly understandable, and the percussive, odd score from Ludwig Göransson was kept at a reasonable level.
Now that that's out of the way, the rest of the movie is mostly flawless technically, with a great deal of it appearing to be shot practically. There are certainly visual effects at work in several sequences, but it's to Nolan's credit that it's rarely clear where the lines between full sized props, miniatures, forced perspective, compositing tricks, and full CGI lie. Yes, he allowed CGI back into the toolbag, and the results are all the better for it.
Acting wise, Maaaat Daaamon does as well as he can given the enormity of everything surrounding him. Anne Hathaway and Tom Holland fare a bit better, as their scenes are quieter with less distractions. Robert Pattinson's character is one dimensional, but he still seems to be having fun playing an absolutely slimeball. Everyone else fades into the gloom, with only John Leguizamo making any real headway in separating himself from the mass.
Audience wise this one seems to be doing pretty well. We might not have any more celebrity actors drawing in crowds, but Nolan's name looks like it's still bringing people in.
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