Which tracking app do you use, and do you think it'll still be around five years from now?

Obviously this is my clear bias. Inception is Chris Nolan’s best movie. When Inception came out, I was itching to see it again and again, and saw it 3x in the theater. I have no desire to rewatch the Odyssey. I do have to give it props, it’s far more entertaining than his last 2 movies. Overall, Odyssey for me is a solid 8/10.

Watched it with friends yesterday. None of us were particularly excited when we got out, which was kinda telling. We agreed that the movie had some strong moments and sound effects were good. I think all of us werent sure what to think though.

It felt as if a young director got a major shot and created a relatively good movie but rushed it, and was inexperienced in writing dialogue and scene montage. Its especially noticeable in the first 15 minutes which were literally all over the place.

But I still could connect emotionally with the movie, especially the major themes and thought Matt Damon did a good job. Wouldnt watch it again though.

Am I glas that i watched it? Yes. Would I miss anything if I didnt? No.

The soundtrack was probably my favorite part of the film.

Yet Nolan has this issue where you can barely hear what the actors are saying. They sound muffled and overwhelmed by the soundtrack. Had the same issue with Tenet. And with Bane's original mumbling before the reedit he released. Biggest problem was that you can barely hear what some people are saying.

Is he doing this on purpose because he knows the dialogue kind of drags? He prefers soundtrack and sound effects over dialogue? I think it's just a mark of a dude who thinks he knows what he is doing but is clearly deficient in this aspect of filmmaking as a director. Hopefully he'll learn someday.

The Odyssey is a movie that met my expectations as a Nolan fan in some parts, while missing the mark in other parts.

First of all, you can definitely feel Nolan's filmmaking DNA injected into into this film. The movie displays a lot of grand spectacles achieved with mostly practical effects, immersing you into the movie in a way that few directors could. There are many standout scenes here, like the Cyclops and the Circe scenes, but also many understatedly beautiful scenes too, like the half-buried Trojan horse stranded on the shore, the ship floating on the vast ocean, and the ocean of armours without their bearers, scattered on the ground, signifying the casualties of the brutal invasion of Troy.

The themes Nolan wants to portray through his retelling of this classic tale are also executed satisfyingly. One great example is Odysseus's signature bow string pluck serving a warning to his prey, which is ironic considering his victory over Troy was with a suprise attack. This gesture repeats throughout the movie and plays a very important role in fleshing out Odysseus's character arc, which is well executed and concluded with the movie's final act.

The score and sounds used in this movie I found really immersive and enjoyable, despite many people complaining about it. It was really effective in signifying the horror and brutality of the journey. The Cyclops's screams of agony when he's injured made me feel like I was trapped inside the cave with him. The loudness didn't really bother me as it just added to the immersion, and my viewing had subtitles in my native languages to help.

The characters, although great, were pretty distracting in their casting, not in the culture war way, but in the fact that it's hard to seperate the star-studded cast from the characters they're playing. Spiderman from Tom Holland. Zendaya being Zendaya is pretty distracting despite being perfectly cast, and Jon Bernthal... well, he's Jon Bernthal lol. Surprisingly, Matt Damon melted into his role for me, I didn't even realise it was him until after the movie, which just shows how good his performance was.

The negative aspects of Nolan's works are especially pronounced in this movie which didn't bother me with his previous film, Oppenheimer. The kinetic pacing, although probably effective in engaging the audience, made it hard to feel the impact of the brutal scenes with little breathing room to take in the loss for Odysseus and his crew. It just felt like the movie was just moving from spectacle to spectacle. Despite being almost 3 hours, I wouldn't mind a couple of scenes to flesh the movie out even more.

I would have also preferred a little more explicitness in the brutality shown to further deepen the scars caused by the horror witnessed by Odysseus. Despite showing violence and terrifying monsters, the movie shies away from a lot of the action and gore you would expect from having a slaughter happen to civilians or Odysseus's crew. This also extends to the action, which despite being creative in its sequences (the hole in the floor weapon delivery service!), is also hard to follow with the sudden cuts making the choreography harder to understand and the strikes and stabs hidden by the deliberate camera angles making the fights less visceral. It's still a Nolan film, and he does tone down the violence a lot, but I just think portraying it explicitly would be effective for this type of story.

These flaws also contribute to my biggest complaint of the movie, which is that the emotional core didn't really stick with me. It's a combination of the lack of breathing room and the violence only going halfway as previously mentioned, and also the hit or miss writing. Despite having massive payoffs towards the end, the writing prevents those payoffs to truly hit emotionally. A story heavily involving the main character's family and centred around hope, longing, tragedy, grief, acceptance, and acceptance sorely needs strong character writing to resonate with me. Unfortunately, Nolan's weakness in bringing out potent emotions through his dialogue, evident in his stilted and awkward writing at crucial moments, made this movie lack the impact that would elevate this movie from being a fun spectacle to an odyssey that will stick with me long after the journey ends.

7/10

But damn did Agamemnon aura farm like crazy and Odysseus go full on Jason Bourne! I wouldn't mind 3 straight hours of just those. Release the directors cut Nolan, I know you have a full scene of Agamemnon

with his fully decked out Cyborg armour just standing menacingly!

I'd give it 6.5/10, maybe 7 if I'm generous. I enjoyed both Troy and Clash of the Titans more.

The good:

-The Agamemnon scenes were cool, very Darth Vader-esque

-some good dramatic build up and tense moments

-some good ocean/storm scenes that feel quite immersive

The bad:

-The "non-linear" story telling was weird

-many scenes were too dimly lit and very plain

-costumes, sets, casting, dialog, and acting didn't really evoke a particular historical period or culture or a people... it felt like a bunch of modern people just dressed up in generic ancient looking stuff for a Halloween party or something. Seemed more like a play than a movie at times. Did not transport me to deep antiquity.

-monsters weren't that well done

-some of the action went on too long, could have been edited down a lot

-Greek gods poorly done

-contrary to what others say, the music wasn't even that good as a whole. Lots of cheap cliche intensity build up noise.

-repetitive

-Troy seemed kind of small

To be fair the movie got better towards the end so I didn't get bored or want to leave the theater. I suppose it would be worth it for some entertainment but it doesn't deserve so much praise. It felt more like a TV series quality type of thing. Would definitely not watch a second time.

Don't expect some masterpiece like Lord of the Rings or something, just average entertainment.

I wrote this for fun. It's more formal. LMK your thoughts:

When I was in elementary school, Mr. Surage, the school counselor, came into my class weekly for wellness sessions. Mr. Surage told us stories about philosophy, and he had us craft while he read stories which championed the importance of truth and goodness. Among these stories was Homer’s The Odyssey. For a few weeks, Mr. Surage would read to us about the cyclops, the Trojan horse, the lurking suitors, and an arrow shot through axe heads. He told us to imagine the sounds of the Mediterranean, the leathered skin of the sun-beaten warriors, and the smell of the salt in the water. We were all intent on listening to his vivid storytelling—our minds were open because our hands were preoccupied with little looms from which we wove polyester yarn to make our version of mourning shrouds.

So when Christopher Nolan’s The Odyssey was announced, my inner child who listened to Mr. Surage stirred with anticipation, but my cynical adult self was nervous about Nolan’s Hollywood taste corrupting the adaptation. My favorite book, Frankenstein, had been repeatedly adapted in vain with its characters and sets falling victim to modern taste in lighting and clothes, and I was skeptical that Nolan could adapt the epic to a legendary standard proportional to the prolific storytelling abilities of Homer. I was right, of course. 

Fundamentally, I struggle with how startlingly plain and not Greek the scenes and sets look. And no, I don’t care about the skin color or phenotypes of the cast. What I do care about is the color grading of the ocean, the costumes, the hair, the makeup, the armor, and the lighting because I believe all of these elements were executed in a manner not true to artistry, but to accommodate for the limited taste of modern audiences brought up on CGI and beige minimalism.

Indulge with me for a moment on the ridiculousness of the set to understand how much better it could have been. The angles of Agamemnon’s armor resemble the bat suit. Tom Holland’s Telemachus looks identical to Peter Parker (they have the same haircut for Zeus’ sake). Nolan dressed Penelope in unadorned cloth and little to no jewels and yet expected us to believe she was the Queen of Ithaca. Nolan’s aesthetic choices make the movie look and feel like a box office cash grab that wants to appease audiences, not a work of art depicting the ancient Mediterranean and one of humanity’s greatest legends. What I see of The Odyssey looks 2026, just like how Troy looks 2004. Neither of these adaptations ever care to look BCE despite the fact that a historical adaptation would make for a more compelling visual narrative to an audience who is so unfamiliar with standards of beauty and grandeur outside of their own generations. This is not an issue just of aesthetics, but of the philosophy of translation.

The reason that classics are retranslated in the field of literature and the reason why there is always a new book on the Tutors in history is because the delivery of the story and knowledge needs to adapt to its audience. A modern translation of Plato’s The Republic will make greater sense to me than one written in vernacular English of the 19th century. However, it is the duty of the translator not to make the story smaller or more digestible for the contemporary reader, but rather to make it understandable while keeping true to the original author’s intentions. What I believe to be a great text-to-screen adaptation is the 1995 BBC miniseries Pride and Prejudice. The costumes, sets, Jane’s startlingly Roman face, and hairstyles are incredibly accurate to the Regency Era. When I first watched it, I genuinely thought it was ugly and was unable to appreciate the sideburn curls. However, after many rewatches, I began to understand the beauty in the time, expanding my own perceptions of aesthetics, bodies, mannerisms, and life. There is a balance to strike between delivering the story in a manner of which it can be understood and liked, but Nolan’s adaptation makes it so that it is easy on our eyes trained on low contrast, sleek metal, and iPhone face.

Consider how epic it would have felt to see something you had never seen before—the ancient Mediterranean. There would have been combinations of colors unique to the natural dyes of the region, draped on bodies in silhouettes no longer seen outside of ancient pottery in museums. Imagine the clash of vibrant and sculpted leather and bronze armor and the sounds of Ithaca, full of people bustling and eating and singing. Sure, it was Nolan’s artistic choice to not bring to life the visuals of the Greeks which now only exist in collections, but it was a poor choice because it assumes that we can only appreciate the beauty of what we already know–an obviously dangerous cycle.

My feelings on this topic are not limited to this one story. Rather, I believe Nolan’s catering to the perceived stupidity of the AMC Stubs is a systemic phenomenon. Little Women 2019 is one of my most hated films for its ridiculous costumes. They wear Ugg boots, and I have nothing else to say because I already feel my blood pressure raising. But these shoes were not an artistic choice similar to the addition of Converse sneakers in the opening scene of Marie Antoinette 2006—it’s just laziness. Hollywood constantly reproduces the same movies with the same stories or the same aesthetics because we audiences feed on nothing more than the slop which we liked before. I call for a pallet cleanse—a revolution of media to begin telling us and showing us something new, important, and dramatic. We need diverse choices which accommodate for the range of human beauty not just within our time, casting actors and showing bodies outside of the pool who we have already accepted as beautiful. 

Nolan’s The Odyssey ought to have delivered a beautiful translation of the story which indulged in the visual aesthetics of the period of which it is set, all while integrating modern bodies and a rejuvenated take on the ethics and themes of the story so as to be compelling to the audience. But alas, I shall mourn what could have been and tell myself that “at least Agamemnon looks hot in his armor.”

I believe a lot of people go to the movie hoping its filled with wonders and spectacles . But the film turn out quite different. Effective and successful marketing indeed .

But it fail to satisfy and quench audiences itch . Its overally quite underwhelming and expectation reverting . It appears to be something that it actaully is not . I won't call it a fraud but definitely a bait .

It utilize people's desire of awe but quickly try to dissuade you from obtaining that . It has that beautiful cloth to lure you into a abyss . The most memorable sequence in the movie is ironically the thing the movie want to get rid of .

To summarize the movie : Its a age of no magic , no wonder , no spectacle , no triumph , no glory , no divinity . Its a age of frustration , defeat , guilt , regret , decay and death .

Not at all what I was expecting. I really admire the Aftersun from a filmmaking perspective. It’s original, it’s a strong concept that it packed with emotion, the cinematic is simple yet beautiful, the acting is fantastic. I can understand how it’s a tearjerker jerker for so many people as it has such a melancholic tone and if you connect with the characters I’m sure it pulls on some emotional heart strings you didn’t even know existed. It feels very meditative to me. However I have to admit I didn’t really feel much from it. Maybe it’s because I’m lucky enough to have two loving parents who were always very open and honest with me but I can’t relate to Sophie at all. That being said I’m only 20 years old so maybe one day I’ll rewatch this and heavily relate to Callum but as much as I enjoy the film, I just don’t connect with it on an emotional level. Aside from that I also really loved how accurate it got the feeling of a uk family holiday abroad. The terrible entertainment, the young people on a drinking holiday, the little arcade games. It felt very really and gave me a nice wave of nostalgia.

The Shawshank Redemption is often remembered as a story about hope: an innocent man survives prison, exposes corruption, and escapes to a blue ocean beyond the reach of his captors. That reading is not wrong, but it is incomplete. Beneath the uplifting surface lies a much darker inquiry into what institutions can do to the human experience of time.

The most chilling word in the film is not “murder,” “solitary,” or even “corruption.” It is the quiet word Red uses to describe what has happened to Brooks: “institutionalized.”

Institutionalization is more than obedience to rules. It is the gradual erosion of a person’s ability to organize life from within. Shawshank takes away physical freedom, but its deeper power lies in repetition. The bells ring. The doors open. The doors close. Orders are given. Meals are served. Bodies move when they are told to move. Each day becomes almost indistinguishable from the one before it.

When time loses its texture, the future becomes difficult to imagine. A person may remain alive while slowly losing the ability to picture a life that is not merely another version of the present.

That is why Brooks’s story is so devastating. His tragedy is often described as an inability to adjust to freedom, but “freedom” is too simple a word for what confronts him. Outside prison, Brooks is legally free to move, work, and make choices. Yet he has lost the social world in which his life made sense.

Inside Shawshank, he was the librarian. He had a history, a place, and people who knew him. His role was restrictive, but it was also relational: others depended on him, recognized him, and understood where he belonged. Outside, he is given a job bagging groceries. It is a function, not a place in a human community. Customers pass before him as strangers. His age, memories, fears, and habits mean nothing to the machinery around him.

The modern world is not simply another Shawshank. It offers forms of movement and choice that prison deliberately destroys. Yet Brooks’s fate exposes a danger that can exist even in an open society: freedom of movement does not necessarily provide belonging. A person may be allowed to go anywhere and still have nowhere to stand.

Brooks does not move from having an identity to having none. He moves from a closed world in which he occupies a recognizable position to an open world that assigns him a task but cannot receive his history. He has escaped the walls, but he has not recovered a livable rhythm of time.

Andy Dufresne responds to Shawshank in a fundamentally different way. His resistance is not merely optimism, and it is not the sentimental claim that no prison can touch the soul. Shawshank does touch the soul. It humiliates, injures, isolates, and distorts. Andy’s achievement is not that he remains magically untouched. It is that, under immense pressure, he slowly reshapes the conditions of his inner and outer life.

His resistance is geological. It is built through pressure, patience, sediment, and almost invisible change.

The first layer of that geology is Andy’s refusal to let the prison completely dictate the rhythm of his consciousness. What he preserves is not an immortal, invulnerable core hidden somewhere beyond experience. He changes, suffers, and sometimes comes close to despair. What survives is a capacity: the ability to remember, judge, imagine, and feel according to a rhythm that the institution has not entirely written for him.

The film’s most famous expression of this resistance comes when Andy locks himself inside the warden’s office and plays Mozart over the prison loudspeakers. The public-address system exists to carry commands. Andy briefly takes control of it, but he does not replace one order with another. Instead, a duet from The Marriage of Figaro pours across the yard.

The prisoners stop working. Guards look upward. For a few minutes, people who have been reduced to numbers and routines respond to something that cannot be measured by prison discipline. No one has ordered them to stand still. Beauty has interrupted the schedule.

The moment matters because Andy does not keep the music to himself. He uses the institution’s own machinery to create a shared pause within institutional time. The prison can punish him for it, and it does. But it cannot make the moment not have happened.

Later, after solitary confinement, Andy says that Mozart was with him in the darkness. He does not mean that music has abolished suffering. He means that the prison could not entirely determine what his mind contained or how he experienced the passing hours. Memory, knowledge, and music gave him an internal measure of time when the external world had been reduced to darkness and silence.

Yet the film never suggests that inner freedom is enough. That is one reason The Shawshank Redemption is more honest than many stories about spiritual endurance. Andy does not learn to feel free while remaining indefinitely in prison. He does not turn confinement into a metaphorical paradise. He preserves an inner rhythm so that he can continue to act.

Without action, inward freedom can become harmless consolation—a private sanctuary that leaves the external structure untouched. Andy’s real danger to Shawshank lies in his ability to divide an almost unimaginable future into small pieces of work.

That is where the film’s geology becomes literal.

There is the tiny rock hammer hidden inside a Bible. There is the hard wall behind the poster. There are nearly two decades of silent excavation. There are fragments of stone carried in pockets and scattered across the prison yard. There is a tunnel whose existence remains invisible until the morning Andy is gone.

Shawshank tries to use repetition as an instrument of erosion. Andy turns repetition into excavation.

The institution makes one day resemble the next; Andy makes each day contain a fraction more of an exit. He does not defeat time. He changes what time is doing.

The same pattern appears elsewhere. He writes to the state legislature week after week until funding finally arrives for the library. Then he keeps writing. He expands the collection, helps prisoners study, teaches Tommy, manages financial records, preserves evidence, and constructs the paper identity that will eventually allow him to expose the warden.

Freedom, in this film, does not arrive as a miracle. It accumulates. It is formed by repeatedly translating intention into action, even when no immediate result is visible.

This is what distinguishes Andy’s hope from fantasy. Fantasy imagines another life and stops there. Hope, as the film understands it, gives imagination a schedule.

But Andy’s resistance would remain incomplete if it ended with his own escape. He might then be nothing more than an unusually resilient individual: a hard, brilliant crystal surviving alone under pressure. Instead, the life he builds inside Shawshank gradually enters the lives of others.

On the roof, Andy risks punishment to secure cold beer for the men who have been working in the sun. The scene is sometimes remembered as a small victory over the guards, but its emotional force comes from something quieter. For a brief afternoon, the prisoners sit together not as units of labor but as men sharing a drink after work. Andy does not even drink with them. He sits apart and watches.

He has created a temporary space in which dignity can return.

The harmonica he gives Red carries a similar meaning. It is not a grand declaration of friendship. It is a small object containing the possibility of a voice. Red does not immediately become a musician, and the gift does not transform him overnight. Its importance lies precisely in its incompleteness. It represents something not yet played, not yet claimed—a part of life that remains possible.

Most importantly, Andy leaves Red more than affection. He leaves him a route.

There is the volcanic rock wall in a field, the oak tree, the buried letter, the money, and the invitation to Zihuatanejo. These details matter because institutionalization cannot be defeated by a vague instruction to “have hope.” A person who has lost the ability to imagine a future may need a concrete next step: go to this place, find this tree, look beneath this stone.

When Brooks leaves prison, no one is waiting for him. When Red leaves, someone has prepared a direction.

Andy does not make Red’s decision for him. He cannot. Freedom imposed from outside would only be another command. What he does is preserve a place in the future where Red might arrive. He gives him enough trust, enough evidence, and enough practical help to make choice possible again.

That distinction is central to the film’s moral vision. Human connection does not rescue people by swallowing their independence. Andy does not create a new institution around himself. He does not demand loyalty or obedience. He acts in ways that enlarge another person’s room to act.

Red must still decide whether to violate the terms of his parole. He must board the bus, cross the border, and endure the uncertainty of travel. Andy can leave a path, but Red must walk it.

The final scenes on the Pacific coast are therefore not merely a reward after suffering. They reveal what freedom means after the fantasy of perfect escape has been stripped away.

On the beach, Andy is repairing an old boat. It is an important detail. The boat is not a ruin displayed as a monument to the past, nor is it a finished vessel waiting to carry him effortlessly into paradise. It is still being restored. Andy has left Shawshank, but he has not entered a world without labor, uncertainty, or damage. He is still working with worn materials. He is still preparing for another departure.

The difference is that the work now belongs to a future he has chosen.

When Red walks across the sand and the two men embrace beside the unfinished boat, the moment completes the film’s argument. Freedom is not the solitary triumph of one exceptional man escaping the walls. It is also the act of keeping a place open beyond those walls for someone else.

The institution tried to make time circular: the same bells, the same doors, the same yard, the same submission. Andy makes time directional again. Music leads to memory. Memory sustains judgment. Judgment becomes patient action. Action opens a tunnel. The tunnel leads outward. Friendship leaves a map. The map gives another man a future.

What Andy ultimately reclaims is not merely space beyond the prison. He reclaims the possibility that time can lead somewhere.

That may be the deepest meaning of redemption in The Shawshank Redemption. Redemption is not escape from all limitation, and it is not the discovery of an untouchable self hidden beyond the world. It is the slow recovery of a life in which time can once again become action, action can reach another person, and the future can become a place one might actually arrive.

Lemme keep this short and simple first off praise:
1. The atmosphere- wow oh wow does it set an atmosphere and tone like no other movie i’ve watched by the end does, its scary and tenseful and heavy in a way and made me think like could all this happen to me? (Ik they explained hypnosis doesn’t bypass ur morals but still)
2-The antagonist-very very very interesting, unsettling and introspective
3. Writing quality- After reading an analysis on it i gotta admit its writing quality is superb and it truly does have a convincing argument for being the best written film of all time
4. The acting- incredible

Criticism:

Its really just one: Atleast imo to understand it beyond stuff like “anyone can be a murderer” or whatever u need external knowledge about topics such as civilization ennui and banality of evil in order to really get a depthful understanding of it. Ik its been debated for time and time its meaning and fairs ik it can be (to a not small at all degree) a subjective film to alot of people but i just really wish it spoke about those aforementioned topics in the film cuz then people would be able to understand it beyond just “we all secretly want to kill” and stuff and have a deeper more thoughtful general consensus understanding and/or interpretation of the film.

Creds for the analysis i read: “ourtransientlives” on tiktok

Whether you (or I) like it or not, pickleball was always destined to get its own movie. It’s become one of the fastest-growing sports in America, seemingly occupying every empty tennis court in the country over the last few years, so it was really only a matter of time before Hollywood shamelessly decided to capitalize on the trend. The Dink embraces that premise with exactly the amount of sincerity you’d expect, delivering a family-friendly sports comedy that occasionally lands some genuinely funny jokes, even if it never really figures out what it wants to be beyond the pickleball movie.

The plot follows Dusty (Jake Johnson), a washed-up tennis pro whose career was cut short years earlier after running into Andy Roddick on the junior circuit and not only losing, but being embarrassed by the champ. Desperate to save his family’s struggling country club while finally earning the approval of his tennis-obsessed father, Dusty reluctantly does the one thing he swore he never would: play pickleball. What begins as a desperate financial decision gradually becomes something much more meaningful as he discovers not only a genuine appreciation for the sport, but also an unexpected sense of community among the people who welcome him into it.

It’s a perfectly serviceable premise, and for stretches, a pretty entertaining one. A lot of that comes down to Jake Johnson, who once again slips comfortably into the role he’s been refining for most of his career. From New Girl to the self-directed 2023 film Self Reliance and now The Dink, Johnson has built an entire persona around playing lovable, slightly aimless guys who can’t quite get out of their own way. The movie wisely doesn’t ask him to reinvent that formula. Instead, it lets him lean into the self-deprecating charm that’s made him such a consistently enjoyable screen presence. If you like New Girl and sports comedies, you’ll find, at the very least, fleeting enjoyment out of this.

Read my full review of 'The Dink' for Cinephile Corner

Earlier I was reading reviews here so I just thought it was relevant to share here. I was shocked that The Odyssey has a 97% on RottenTomatoes, so I thought it was my duty to leave my first ever review. I gave it a 7.5/10. However, 8 hours later I came back to check on my review and saw that it has been removed. I'm not sure if this is because of something I said in my review, but I don't think there was anything inappropriate about my review that an AI bot would remove it. Is there censorship happening on RottenTomatoes?

Edit: I really meant for the title to be a question, not clickbait. I would add a question mark at least if I could edit the title. I really just want to know if other people's reviews have been getting removed. I also originally said that I doubted it should be getting a 97% audience score, but this sub helped me learn that's not how the rating system works. For anyone who isn't sure how RottenTomatoes works, if it is a 6/10 or higher then it gives the movie a "fresh" rating.

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I convinced my husband to go to the AMC Screen Unseen with me today an Motor City was the movie they played today.

The movie opened up with the same action sequence as the trailer. I thought to myself "there is no way this is a good sign".

It turns out that this movie is a silent film. But, it does not deliver the premise well at all. There were several times within the first 10 to 15 minutes of the film where they could have said *something* and instead the characters just look at each other like 👁️👄👁️. The lack of dialogue at one point just kind of becomes hilarious.

This movie is filled with needle drops to try and make up for the lack of dialogue or lack of good writing. The worst needle drop is Fleetwood Mac's "The Chain". While it was technically fitting for the scene all I could think of was Guardians of the Galaxy.

The wigs, oh my god the wigs. They were laughably bad, like they were on par with the flashback scenes in Dexter.

I am convinced that Chad St. John, and Potsy Ponciroli hate women and possibly had a grudge against Shailene Woodley. She is the only female character in the entire movie and even though this movie has like 5 words of dialogue; absolutely BOMBS the Bechdel test. Her character only exists for the protagonist and the antagonist.

In the beginning of the movie when John Motor City himself gets arrested when the antagonist plants drugs in his car, she ends their 20 minute engagement ( not joking) after being upset that she thought he was selling drugs.

Which then makes NO SENSE AT ALL, because she ends up back with the antagonist who IS A VERY OBVIOUS DRUG DEALER. Not only that but she gets || sexually assaulted || JUST TO ADVANCE THE ANTAGONIST'S PLOT? That was where I lost all respect for this movie.

She literally only existed as eye candy for both men to fight over.

I sincerely hope that Shailene Woodley got compensated well for this movie and that she fired her agent.

It is disappointing, because the movie LOOKED great. The lighting was stunning.

If you want a good action movie that was made in 2026 with a silent protagonist watch "The Furious".

Spoilers for the Odyssey

I really dislike Christopher Nolan's adaptation. I've been a fan of his for years, and when I heard he was directing, I put all my trust in him because he's never let me down before.

My main issues:

There is way too much time spent in Ithaca; Penelope and Telemachus do not need to share so much screen time with Odysseus. It's ok for them to just be his goal and reason for wanting to be home without needing to be these deep characters.

There is not enough time spent on the "Odyssey" part of the story. One of the reasons that I loved the Odyssey is the feeling of adventure and wonder at every new island, but in this Nolan just seemed to treat that as a side plot.

Matt Damon seems incapable of showing any emotion but seriousness and stoicism. There were too many scenes where he just brought the completely wrong energy.

The Odyssey in this movie doesn't at any point really feel cunning, quick-witted, or like someone mentored by Athena. To make it worse, Nolan removed scenes that would have shown these traits, like the "Nobody" scene.

Nolan did the same thing that "Troy" did and removed the Gods. They are such an important part of the story and add to the illusion of the world; removing them just felt like an odd choice. I was so disappointed that they didn't go to Aeolus and the fact that the wind bag was removed. It was such a good moment to show the distrust that the crew really had for Odysseus, as they really felt dead and unimportant for most of the film.

The treatment of the characters in the movie is abysmal. Athena is just not a character; she has at max 4 lines. Polyphemus being reduced to this eat, sleep, open cave monster really annoyed me. In addition to removing all of his dialogue. Circe being this bitter old woman hiding away in a shack just isn’t a change I understand for the original context of the story. The pig scene was interesting, and the sister plot was fun, though. Not getting to see the Siren’s kind of ticked me off, but I get the change. Scylla also really annoyed me because their design looked so cool, but I barely got to see any of it.

It was too modern. The modernity takes away from the illusion of the ancient Greek setting. Characters saying “Fuck” just take away from it.

My favorite scene was when they were in the Underworld, and I love Elliot Page's performance; I just have a dislike for the Underworld design. I wasn’t expecting Dante's Inferno, but it just being an Island with gray skies just takes away from the magic.

The ending just destroys the whole purpose of the story. The Odyssey was about Odysseus wanting to go home. But when he gets home, he immediately leaves with his wife and leaves his son behind.

Loved Anne Hathaway's performance

Lastly, I would understand all of Nolan's changes under the guise that he was going for realism, and the Gods would be in the way of it. But I can’t take that seriously when you have Odysseus in a Kill Bill montage of 1 vs 128.

Noticed a lot of reviews that came with spoilers or nuances from homer or "olympian non-cinematic literary universe" as I'd like to call it. Thought I'd render a slightly simpler take for the casual viewer.

First of all, a bulk of its brilliance lies in the low barrier to entry where the audience doesn't have to make the oh so great effort to educate ourselves to be part of this adventure. It is inclusive to the non-reader, intense to the action lovers, and even engaging for the post 9-5 crowd just accompanying their partner after a long day of work.

Secondly, this is a sequel that unravels its own backstory through character development. This makes the story easy to follow despite the hopping around from past to present across different points in history. The storytelling is excellent - even the characters who are supposed to be static remain static in their own gradients of uncertainty.

Also, I enjoyed the thematic overlaps in this film. If you have watched previous notable works of Nolan, you'd know that regret & redemption have always been a staple in his direction. This adaptation is no exception. Nolan was able to break the film down into multiple key stories, harmonizing the themes as the audience shifts from one episode to the next.

Highly recommend to catch this film in the original 70mm IMAX if it's available in your city, if not, still watch it in the cinema instead of waiting for its release on streaming platforms. It's a cinematic experience that won't disappoint. If you're intending to watch for the cast, rest assured this is not Twilight. A solid 9/10 in my opinion, can't give the reason for the missing 1/10 if not I'd have to spoil 😂 😂😂

As a Nolan fan, I, like many of us, have come to appreciate his ability to make the most of a story using his unique editing and storytelling style- mainly the pacing between multiple events ongoing at the same time which might also be in present or past present. I felt this was the hook which he used to build the momentum scene after scene leading to a grand crescendo, only to be followed by another one few minutes later, and then another one. Leaves you baffled and amazed. In the odyssey, it really did not work.
Cast- Mat Damon just didn’t do it for me. He acted well, but I guess he lacked charisma
Tom holland- Why?
Zendaya - Why?
Charlize Theron- Okay
Robert Pattinson- i felt he was playing a caricature of a villain

Story- The parts I was most excited about- Cyclops, hades and the underworld, circe - were very small.
The fact that cyclops was the son of Poseidon, the god of the sea and storms was just defeated so easily, I actually kind of felt bad for him lol

The movie did not give any context to who Charlize Theron was? I read it after and she was an immortal spirit?

So Odysseus son Telemachus visits Menelaus and Helen and just returns? He says I dont know where my father is but i know who he is now?

The whole song of sirens was fascinating but so quick.

Underworld was by far the most fascinating sequence- Nolan really nailed it. I feel like watching it again.

Music did not hit? I actually thought why does every scene has to have a musical score, most of the scores did not hit
Last fighting sequence was just meh.

It was too rushed a movie and too fast with little time to even to notice or admire things which were amazing.

I know i am in the minority as I heard most people love the movie so probably I would be rewatching it soon.

I went to see it yesterday. I thought it was OKAY. You always hope a director's next film will be their best, but that definitely isn't the case here.

First off, the performances by Pattinson, Patel, Leguizamo, and Morton deserve praise. As for the "DEI casting" discourse: for those losing their minds over it, don't bother. It's basically a non-issue. Elliot Page, Zendaya, and Lupita Nyong'o have so little screen time that there's barely enough to judge their performances... So please, stop it.

As for the cinematography, I still don't understand why Nolan chose to shoot this in IMAX. The medium should serve a purpose. With that much money invested and all the physical limitations of the format (like those roughly three-minute magazine loads), there should be a compelling reason to use it. I don't think this film provides one. There are far too many close-ups with an incredibly shallow depth of field. What's the point of having only an actor's face—from the tip of their nose to their ears—in focus while everything else is constantly blurred? That kind of look has definitely been fashionable for the past five to ten years, but I don't think it serves the film. It completely wastes the incredible locations where it was shot.

Ultimately, I felt IMAX was used out of sheer extravagance. The large format simply wasn't put to good use. By the halfway point, I found myself wondering how John Ford would have shot this using the same equipment Nolan had—or even just classic 70mm. I imagine it would have been breathtaking, like a painting brought to life. Joel Meyerowitz had a reason to shoot 35mm, and Ansel Adams had a reason to shoot large format. Nolan did it simply because he could. That's it. I won't even get into the fact that you can't properly experience the film unless you happen to live near one of the mere 41 theaters equipped to show it as intended—that's a whole discussion on its own.

As for the color palette, while it's true there's an overuse of that grayish filter, sometimes it's justified and other times it isn't even there, with the sea and sky looking much closer to what the Mediterranean actually looks like. I think the controversy surrounding the colors is somewhat manufactured. Nolan overdoes it, sure, but it's not nearly as bad as people make it out to be.

The movie is long, but I didn't feel it was that long. That doesn't mean I was thoroughly entertained, though. Once again, it was simply okay. I did like the decision to merge the Calypso storyline with the island of the Lotus-Eaters. It works well for the screenplay.

Leaving out the bag of winds, I think, reflects Nolan's desire to strip away as much of the supernatural from The Odyssey as possible. I don't necessarily dislike that choice, but I would have preferred a much more direct and explicit intervention by the gods, as in the original poem. Along those same lines, Athena is treated less as an actual deity and more as Odysseus' guilty conscience—a sort of Jiminy Cricket. That's one of the biggest departures from the source material. In the poem, Odysseus is never portrayed as someone suffering from PTSD, whereas in the film he's consumed by guilt.

There's also the famous "Nobody" joke with the Cyclops, followed by Odysseus shouting his real name afterward. Again, I don't think Nolan omitted it because it "doesn't translate into English." I think it was a deliberate decision to minimize the magical aspects of the story and the gods' overt intervention.

In the end, the movie is just okay. The actors with the most screen time (aside from Pattinson and Leguizamo really did their work) deliver competent performances, but nothing particularly memorable. The dialogue isn't anything special either—they completely fumble that random Bronze Age reference. Seriously, what the hell was that?

The cinematography and lighting are "solid" enough, but using IMAX for this film feels completely unjustified. It's pure technical extravagance for its own sake.

Would I go see it again? Absolutely not. 3 out of 5 stars.

Luckily got to see it in PVR Priya … that’s actually as close as it gets to watching this film in all its magnificence. Absolutely loved it… not just for the amazing acting (specially Anne Hathaway, true queen), the cinematography, music which just amplifies and makes you feel each emotion to the bones the bollywoodish ending… what’s truly remarkable is how beautifully the story has been stitched together … each scene contributes so nicely to the whole narrative which culminates so beautifully in the end. Little details and so many arcs weaved together and to finish it all in a most satisfying manner is what makes Nolan an unmatched storyteller.

In terms of scale this movie just didn’t have that , troys walls are 12 feet tall? The army looked small imo . The whirlpool was even tiny

The witch ? You see she obviously has had visitors before who have left with no amour and you suspect nothing? Spent 5 minutes showing how brutal the transformation is and the soldiers just have no emotional scaring? They just shift back and they’re fine. Seriously? Its like got when john snow comes back from the dead and its never mentioned again

The hand of Zeus , literally just a flash of light.

The Sirens were good

The mountain monster ended too abrupt and was out shadowed by the other 2 monsters in succession.

Zendaya was literally Just zendeya . No nothing, doesn’t look ethereal at all.

I forgot her name but oddesuses wife was so whiny and like a pouty teen Im actually happy she never became queen.

The costume designs just sucked, plastic looking. Looked like clay. They had suede vests that looked bullet proof.

Why is john berthal being punisher?

Challenge room was literally every running around like headless chickens the chaos was comedic and not giving a sense of panic.

Giants again really? just in amour and funny moving trees? Really? I think centaurs would have been better idk if that’s accurate not like the movie was.

I don’t care for accuracy as long as the artistic choice to deliberately ignore it still leads to a good film.

Again set design was just trash , challenge room is just brown wood and warm lights? with some axes in the middle.

did like somethings but honestly not good imo
5/10 agree or disagree.

Hear me out.

Ever since I rewatched both movies, I haven’t been able to get this comparison out of my head.

I know they’re completely different genres. One’s a dark drama, the other’s a romantic comedy.

But I don’t think genre matters here.

I think they’re asking almost the exact same question:

What happens when a middle-aged man realizes he’s spent years living someone else’s life?

Both movies start with a guy who’s completely lost himself.

They’re emotionally disconnected from their wives.

They’re distant from their kids.

They’re stuck in comfortable suburban lives that secretly make them miserable.

They’re not really living anymore.

Then both movies introduce someone who completely changes their direction.

For Cal, it’s Jacob.

For Lester, it’s a mix of Angela and Ricky. Angela wakes something up in him, but Ricky is the one who ultimately changes how he sees life.

Then the same transformation begins.

Both men stop caring what people think.

They start taking care of themselves.

They become more confident.

They finally stand up for themselves.

They try to become the person they feel they used to be.

At first, both movies almost trick you into thinking this is about getting younger, looking better, or attracting women again.

But by the end, neither movie is really about that.

They’re about rediscovering who you are.

The wives also feel surprisingly similar.

Both marriages were basically over before the movies even started.

Both wives cheat on their husbands with men who are more successful and have higher social status.

Both families look like the perfect suburban family from the outside while everything is quietly falling apart.

Even the climaxes feel weirdly similar.

Both build toward chaos because of a false assumption involving the main character and someone they supposedly had sex with.

In Crazy, Stupid, Love, David thinks Cal slept with his daughter.

In American Beauty, Colonel Fitts convinces himself Lester is sleeping with Ricky.

Then comes the biggest difference.

The movies split apart.

American Beauty says that sometimes people realize what truly matters only when it’s already too late.

Crazy, Stupid, Love says maybe it isn’t too late.

One ends in tragedy.

The other ends in forgiveness.

One ends with death.

The other ends with a second chance.

That’s why I honestly can’t stop thinking about Crazy, Stupid, Love as the happy ending version of American Beauty.

I’m not saying they’re the same movie.

I’m saying they feel like two different answers to the exact same question.

Am I completely overthinking this, or has anyone else ever noticed these similarities?

Let me begin by saying that Greek mythology is not my niche. I remember reading the story in high school and that's pretty much it. When the movie came out, I deliberately didn't read the odyssey or any reviews because I wanted to be a blank slate.

When I left the theater, I couldn't speak for at least 10 minutes.

To make things simple (and palatable for every person wanting to rip me to shreds for this review lol), I'll summarize my liking of the movie into 4 points.

1. Nolan revived theaters

In an age where people (and studios) will opt for a release via Netflix versus a traditional theatrical release, seeing people flock to the movies and grab a popcorn to watch a film in its intended format is so beautiful. Being in a packed theater and debriefing with total strangers is an experience I will hold dear. It takes a creator that loves the art of filmmaking and reveres the sanctity of the theater to produce a movie like this.

1. The option to not use CGI is a triumph and it should be rewarded as such

Nolan chose to use animatronics, extras, and special effects to formulate this film. Honesltly, I don't think many would fault him for using CGI for this sort of movie. In a lot of ways, it would be expected. His decision to do things the "old-fashioned way" serves as a rightful nod and appreciation to the art and integrity of film making. It takes so many things going right for something like this to be even plausible much less acceptable for an IMAX screen. While I was watching some of the big battle and fight scenes, all I could think about was the extras, the amount of people assigned to makeup and wardrobe, every PA and set assistant having to clean up and reset for a shot, cooks who fed the hungry staff, etc. I don't know the specifics but I'm sure this movie employed a lot of people who's job could've been replaced by a computer.

1. The score is incredible and no it wasn't too loud

There really isn't much to add here. Ludwig Göransson is absolutely insane for this score. While I may not be a nerd when it comes to Greek mythology, I can hold my own when it comes to discussing music. The score was enchanting and haunting. Just accept that it was good lol

1. Nolan gave us tormented hero instead of a proud one and that's the story we needed

I know this point will get me crucified so I'll enjoy my last moments of freedom while I can. As I said before Greek mythology is not my thing, but I do love literature and I can understand why seeing an onscreen adaption depart from the original source material can be frustrating. However, I would argue that a hero is not what we needed to see as an audience. We needed to see someone affected by their own actions. This is something that seems to be lost nowadays.

If the original poem is as layered and deep as many on this Reddit attest, then Nolan chose a thread in the story line and used it to hold a mirror to the viewer. Watching someone as heroic as Odysseus come face to face with his actions can only provoke either deep self-reflection or repulsion. The wide array of good and bad reviews for this movie illustrates that clearly. Could Nolan have included more things from the original poem and keep the same theme? Possibly, but I'd reason that the story he wanted to tell would get lost in the story that people were expecting.

In a nutshell, this movie touches on the topic of sin, departure from morality, and what you would do if you had another chance to make things right. To talk about something like this in the framework of a classic poem is not only smart but sobering.

That is all.

P.s please be nice! I have seen some crazyy comments on this subreddit about this film. At the end of the day its just a movie, the world isn't ending! (not today at least)

Walking out of Christopher Nolan’s Odyssey was a disorienting experience. This movie rarely has the esoteric mindfuckery which is glamorously associated with most of Nolan’s filmography, or I should say in better words, what one should expect given Nolan’s filmography. Giving credit where its due, Adapting Homer’s epic composition for the modern sensibilities is a herculean task in itself and one could consider it a worthy objective to tackle after making landmark movies spanning almost every defining genre known to mankind. But the thing about historical movies or in this case quasi mythical movies is that unlike Nolan’s previous forays into science fiction with Tenet and interstellar or Biographical sympathy vehicles like Oppenheimer, while such movies , though amazing no doubt, are not based in reality which is not as similar as presenting a Greek epic on screen. Because the story of Odysseus is known to a few, if not many, and the era it is supposed to have happened did occur in this timeline. And in such cases the elegancy of an adaptation depends mostly on the way it views the story it is meant to translate.

 And that is where Odyssey gets it all wrong. The film imposes an anachronistic, PTSD-ridden, visceral guilt complex on Odysseus, a Hero who, in the original edict, unabashedly proclaims himself to be “The Sacker of Cities”. Homer’s Odysseus lives for glory but in this anachronistic retelling he barely feels….glorious? Men survived wars because men had their ideals traded for glory. A bronze age Greek will not feel bad about murdering and pillaging his enemies. on the contrary it would give him honor because that is what the “society” expected of him. This “subversion” catalyzes a cascade into a sequence of bizarre storytelling choices this movie makes since it’s trying to tell someone’s story by fundamental change in his ethos, while keeping the events in his life similar.

Not to say, the blatant disregard and misrepresentation of ancient Greek culture saddens me, as a history enthusiast. Aura farmer or not Agamemnon’s batsuit is one of the worst offenders here. So are the tacky 3d printed plastic lookalike abominable wardrobe choices for both the Trojans and the Greeks, which are so distinguishingly not of bronze age by a margin of a millennium for crying out loud, severely hinder the required immersive engagement. Notably The film has certain high points and strong dialogue in certain sequences ..particularly the song of sirens and the action sequence with the Laestrygonians (giving them medieval knight armor was again a ….choice).

As for the cast, the advantages of casting every 2^nd popular face in Hollywood is that there is no bad acting in the movie. While certain casting decisions feel questionable, they do not hamper the story in large. The spine-chilling score by Ludwig and eye watering visual imagery created by Hoytema are a few other bonuses which palliates the otherwise uninspired viewing experience.  Nolans devotion and hard work in making everything practical, his unyielding technical fetishism and non-reliance on CGI imagery shows but it makes you wonder that if more effort was given in understanding the story it was supposed to tell instead of stretching the viewing space by a few inches on the longer side, maybe we would have had a better movie in our hands.

Note: Thanks for reading till the end. This is my first draft and first attempt at writing a critical movie review. all insights and feedbacks will be appreciated.

This movie kind of reminds me the eerie museum experience about ancient civilization. Mainly because the movie score is quite raw and instrumental .

Some scenes feel very archaic vibes , it also does remind me of documentary channel on biblical story .

At times its very dim like some corner in a museum . Especially the Cyclops and Ithaca temple sequence .

The shortcomings of the film is its lacking of mythology . Here are my thoughts on how to improve the film :

Have Odysseus reveal his real name , then Polyphemus curse him with a long chantful howl .

Make Laestrygonians scene more intense , have them actually eat people and throwing rocks . Have people and ship crushed by rocks .

Redesign Circe's scene , make the hut more like a shrine . Make Circe more seductive . Make the sequence more mysterious .

Remake Siren scene , show their appearance . And show us the sailors mesmerized by their songs like a child . Demonstrate the insanity among sailors who are lured by their beauty and voice .

Remake Scylla scene , make it a monster with multiple actual human heads .

Overall , amplify the mythic aspect and make the journey more impossible . The movie fail to do that . I will give a solid 6 .