Reviews

"The menu" is a psychological horror movie with great actors, Ralph Fiennes from Harry Potter (Voldemort) and Anya Taylor-Joy (Queen's Gambit).

The problem is that the movie builds a lot of tension and doesn't resolve it. You will be very disappointed by the end. The movie just doesn't go anywhere.

The absence of fighting back is beyond ridiculous. There is no reason why a whole team of chefs would accept some atrocious stuff like the main chef orders.

Some scenes are very violent and could have been suggested, but it's always easier to shock the audience than actually setup writing in a scene. I can't believe that Anya went for this.

Another problem is that the movie it doesn't respect its subject. There is a chasing scene which has nothing left to do with cooking anymore. It's something basic that you would see on any horror movie like Animals or Final Girl, even The Purge.

Let's face it, the good scenes are in the trailer. I love norse mythology but this movie was incredibly boring. I couldn't care less about this story of vengeance. I also watched this for Anya Taylor-Joy but her great performance didn't save it.

All the choice MC makes are destiny choices, this means that he only listens to his destiny, and this is a huge problem he always makes stupid decisions (well...except if you believe in destiny, but the movie isn't clear about the supernatural aspect. There are witches, soothsayers, but none of them seem to have an actual power, at least there is some doubt about it.

So it was really hard to buy that he made himself a slave just to get a vengeance someday. Why bother. He's destroying his life. At some point, he even reveals itself to the whole village (actually yelling) as the hidden son that stalked the brother's killer. I mean, way to go to kill yourself. But he somehow survives the dozen of guards. He creates chaos in the village, so the guards...give weapons to slaves. I laughed so hard. That was incredibly stupid.

Obviously, MC has a great sense of honor...but his mother doesn't, although she also receives a Viking education and culture. Whatever.

The movie is beautiful with a nice atmosphere but it's just too boring and incoherent for me.

I really liked the dark and horrific atmosphere of The Swarm.

But the characters didn't make sense, the mother and daughter are violent and crazy without any reason, it's clearly a naive way to add some "darkness" to the movie.

The mother is bankrupt and as soon as it starts to become better she buys a scooter for her daughter, and then they struggle again... When the swarm (spoiler) breaks out, they don't get inside with shut doors, they get...to the beach. There is even a close shot of her wound supposed to lure the swarm, but nothing happens. A lot of tension is made for nothing.

There is no relationship with media in this movie whatsoever. We have no idea of where the swarm is going. It's like there is no television.

The ending is ridiculous, leaving all the accumulated tension. It's just unresolved and I had tons of questions about the swarm. There is like 30mn missing.

Very disappointing. Grave was better. (her previous movie)

As many here noticed, it is incredibly frustrating to need a second watching to understand a movie. So I won't do it. Because when you do this kind of movies, you need to be sure that the first watching will already be a pleasure. It's not. Compare it with the sixth sense. When you don't know the end, you miss some details, and if you watch it twice it can be interesting but you don't have to do it. Here, the first watching is a pain and you HAVE to watch it twice to understand. Not because it's very intellectual. Not even because it uses some SF concepts. I've read a lot about time travel, I'm not scared of theses stories. No, it's the horrible dialogues and exposition scene that messes up the movie. I have no idea why the dialogues are that fast but it's beyond ridiculous. Characters are almost cutting each other off, like they're gonna miss a train or something. And this for the whole duration of the movie, so I had to use subtitles, like I suddenly forgot the English language. So I won't do my homework and watch it again because I wanted an experience, not a working task.

The music is overly dramatic. It's good to have overwhelming atmosphere when the scene is important and intense, but there is heavy music all the time for 2 hours, so it loses all signification. It's rare to see epic music so badly used.

Also, Robbert Pattinson is pretty good, but the MC has no emotion whatsoever. You might as well put a robot. It is a SF movie anyway. Let's mention that the first scene is a mass shooting in a concert hall, like the 2015 attacks in France. It was very shocking to see that, and Nolan couldn't possibly ignore this fact. That is such a low-key way to make his movie stand out.

The whole thing reminded me of the new brainless James Bond movies, when MC need to get some item to prevent the world from total extinction, which require a lot of pew-pew (that is the official term) and car racing (there is even a blonde). I hate this "rich" visuals with big cars, big boats, even planes, just to make things look expensive. Where is the story ?

So, Nolan added some time reversing stuff to make things complicated and intellectual, but it doesn't really make sense. Maybe it does to him, to the writers even, but if it doesn't in the spectator's eye, then it doesn't matter. And the exposition scene doesn't explain anything, except that some object are time-reversed thanks to a future technology.

• why does this work with people too, after half ot the movie ?
• do they stay reversed forever ?
• Does this property depends on the material ?
• what about the paradoxes ?
• What about the Tenet word ? They didn't use it a single time. Did they actually read their own story ?
• How reversed object are gonna possibly interact with normal objects ? The whole movie is based on this object having their own arrow of time but it cannot make sense. Some physicists argue that there is no arrow of time, like Minkowski's cube, but things still have to go ALL in a certain direction. Nolan's movie is just pure chaos.

Because of the movie story, fight scenes are used twice and I couldn't believe it. I have to watch this again ?? Even if you watch the movie once, you get some stuff twice. What a scam.

I hate the pseudo-scientific talk that is supposed to make everyone asleep and fall for it. So the objects are time-reversed because of some future radiation stuff. Yeah sure. I'm sorry but I love science, so I can't love this movie.The idea that some kind of formula is gonna suddenly make us able to violate laws of physics is so childish.We know gravity's law, are we able to control gravity ?

The moral at the end is so pseudo-philosophical and forced that it shouldn't make it to the second draft. My two stars are for the visuals.

I absolutely loved the atmosphere of Doctor sleep. The vampires are amazing, there is a lot of visual and aesthetic ideas, especially everything around the psychic powers, even the voice inside the head is scary. And the astral journey is beautiful. Ewan McGregor is convincing, and the main vampire is a great actress too.

However...after most of psychic vampires are defeated, there is almost nothing left to do. The scenario crumbles and this is just a guided visit of the Overlook hostel. The movie adds a lot of Shining references, and even recreates shots of Shining, and even includes some original Shining shots. All of this is useless and boring.

It's basically an interesting and scary movie of 1h30 and then you got Shining 1 again. I recommend the first part and then just get out of the theater.