Tenet (2020)

Netflix’s recent Millie Bobby Brown vehicle, Enola Holmes 3, is a disappointing and confusing entry in the stellar Enola Holmes franchise. Directed by Philip Barantini, the film stars Brown as Enola Holmes, estranged sister of Sherlock Holmes, Henry Cavill as Sherlock Holmes, and Louis Partridge as her love interest, Viscount Tewkesbury. While it deserves credit for its exciting action scenes and attempts to expand the diversity of its Dickensian setting, the most recent entry in the series completely scuttles Enola’s underdog status from the first films that made her so charming and gave a touch of realism to the story of a young, unmarried woman living in London while self-employed as a detective.

Enola Holmes 3 opens with Enola on her way to her wedding to the Viscount of Tewkesbury. A dramatic scene ensues in which Enola must rip off her wedding accouterments and attack the man pursuing her carriage, who turns out to be Dr. Watson (Himesh Patel) asking for help because Sherlock has been kidnapped. In a flurry of flashbacks and narration to the camera, we follow Enola as she abandons her wedding, the hotel she’s staying at gets burned down, and her soon to be mother in law is kidnapped. With help from her mother (Helena Bonham-Carter), her pushover fiancé, the amenable Dr. Watson, and anticolonial Maltese freedom fighter (and comic relief) Mikiel Mizzi (Joe Azzopardi), she saves her loved ones and uncovers a conspiracy of silence around treasure plundered from Khost during the British invasion of Afghanistan. However, Enola’s character has changed dramatically since the first two films, and in some ways lost its effectiveness. 

I was floored by Oppenheimer.  I left the theater blown away (no pun intended) by what I had just witnessed. The film never felt too long nor boring. Despite not understanding practically pages of dialogue at a time, the movie retained an undeniable gravity (again, no pun intended) and suspense.

I’ve yet to analyze my experience piece by piece because I thought it would ruin the effect. I’ve been surfing this wave of contentment for days without studying the ‘why’ of it all.

What made it great? A few things: the scale, the acting, the technical wizardry involving sound and editing, and a true understanding of an elusive historical figure that starts on the page.  

This wasn’t some sci-fi epic like Interstellar, nor did it have the grit and pedigree of the war film, Dunkirk.  This movie was more subtle. It functions somewhat as a biopic. Starting with his early academic years, Oppenheimer sticks to the story of Dr. J. Robert Oppenheimer (Cillian Murphy) and we don’t venture far from him over the course of 3 hours. The sound, realistic visual effects, and editing are all impressively concentrated on the internal struggles of one man, the “founder of the atomic bomb.”