While it's not flawless - the first half hour is jumpy and a touch clumsy as it tries to establish every name and place - I think it's deserving of all the praise it's been getting. Once it got its teeth in me, it never let go, and I'll definitely be thinking about it for a good while.

But I think where the film really shines is its final act and the way Nolan reframes Odysseus' character. Won't spoil in what way it's been changed, but I will say its commentary is powerful, and I was inconsolable for the final 30 minutes. I half-expected a BlacKkKlansman-style cut to the present.

There's even horror found by exploring realistic logistics to otherwise larger-than-life tales. Days sealed in a Trojan horse, covered in filth, with people literally drowning beneath your feet is absolutely nightmarish and so well-realised. All the sequences surrounding that are spectacular.

I already felt this with bits of Oppenheimer that were just SO raw or stylised and it's taken to another level here. He's cast aside much of the immaculate blocking and pushed more for a run-and-gun handheld feel to a lot of the cinematography. Wild given the camera weight Hoytema was working with!

It's across all these sequences that I started to feel like a new Nolan had emerged - someone who's clearly looked at his peers like Villeneuve, Eggers, and Ari Aster, and learnt a great deal from them. He doesn't feel as afraid to try out grungier approaches to direction and it's great!

There doesn't feel like there's any shame in the depictions. These things aren't just hidden in shadow, he has the balls to put it all on full display, and it looks great. At the same time, there's some fantastic horror created with restraint like the Circe segment where the unseen is what carries.

It allows all of this fantastical stuff to exist without needing to explain it. The cyclops is designed like a man with a disfigured face. Like someone missing an eye with the other features spiralling in on themselves. You can almost trace back the reality that may have created the myth.

I went into this a bit apprehensive given Nolan kept calling it "grounded". I assumed it meant hiding the fantastical elements as though it was a point of shame. Turns out he meant "grounded" in the sense that the story is structured as oral legend - something feasibly inflated with each retelling.

Oftentimes his directorial qualities are described as "sterile" or a bit too clean, and while I really enjoy his body of work - Interstellar's my favourite - I can definitely see some of that in there from The Dark Knight through to Tenet. Sometimes that slickness robs scenes of their atmosphere.

I saw The Odyssey yesterday! Between this and Oppenheimer, it feels like Nolan's evolved and learned a lot from his contemporaries. Maybe a terrible miss like Tenet woke something up in him or it was a rare stumble, but I feel a very distinctive and mature voice has started to emerge in his work.

Watched Disclosure Day.

I want to drive nails into my sinuses. This is the most sick I've been in forever.

Watched Obsession the other night. Not sure I can add much that hasn't already been said, but it was fantastic. Extremely unsettling subversion of the nice guy trope, packed full of interesting commentary on codependency, coercion, and manipulative relationship dynamics. Really got under my skin.

I'd love to know how it ended up like this. In many ways, it feels like a poor imitation of a Gunn movie, but I can see Gillespie in there in its intimate moments. So is it a mess because of clashing visions or does this stem from a poor script? A combination of everything probably. What a shame.

Alas a big chunk of the film's taken up by not very well done action. I don't know why the focal length was so long for a lot of those action scenes - it didn't feel intimate, it just felt claustrophobic and completely lacking in scale. And good lord, the climactic needle drop was bafflingly bad.

The strongest parts of the film are the flashbacks to Krypton. There are some real emotional highs across the board here and it's where Milly Alcock gets to shine. Coupled with cool lighting and nice production design and it starts to feel like more of what I expected of the Gillespie x Hardy combo.

I truly don't know why Lobo is in this film. He's not in the comic! It sort of seems like he was positioned to serve as this film's version of Superman 2025's Mister Terrific. Momoa's good value, but a few fun scenes don't really justify his existence. He takes a lot away from the finale IMO.

Krem is less an antagonist in the comic and more of a symbolic stand-in for what the central duo must overcome in themselves. When you try and position someone like that as a constant presence in a film like this and do nothing to elevate him, he ends up feeling like a forgettable lackey.

Ruthye is given no meaningful background and her inciting incident is over with in a flash. There's no reason to care in the moment but also no depiction of grief to sell it after the fact. In turn, the plight that drives the film is utterly flat. It certainly doesn't position Krypto any better!

The comic is about grief and revenge, mentorship, and higher concepts like mortality, impermanence, and what it means to become mythology. I don't begrudge the film for stripping it back into something simple and broadly palatable, but it has to execute its simplicity well and it just doesn't.

I *really* wanted to like this as both a huge fan of Milly Alcock and the original comic, but it's just not very good. Yeah, it's a bad adaptation, but that's not why it's bad - it's just a very dull movie with plodding pacing and poor direction. Its admittedly solid emotional highs can't save it!

Past Lives has been sat on my to-watch list for three years and I am SO ashamed it took me so long to get to it. What an astonishing piece of cinema. Such a beautiful story about the immigrant experience, but simultaneously a universal story about identity and the way experience shapes us. Loved it!

While the Hollywood adaptation focuses on the aftermath and tastelessly questions whether it was mental illness or possession, Requiem looks at the lead-up to it. It's a quiet drama about a girl's collapse, the mental illness she saw as a battle of faith, and the parents and church who failed her.

The second is a German film called Requiem. Both this and The Exorcism of Emily Rose are based on the same real-world story of Anneliese Michel, a mentally ill girl who died of malnutrition after being subjected to 67 'exorcisms' after her parents and priest mistook her illness for possession.

It's a beautifully made film that really runs the gamut of intense emotions. Anger, frustration, devastation, and even just... resigned sorrow. It's a real slow burn but I think it earns that pace. By the end, I was caught off guard by how much it had moved me.

Watched two very different films recently that almost feel like companion pieces thematically. The first is Apostasy, a British film about a family of Jehovah's Witnesses, and the crisis of faith that comes about when simple solutions to life events are blocked by doctrine.

Frictionless fun isn't the end of the world - there's nothing wrong with being an easy breezy crowd-pleaser, but I just don't think it has enough oomph in any single area to push it above just fine. It's a decent foundation but it needs a hell of a lot of work if a sequel is gonna wow me.

The thrill of stealth is the chance for failure. It's puzzling out your approach, navigating the different alert levels, and unfucking the situation if you mess up. Bond doesn't really allow for any of that. You're lucky if one half of a room even notices you brawling with the other when you mess up

The stealth is *okay*, but in spite of the many options available, it feels on-rails. You kinda just... pick one of the few obvious options and do it, with practically no friction along the way. It's borderline impossible to mess up or feel the tension of uncertainty about how to approach things.

I actually think the game is at its strongest when it's NOT being Hitman-lite. The combat feels GREAT. Between the smooth animation work of picking up guns, transitioning in and out of melee combat, utilising gadgets, and causing chaos - the explosive action is where this game shines the most.