Arrival is better than anything Nolan has ever done
-
emvan — 9 years ago(November 10, 2016 10:06 PM)
Almost nothing is better than
Memento
.
This is on a par with
The Prestige
and
Inception
, and is probably even better than
Interstellar
.
(BTW, I'm 1300 words into a post for Quora explaining for fellow cinephiles why Nolan is a profoundly important director. I'm maybe halfway done.)
Prepare your minds for a new scale of physical, scientific values, gentlemen. -
Chimasternmay — 9 years ago(November 11, 2016 12:21 AM)
IMO this film is no where near the effect Interstellar had on me after watching it. Right after watching it I felt like I don't even know if I will ever see a better scifi space film better then Interstellar ever again. And till now still haven't.
This film was certainly very good in its own right. But it just didn't make move me the same as Interstellar. -
emvan — 9 years ago(November 11, 2016 07:43 AM)
Do you have kids?
I thought
Interstellar
was a bit more moving than than
Arrival
. But I don't have kids. A friend who loves Nolan like I do, and is a dad, tells me that
Interstellar
just destroyed him emotionally, and I can see that.
Prepare your minds for a new scale of physical, scientific values, gentlemen. -
asfound — 9 years ago(November 11, 2016 08:45 AM)
I agree - Nolan's films, whether we're talking Inception, Interstellar or his Batman films really have a way of hitting you right in the chest. I always walk out of them feeling dazed yet exhilarated.
Arrival was good, but not that good - I think the issue for me is that I didn't feel the mother-daughter angle was that well integrated or even necessary to the plot. It was a nice addition, but despite the flashbacks it never seemed as pressing or as prominent or as pivotal as the Cooper/Murphy narrative. -
emvan — 9 years ago(November 11, 2016 08:07 AM)
That's perfectly valid. It says nothing about
Memento
and everything about you, however. Such personal reactions are not to be dismissed. Collecting a bunch of them is often the key to truly understanding a film.
I see a lot of films with groups of other people who are smart about film. The first question we ask each other is "Did you like it, and why?" What made
you
like it or dislike it? We usually move on to what made the movie good or less than good, and that's based on the the things that a majority liked about it, or thought were weaknesses. It starts with the subjective response,
and they are all valid
, and from the variety of subjective responses you can identify the movie's strengths and weaknesses.
Every aspect of a film can be judged in two dimensions: how good it is, and what percentage of people can see the goodness.
Quality and universality of appeal are separate, largely unrelated dimensions.
That's rule #1 of film appreciation, and the most common and most annoying mistake on these boards is to think that being one of the people in the minority of a film with non-universal appeal* is equivalent to the film not being good.
*Which is all of them, if you include enough people.
Prepare your minds for a new scale of physical, scientific values, gentlemen. -
lexob9 — 9 years ago(November 11, 2016 02:46 PM)
great comment and great questions to evaluate film and separate personal subjective evaluation from objective evaluation of movie. which i always struggled about. i am going to use this questions next time. also i am not sure what - percentage of people that can appreciate the goodness of specific aspect of movie says about that movie. seems like quality dimension? although you stated quality separately as different dimension and as being not important in evaluating the film. how do you even evaluate some aspect without evaluating that aspects' quality?
-
emvan — 9 years ago(November 11, 2016 10:37 PM)
Short version: quality is established when at least a few people can explain how the element works and why it's good. So that becomes objective. The more people who can see the quality, the wider the appeal.
Everyone thinks
Blade Runner
looks amazing.
The editing style of
Upstream Color
appeals to only a minority of viewers, but we can explain why it's tremendously good.
Prepare your minds for a new scale of physical, scientific values, gentlemen. -
emvan — 9 years ago(December 19, 2016 04:24 PM)
Just remembered this! The Quora post is immensely long, but I think it's really cool. You'll learn some brain science, too.
https://www.quora.com/Are-Christopher-Nolan-films-really-deep-and-complex-or-does-he-dazzle-his-audiences-into-believing-theyve-witnessed-something-profoundly-meaningful/answer/Eric-M-Van-1?srid=dxw0
Prepare your minds for a new scale of physical, scientific values, gentlemen.