Do cinephiles watch blockbuster films?

That Chris Pratt. Is he a hunk, or a teddy bear? As long as he's big and stupid!

Hard disagree, here. To each their own, of course, but I feel he has done well with his human elements, with a few exceptions here and there. Tenet for example.

I'm actually not that bothered by his character dynamics.

I was clarifying that the criticism of Nolan isn't "Why doesn't he do more with the humanity side of things?!", the criticism is "Nolan tries to do the humanity thing and sometimes he's not so good at it."

Understood. My apologies

Well, at least we've answered the question "Do cinephiles reconcile after a very low-stakes misunderstanding?"

TRUE CINEPHILES DON'T !

Ugh! It was a trap the whole time! You people are monsters!

Fine.

I've never seen a "movie". I just read the plot synopsis on IMDb and a handful of hot takes on Twitter and then I post. My favorite plot synopses is Throw Momma From the Train.

*hangs head in shame*

I also like directors from Hitchcock to Cronenberg to Russo Brothers to Leone etc.

I wouldn’t say a critically acclaimed film which is in all best of the year and decade list and has won 4 Oscar is a popcorn flick tbh.

Understood

Why not? I'm not going to act like I'm above every single film that's just trying to be fun (just look at my avatar) but it's not like I have an obligation to give them a pass either just because they have simpler goals in mind.

I mean, there's certainly potential for a film like Tenet to work in terms of executing a convoluted concept (albeit one that still just boils down to "people can move in reverse" and the kind of time-travel plot where people have to work around their own past exploits like Back to the Future Part II), but it just seems too inconsistent - "don't understand it, just feel it" seems at odds with countless scenes of exposition, for instance. I've also never thought of Interstellar as being particularly complex either - there have been other narratives that dealt in time dilation and relativity prior to it, but it arguably gets more credit on account of having the wider exposure afforded by its blockbuster status (plus its whole emotional core of a father losing touch with his children feels like an expansion on the protagonist's motivation in Inception, though that is where he stretches himself too thin - Inception at least comes across as an attempt at interrogating his "dead wife" cliché).

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This cinephile does, because it doesn't have to be an either/or dilemma between "arthouse" films and mainstream blockbusters; you can be interested in both. I mean, I just made a two hour drive yesterday to go see The Green Knight, and I'll probably end up seeing The Suicide Squad when I get the chance for the same reason I did Knight (because they're both getting good reviews, after all), and I'm tired of this "us versus them" mentality I constantly see in this, and seemingly every other discourse online, for that matter. That being said though, I still lean more towards the arthouse side of things, because by the nature of that style, it's where you tend to the more unique, challenging experiences on film, and you're not being a "film snob" if you hold genuinely heartfelt critiques of the lack of ambition in, say, Marvel movies in general, or if you feel that one multi-billion dollar studio gobbling up the competition, essentially holding a monopoly over the American film industry, and making movies that genuinely try to challenge audiences less common (even in popular genres like Superhero movies, like what Fox did with Logan) is a bad thing for the artform.

what is a cinephiles?

Sure, that was pretty ridiculous. I guess he was worried about sacrificing the spectacle element and ending up with a Primer-type “explainer” film, which would kind of be the opposite - “Understand it once you’ve seen the online time travel diagrams and watched this 10+ times and don’t expect to feel it.” And then he did too much explaining himself

Yeah, I agree about Interstellar. But also, that does depend on what we mean by “complex”; Primer is also about winning the lottery, is it, through time travel - but what sets it apart is its unique focus on the mechanics and the nerdy, boring science over any other concerns. Time dilation and quantum physics in film are not new, true, but do they get used in action often? I would say not so much, prior to Nolan.

So, I think Nolan’s stuff is still a bit more investigative when it comes to the science than Back to the Future, but I would argue that all time travel films come down to saving a dead person (changing the past), preventing a future apocalypse or making money via knowing the future.

I’ve always thought that Inception epitomises Nolan’s “dead wives problem” instead of critiquing it, so that’s an interesting thought. Anyway, I tend to think he’s just not good at writing women (hence the lack of female protagonists, I wouldn’t even 100 per cent count Chastain in Interstellar as one).

That’s what it boils down to: I think it’s reasonable for artists to steer clear of things/themes/character types they’re “not good at”, otherwise you get something that feels thoroughly fake and wooden, and who wants that? You can embrace that this isn’t your strong side, I guess, and “learn on the job” as you practice writing female protagonists and whatnot. But that will make you more vulnerable to criticism, because you won’t do a good job.

So, I do understand the logic behind just not doing it, and I’d argue that if he literally had no women in his films, he’d be better off. Would make a curious self-imposed constraint, like the postmodern writers avoiding a letter. How do I write an engaging film with 0 women (hence no dead wives, or whatever else he’s bad at)?

Looking forward to Christopher Nolan's upcoming movie in which the protagonist does a lot of stunts, listens to a bit of exposition from Michael Caine and broods about the death of his husband.

Hahah, thank you for cheering me up on a ****ty morning! I’m pretty sure he’d smash that brief, actually.

(Look at my avatar) and top 10 and you’ll find that i like them both.

I know some people have higher standards but what matters is the execution or the overall product.

I think it's more that it just weighs down the film unnecessarily. It's like he wants to trust viewers but thinks (feels?) has to hedge his bets anyway and the whole thing comes across as overlong with a sluggish middle (especially coming off Dunkirk, which I wasn't big on but still appreciated its taut 100m runtime next to the 160+ bloat of TDKR or Interstellar).

Hideaki Anno's Gunbuster had what I considered to be a very effective narrative use of time dilation within an action-oriented context but it's in a 30-year-old robot anime so I'm aware it's not going to have as wide an audience right from the jump. I think I also just bristle at the idea that Nolan's films end up being complex on a technical level when they still make the effort to simplify things as much as possible anyway (like using the pen-through-paper explanation for a wormhole that also featured in Event Horizon, for instance).

I put it that way because in his prior films (and at least one or two subsequent films) the dead wives really have just acted as motivating factors for the protagonists, and while that's arguably true of Mal from Inception, it's worth noting that she not only gets to be more of a character than the others but that she ends up serving as more of an antagonist than anyone else in the film (but not necessarily a one-dimensional villain either).

A true cinephile watches all kinds of movies but it doesn't mean they cream over hacks like Nolan.

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Not 100% certain but I'm just assuming it's a person who ****s dogs.

Nolan’s films have won 12 oscars out of 30 nominations (both for technical aspects and quality)

they are all critically acclaimed by professional critics, with many being in their respective best of decade and year lists.

he's gotten countless of awards and 5 Oscar nominations.

Also, many prestigious magazines and aggregators have put him in a fairly solid position in the all time list and one of the best of the decade.

Anyone who knows anything about directing can see that he directs his films well.

But somehow, a random comment in an internet board makes him an incompetent director? Are you serious?

Saying that he's an "hack" like Bay or Snyder is just wrong in any way, shape or form and shows an extreme lack of common sense and objectivity.

Or maybe an aversion, that revolves around extremely subjective "criticism".

Until proven otherwise, most of these people know more about cinema than you, and they are more reliable. I accidentally liked the post but wanted to reply lol.

Films are art.

It is possible for someone to both love art and to really dislike a certain artist.

Stalker after two different viewings, continues to be a film for me. Basically every professional critic (and almost everyone on sites like this one) considers it an all-time great masterpiece.

Does that mean I don't love film? Is my reaction to the film (which is an honest, good faith reaction) "wrong"?

Loving movies doesn't mean bowing down to critical consensus.