The Odyssey (Round 2)
Okay, round two.
Went to a regular theater to see The Odyssey again, and lemme tell you something, it's getting fast tracked up into my top ten of all time. Seriously. It's really, really good. Like, it's a landmark movie. I feel like it's been a while since we've had this kind of a movie. A movie that perfectly combines the subject, the scale, and the creative team to build something monumentous. To me, this is a line where movies will be forced to decide if they're going to mean something or not.
I don't just mean in scale or intellectual depth, I just mean that a filmmaker gathers a team of like-minded and hardworking craftspeople to make a film that means something. That feels important and valuable.
There's room for all sorts of movies, and famously, one of Christopher Nolan's favorite movies is Talladega Nights, so I'm not suggesting that movies need to be more pretentious or self serving. Just have some heart. Some soul. Not just good intentions, but real hard work and standards. Make every inch of that image count for something. Every second of the movie should build on or change the second before it.
That's what I love about this movie. I'm not a Nolan guy really. I liked Oppenheimer very much. I thought Batman Begins and The Dark Knight were both really good movies. Inception was good. He has a lot of good movies, but I never saw Tenant and I only saw Interstellar once in the theater, and I barely remember it. I find his movies to be well made and thoughtful, and i respect that. I also find his movies to be a lot of work sometimes, and I don't always want to work that hard to watch a movie if I'm not that invested in the movie.
Like, for instance, Interstellar. It was good. I liked it. But I felt like it required multiple viewings to get what people who REALLY love Interstellar get out of it, and I'm just not that invested. So I happily say that i liked it, and that's that.
Oppenheimer, however, I got immediately what he was doing, and it was incredible. That, to me, felt like a new kind of a movie. A Christopher Nolan movie. Not just a movie, but a Nolan movie. It's like the engine is tuned differently and it runs harder and faster and more intensely than most other movies. So you have to drive it differently.
It's making me want to try Interstellar again. And watch Tenant. And it's making me want to get back into watch movies at home. Which I rarely do these days. But I have the setup to do it, so I should.
So that's my second review of The Odyssey, which was more of a review of feelings about having watched it again.
The movie itself? Still five stars. I wish I could give it another star. I just really, really loved it.
