The Quite Nerdy Blog

As part of his frenetic media tour when promoting Parasite , there was a particularly dry answer Bong Joon-Ho gave to a question. The audience member was talking about a flooding scene in the film and asking if it was perhaps created as a response to some of the massive floods the US had seen over the last few years. His answer? "We have floods in Korea too". Aside from it being a wonderfully witty story about a man the entire world now loves, it's also a really telling example of how a brilliant film can feel like it was made specifically for the moment you're watching it in, even when that couldn't possibly have been the intention. That is the current mood around La Haine , a film that is 25 years old this year and unfortunately, it feels just as relevant today as it did when I first saw it in 2016 and I can only imagine it feels even more urgent than it did in 1995. For the uninitiated (and I strongly recommend initiating yourself with this wonderful film), La ...

Um, hey! This isn't going to be your regularly scheduled post, because (as David Bowie's appearance is supposed to hint at) The Quite Nerdy Blog is changing. For six years now, I have been doing pretty much the exact same thing. Every week, without fail, I have produced a piece of writing. It means I have an incredibly dense portfolio but it has also led to weeks of panic, last minute writing and feverish edits as I've attempted to put out a new post. I also feel like it means I am more worried about putting out a lot of content instead of really interesting content and as such, I am finally changing up my schedule. We are still sticking to a Tuesday release at 10:00am GMT, but I will only be releasing a post every other week. If there is something out that I want to talk about or review in some form then yes, I may break from the schedule for something. As we stand though, a new blog post will be released every other Tuesday. I figure I should explain my logic a little bit...

Charlie Kaufman is back! For those unfamiliar, he is the brilliant yet intensely strange writer responsible for Being John Malkovich  and Adaptation , as well as the director (and writer, again) of Synecdoche, New York and Anomalisa . Importantly, he is also the writer of Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind , my favourite film. His films are cerebral and strange but have a large cult following among a certain breed of film fan, among which I certainly count myself. He returns with I'm Thinking of Ending Things , produced and distributed by Netflix, a film which is likely to perplex even the die hard Kaufman fan. The premise is simple; a young woman is joining her boyfriend on a trip to meet his parents for the first time. They're leaving the city and heading toward a farm, heading there in the snow. The problem is, the young woman is thinking of ending things. Despite what I was saying earlier, about how Charlie Kaufman's films are cerebral and strange, they're usuall...

Tenet is a film with few expectations on it, it only has to be the film to bring audiences back into cinemas after six months of closure, so no biggie. It is also... It is a lot and what we're going to have here is one of those reviews that is in part going to be me attempting to break down what I saw for my own benefit. I'm also going to steer clear of spoilers, because I know the film isn't yet playing in America and plenty of people don't yet feel comfortable going to the cinema, a decision I completely respect. Anyway, the plot of Tenet is ambiguous, both in how the film has been marketed and even by the end of the film. What I feel confident saying is that our protagonist is a secret agent who, after a mission gone wrong, is recruited by an agency even more mysterious than the one he previously worked for. With the help of allies whose motives are ambiguous, he must prevent annihilation, the form of which is also initially unclear. My vague words and unclear descri...