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This film answers the questions we have about what makes and how Bruce Wayne becomes Batman. And those answers are both challenging and very satisfying.

The film hits the ground running, and it doesn't let up until the end credits. Along the way, we see Bruce tinkering on and refining the Batman persona, as well as the incredible sacrifices he must make in the process. I also liked the presentation of Batman as being part of a greater team of willing and unaware allies, and not as a one-man show. One could say that by presenting Batman's vulnerabilities and limitations, it humanizes the character and enhances the audience's suspension of disbelief.

The myriad of villains are all fresh and interesting, as well as adding additional layers to the story, the setting, and the Batman/Bruce Wayne character. The cinematography is breathtakingly beautiful at times, and the visuals are another standout feature of the film. Also, Hans Zimmer and James Newton Howard's music also has a je ne sais quoi that takes the film to another level.

Probably the only flaw to this film is that it renders Tim Burton's and Joel Schumacher's Batman films almost unwatchable due to their cartoonishness...

Magic, revenge, murder. Those are the things the movie deals with, but it's really about obsessions—and the lengths people will go toward them, and the costs they pay in doing so. And one nice thing about this film is that it stays with you long after leaving the theatre, thinking and reflecting on its themes.

Like the other good Nolan films, this one gets better on repeat viewings. On the one hand, it helps make a bit more sense of the non-linear storytelling, but on the other hand, its wonderful discovering the hints and clues about the two protagonists—and the film has a lot of them sprinkled through its narrative, if you're paying attention. And speaking of the protagonists, it is remarkable that they are neither portrayed as good nor evil. Amoral at best.

One of the highlights of the film is the magic, and how so-called magicians perform their illusions. Naturally, it evolves into illusions and experiments that use electricity—something that still has magical properties for many people even in this day and age. Above all else, this film is a good mystery (or illusion, in the sense that the movie defines it as such), and even if you missed the clues (or caught them), the reveal at the end is still shockingly cathartic.

I want to give this film a higher rating. I really do. It has all the right elements (acting, effects, music) and makes some very pointed observations and arguments. But it just doesn't come together for me.

Christopher Nolan's films are generally what I describe as 'breathless', in the sense that they have so much to say. Such as "Inception", "Interstellar", and "Batman Begins". However, The Dark Knight doesn't feel like that. Well, aside from the first reel, and the last ten minutes. The rest? I'll paraphrase Wikipedia: 'the film is always climaxing, and scenes are cut off just as they're getting interesting.' That 'constant climaxing' ends up deadening the senses, and coupled with the cutting off, it prevents some of the film's most important points from making a proper impact.

I'd also like to add that Bruce Wayne is practically invisible in most of the film... troubling, as he is the most interesting character in "Batman Begins", and arguably the one person who the film should have been paying more attention to. The other character missing from the film is Gotham City itself. Maybe Nolan gave the city a bright and clean overhaul to make the film more relevant to the audience, but it came at the cost of eliminating a lot of the inner city grunge—the very thing that spawned Batman and gave him his raison d'etre.

As the movie is full of excellent, believable performances, and as each scene more or less works on its own, I'm left with the conclusion that the movie overreached itself, and the pacing problems are down to grief during editing over the (at the time) recent passing of Heath Ledger. And speaking of Ledger: his performance is one of the main reasons to see this film.

I'd like to note that I'm making this review after watching the film numerous times. I felt that it was more effective on the first viewing; which is another thing unusual for a Nolan film—usually they get better after the first viewing!

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Nolan returns to form in the Batman series with this film. His Batman is as much about the present and the future, as it is about looking back on the past for the motivations and causes. The flashbacks in this film are plentiful and refreshing, and sometimes breathtaking.

This film is about what it takes to be Batman—in the sense of the will needed (what makes Bruce Wayne a 'super' hero), and the emotional and physical costs involved. This film unflinchingly examines both. They're not pretty, but through it, the Bruce Wayne character is rounded out even more than we could have hoped for. That examination of Bruce Wayne makes this film one of the better ones in the series. More than the title character alter ego, it is Bruce Wayne himself who is the most interesting thing about Batman - and this film continues from where "Batman Begins" left off in probing what drives him on.

I really liked the film's running theme of questioning 'how much is enough' and 'when is it time to move on'. Questions that the viewer readily answers, but the film holds off answering until the very end. And oh, what an end! The film keeps building and building and building... for a truly cathartic payoff. And in a decade of endless sequels, it's great to have a proper conclusion to a film franchise (never mind that this one was restarted a few years hence).

Hans Zimmer's score is also one of, if not the highlight of the film. Not only does it revisit the themes from the preceding films, but he incorporates aspects of the story into it (sometimes even before we're aware of their significance—another reason why Nolan's films get better when watched again). And at one point, I found myself wondering if the apparent co-opting of Bane's theme by Batman in the climax was a deliberate choice! Great stuff.

The mark of a great movie is that it engages you on all levels, stays with you long after you've finished watching it, and starts to influence your later actions. This movie does that.

I went into this movie with trepidation—it was billed as a science fiction film on par with "2001: A Space Odyssey", that saw the creation of not one, but two (!) scientific papers, and was generally panned by the Internet movie-going public. Suffice to say, my expectations were more than surpassed by this movie.

It had me firing on all mental cylinders—and that was before they even launched into space! The way the film introduces the setting and characters benefits the rest of the film immensely. By the time the title journey begins, we've got an extremely solid foundation for why they must make the journey, the stakes involved, and most importantly, an emotional bedrock underlying it all.

That emotional bedrock, and the character growth and choices stemming from it, have made this film truly unforgettable. I've seen many films, and forgotten just as many of the characters that populate those films. The ones in this film have stayed with me. So, too, have their sentiments and advice. Perhaps my perspective as an expat parent has made the emotions in this film that much more poignant for me than to the usual young adult moviegoers.

One of the things I really liked about this film is its depiction of near-future space travel. Perhaps more than the broad strokes of space travel (if I'm getting dizzy briefly looking out the windows of their spinning spaceship, what about the astronauts in the film?), it was the small touches that really got me (what is the most fascinating music for an astronaut on an interstellar journey? The answer is surprisingly akin to what an expat listens to in their adoptive country!).

Perhaps as an expat parent, this film talked to me much more than it does to others. Nevertheless, it is another bold step forward by Christopher Nolan, and by focusing as much on the inner, mental challenges as much as the external, physical ones, he has succeeded in creating another thought provoking, great movie. Recommended.

In 1940, Allied soldiers have retreated to Dunkirk. They are surrounded by German forces. British Private Tommy Jensen survives a German ambush and makes it to the beach, where he finds thousands upon thousands of troops awaiting evacuation. He meets Gibson, an aloof soldier. After a dive bomber attack, they attempt to get aboard a hospital ship, but are ordered off. The ship is soon sunk by dive bombers, and Tommy saves Alex from the sinking ship. The Royal Navy requisitions civilian ships in Great Britain that can get to the beach. Mr. Dawson sets out on his boat with his son Peter to avoid letting the navy commandeer their ship. The teenager George, who is looking for adventure, impulsively jumps on board just as they leave. En route to Dunkirk, they rescue a shivering, shell-shocked soldier from a wrecked ship. When he realizes that they are heading to Dunkirk, the soldier demands that they turn back and tries to take control of the ship. In the scuffle, George suffers a head injury. Concurrently, three Spitfires cross the English Channel with orders to defend the evacuation. After their leader is shot down, Farrier assumes command. His wingmate, however, is soon hit and has to ditch in the sea. Farrier continues toward Dunkirk. Tommy, Alex, and Gibson make it onto a destroyer. En route to England, it is hit and sunk by a torpedo. The three soldiers have no choice but to head back to the beach, where they rejoin the hundreds of thousands of men who are desperate to get off of it.

Dunkirk is a thought provoking film. This is partially because the story is told from three perspectives with different time dilation—land (one week), sea (one day), and air (one hour). The other challenging aspect is that Dir. Nolan is interested in depicting how individual actions, whether self-serving or selfish, add together into the success or failure of the entire evacuation. While it is hardly gruesome, it is an incredibly tense film from start to finish. The strongest lasting impression is the sheer desperation of the men to not only survive, but get off the beach as soon as possible.

The highlights of the film are that pretty much everything was filmed in frame—with only a minimal amount of CG—and the beauty of Hoyte van Hoytema's cinematography. While the former adds infinitely to the realism of the film, the later makes it all look breathtakingly beautiful. The only drawback of the film is that it doesn't really address the struggles of the French soldiers who were also ensnared with the British. Nevertheless, the film is a tour de force by an auteur at the top of his game. And while it has all the hallmarks of a Nolan film (time dilation, Michael Caine, etc.), it is also unique in Nolan's catalogue as a film that isn't going breathless from all the exposition needed to explain what's going on.

"Protagonist", a CIA agent, participates in an extraction at the Kyiv Opera House during a terrorist attack. He loses his team and the plutonium-241 that the operative was carrying. A couple of weeks later, Protagonist is recruited by an organization called Tenet, and is briefed on bullets whose entropy has been inverted—meaning that they move backwards through time. Tracing the inverted bullets to Mumbai, he meets his handler Neil, and break into the home of arms dealer Priya Singh, the original source of the bullets. They learn that Priya is a member of Tenet, and that the bullets were sold to and inverted by Russian oligarch Andrei Sator. In order to get close to Sator, Protagonist approaches his estranged wife Kat. She is being controlled by Sator through blackmail. In exchange for her help, Protagonist agrees to free her by stealing from Sator's freeport storage facility in the Oslo Airport the item that he is using to blackmail her. After breaking into the facility, Protagonist and Neil are startled when the mysterious "turnstile" in the centre of the building suddenly activates and two masked men jump out of it. Jarringly, the one that the Protagonist fights is moving backwards through time! Later, Protagonist is introduced to Sator, and they form a partnership to retrieve the plutonium-241 that was lost in Kyiv. Moments after Protagonist and Neil steal the plutonium, they discover that it is actually an artifact that has travelled back in time from the future. An inverted Sator, who is holding Kat hostage, immediately ambushes them to retrieve the artifact. Protagonist soon learns that not only is Sator allied with and advised by people in the future, they are actively trying to cause WWIII!

Tenet is a true mind-bender. Its time manipulation theme is similar to that of Memento, in which a pair of storylines are moving concurrently both forwards and backwards in time toward a common point. The key twist is that in Tenet, the backwards flowing one is literally moving backwards, and often occurs concurrently to the forward flowing one. This results in not only viewing the same sequence from a different perspective, but experiencing it 'backwards' as one set of characters progresses 'forward' through it.

Confused? I was the first time I saw the film. Nevertheless, I found two quotes in the film to be helpful in unlocking the story: "Don't try to understand it, feel it.", and "There is no first wave—Red Team and Blue Team operate simultaneously. Don't get on the chopper if you can't stop thinking in linear terms." One recurring motif is a pincer movement. However, the film takes pains to note that it's not a pincer movement in 'space', but in 'time'.

This is one of those rare films that becomes more and more understandable (and enjoyable!) the more times one watches it. All the more so as you become aware of what kind of clues to pay attention to. While some have complained that the dialogue is drowned out or hard to hear at times, in a recent viewing I realized that that was the director's way of telling us not to focus on that—in one sequence, the in-movie dialogue had even just instructed one character to pay attention to something else!

Tenet is very well acted, directed, and framed. I found the action sequences set up and filmed extremely well—and despite the dense script and mind-bending concept, the visuals are very clear and easy to follow. What I like most about the film is that the beginning and ending of the movie are not necessarily the start and end of the story (if such concepts are even applicable!) This is a film unlike any before, and due to the complaints it has received, most likely not going to be reproduced any time soon.