"The Odyssey" - The OG.

Did you know Homer's The Odyssey was originally written as twenty-four books? Maybe you had to read The Odyssey in a class back in school and that factoid just dusted some cobwebs off a decades-old memory. So, you can honestly answer yes, you did know that. But I'm betting you didn't read the whole thing, did you? It's written in a style called dactylic hexameter. If that's even half as obnoxious as iambic pentameter, you probably just vomited in your mouth a little bit when recalling trying to read something in dactylic hexameter. The good news is Christopher Nolan's film adaptation of The Odyssey has translated the story from whatever-meter into good old-fashioned epic blockbuster movie.

Full disclosure, I've never read The Odyssey either. If you're like me, you've heard of at least some of the elements in the story. The Trojan Horse. Odysseus' ten-year voyage home after the end of the Trojan War. Odysseus' wife Penelope and son Telemachus enduring a host of suitors trying to woo Penelope into marriage. The cyclops. The sirens. Now that I think about it, I'm not even sure I knew Odysseus encountered the sirens, but am actually remembering the sirens from Jason and the Argonauts. At least I've got the correct civilization's mythology.

This being a Nolan movie, it shouldn't be surprising to learn that the story isn't presented linearly. Don't worry, there's no time travel or dreams within dreams to melt your brain. Instead of depicting a straight timeline of Odysseus' voyage home and the events that occur during that voyage, we get the highlights in a series of flashbacks. Odysseus (Matt Damon) has been trapped on an island without his crew for seven years and his only company is a sea nymph named Calypso (Charlize Theron). Parallel to that, we jump every so often to Odysseus' palace in Ithaca, where Penelope (Anne Hathaway) has been humoring suitors for nearly two decades. Her now-grown son Telemachus (Tom Holland) is aware that the suitors are looking for any reason to kill him, given he's the heir to the throne. Among the suitors is Antinous (Robert Pattinson), who definitely has murder in his eyes.

The jumping back and forth between Odysseus (and Odysseus' flashbacks) and Penelope/Telemachus does a great job of building tension toward a climax. The drama of the film is in if Odysseus can make it back to Ithaca to reunite with his queen, prevent his son's exile/murder, and resume his place as king of Ithaca. The journey to get there is all of that other stuff. And all of that other stuff is just as exciting and tense to sit through, but for different reasons.

And that's the reason you should watch The Odyssey - the hero's journey. Yeah, that's where the hero's journey came from. Odysseus is THE hero. Practically every fiction movie ever made is based on the hero's journey (even a lot of non-fiction movies use the structure). Same goes for most books. And once you know that, you can't help but map other movies using The Odyssey. One of my favorite examples of this is my wife's breakdown of The Natural. It has a hero, a hero lost for many years, a cyclops, suitors trying to usurp a king, sirens, and more. As I've said in other reviews, my wife is a genius.

The other reason you should watch The Odyssey is...every other film reason that exists. You want great characters and character development? All of the above, plus John Leguizamo (Eumaeus), Lupita Nyong'o (Helen of Troy), Samantha Morton (Circe), Jon Bernthal (Menelaus), Himesh Patel (Eurylochus), Zendaya (Athena), and Elliot Page (Sinon). Do you like great visuals? Nolan blends CGI with practical effects (filming exclusively with IMAX cameras) to perfection. And the way he presents such things as Charybdis, the Cyclops, the Laestrygonians, the Trojan Horse, the underworld, and even Agamemnon (Bennie Safdie) is the sweetest of eye candy. I could go on about the sound, the costumes, the cinematography, the pacing, the everything else that makes this movie so very, very fantastic. But words can't do it full justice. Not even in Greek dactylic hexameter.

Rating: Worth twice the cost of IMAX tickets and you should see it at least twice.

“The Whale” - We are all chasing something.

Going into Darren Aronofsky’s latest film The Whale, I prepared myself for at least one disturbing scene that would sear itself into my brain next to scenes from Requiem for a Dream and Black Swan. Like Stanley Kubrick, Aronofsky tends to make weird and dark movies, some of which feature scenes you cannot unsee. To this day, I can’t see Jennifer Connelly without my brain momentarily flashing to the end of Requiem for a Dream and my body doing an involuntary shudder. Yuck. It just happened again.

Charlie (Brendan Fraser) is a morbidly obese English professor who has issues. Not just that he is literally eating himself to congestive heart failure, but is grieving the death of a loved one, estranged from his daughter Ellie (Sadie Sink), divorced from his ex-wife Mary (Samantha Morton), and a gay man living in Idaho. He has become such a recluse that he teaches his course online with the camera disabled, never leaves his apartment, and has just one friend left - Liz (Hong Chau), a nurse who takes care of him.

We meet Charlie in the flesh when a missionary named Thomas (Ty Simpkins) knocks on Charlie’s door just as Charlie appears to be having a heart attack. Charlie beckons Thomas in, implores Thomas not to call 911, and insists Thomas read to Charlie an essay about Moby Dick. After a few minutes, Charlie’s heart decides not to kill him just yet. Thomas asks Charlie what was the point of reading the essay and Charlie responds, “it makes me feel better; it’s a really good essay.” By this time Liz makes her initial appearance, scolding Charlie and imploring him to go to the hospital and deal with his condition. Charlie refuses on the grounds of money and Liz resigns herself to comforting Charlie as they watch TV.

This scene gives us the stakes - is Charlie going to listen to his best friend or even a possible sign from God or is Charlie going to complete his suicide by food? The scene also establishes the main Moby Dick theme. Seems pretty straightforward, but Aronofsky doesn’t do straightforward. Besides the two obvious references - the essay and Charlie being a whale of a human - everyone in this movie is either Ahab, the whale, or both. This brings us to Ellie.

Charlie knows he is dying, so he chases the only whale left to him - reconciliation with Ellie. This is not going to be easy since Ellie hasn’t seen Charlie since she was eight, is well aware of why Charlie left them, and is now sixteen and her own mom calls her evil. This should be fun. Angry, hormonal teenagers who feel abandoned by their parents are historically rational, thoughtful human beings.

The remainder of the film takes place over the course of a week and it’s a hell of a week. The emotional beats hit often and hard, everyone revealing an anger at something or someone that has driven them to this point in their lives. Charlie’s health is deteriorating quickly, hammering home a sense of urgency that if Charlie dies, all of their personal whale hunts will fail. Every time he eats a sandwich or clutches at his chest, we tense up because nothing is resolved yet. This being an Aronofsky flick, there’s a good chance this film ends without those resolutions.

What makes this film so gripping is a combination of great performances and the choice to enclose the entire film in Charlie’s apartment. Like Charlie, we are trapped in his apartment with no way out. When the emotions start flying, many of the scenes feel like a live wire is exposed. Electricity emanates from all the raw nerves in Charlie’s apartment, none more than when Ellie and Charlie are alone together. With respect to Chau, Simpkins, and Morton, Sink and Fraser are on another level. The two of them are a force together, Ahab and Moby Dick doing their final dance. But who is whom?

Besides the stirring performances and great story, I appreciated Aronofsky resisting the temptation to go weird and dark. It would have been very easy given Charlie’s physical appearance. Several elements in the film could taken scenes in visually and mentally disturbing directions, but Aronofsky wisely avoided them. Had he given into that temptation, much of the emotional impact would have been lost to spectacle. Instead, the movie and characters stay grounded in a reality that is much more relatable. Now, we have images seared into our brains that we won’t mind revisiting whenever we see Fraser or Sink again.

Rating: Worth every penny and, hey, no new shudders.