Episode 155: Tenet (2020)

Max, Mike; Movies

Welcome to a brand new series here at Max, Mike; Movies. We’re starting “I’d Forgotten How Much I Hate Time Travel” this week . . . or maybe we started it years into the future and it’s only arriving at this point in the timestream, or timecreek, or timepuddle, right now. But when is now? What is time? Is it a river? Is it made up of “wibbly wobbly timey wimey stuff”? Is it a wreath of pretty flowers that smell bad? No, wait, that’s logic. And how does one travel in time? We all do it forward, at one second per second but we’re also kind of obsessed with the notion that you can travel to the past or the future and we see that in approximately eleven kabillion movies. But unless I can finally perfect my time machine (which I will, once I can get the giraffe to stop moving around. Did I mention they all laughed at me at the Academy?), we only have time to discuss a few movies, movies that use time travel as a major narrative device and not some single even to trigger the plot. Not so much the “welcome to Roman Times!”, more “Quick, back onto the Time Velocipede so we can stop Napoleon from murdering Da Vinci! And make sure Sparky the dog doesn’t get in more mischief!” sort of movie. We’re starting off with Christopher Nolan’s mind-mangling, anagrammatically-named opus “Tenet,” a movie about . . . look, just listen to the podcast, ‘cause I ain’t trying to explain this thing twice! Enjoy!

Poll question: what sad or touching movie scene, no matter how many times you’ve seen it, still makes you tear up?

George Floyd Memorial Fund: https://www.gofundme.com/f/georgefloyd

ACLU: https://www.aclu.org/

Black Lives Matter: https://secure.actblue.com/donate/ms_blm_homepage_2019

Southern Poverty Law Center: https://donate.splcenter.org/