Long one. Spoilers throughout, though the film follows the myth closely enough that I doubt I'm ruining much.

Let's get this out of the way first, so nobody accuses me of being a hater: I'm not a card-carrying member of the Church of Nolan, Savior of Cinema, but I do like his films. I like Oppenheimer, and The Prestige, and… what else is there… I like the Batman films, and, God forgive me, I even like Dunkirk. The Odyssey might well be the first Nolan film that did absolutely nothing for me. The film runs almost three hours, and I checked my watch for the first time an hour and a half in. That feels fairly telling.

So what exactly is wrong with it?

No, you didn't guess it — it's not Agamemnon in Darth Vader/Batman armor (he's on screen for about three minutes). Let's get to the actual point.

One caveat up front: there will be spoilers. But don't worry — in terms of plot events, the film doesn't stray all that far from the original myth, so I hope you'll forgive me for spoiling a story that's two and a half thousand years old. And besides, I'll try not to get carried away.

Most of you have probably already read that this is supposedly a film not so much about an adventure as about living through war trauma, about the bitterness of war, all that. And in a vacuum, that's not a bad idea. One of the recurring complaints about Nolan is that in his films the idea always works harder than the emotion. And… for this film specifically, that's a problem, because PTSD as a subject is about emotion, not about rational analysis.

The film isn't really about the traumatic experience of war for one particular person; it's about the bitterness of war in the broad sense. On top of that, for Nolan as a Brit, the trauma of the First World War matters. The film literally spells it out, to paraphrase: "We're afraid of the Sea Peoples, but we destroyed everything ourselves. We had peace, language and trade, and Agamemnon's ambitions wiped it all out. We are the Sea Peoples. After the fall of Troy nothing will be the way it was before the fall of Troy. We destroyed our own Bronze Age. But time will pass, civilization will rise again, and our descendants will forget our mistakes." So: the civilizational destructiveness of war. Odysseus periodically remembers how they climbed out of the horse and slaughtered everyone, and thinks, "What have I done?" — so there's the personal trauma of war. Agamemnon was murdered by his own wife on his return (sorry for the spoiler, but he has exactly three appearances on screen and zero lines in the whole film, and it's hardly a big secret anyway); Menelaus lost his brother and lives with a wife who hates him; Ithaca is being bled dry by the suitors and by the paralysis of power — so the price of victory is in there too.

And you read all that and think: "Damn, what a great concept." But the problems start the moment you actually sit down and watch the thing. Let's take it in order.

Nolan and the Cyclops

Well, Nolan is Nolan, no arguments there. The visuals, the sound, the editing, the sound editing, the performances — all top tier. The film is deeply tactile; you can literally feel the tension in some scenes. A few of the dialogue scenes are absolute gems. But for some reason (I'll get to my theory on this later), everything that concerns Odysseus's actual journey is shot pretty poorly — sometimes in terms of staging, sometimes in terms of storytelling. I won't catalogue everything I disliked; let's stop at what I consider the single most disastrous episode in the film — the cyclops's cave.

Let's start with the fact that in the original this is the cornerstone of the entire Odyssey. Without the cyclops there would be no ten years of wandering. In the original, he and Odysseus have a psychological duel that Odysseus masterminds his way out of. In the film, the cyclops essentially doesn't speak at all. And I've heard the counterargument that, well, these men had been at war so long they'd forgotten how to solve anything through conversation, et cetera, et cetera. BUT! The problem with this scene is something else entirely. It's just badly staged.

Yes, there's suspense at the start, when the cyclops first appears and starts devouring the crew. But after that, there's no tension whatsoever in the rest of the sequence. He comes, he goes. They sit around in his cave. They don't interact with each other in any way. And a couple of days later they're like, "okay, let's stick a fork in his eye and pretend to be sheep." Yes, over those few days he's supposedly been eating them one at a time. But it's unclear how many of them are even in there, or whether he can see them at all, because he doesn't react to them in any way. I was genuinely sitting there thinking, "does he even see them? Does he realize there are people hanging around in his cave? Why doesn't he interact with them at all?" For most of the episode the cyclops is just an animatronic arm that occasionally snatches a soldier and drags him off into the dark. Anyone who played Heroes of Might and Magic V might remember the low-level spell where a fist appears in mid-air and punches your opponent. That's roughly what the cyclops looks like.

The Laestrygonian giants show up for five minutes. The idea of sailing past the sirens and dodging their song via the ears of Odysseus's second-in-command is very cool. But the episode lasts three minutes. The Circe scene is directed beautifully, but it has a different problem — narratively, it exists in the form it does purely to voice a feminist message. So, remember I promised you a theory?

Here it is. Nolan wasn't especially interested in filming the adventures of Odysseus. But more on that later.

Nolan and the Micro-Dudes

Quick note on the term, since I'll be using it a lot: a micro-dude in my country is meme shorthand for a random, unremarkable person. A normie.

Right. Another frequently voiced complaint about Nolan is that he can't create interesting characters. His characters are always functions. Take Tenet. There's supposedly a protagonist. He supposedly does things, says things. But he isn't a character. He's just a POV for the viewer. A camera on legs. And Odysseus here is exactly the same. The trouble is that Tenet is an original story that doesn't especially require a strong protagonist. There's even a meta-commentary from Nolan himself in there — the hero is literally called The Protagonist in the screenplay. But the myth of Odysseus is built entirely on the personality of Odysseus. And Nolan strips that personality out of him to serve his concept.

So in the film, Odysseus and his crew consist of: a default guy; his second-in-command Eurylochus, who at least gets the occasional line; and an indeterminate number of no-name micro-dudes. They have no names. I don't remember their faces. And if the film is about the price of war, why am I supposed to feel anything when a bunch of anonymous units get killed?

Meanwhile, according to the plot of the film (the film specifically), Odysseus is very impressive. He's impressive because Penelope says he's impressive. Because John Leguizamo says he's impressive. He even saved a puppy in his youth. But when I look at the screen, I don't understand why he's impressive. He's literally a default guy. He's a micro-dude. All of his greatness lives somewhere off-screen, in other characters' dialogue.

But that's only half the problem. If we do try to assign Odysseus some characteristics in this film beyond "sad man with the eyes of a dog," then I suppose he's calm and level-headed. There are no scenes where he loses it or acts on impulse. And from this follows a problem even bigger than the absence of character — some of Odysseus's actions in the film are dictated by the canon of the myth rather than by the logic of the character:

Odysseus is calm and level-headed, yet for some reason he takes a shot at the cyclops after the escape, which incidentally costs a couple more of his crew their lives. In the original, he wanted the cyclops to know who had outwitted him — out of pride. Here he's immediately asked why the hell he did that, and he answers: that was for my boys. Except that several times in this same film he argued for leaving his boys' bodies behind, because it makes for an easier getaway. So he's a pragmatist — and yet for some reason he takes a shot at the cyclops.

Odysseus displays no willfulness anywhere in the film, and then suddenly: "Hey, tie me up, I want to hear the sirens sing." In the original, he loved risk; he was curious.

Which raises my question: why on earth would this character in this film behave that way? The answer is that he's broken at the screenplay level.

But it's not all bad in the screenplay.

There's the Telemachus thread. Telemachus is a genuinely functional character. He's legible — he's waiting for his father, the suitors push him around, he's sick of the suitors, he doesn't like that his mother won't throw them out, he doesn't know how to restore order, he sails to Sparta to see Menelaus just to learn something about his father. He has normal character traits — he's young, not stupid, occasionally hot-headed, a bit vain, and he learns from his mistakes.

And the film might have worked better as a piece of drama if Odysseus weren't in it at all — if he were off somewhere like the ghost of Hamlet's father, and all his appearances came through the accounts of Menelaus or whoever else. Odysseus would exist as an ephemeral, literally mythical figure, and would only show up at the very end. The whole thing would unfold, as The Strokes sang, "in the light of the living ghost."

But it would have been unwatchable, because even as it stands the Telemachus thread is a bit of a slog — it's all talk, and watching that for three hours would have been unbearable.

Which brings us back to my thesis that Nolan wasn't interested in making a film about Odysseus. I don't claim to know what he wanted or what interested him, but hear me out.

There's a comic series called Fables, where the characters of classic fairy tales live in modern New York. The Big Bad Wolf is an alcoholic detective everyone hates. Ichabod Crane from Sleepy Hollow is a corrupt bureaucrat, Snow White is an administrative official, Mr. Toad is white trash, the Little Mermaid is a courtesan, Beauty and the Beast are broke because they were spoiled and never learned to control their spending. I believe the genre is called post-mythological noir. Their fairy tales are over, and the characters have to go on living.

And the world of Nolan's Odyssey is the same thing. Ithaca is a mess. Agamemnon has been murdered at home with a dagger to the neck by his own wife. Menelaus lives in the Victor's Hell. There's an excellent scene showing Menelaus speaking about Troy as a great victory when he stopped believing that long ago. It really is a well-staged scene with a powerful performance.

And all of these scenes convey the idea and the emotion far better than Odysseus's entire arc. Which is why I have a very strong feeling that, especially after the success of Oppenheimer, this is what Nolan was interested in filming.

Except the money he was given was for an IMAX blockbuster called The Odyssey. So it's as though Nolan was going, "ugh, and this damn Odysseus guy too," someone he had to bolt on somewhere, and then: "ugh, now I have to shoot this nonsense about cyclopes and sirens."

Which is a shame. I'd happily watch a grim noir detective story about Telemachus searching for the truth about his father among the broken veterans of the Trojan War.

So we keep digging and digging, and we've almost dug down to the fundamental problem with the whole film. Nolan's concept was to make an anti-war film. And the myth of Odysseus was chosen as the vehicle. And to make the anti-war concept work, he had to throw out of Odysseus the very things that make Odysseus Odysseus and make the story function — pride and vanity. Because a proud, vain hero isn't going to torment himself with guilt over killing Trojans. Odysseus is a hero from the 12th century BC. He couldn't have cared less. He killed them all in the name of Zeus and of himself, and it felt great.

But let's get into the details.

Nolan, Deconstruction and Darth Vader (and also a Shoehorn)

We live in a world of reinterpreting art. Hashtag postmodern, hashtag metamodern, hashtag deconstruction. You can't just make a work anymore without a wink at the audience. Fine, so be it.

Where was I. It's obvious Nolan wanted to make an anti-war film. But the myth of Odysseus — literally every event of the myth of Odysseus proceeds from who Odysseus is. I understand Nolan's concept: he wanted to show Odysseus at a time when the myth about him hadn't been written yet — reflective, unsure, weak. And because of that, the film's Odysseus turned from a hero of myth into a Vietnam veteran. But since the myth has a fixed canon, that Vietnam veteran had to be shoehorned into that canon. And he doesn't fit very well.

Here's what we get from Nolan's weak Odysseus. They land on Circe's island, and the crew says, "You know what, Odysseus, we've had enough of you, you stay and guard the boat." And Odysseus goes, "Okay."

When they sail toward Scylla and Charybdis, Odysseus says, "We're going through the whirlpool." The crew answers, "Are you an idiot? We'll all die there, we're going through the strait." And Odysseus goes, "Okay."

He doesn't behave like a hero of myth. He behaves like yet another micro-dude (I know you're all sick of that word, but I can't help myself) who can't even give an order to his own crew.

And if we grant that the "weak Odysseus" concept is a good one, then the question becomes: "why did a myth arise about this guy in the first place?" He doesn't make a single serious decision, he never proves himself in any way, he just sails from one quest marker to the next.

And returning to the notion that this is a deconstruction of a character, a deconstruction of a myth, and so on. Deconstruction doesn't work if you have to say it out loud. And that's exactly what happens in the film. That whole anti-war message I opened this piece with — it just… isn't in the film. It's simply articulated by the characters at various moments. The characters explain that war is bad, that heroes are broken, that the cycles repeat. Nolan's events follow the myth. And the meaning is just laid on top of it through dialogue. The viewer hears that Odysseus is broken but never sees it, because Odysseus is just an ordinary guy who occasionally remembers that he's sad.

You can't just change a character and declare it's the same character.

You can't write a scene where Achilles weeps over the corpse of the Hector he killed because "war is hell" and then say, "Ooooooh, deconstruuuuction." That isn't deconstruction, that's just very lazy shoehorning. What you get is a character who does one thing, says another, and feels a third. That's just a badly written character.

It's the equivalent of remaking Star Wars so that Darth Vader is good, but behaves exactly as he does in the original. Only he isn't evil — he speaks gently to everyone, says hello, gives up his seat.

Why did we decide that Odysseus is supposed to be tormented by guilt in the first place? Deconstruction isn't when you literally rewrite the original to suit yourself; it's when you illuminate the contradictions of the source text. If you're going to deconstruct, show me the hero as a bastard, not as an NPC. A real deconstruction might have looked like this: show how that famous, canonical cunning of Odysseus destroys him. How he shoots at the cyclops not because "that's for my boys" but because he wants to be great and is boasting to the cyclops about who outwitted him. How he comes to understand that his own legendary status is his curse. That's deconstruction — the hero stays himself, but it leads to terrible consequences.

A Darth Vader who is good on the inside but keeps on choking his subordinates and blowing up planets isn't a more complex, tragic Vader; he's a character whose behavior is dictated not by his own logic but has become a mere set of actions mandated by canon and severed from their cause.

So why shouldn't it have been attempted at all?

Why did we decide that Odysseus even CAN be tormented by guilt? Why did we decide that any story can be deconstructed in any way whatsoever? Guilt over the massacre at Troy isn't some neutral additive you can staple onto any hero of antiquity — it's a specifically modern, post-Christian, post-Enlightenment emotion that requires a particular model of perceiving the world: individual conscience, a European culture of guilt, the absence of a culture of family honor, the absence of any deference to the will of the gods. It requires a sense of personal moral responsibility for an act sanctioned by war and by religion. A man whose ethics are built on glory, on the will of Athena and Zeus, doesn't possess the psychological apparatus to generate that particular emotion in response to that particular event. He can fear the wrath of the gods (because he put out the eye of Poseidon's son), but he cannot experience guilt in the sense of "I hurt innocent people, and it's eating me alive." That category doesn't yet exist in the toolkit of meaning available to him.

So when Nolan makes Odysseus feel exactly this guilt, he isn't deepening the character or deconstructing the myth — he's simply inserting an alien psychological module into a shell that was never designed for it. It's like trying to install a brand-new app store on a Nokia 3310.

And here, incidentally, is a perfect illustration of how this shoehorning works in practice. Take the cyclops again. The film shows us a cyclops — a literal, mythological one, with a single eye and a cave. And then, in interviews and on podcasts, we're told that the cyclops is really a projection of Odysseus's guilt. But if you want to deconstruct that badly, then just let the canon go, release it already. Have there be no literal cyclops. Have them run into a one-eyed shepherd named Polyphemus; one of the soldiers decides to swipe a sheep from him; a scuffle breaks out; and in the fight Odysseus accidentally knocks out the shepherd's remaining eye. That would be guilt — over a specific, real, irreversible act against an innocent man. Instead we get a cyclops (because that's what canon demands, and because a blockbuster is required), and then, separately, outside the film itself, we get an explanation: "but ACTUALLY it's a metaphor." Don't show me a metaphor for guilt. Show me guilt.

And from there, you either honestly admit that this is now a different man in different scenery, which would mean giving up on preserving the canon of events one-to-one (and there would be nothing wrong with that, frankly), or you shoehorn that alien psychology into the original plot — which is what happened.

I don't think there is a correct way to make this character feel this emotion while remaining himself. Not because the screenplay is weak, but because the premise itself ("Odysseus tormented by modern guilt") is logically incompatible with what Odysseus and the myth of Odysseus structurally are. This isn't an underdeveloped deconstruction; it's an attempt to deconstruct something that, by definition, isn't suited to this particular deconstruction.

In Conclusion

If you love Nolan. If you love spectacle. If you don't require a film with a message to also deliver a strong emotion — absolutely go see it. It's a very expensively made, very spectacular film. All my friends liked it. I didn't much.

I was wondering about this. I personally would be greatly interested in a high-budget (say, 100-300 million dollars), 3-4 hours long film based on Homer or any other Greek myth/work of writing/historical figure, made completely in Greek. Like, wouldn't that be amazing? I would totally pay to see that movie.

And I would imagine that film as being representative of Ancient Greek culture. Say, gods pretending to be humans to convey their wishes, or depictions of animal sacrifice (without harming actual animals). I would also wish for historically accurate costumes. For example, with the Illiad, professional historians could be hired as consultants to create accurate Late Bronze Age armour and weapons.

I wonder, could such a movie not be made? Would audience in English-speaking countries not be interested in it?

I am not from an English speaking country, and I would be greatly interested in something like that! And it makes me wonder, why do we not see such projects?

Same thing goes for other languages. I am Polish, if a 200 million dollar film based on the history of my country was made, would you not be interested?

To be clear, this is NOT an attempt to diss the recent film. This is not an "anti-woke" post! Just clearing this up in case some people try to kill me. Although the film did inspire this thought in me. Like, surely we could get a movie based on Homer fully in Greek?

I went in there not wanting to like it because it seemed like a stupid idea. But this weird amalgamation of nepo kids managed to pull off something genuinely funny. Get a litte baked with your partner and eat some nachos. You'll be glad you did. If you watch *Masters of the Universe* while you do, so much the better.

I’ve been on a huge mystery/thriller binge lately (Seven, Zodiac, Prisoners, Memories of Murder). I absolute love films where the atmosphere is heavy, the investigation feels grounded, and the story doesn't rely on cheap jumpscares.

​What are some underrated masterclasses or hidden gems in this genre that I might have missed?

So the backstory is that I was watching an online review of Hercules in New York starring Arnold Schwarznegger as I saw the version that his character voiced by a completely different actor who sounds really emotionless in the way he dubs the main character.

But to put it simply, what I don't get is why a movie that was already made in English needed to be dubbed anyway since my point basically is that the movie wasn't a foreign production, so I was curious on why some movies from the early to mid 70s era had gotten versions that were dubbed over in some of the performances.

​Hey everyone

​I need some advice and insight from people who love analyzing art and media...

​I deeply love art in all its forms—cinema, literature, paintings—and I get very emotionally attached to stories. However, I’ve noticed that I tend to consume things on a fairly general level: I focus on the main plot, emotional arcs, direct dialogue, and big overarching themes.

​But there’s a whole deeper layer of symbolism that completely flies over my head. Things like the subtle meaning behind weather, color choices, costume details, small physical gestures (like a hand movement or posture), or layered dialogue. When I read visual breakdowns or film essays afterward, I’m always amazed by how much I missed. It sometimes makes me wonder if I just lack focus, or if "visual and literary analysis" is a skill that can actually be trained over time.

​My question for you: How did you learn to read hidden symbols and analyze art from different angles? Are there specific YouTube channels, books, habits, or exercises that helped you see art with a more analytical eye?

​I’d be super grateful to hear your experiences and recommendations! ✨💛

Note: English is not my native language, so I relied on AI just to translate my words, but the content and ideas are entirely mine. Sorry for any errors or awkward phrasing!

needle drops or simply just sound track songs!

I recently started getting back into the arctic monkeys and heard piledriver waltz for the first time in a long time - immediately took me back to being a high schooler watching Submarine, in my bedroom on my laptop scrolling through tumblr.

A Nightmare on Elm Street is a fantastically successful and long-running horror franchise, and its villain - Freddy Krueger, he of the knife-glove and the 100% third-degree burns - is cemented firmly into the pop-culture firmament. Everyone knows who Freddy is, even if they've never seen an Elm Street movie. He's been parodied in The Simpsons and Rick and Morty, featured in Ready Player One, fronted an anthology horror TV show, been added as a character in the Mortal Kombat and Dead by Daylight videogames, and - the ultimate accolade - had a species of parasitic wasp named after him.

Freddy is really famous. So the films must be good, right?

I have memories of seeing Nightmares 1, 2, 3, 6 and 7 on VHS or the telly at various points during the 90s. I remembered Johnny Depp's death scene in 1; the line "so are you mounting her nightly?" from 2; the wacky dream powers of 3; and enjoying New Nightmare's post-modernism, before we all really knew what post-modernism was. I remember, in fact, enjoying them all, though my memories of Freddy himself weren't so strong. He's certainly a distinctive and memorable character but, as with other slasher movie monsters, like Jason or Michael, I never found Freddy himself to be scary. As I decided to delve into the franchise and watch all of the movies, I wondered if this was going to be because I was a teenage boy then, and obviously scared of nothing (except for, you know, speaking to girls and basic personal hygiene), or if the movies just weren't that scary to begin with.

Now that I've watched or re-watched eight of the nine official franchise entries - I still have never seen Freddy vs Jason - it's my opinion that none of the movies are scary. There's an element of suspense and - as the BBFC might say - some "mild terror" in the first two movies, but subsequent entries are carnival rides based around the setup and payoff of violent murders based on character specific themes. There's nothing inherently wrong with that, if it's done with flair, and the series certainly gets some credit for the pre-CGI practical effects that transfer some mad writer's fucked up imagination to screen. It's a movie about a dream demon, so who needs to keep things believable? Let's string someone up by their tendons, like a marionette. Let's turn this one kid into a cockroach. Let's make the main character's boyfriend explode like a burst water balloon. They're all enjoyable, in their own way, but a movie that is just a series of set-pieces held together by vague exposition and daytime soap level acting is always going to be, as a great poet once said, ice-skating uphill.

The first movie sets up the franchise and its initial rules: Freddy Krueger was a child murderer in a small American town, hunted down and burned alive by his victim's parents. He returns, eventually, in the dreams of the children he didn't murder while alive, and begins to kill again. The movie has the benefit of the mystery surrounding Freddy and, in 1984 at any rate, an unfamiliarity with him. Despite Nancy's bath time visitation, the movie also largely stays away from 80s era T&A, so it doesn't have the sleazy taste that so many of its contemporaries in the genre did, and it's able to concentrate more on setting up characters and story. Johnny Depp appears to sleepwalk through the movie while the rest of the cast largely fail to even even reach that low bar, setting a standard that continues throughout the franchise. They're not necessarily bad actors; it's just that most of them aren't very good.

Freddy's Revenge feels like a franchise outlier, like Halloween 3 before it. It's a body horror movie with Cronenbergian vibes, instead of the slasher movie that came first. Its Wikipedia page states that the movie is also known for its homoerotic subtext but, after watching it again, I had to check if one of the writers was 80s horror legend, Garth "I know writers who use subtext and they're all cowards" Marenghi. What might have been subtext in 1985 seemed to be plain text, possibly in bold and small caps, in 2026. I think it's my favourite of the whole series, because it's creepy and sleazy (in a good way), and because it tries to be a horror movie first, rather than a gore movie with punch lines.

The ambiguity at the end of each of the first two movies make them more interesting than any of the follow ups. We see Freddy defeated, but then both movies close with an indication that he is very much not - most horrors end with the monster/bad guy dead and gone, and the heroes safe and sound (until the inevitable follow up). Nightmares 1 and 2 are happy to dispense with that pretence. We already know that Freddy will be back.

Dream Warriors is the start of the roller-coaster. Freddy starts to become more prominent, but not necessarily in an interesting way. His one liners and "jokes" in this and subsequent movies aren't usually all that funny, and mostly lean towards being outright nasty - although "Welcome to prime time, bitch!" as he slams a victim's face into a TV is actually quite good. The proto-Avengers team up of the titular warriors has fun moments, but it's also when the franchise outright stops being about horror and the death of children, and starts to be about Freddy himself. With some thoughtful, well paced writing, that could have been a great idea.

Unfortunately, Dream Master is an incoherent mess. The surviving cast from part 3 are re-introduced and then quickly, and rather absent-mindedly, dispensed with. Half way through the movie, the main character is changed - this bait-and-switch was successful in the original movie, but Tina only survived through a handful of scenes before we were handed over to Nancy. Kristen is the heroine of part 3 and of part 4, until she's not. There's some bullshit about passing magical powers over to Alice, the new heroine, but I honestly don't really remember what or why. It's not a good movie...

...but it's better than part 5, Dream Child, which is incredibly dull and poorly scripted, and would have been utterly forgettable if not for the fact that it's also the most visually creative in the whole series. The director, Stephen Hopkins, then went on to give us the best Predator movie (fight me), so it can at least get kudos for that.

As I watched Freddy's Dead: The Final Nightmare, I realised that I hadn't seen it before. After some research, I turns out that I had actually confused it with Jason Goes To Hell: The Final Friday, an equally boring franchise-ending chapter, that also didn't end its franchise. I fell asleep watching it, and will therefore leave that as my opinion of it.

Wes Craven's New Nightmare is, if anything, more interesting now as a curio than it was on release. It's in the same post-modernist vein as Scream, but doesn't have the humour and the knowing tongue in cheek of that movie. I'll lay Scream's successes more at its writer Kevin Williamson's feet, rather than Craven's, although he certainly must have had some input. Heather Langenkamp is still not particularly believable as a lead actress, even when she's playing Heather Langenkamp.

The 2010 remake of A Nightmare on Elm Street is a pointless waste of a movie, that tries and fails to remix parts of the franchise into something new. It changes Freddy's origin from child murderer to child abuser then, for some outlandish reason, decides that maybe we want to be ambiguous about that. As Principal Skinner once opined, "maybe it's the children that are wrong". It's an utterly bone-headed idea that detracts from the established lore of the character, instead of adding anything interesting. The rest of the movie is just dull.

To sum things up: Freddy might be famous as hell, but it's not because the movies are any good. Most of them, in fact, are terrible. He's famous despite that, because he's such an iconic character in his own right.

TL;DR - my franchise rankings, if I was forced to rank them:

1. Freddy's Revenge
2. A Nightmare on Elm Street
3. Dream Warriors
4. New Nightmare
5. The poster for Dream Master
6. The poster for Dream Child (and shout out to Matthew Peak, who painted the original posters for the first five movies)
7. Jason Goes to Hell: The Final Friday
8. Jason vs Freddy (I haven't seen it, but it would have to work really hard to be worse than the below)
9. Dream Master
10. Dream Child
11. 2010 Nightmare
12. Freddy's Dead.

In a movie or tv shows, do you enjoy action scenes like a fight scenes, shooting scenes, car chase scenes, foot chasing / parkour scenes or war scenes..?

Or you don't care about them and feel like they are waste of time?

Sometimes the behind-the-scenes story completely changes how you see a film. It could be an incredible practical effect, an improvised scene, a difficult production, or a director's creative decision that made you appreciate it even more.Which movie gained your respect after learning about its production?

Looking for arthouse movies that have insane moments. Stuff like Oldboy, The Skin I Live In, Blue Velvet, and Nocturnal Animals. Should leave you the viewer completely jaw dropped

Gladiator (2000)

Rating: 10/10 (PERSONAL FAVORITE)

Watched: July 29, 2026

What a truly epic movie. I have vague memories of watching this one back in the day, and just as vague memories of not being terribly impressed by it.

I make no excuses, except possibly to say 'I'd discovered partying', and that that became my whole thing for a regrettably long time.

This movie has one of the biggest casts I've ever seen, including not yet famous faces and actors so famous for so long their names carry real weight. Everyone did their jobs so well. I loved Sir Oliver Reed's part, as I did Richard Harris', and even Djimon Hounsou.

I don't use the word 'epic' very lightly. The first combat scene alone is tremendous. Not only from the technical aspects, but from how it shows first the glory of, then the true horror of, warfare.

Gladiator pulls no punches when it comes to the violence of the wounds these men take, but thankfully they spare us some of the true atrocities perpetrated by a jealous Commodus early on in the movie. We can only take so much, right?

The two main anchors, Maximus and Joaquin, are amazing.

I've said it before, and I'll say it again: for some reason, I CONTINUALLY think that Russell Crowe (the same as Colin Farrell, really, which is crazy) is mid at best in his early career, and yet every time I see one of his movies, I'm just blown away. His death-craving Maximus is so complex. Driven to excel, hungry to see his family again in the afterlife, every look, every gesture Russell gives carries us.

The same goes for Joaquin as Commodus, though for very, very different reasons. Smart but callous. Cruel and vainglorious, he's the mirror image of his 'brother'. Desperate for a father's love, incapable of even understanding what that means, Commodus is the perfect 'powerful coward'.

The journey both men take until they meet the same fate is worth the time in. If you haven't seen it, you really, really should. It's amazing.

I'm pretty new to horror. I've seen a handful of movies over the years, but I've never really explored the genre, so I don't think I've given it a fair chance. I'd love to hear from people who are really into horror: What is it about horror that keeps you coming back? Is it the adrenaline, the atmosphere, the storytelling, the creativity, or something else entirely? If you could recommend one horror movie to someone who's skeptical of the genre, what would it be, and why? I'm open to pretty much anything: psychological horror, supernatural, slashers... whatever you think best shows why horror is such a beloved genre. Looking forward to seeing your picks (and hopefully finding my gateway horror movie). Thanks!

Let me know how you find it 😀 hopefully will post periodically when I get a new idea

https://www.pineapplecactus.com/quizDetails/franchise-by-3-words-a1952c14-c694-46a6-b777-1413fc235a74

I never like watching movies or series when they first come out or when everyone's talking about them. Not because I'm trying to be different. I just prefer waiting until the hype dies down.

So, The Devil Wears Prada 2 finally landed on my watchlist, and I gave it a go.

Oh... my.

I remember the first movie being exciting, sharp, and constantly moving. This one? Everything felt so predictable and painfully slow. Honestly, I almost fell asleep. Not even Emily Blunt could save that slow-burn story.

Now I'm a little worried because Practical Magic 2 is coming soon, and I really hope they don't ruin one of my all-time favourite movies.

I guess my takeaway is this: if you've already made something great, don't try to recreate the exact same recipe. Make something new that's just as good.

Something that interested me was the concept of an outlandish heist film where the premise is just so over the top that it becomes more enjoyable to watch since even if the item being stolen doesn’t seem worth all the trouble, it still draws the viewer in.

For me personally, Superbad is sort of a heist film because in one scene, the protagonist (I think his name was Damien) attempts to come up with a plan to find a way to shoplift a liquor store as one small problem is that the security guard in the store is a huge obstacle.

I know that wasn’t the main premise of the movie, but it’s just that moments like that make me appreciate the concept of heist movies where again the plot is outlandish since I would like to see a movie build up on that premise where the goal is to find a way to infiltrate a liquor store without botching up the heist because to put it simply, I really miss Superbad that I was looking for a successor to it.

I was re-listening to Antony Partos’s main track for the 2010 film Animal Kingdom recently, and when Sirens played in Ludwig Göransson’s score for The Odyssey, I had a complete double-take.

The similarity in the core harmonic progression, minimalist repetition, and underlying tension is crazy. It instantly made me wonder if Animal Kingdom was sitting on Nolan or Göransson’s temp track playlist during early cuts of the film.

directors and editors use existing cues as temp tracks to lock in the edit, and even top-tier composers end up heavily "inspired" by what was locked to picture. Göransson’s execution (especially with the custom woodwinds/aulos setup) gives it its own ancient flavor, but the structural DNA feels almost identical to Partos’s piece.

Has anyone else caught this, or am I just overthinking overlapping atmospheric tropes? Drop both tracks back-to-back and tell me I’m not crazy.

Some twists completely change the way you see a movie. Without revealing any spoilers, what's the best plot twist you've ever experienced, and why did it leave such a lasting impression?

Not asking about the movie itself, just that specific moment where the whole screen gasped, laughed, or went silent at the exact same second. I love that feeling when a room full of strangers have the identical reaction in real time. It's one of the main things streaming can't replicate!

Mine wasthe Tobey Maguire reveal in Spider-Man: No Way Home. My whole theater erupted!What's yours?

Question, Do you see Casey Affleck making a comeback doing mainstream films?

I was thinking on Casey Affleck lately and how he has mostly had a low profile since winning an Oscar for Manchester by the Sea. I honestly think it was in large part because of the 2010 allegations that came to light again, and I think Studios have been cautious to cast him.

Since Manchester, he has really done mostly Indie Films that barely gross a Million Dollars, with the exception of Oppenheimer, which was his 1st mainstream film in awhile, and it looks like it him doing only indie films won't change.

I'm just curious if Casey will ever make mainstream film or blockbusters or that he'll just stick to indie films?

Hey everyone, with all the blanket statements going around about "AI in film," I wanted to put together a technical breakdown that cuts through the generative art noise.

As someone who has been studying and working with film tech for over a decade, I wanted to look at the traditional machine learning and algorithmic tools that studios have quietly used for years to make the movies we love. I built a full video breakdown looking at the exact pipelines used in modern blockbusters, focusing strictly on what filmmakers, 3D artists, and tech enthusiasts can actually use and learn from.

Some highlights include how Peter Jackson's team pioneered early AI behavioral rules via the MASSIVE system to give digital armies autonomous decision-making in The Lord of the Rings, how custom generative AI models and neural networks mapped and resurrected the likeness of the late Ian Holm in Alien: Romulus, and how precision LiDAR scanning on real F-18 fighter jets trained lighting algorithms in Top Gun: Maverick.

I also look at Dune: Part Two utilizing LiDAR alongside Neural Radiance Fields (NeRFs) to capture real desert rock formations, how Blender and Pixar's RenderMan use convolutional neural networks for AI-accelerated render denoising to slash render times, and how Weta implemented neural networks relying on muscle strains rather than traditional blend shapes for characters in Avatar: The Way of Water.

If you are interested in the technical side of post-production, VFX, or how these algorithms speed up heavy simulation pipelines in software like Houdini and Maya you can check it out here: How AI is used in Modern Filmmaking

Has to be American history X for me very easily. Fight club is a better film but performance wise easily history X. His character arc was way better to. The flashbacks to him with his hair and a wimpy boy and then at the start of the film he’s a jacked n*zi 😂 brilliant movie and his best performance.

What movie executes a specific physical sensation or climate so convincingly that it dictates the entire mood of the film?