Aedrian De Castro

The Odyssey delivers, in the way you’d expect from a Christopher Nolan film — which is to say, both the highs and the lows are unmistakably his. Shooting the whole thing on IMAX is a genuine feat, and Ludwig Göransson’s score is doing heavy lifting throughout (one of the best things about the film). But the Nolan-isms are all present and accounted for: dialogue that exists purely to explain plot, pacing that stumbles badly in the first act, and flashbacks that show up right when a scene should be allowed to sit in its own emotional weight instead of undercutting it. It’s a film that tells you about its characters more than it lets you actually spend time with them. Which makes it all the more surprising that this might be one of Nolan's most emotionally rich films yet. His Odysseus isn't the hero of the epic so much as a man hollowed out by his own violence, and the film argues that no homecoming can undo the cost of the war he fought or the family he abandoned. It's a bleak read on the material, and it's the best evidence yet that Nolan does have real feeling underneath the technicalities, even if he won't let a scene breathe long enough to show it. Still, flawed Nolan is still Nolan, and there’s enough sheer scale and craft here that I walked out satisfied. Impressive, exhausting, frustrating in all the ways Nolan always is. I just wish, for once, he trusted a moment enough to let it linger.

I went in expecting a boring, formulaic biopic about the origins of Tetris. What I actually got was a high-stakes Cold War thriller about contract law, the KGB, and international smuggling. Surprisingly incredibly entertaining. What really makes it work is the breakneck pacing and a killer soundtrack that elevates the whole thing.