Jak sie masz?  His name is Borat.  Fourteen years ago, movie goers were introduced to this grey-suit wearing, moustache ornamented journalist from glorious nation of Kazakhstan.  Unbeknownst to many, Borat Sagdiyev’s big screen debut would not only find an audience in both America and across the world, but it would become a phenomenal hit as well.  And perhaps the most surprised of all with regards to Borat’s success was the creator of this oddball character; Sasha Baron Cohen.  Borat had been a fixture on Cohen’s hit comedy series Da Ali G Show, which featured Cohen’s unique brand of prank comedy where he would portray different characters and interview unsuspecting people in order to catch them in an ridiculously uncomfortable moment.  Of those characters, they included titular Ali G, fashion critic Bruno, and of course Borat.  The success of the show led to Cohen getting the chance to bring his characters to the big screen.  He started with the pretty straight-forward comedy Ali G: Indahouse (2002), but when it came time for a follow-up, Cohen decided to go in a different direction.  Deciding to center his next film on the character Borat, Sasha Baron Cohen opted for a documentary style similar to what he had used on the show, with himself staying in character while speaking to various different people and drawing the comedy from their reactions to his outlandish behavior.  In the movie, Borat’s mission is to document “cultural learnings” of America for his country’s educational “benefit,” and along the way, he becomes enraptured by the country, especially when he discovers a beautiful blonde on TV named Pamela Anderson.  Thus Borat leapt off of the small screen and became a movie star, and how.  The movie was a monster box office hit, and suddenly it became impossible to escape for a while, becoming one of the most heavily quotable movies at the time.  There’s only one problem though when your movie becomes that big of a success; where do you go next?

Sasha Baron Cohen’s career post Borat (2006) has been in many ways an experiment in answering that question.  The movie did give him valuable exposure that helped to land him in some prestigious movies from big time directors, like Tim Burton’s Sweeny Todd (2007), Martin Scorsese’s Hugo (2011) and more recently Aaron Sorkin’s The Trial of the Chicago 7 (2020).  However, his own projects have yet to reach that mighty Borat high bar that he set for himself.  A film adaptation of the character Bruno (2009) came and went and was not as well received; often described as being too close in style to Borat.  In the 2010’s, he tried his hand at creating new characters, and ditching the documentary style of Borat and Bruno.  This resulted in the movies The Dictator (2012) and The Brother’s Grimsby (2016), both of which also failed to ignite the same way that Borat had.  It seemed like Cohen’s magic touch was short lived and that he would not be able to make lightning strike twice.  In a way, he became a victim of his own success.  Because he made Borat such a popular character around the world, he likewise made it impossible to repeat the same conditions that made Borat work in the first place.  Borat became too well known, and now it was harder to prank people, because once they saw him in his Borat character, people would be aware that they were about to be pranked on film.  So, it became quite a surprise to many that new broke this year that not only was Sasha Baron Cohen going to be returning to the character once again, but that he had secretly managed to film a new movie and have it ready to premiere on Amazon Prime before Election Day.  This was a shocking revelation to find out, but in a way it’s within Cohen’s character to stealthily surprise the world with a Borat sequel in a time when we weren’t expecting to have one.  The only question is, did Sasha Baron Cohen manage to make lightning strike twice, or was he better off leaving Borat one and done.

The fully titled Borat Subsequent Moviefilm: Delivery of Prodigious Bribe to American Regime for Make Benefit Once Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan (2020) brings Borat up to present day.  The international success of Borat’s first movie has put him at odds with his home country’s government, who believe that he shamed them by making Kazakhstan look so backwards to the world.  For this, Borat has been imprisoned and force to work in a gulag for fourteen years.  However, he is brought back to the capitol city to participate in a new mission.  The Premier of Kazakhstan orders Borat to deliver a peace offering to President Trump, care of his Vice President Mike Pence.  That peace offering is the head of Kazakhstan’s cultural ministry and #1 porno star in all the country, Johnny the Monkey.  Tasked with this mission, Borat leaves Kazakhstan for a return trip to America.  The only problem is, once he arrives there, he is instantly recognized by fans of his previous film, so he puts on disguises to hide his identity.  He manages to retrieve the crate that was sent from Kazakhstan with Johnny the Monkey inside, but finds an unwelcome surprise instead.  Stowing away in the crate is Borat’s fifteen year old daughter, Tutar (Maria Bakalova) who wants to follow after her father on his mission.  Her dream is to be like her idol Melania Trump and have her privates grabbed by another fat, rich American who will put her in a golden cage.  After the mishap with the monkey, Borat gets the idea to substitute his daughter as the gift to Mike Pence.  After failing to get his attention at the CPAC conference, Borat then decides to pursue Rudy Giuliani as a possible alternative to getting close to the president.  He decides to help get his daughter a make-over, but while she is by herself, she begins to see how things are different for women in America, and it breaks down many of the lies that she’s been hearing from her father.  So, a rift between Borat and Tutar erupts, which endangers his mission, of which Borat could be executed for if he fails.

So, very much like the original Borat, there is a thinly laid bit of plot connecting all the different sketches together.  For the original movie, it was Borat’s pursuit of finding Pamela Anderson and bringing her back home with him to become his wife.  In Subsequent Moviefilm, the focus changes to Borat as a father figure, which is refreshingly different, as it does add a new layer to the character.  But, after over a decade of trying to reach the heights of the first movie and failing, did Sasha Baron Cohen manage to justify making a sequel to his greatest hit.  On the whole, I would say that he fell short once again, but it’s definitely one hell of a try though.  In many ways, making a sequel to Borat that hit exactly the same way was an almost impossible errand.  Once you do it once, the novelty is gone.  Indeed, the character is too recognizable to ever pull a fast one on anyone the same way ever again.  And yet, I have to commend Cohen’s attempt at trying.  Without a doubt, this is far and away the best film Sasha Baron Cohen has made based on his own original characters since Borat.  The movie balances the story and the outrageous humor much better here than say The Brothers Grimsby, which was just gross out humor with none of the fun attached.  There are fewer pranks that land with the same level of hilarity in Subsequent Moviefilm nor with the same regularity, but the ones that do land are right up there with those from the original.  I think that Cohen knew that he was going to have to put more effort into those big moments to make them work, and that meant filling up the rest of the run time with only minor laughs.  Another problem with the movie is that the shock factor of the original movie no longer exists fourteen years later.  It’s a sad consequence of the Trump Era in American Politics, where hearing public figures say horribly racist things has just become so normalized and no longer shocking.

But there is one thing for sure; a whole lot of skill had to go into making the film’s most shocking moments work.  What will undoubtedly become the most talked about moment in the movie is the encounter with Rudy Giuliani that serves as the film’s climax.  I’m not giving anything away here, as the story has already broken into the headlines and now even people who haven’t seen the movie have become aware of it.  But, I will say the way that the moment happens in the movie must have required an unprecedented amount of secrecy, coordination, and just flat out luck to happen the way it does in the movie.  And the fact that it still works it’s way perfectly into the narrative thread of the movie is really quite an impressive feat.  That in a way helps the movie come very close to reaching the heights of it’s predecessor.  Cohen is a master of manipulation and the fact that he can still coax public figures like Giuliani into a compromising situation like he does here is just as impressive today as it was in 2006.  In many ways, it’s even more impressive, because he had to pull a prank of this level off in a world that is fully aware of who Borat is.  There are similarly impressive pranks pulled throughout the movie, and though most of them don’t rise up to the level of the Giuliani encounter in terms of sheer boldness, they are nevertheless hilariously realized.  These include a visit to a debutante ball in Georgia, the interruption of Mike Pence’s speech at the CPAC conference, and of course the infamous trolling of a Far Right rally in Olympia, Washington that made the headlines a few weeks ago.  What’s even more impressive though is that he crafted most of this movie over the last year, in the middle of a pandemic.  And the introduction of COVID-19 into the movie doesn’t even detract from the main story, and in fact adds to it; especially at the end in one of the most hilarious final codas I’ve seen in a movie in a long time.

There is one thing, however, that I think people are going to be praising for a long time from this movie, and that’s the performance of Maria Bakalova as Tutar Sagdiyev.  Maria has been active in her native Bulgarian film scene for several years, but she was won the role of Tutar out of hundreds of actresses who auditioned, and she is quite the revelation.  Surprisingly, her background is not in comedy,  and yet she not only manages to go toe to toe with Sasha Baron Cohen in this movie, she even outshines him.  Much of the movie hinges around the believability of the father daughter relationship between Borat and Tutar, as dysfunctional as it is, and Maria Bakalova is 100% committed in this role.  Often, the movie even deviates away from Borat as the central focus, and features Tutar being the one making the unsuspecting marks uncomfortable in a scene.  Indeed, as a performer, she was in the thick of it as much as Cohen was, including some of those highly dangerous situations.  The fact that she manages to pull through all of it without breaking character shows that she is indeed just as much a master of this deception as Cohen.  And given that Sasha Baron Cohen’s objective is to create the same level of shocking results that he did from the last film, well it helps to have someone who can stealthily pull it off without being recognized.  A lot of what make the movie works is all because of her, and how well her chemistry with Sasha Baron Cohen lifts the movie.  To be fair, Cohen is at his best here too, showing that he hasn’t lost the ability to play the character so many years later.  I am definitely interested in seeing where Maria Bakalova goes from here.  Is she going to use this as a springboard for an mainstream international movie career, or will she follow Cohen’s lead and launch her own off shoot of gotcha comedy, since she clearly demonstrated how good she is at it.  Whatever happens, she has definitely left an impression and managed to steal the spotlight from her more famous co-star.  I have no doubt that what we see in this movie is the makings of a future star.

In addition to the great work of the actors, the movie benefits from it’s tightly knit story.  Sure, the novelty of the first movie is worn out, and there is not much more that can be explored with Borat as a character.  He is a lovable oaf with a very backwards, dark ages view of the world, and he primarily is the same here as well.  But, the father and daughter relationship angle is a great substitution for centering a sequel around.  And as I said before, it is impressive how Sasha Baron Cohen has managed to tie it all together in the end and never lose sight of the narrative.  I don’t know how much of it was thought up on the fly, or was designed that way, but it does connect together and that is pretty impressive.  Even working through a pandemic didn’t even throw them off.  I think what helps are the clearly scripted moments of Borat and Tutar that fill in between the big pranks, where we get to watch them build their relationship.  In some ways, this is actually done better than the original, where it was mainly up to Cohen to carry the narrative arc through.  Here, the arc is carried through in the duality of their relationship.  Tutar coming into her own, Borat at first becoming an obstacle and then ultimately finding their common ground.  What is surprising is the fact that so much of the movie manages to blend so well into this narrative.  You have to imagine that in order to get things like the Far Right Wing rally and the Giuliani interview to work as part of the film’s story that the filmmakers had to plan things out perfectly in order for it to go exactly as planned.  I imagine that there is a lot of unused footage out there of multiple pranks that didn’t go as planned.  If you look at the raw footage captured of the Washington rally itself, you’ll see that there was a lot of that event that didn’t make it into the final film, and most of it is even crazier than what did make it in.  These kinds of movies are extremely difficult to pull of, and the remarkable thing is that Sasha Baron Cohen not only managed to do it again, but he did so with a surprisingly cohesive story at it’s center.

So, in the end, the movie is not quite at the level that the original managed to pull off, but it was still a commendable try.  Borat Subsequent Moviefilm has moments in it that certainly rise to the same level of hilarity that the original movie managed to hit, even if the frequency is a bit lagging.  For one thing, the inclusion of Borat’s daughter Tutar really lifts this movie up, and Maria Bakalova is a real discovery that should be taken seriously in Hollywood.  I certainly would say that it may fall short of the original, but Subsequent Moviefilm works quite well as a companion piece.  It certainly confirms that Sasha Baron Cohen still has a few tricks up his sleeve, and can even bring surprising new layers to a character like Borat, even after the novelty has long worn off.  If anything, the movie is just a fun romp, with plenty of great laugh out loud moments that are among the best that we have seen from Cohen.  I don’t know if he’ll bring Borat back in another film; I almost feel that any more would be overkill.  This movie gives us just enough to not spoil the fun that can still be had with the character.  In a way, this moment in our history really called for a return of the character, as the United States has become a far more dysfunctional nation.  Sure, the movie does feel like a retread at times, but the essence of what made Borat such a likable character in the first place is still there.  Underneath the vulgarity and the bigotry is a charming curiosity from a simple man who wants to embrace new things.  And the addition of a daughter to the storyline helps to give this movie a surprising amount of heart as well.  So, if you loved the original, you’ll likely find this one a lot of fun too.  Borat may no longer be an original who is going to take the world by storm, but seeing him again in a new adventure is still a welcome surprise in this tumultuous year.  If you are an Amazon Prime subscriber, I’d say you owe it to yourself to at least check it out.  It’s a gift to make benefit our glorious nation.  Dziekuje!

Rating: 7.5/10

You know the old saying; that those who don’t learn from history are doomed to repeat it.  Living through the pandemic year of 2020 is giving us a daily reminder of why it’s important to know our history in order to avoid the pitfalls that have dragged us down before.  The experience of a botched pandemic response is making us look back at the mistakes made during the 1918 pandemic, and how so much of it has fallen in line the same way.  The social unrest related to the misuse of force from law enforcement and the government is also making us look again at a similar time in America when people were having to reckon with the state of our country.  Like today, protests and riots were gripping cities across the country.  The difference was that civil unrest in that time was due to the unpopular Vietnam War.  Though the war was a major catalyst of protest, the decade before had seen a lot of civil unrest due to the fight for justice and equal rights for many the African American community.  The year of 1968 was a particular turning point for America and it’s shifting culture.  Both Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.  and Senator Robert Kennedy were assassinated within months of each other, and the American Left, which had been fighting hard for Civil Rights and an end to the War for years, was now demoralized and splintered, and facing a tough future in an election year.  This led to the infamous Chicago Riot outside the Democratic National Convention, where many of the anti-war protestors clashed with police officers and caused havoc within the city.  These events, along with the over zealous response of Mayor Daley’s police force, were largely observed as what brought victory to President Richard Nixon in that 1968 election, and of course, all the progress that the American Left had hoped to have gotten accomplished out of their protests only ended up leading to a backwards slide in their cause.  And the Nixon administration would in turn break the law within the White House and further engage in Vietnam for many years more.

This pivotal point in the history of American resistance would be most exemplified by the infamous Trial of the Chicago 7.  In what has since been observed as a politically motivated move to make an example of “dangerous” left-wing agitators by the Nixon Administration, seven of the most high profile participants were put on trail in Chicago for what was described as “crossing state-lines to incite a riot” which is a federal offense.  Though the men were found guilty, their imprisonment had the opposite effect, and they became heroes of resistance to a new generation of Anti-Establishment protestors.  The story of the 7 has carried on as a monumental moment of defiance in the face of oppression, and it still inspires people today to speak their minds and fight for what they believe in.  The story has been especially popular to filmmakers in Hollywood, who have tried many times to bring the story of the 7 to the big screen.  Aaron Sorkin wrote his treatment for a dramatization of the the infamous trial shortly after leaving his show, The West Wing, in the mid-2000’s.  For a while, it looked like Steven Spielberg was attached to direct the film, eyeing it as a possible next project after Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull (2008), and with actor Heath Ledger in a lead role.  However, the writer’s strike of 2007 put the project on hold and Ledger’s untimely death also dealt the movie another blow, which led to Spielberg moving on shortly after.  After a while, Paul Greengrass began to circle around Sorkin’s screenplay, with Ben Stiller in tow to help produce and star.  But further delays led them to leave as well, and eventually Amblin studios, which held the rights, decided to let the project go.  Once it landed at Paramount, a slew of other directors and actors came and went.  Then Netflix stepped in to bring in the final needed funding the movie needed, and more importantly, Sorkin himself stepped in to direct the movie himself.  And the timing for this kind of movie could not be more perfect given what’s been going on this year.  The only question is, was the delay worth it and is it the movie we need right now in our own turbulent time.

The Trial of the Chicago 7 introduces us right away to the men who would go on to define the movement, observing their moments before they made their way to Chicago.  We meet straight laced, grass roots anti-war activists Tom Hayden (Eddie Redmayne) and Rennie Davis (Alex Sharp); the flashy, irreverent founders of the Yippie Movement Abbie Hoffman (Sacha Baron Cohen) and Jerry Rubin (Jeremy Strong); pacifist David Dellinger (John Carroll Lynch); and two protestors caught up in the middle, Lee Weiner (Noah Robbins) and John Froines (Daniel Flaherty).  In addition, to these seven, another defendant is put on trial, Black Panther co-founder Bobby Seale (Yahya Abdul-Mateen II), who rightly points out that he has no connection to the other defendants and is only being tried there as a means of connecting his radical group with the others, and he’s there without proper counsel.  The trial is presided over by Judge Julius Hoffman (Frank Langella), who has little tolerance for disruption in his court.  Defending the Chicago 7 are two lawyers, the more reserved Leonard Weinglass (Ben Shankmen) and the seasoned and confrontational William Kunstler (Mark Rylance).  On the other side, representing the Justice Department of the United States, are US attorneys Tom Foran (J.C. MacKenzie) and Richard Schultz (Joseph Gordon-Levitt), under the direction of new Attorney General  John Mitchell (John Doman), who is still sore about a perceived insult from out-going AG, Ramsey Clark (Michael Keaton).  Through testimony and flash backs, the events of the infamous DNC riots are presented to us, piecing together how each individual played their part in what happened, and allowing us to see if any of their actions did indeed cross the line.  When not in the courtroom, we see the many different personality types begin to clash, particularly between the more pragmatic Hayden and the show-boaty flash of Hoffman.  All in all, it shows us that there is more at stake than just their innocence in the face of the law when it comes to this trial.  It’s about whether or not this trial is going to imprison their voices as well.

It is amazing how long it actually took for this movie to get made, and how it’s eventual timing proved to be more spot on than perhaps anyone realized.  Aaron Sorkin certainly hasn’t been hurting for success since he wrote his first draft for The Trail of the Chicago 7 back in the aughts.  He won an Academy Award for his monumental screenplay for The Social Network (2010), was nominated for another for Moneyball (2011), and even went on to direct his first feature, Molly’s Game (2017).  Having gotten that first directorial effort out of the way was probably the best thing for Sorkin to finally make Chicago 7 a reality, because it gave him the confidence to tackle a story with as much weight as this one, with all the lessons learned about how to actually do it properly.  When some writers move into directing, it can often lead to mixed results, as some writers grow too attached to their writing and leave too much in.  That was honestly the one problem with Molly’s Game as a film; Sorkin’s reluctance to trim stuff down and streamline the plot, thereby leaving the film bloated.  Given that Chicago 7 had been passed around between several different directors before, all helping him to parse the story down to all the essentials, it helped to give Sorkin the much needed fine tuning that the script called for before he could start rolling camera.  All Sorkin needed to do as a director was not mess it up, and thankfully he didn’t.  The Trial of the Chicago 7 is a major step up for the legendary writer turned director, and it proves that he is now as much of a force behind the camera as he is in drafting a screenplay.  And to be very honest, it’s probably a good thing that this movie waited for the moment when Sorkin himself could step into that role, because I can’t think of any other filmmaker who would’ve fulfilled what the script needed.

There’s no doubt about it upon watching this film; this is a Sorkin movie through and through.  Aaron Sorkin is one of those rare screenwriters today whose rhythm in dialogue is instantly recognizable.  The only other writers who I would say come close to having that stature would be either Quentin Tarantino, the Coen Brothers, or Charlie Kaufman.  What sets Sorkin apart is the rapid fire nature of his writing.  The man is exceptionally good at writing back and forth arguments between his characters, which does fit perfectly in a courtroom setting.  If anything, it’s the screenwriting in this movie that is the main attraction.  Like with Social Network and many of his other standout screenplays throughout his career, Sorkin balances back and forth between so many different tones in his writing, and does so with incredible finesse.  Within the span of a couple minutes, he could have as many as five different characters shouting off, delivering anything from important facts to non-sequiturs, to flagrant insults, to even just a bad joke.  The incredible way he writes is that so many elements come at you from so many directions, and yet it all manages to hit the mark.  Court room dramas can often drift into the mundane, but Sorkin manages to engage the viewer through every moment, making sure you hang on every word, even if it’s just a throw-away punchline.  Given that he’s working with a narrative focused on 7 different individuals, and the people surrounding them, and that he has to make them all distinctive from one another, and make the weight of their moment in time relevant to the viewer, Aaron Sorkin is certainly putting together what may be his most complex film yet.  And the end result is an exceptional achievement not only in measured direction, but also in complex story-telling.  Sorkin could have been a show off here, which he sometimes can be (especially in his television shows), but with Chicago 7, he displays a level of maturity as a filmmaker that rises to the challenge of his own distinctive writing.

It also doesn’t hurt that he’s put together a stellar cast as well.  There were so many big names that have circled their wagons around this project, including the previously mentioned Ledger.  Will Smith, Seth Rogan, William Hurt,  and Jonathan Majors were all at some points attach to this film, before the delays began to change plans.  The cast that did end up in the movie all do their jobs very well, especially those in the courtroom itself.  The role of Tom Hayden is a nice departure for Oscar-winner Eddie Redmayne, who manages to hide his British accent surprisingly well in the role.  He’s also the character who experiences the most growth through the movie, which he handles pretty well.  Sacha Baron Cohen of course gets the flashiest role in the movie as Abbie Hoffman, and while I do think he perfectly captured the cadence of the notorious Yippie leader, he doesn’t quite master the American accent as well as Redmayne, often letting his British accent slip a couple times.  Mark Rylance, John Carroll Lynch, Jeremy Strong and Joseph Gordon-Levitt also deliver solid supporting performances throughout the movie.  However, the two stand outs that I think steal the movie away from the others are Yahya Abdul Mateen and Frank Langella as Bobby Seale and Judge Hoffman respectively.  Mateen’s Seale is an exceptional characterization that really underlines the frustration of African American people who are unfairly treated by the Justice system, and his performance really captures that passionate defiance in a compelling way.  On the opposite end, Langella’s Judge Hoffman is a perfect portrayal of a dispassionate judge who is completely out of his element proceeding over a trial of this nature.  His judge Hoffman in the end makes an effect antagonistic representation of the forces working against the 7 and the futility of the system trying to use the courtroom as a means of controlling speech.  There’s no doubt that Sorkin could find plenty of eager actors willing to bring his words to life.  It’s just fortunate that each and every one fills their respective roles to perfection.

It’s also interesting that Sorkin, for the first time, is working entirely within a different period.  Social Network, Moneyball, and Molly’s Game were all recent history, torn from the headlines.  Here, Sorkin is working in a time period dating over 50 years ago.  In doing so, he has to work his dialogue in a way that doesn’t feel out of step with the time period, and thankfully it doesn’t.  You do buy into this being a flash of time within the late 1960’s, when Vietnam was still raging and political upheaval was happening all around.  I think it says more about our time that so much of this movie feels so current to today.  What I like best about what Sorkin has done here as a director is the fact that he doesn’t try to do too much as a director.  He lets the screenplay and the performances carry the film, and just lets the camera observe.  If the movie had been done by a different director, I think a lot of Sorkin’s rhythm would have been lost in translation.  Spielberg would have gotten good performances to be sure, but he might have been too manipulative as well, if he tried to underscore several scenes with a sweeping John Williams crescendo.  And Paul Greengrass would’ve had the camera shaking needlessly with his hand held style.  Sorkin on the other hand just holds the camera steady and uses the power of editing to match the rhythm of his words.  The movie is devoid of big, operatic moments, and instead just allows the scenes to flow naturally.  I especially like how the flash backs are used in conjunction with what is said in court.  He’s used this technique before in movies like Steve Jobs (2015), Social Network, and even going as far back as his script for A Few Good Men (1992).  There’s a fantastic scene late in the film when Eddie Redmayne is cross-examined with a tape recording being used as evidence, and it intercuts with the incident in question, and it’s edited together in a perfectly tuned way to rev up the tension of the moment.  Like I said, over the course of writing so many films, and having already directed a feature before, The Trial of the Chicago 7 marks a bold step forward for Aaron Sorkin as a force in the director’s chair.

With the way the world is right now, there definitely needs to be a film that puts history and it’s effect on the present into perspective, and The Trial of the Chicago 7 is exactly what we need right now.  It is a important reminder of where we have been as a nation, and how some problems go unsolved and end up repeating themselves over time.  In the trial of the Chicago 7, America saw for the first time people put on public trail not for the crimes that they committed, but for the threat that their message could mean to the establishment.  Tom Hayden, Abbie Hoffman, David Dellinger, Rennie Davis, Jerry Rubin, Lee Weiner, John Froines and Bobby Seale were put on trial for what Hoffman described as “their thoughts’ which were deemed dangerous by the then Nixon Administration.  But the attempt to silence the Chicago 7 only added to their legend and their act of defiance through their activism and trial still inspires activists to this very day.  As we face a pivotal election day in the middle of a still raging pandemic, the stakes could not be made more clear about where we stand as a nation, and the example of the Chicago 7 feels more relevant than ever.  In the end, it probably was for the best that Aaron Sorkin’s re-telling of the Chicago 7 trial took this long to  become a reality, because it eventually came out at the most important time that it could.  We are at yet another tipping point in our nations history, where the rights of citizens from every walk of life is at stake in this election, as are the fundamental pillars of our democracy.  The real gift of Aaron Sorkin’s The Trial of the Chicago 7 is that it reminds us of the fact that it is hard to kill an idea, and that people will always fight for the things that they value.  We have been in this position before, and though finding justice is hard, it will always in some way find a way to become a reality.  We stand on the shoulders of those who have fought for our freedoms; let’s not make their sacrifice go in vain, and continue the fight for the things that we value.

Rating: 9/10

The Summer season of 2020 came and went, and for the first time in a century, movie theaters remained silent.  There have been a few individual theaters open here and there across the country where the COVID-19 pandemic has been less virulent, but for the major chains across the country, it has been anything but a normal year for them.  With the major studios either moving all their major tent-poles to next year or dropping them off onto streaming services, there has been no reason for the theaters to reopen and return to normal business.  The next year or so is going to be a long, slow return to normalcy for the theater industry, and the feats they had to go through over this Summer just to keep themselves afloat may have made the marker for normalcy far different from what it used to be.  At this point, we don’t know where the end game of all of this will land, and that is making everyone worried.  Hollywood is facing it’s most existential crisis since the advent of television, and they are being increasingly confronted with the hard choice of what they must do in order to survive this pandemic year.  Do they sacrifice the theatrical market in order to secure financial stability for the year ahead, or do they assist the theatrical market with new releases, at the risk of receiving less than normal returns.  After a Summer that made it impossible to do any business normally in the movie theaters, Hollywood is now trying some new experiments with their upcoming releases.  As we head into Labor Day weekend, two of the year’s biggest new films are making their debut, but with entirely different roll outs.  Disney’s long delayed Mulan (2020) is skipping a theatrical release in favor of a premium streaming debut on Disney+.  At the same time, Christopher Nolan’s Tenet (2020), which was originally set for mid-July, is also coming out this weekend, but exclusively on the big screen, and only in areas of the country where it is allowed.  Whoever prevails out of these experiments may in fact be the one that ultimately determines the future of movie theaters as we know it.

For the movie Tenet, it’s clear that a theatrical premiere was the only logical choice for it’s debut.  Christopher Nolan has built his reputation as a filmmaker on being the master of grandiose, cinematic spectacles that can only be fully appreciated on a big screen.  Ever since The Dark Knight (2008), Nolan has utilized the large format IMAX process as his favorite cinematic tool.  With every new movie he makes, he has incorporated more and more scenes shot with those very big and very expensive cameras.  Nearly 80% of his last feature in fact, the World War II epic Dunkirk (2017), had been filmed in IMAX.  So, even considering taking his newest film Tenet, which purportedly is his first entirely IMAX movie, and dumping it off on Warner Brothers’ new streamer, HBO Max, would be sacrilege to both Nolan and his fan-base.  So, a theatrical run of this movie needed to happen at some point.  The only question is, why now?  Why put this movie out while the country has yet to clear itself of this pandemic.  I understand wanting to assist the struggling theatrical industry, but with social distancing protocols still in place in theaters across the world, theaters aren’t exactly going to be a full house for quite a while.  Universal, Sony, and Paramount all moved their big tent-poles to next Summer, while Disney opted to push everything they could to November and December.  For some reason, Warner Brothers’ is making a gamble here, and they are betting high on Nolan to help bail them and the theatrical industry out.  The only question is, will Tenet indeed be that movie that will save the theatrical experience?  Can Christopher Nolan deliver a spectacle that lives up to it’s important status, or will it have proved that we were far from ready from returning back to normal?

Tenet, probably more than any other movie in the director’s oeuvre, plays around with Nolan’s fascination with the element of Time.  A reoccurring trope in all of his movies, the flow of time and it’s many different branches of theory, is clearly something that Nolan loves to explore in his stories.  Whether it’s in the nonlinear way he can tell a chronological story, like with Memento (2000) and Dunkirk, or the way he can manipulate time as a plot device, like in Inception (2010) or Interstellar (2014), he’s always looked at the flow of time as an interesting cinematic device.  Tenet places time front and center within it’s narrative, but adds a new flavor to Nolan’s use of the gimmick; inversion.  The movie follows an unnamed, highly-trained mercenary known as The Protagonist (John David Washington) who finds himself recruited into a secret underworld squad of spies tasked with stopping a world-ending event that is making use of inverted technology.  He learns that objects are being transported from the future to the past through a process of Inversion; meaning that they are moving backwards in time while everything else in moving forward.  A Russian crime lord named Andrei Sator (Kenneth Branagh) is the one smuggling all the future objects and has intentions of using them to create a nuclear bomb.  The Protagonist embarks on his mission towards stopping Sator’s plot by infiltrating his organization through a relationship with Sator’s wife, Kat (Elizabeth Dibicki).  Along the way, The Protagonist also receives assistance from a resourceful but mysterious British operative named Neil (Robert Pattinson), who helps him uncover the heart of Sator’s organization, as well as the technology he’s using to actually created the Inversion effect on both objects, and people.  With time literally in the balance, can the Protagonist manage to stop Sator from enacting his evil plan, and can he also end up making sense of what which way through time is the right course.

For me personally, just being able to see this movie was an adventure in itself.  I am un-apologetically an ardent fan of Christopher Nolan’s work; especially with not one but two of his movies making my best of the 2010’s list right here; Inception and Dunkirk respectively.  I have been eagerly anticipating Tenet ever since it was announced back in 2018, and was hoping that it would continue his track record of success.  When the pandemic began closing theaters, my hope was that things would get back to normal sooner rather than later, so that Tenet could still premiere on time.  With every new push back of the date, it became clear that this was just wishful thinking.  Now, some theaters are beginning to reopen, and Tenet is the movie being touted as the first big blockbuster to usher in this return to business.  Unfortunately, movie theaters are still not ready to reopen in all parts of the country where hot spots still exist, and sadly, I just happen to live in one of those hot spots.  Movie theaters in the Los Angeles metro area are still closed as of this writing, which made me worry that I would be having to wait weeks and maybe even months before I could see this movie while the rest of the country had already had their opportunity.  But, there has been a silver lining, which is that although LA remains a hot spot, it’s neighboring metropolis to the south, San Diego, is in the process of reopening, including it’s many movie theaters.  For some film enthusiasts, there is a limit to how far one will travel in order to see a movie, and for me, a 130 mile drive falls under that ceiling.  I decided that it was worth the long trip and I made my way down to sunny San Diego just so I could finally see Tenet at the same time that most of the rest of the country was.  So, did it live up to my lofty expectations and justify the long road trip that I took.  Well, yes and no.

I will say that my overall reaction to the movie is a positive one.  I would say that I don’t feel like I wasted my time and effort to travel down to  San Diego just to watch this movie.  At the same time, I do acknowledge that as far as movies within Christopher Nolan’s filmography go, I would’ve felt more satisfied with the risks if it had been for Inception, The Dark Knight, or Dunkirk.  Tenet is a massive spectacle that certainly needs to be experienced on the big screen to be fully appreciated.  At the same time, it also is probably the flimsiest story that Nolan has ever constructed for any of his movies.  Tenet is very plot heavy, and as a result, it has to rely upon excessive amounts of exposition just to make everything make sense for the viewer.  In the process, it sacrifices other important narrative elements like character development and emotional resonance.  It’s like Nolan spent so much time trying to make all the pieces of his intricate puzzle of a movie fall into place in a way that made sense while writing the screenplay that he forgot to add all the other important things that should belong in the story.  As a result, there is a bit of coldness to the story that may alienate the film from some viewers.  But, that being said, what Nolan lacks in emotional resonance he makes up for in daring visual extravagance.  Sometimes he has fallen in the trap of doing the exact opposite and relying too heavily on emotion to carry the story.  That’s why I liked Tenet over Interstellar for example.  Nolan injected too much emotion into that story to the point where it became sappy and inauthentic, despite delivering some incredible visual complexity at the same time.  Tenet is cold, but it’s also a thrilling adrenaline rush that kept me engaged all the way through.  It does pick up in the second half of the movie, where all the pieces do come into place and things start to make more sense.  But, I can see the slow burn of the first half as a being a make or break point for many viewers, and Tenet will likely be the most polarizing film he’s made to date.

One thing that helped me get through some of the more lackluster parts of the movie was in recognizing what Nolan was actually trying to accomplish with this movie.  Though Nolan is working with some very heavy, philosophical themes and out-of-this-world concepts, he’s also making what is essentially a very standard genre film too.  In particular, he’s making an espionage thriller, bearing the marks of a lot of tropes within the genre.  There is a very not so uncanny resemblance between Tenet and the likes of films from the James Bond franchise; much less a parody as a homage of sorts.  If you’re going to borrow inspiration, borrow from the gold standard I say.  Tenet has all the makings of a Bond film, but through Nolan’s unique vision.  As a result, I was able to go along with the movie in it’s more languid first act, because I anticipated that it was all going to lead to something pretty grand by the end, which it did.  And Nolan certainly makes his movies with an eye for what will look best through the lenses of the IMAX cameras.  Whether it something on a grand scale like a 747 airplane crashing into a storage warehouse, or something more intimate like a hallway fight scene between two characters, one moving through inverted time, he captures it with an incredible cinematic flair that is unparalleled in Hollywood.  And like the Bond movies he’s emulating, Nolan also does some incredible globe-trotting photography for his many locations.  The way that he crafted the inverted time environments are also pretty incredible, especially considering that much of it was done with very little digital touch-up.  Once the characters do enter inverted time, it does take the movie into surreal territory, which changes the whole dynamic of the movie in a positive way from it’s more straightforward set-up.  Working again with with the same cinematographer of Interstellar and Dunkirk (Hoyte Van Hoytema), Nolan has managed to craft a movie that still feels akin to his previous work, but also unique enough in it’s own right to stand out.

Another great thing about the movie is just how solid the cast is.  Albeit, their characters are written as pretty flimsy compared to those from other Nolan films, but the cast makes up for that with strong, engaging performances.  In particular, John David Washington carries the weight of the movie perfectly on his shoulders.  His character is such a blank slate on the script that Nolan didn’t even bother to give him a name, just merely calling him the Protagonist.  And yet, Washington stands out by giving a wonderfully charismatic performance.  He can be charming, authoritative, and even vulnerable throughout the film, and I get the feeling that Nolan left much of the development of the character up to the interpretation of the actor who plays him, and thankfully Washington brought a lot of talent into the role.  He’s also supported very well by Robert Pattinson in another departure for the heartthrob actor.  Pattinson’s performance feels like a throwback to the roles once played by Peter O’Toole, Robert Harris, or loyal Nolan stand-by Michael Caine (who cameos in Tenet) in the old espionage thrillers of the 1960’s, and he too does stand out as much more likable than he might have been originally written.  Kenneth Branagh gives the movie it’s most over the top performance as a growling, Russian thug, but this too feels at home in a movie like this, and he makes for an effective antagonist to John David Washington’s Protagonist.  There’s also solid work coming from Elizabeth Debicki, Aaron Taylor-Johnson, and Himesh Patel in their supporting roles.  What I also found rewarding was the pulse-pounding musical score for this film, which in itself marks a departure for Christopher Nolan.  For the first time in nearly 20 years, Nolan is working without his frequent composer Hans Zimmer, who actually turned this down to work on Denis Villeneuve’s upcoming Dune (2020) instead.  So, in his place, Nolan turned to Ludwig Goransson; famous for his Oscar-winning score to Black Panther (2018).  And Goransson actually proved to be capable of filling Zimmer’s big shoes, and create a musical symphony that matches Nolan’s bold vision perfectly.

It may not be among my favorite of Christopher Nolan’s films, but a B-grade Nolan movie is still far better than most other movies out there.  Nolan may have become a victim of his own success, in that he has to hit one out of the park every time in order to maintain his reputation in Hollywood.  That’s why I think that many may end up being disappointed by Tenet.  It finds the director at his most uneven, particularly at the script level.  And yet at the same time, you can’t also say that he’s lost his touch when it comes to crafting mind-blowing scale within his movies either.  Though it may lack some narrative punch, Tenet may also be the director’s most ambitious movie to date, which is saying a lot.  He really is pushing the envelope in a way you see from few directors in the business, and I am happy to see that he’s continuing to build his artistic vision around more and more original concepts.  He’s working within a familiar genre, yes, but doing so in a way that you’ve never seen before.  Honestly, I don’t think anyone has ever seen a movie that utilizes the different flows of time the same way we see here.  I think that Tenet is going to see a lot of repeat viewing from people wanting to see all the things they missed the first time around.  That could be the key to Tenet finding success on the big screen, but that’ll all depend on the kind of access audiences will have to endure during this ongoing pandemic.  For me, I may not have understood all of it, and may have found some of the movie lacking in certain aspects, but I am glad that I managed to see it at all, and in a movie theater setting no less.  Part of my enjoyment certainly came from being able to sit in a theater seat again, after having missed out on it for 6 months.  There really is no replacement for the theatrical experience, and I hope that it comes roaring back soon.  I would absolutely go see this movie again, if it were closer to home.  Hopefully I can see it in the even better 70mm IMAX format when it comes to LA finally.  When that happens, or if you are already near an open theater, obey the guidelines and wear a mask.  Tenet is flawed, but it is still an enjoyable ride nonetheless, and a great reminder of why we need to keep the theatrical experience going.

Rating: 8.5/10