I never would have thought a year ago that I would not see any movie in a theater from early March to early September 2020 or that I would have to wear a mask. Things have changed in the movie industry in the past year, and the reality is that things may never be the same as they were again. Now there are rules for all theaters, starting with extreme cleanliness, no working water fountains, bathrooms with every other appliance blocked off. Social distancing stickers were all over the floor and understandably there were only a small number of people in the movie theater. The reality is, due to the world wide tragedy of the Corona Virus, the number of people who regularly go to the movies may never get back to the way it was in 2019.

Unfortunately my return to a movie theater after 6 months included sitting through 2 1/2 hours of one of the worst movies I have ever seen – “Tenet”, written and directed by Christoper Nolan. As Nolan has tried to prove in every movie he has ever made; he is more interested in being very different than entertaining or inspiring an audience. In just about every scene in Tenet, there is no explanation, no transition, no real story and no respect for the viewing audience. After two hours of this, I could not wait for this ridiculous nightmare of a movie to be over. After 2 1/2 hours, it was almost impossible to not walk out of the theater. I find movies like Tenet that make no effort to make the story understandable – infuriating. With Nolan it seems at times he has this attitude of, “its not my responsibility to explain my stories, let the audience fend for themselves.” For those of us who aspire to write a great screenplay and have it made into a great movie, seeing bad movies like Tenet are even more unbearable to sit through.

Tenet mostly stars John David Washington and in a much smaller role, Robert Pattinson. They are both part of some kind of a CIA organization called Tenet with a purpose that is never explained. What is also never really explained are these various tools and bullets that when used or touched act in reverse time – which is some kind of new science that was invented by some Russian organization, for reasons that are also never explained. What is the purpose during this entire movie to have the ability to reverse time? Where was the gain, financial or otherwise in reversing time within this story? None of this is ever explained. This movie makes no sense on any level and is a complete waste of 2 1/2 hours.

Some of the reviews I have read on Rotten Tomatoes include:

“The final action sequence is completely incomprehensible. Does Nolan even care? Like “Inception,” “Tenet” characters spend gobs of screen time explaining to us, and each other, what’s happening. That’s a rookie screenwriting tic that Nolan can’t stop repeating. Then again, what could possibly clear up this 2 hour, 31 minute smoke bomb of a movie.” – Sean Collier

“A massive, sprawling, largely incomprehensible mess, albeit with Nolan’s usual slick action scenes and sense of weight.” – Christopher Lloyd

Despite all of these horrendous reviews, the overall score for Tenet is an ridiculous 74%. My rating is a 3% – only for some of the special effects. Can we finally put an end to movies like this and directors who do not care about the audience, including Michael Bay and all of his Transformer movies? Just because something has never been done before with an idea that has never been seen before, does not make any movie good, or ever worth seeing.

I have no idea why Micheal Caine , Himesh Patel or Kenneth Branagh agreed to act in this perfect example of an extremely bad movie, other than perhaps giving back a favor they owed to Nolan or some production company.

Tenet is one of the worst movies I have ever seen and should never even be copied to DVD – because it is just that bad. Run from this horrible mess.

Rather than reviewing one of the latest Pay Per View movies that have been released – “Forces of Nature”, I thought a better idea would be to examine how movies this bad, with well known actors are even made in the first place. This alone would be a great idea for a documentary entitled “Why and How Bad Movies are Made”.

In the case of this very bad movie, why any actor – known or unknown – could read this script and then decide to risk their careers by agreeing to take the part is more interesting than listing the boring details of one day in the lives of 2 cops, Cardillo and Jess during a Hurricane in Puerto Rico.

The two cops are played by Emile Hirsch and Stephanie Cayo. Cayo is an unknown actress and Emile Hirsch is well known and not too long ago was making some very good movies. While it is understandable to want to stay current as an actor, but choosing a bad role in a very bad movie, cannot be a good idea, no matter how badly things are going for you in the movie industry. This is also true of Kate Bosworth, who has not made many movies recently after being prolific about 10 years ago. Taking this role will do nothing to revive anyone’s acting career.

As for Mel Gibson, despite doing everything in his power to say and do the wrong thing for the last decade he is still a great movie director and is also very rich, so why did he decide to be in a movie this bad? Mel Gibson’s appearance in this bad movie is the most confusing part of this waste of 2 hours. This is one of those cases where I think there was some Hollywood favor that was owed. Despite being the main draw for this movie, Gibson’s appearance seems very awkward and out of place.

As far as the plot of Forces of Nature, the most interesting part of this entire story was one of the tenants in this run down Motel who has a violent pet Alligator who he feeds hamburger from a local food store. The criminals in the Motel trying steal valuable paintings in the building was completely unwatchable.

Forces of Nature has a 4.4 rating on IMDB and a 9 on Rotten Tomatoes and for a change, both of those numbers are accurate. Nobody should waste their time or money on this remarkably bad movie.

This excerpt from a review of Forces of Nature by Paul Byrnes summarizes one reason how and why bad movies are made:

“Some movies are born bad; some achieve badness through lack of care or budget. Some seem to aspire to it and director Michael Polish has had a long enough career to know the difference.”

When a person has been through a traumatic event – the plot of the new Amazon Prime streaming film “Chemical Hearts”, a severe car accident – the worst thing you can say is “get over it”. Traumatic events in any person’s life heal in proportion to the level of trauma, and that person’s ability to rationalize and slowly set it aside over a defined period of time. There is no speeding up this process, and in many cases some people never are able to get past the traumatic event. The famous phrase “Time Heals All Wounds” is just not true in every case.

Chemical Hearts is about a young woman, Grace Towns, who is in high school and was a passenger in a car with her boyfriend. One day the car swerves into some rocks and her boyfriend is killed. Grace receives a severe leg injury that requires a cane for her to walk. This is an example of a life trauma that nobody will get over quickly. Then add the guilt of “why did I live” and “if we had only done this instead” – that are typical thoughts for anyone who has been through something as traumatic as a car accident where someone is killed.

Through the high school newspaper, Grace meets Henry Page, a fellow student and member of the newspaper. Over time, Grace and Henry get involved in a very complex relationship that includes Grace reliving the accident and her guilt over still being alive and becoming involved with someone else. The plot of this teenage drama is different than any other similar movies I have seen in the past and I thought the complex relationship drama was well done and well acted.

I thought the acting in this film was excellent, with Lili Reinhart as Grace and Austin Abrams has Henry. All of the other actors were very good in their roles throughout this film, even though one side story about two lesbian students seemed more like “2 hour filler”, than something that should have been included in the screenplay.  I have been mostly impressed with the quality of originally developed movies with both Amazon and Netflix over the years. 

The Rotten Tomatoes rating for this movie at only 57% is completely wrong and the audience rating of 86% is a bit too high. My rating is around 75% for the solid story and acting and I do recommend this movie.