2026: A Nolan Odyssey

Christopher Nolan’s next film, The Odyssey, is a mythic action epic shot across the world using brand new IMAX film technology. The film brings Homer’s foundational saga to IMAX film screens for the first time and opens in theaters everywhere on July 17, 2026.

The Odyssey stars Matt Damon, Tom Holland, Anne Hathaway, Robert Pattinson and Lupita Nyong’o, with Zendaya and Charlize Theron.

Matt Damon as Odysseus

SAW WEEK: Saw - The Final Chapter (2010)

The ironically named Saw; The Final Chapter (there are already further movies and possibly more, I guess) was full of surprises.

The biggest being that I came away from this gory offering with great admiration for the tight plotting of the whole franchise to date.

This episode had ties to numerous events - but possibly not explained - in previous chapters, and I like to think was all planned from a very early stage.

Of course, this also further compounds the feeling I mentioned the other day that the on-going saga - which is seven parts of a single story - as much like a blood-spattered  HBO series as a horror movie franchise.

While occasionally looking like a cheap '80s cop show, and sometimes hampered by some hilarious overacting from key players in the story, Saw: The Final Chapter (aka Saw 3D aka Saw VII) manages to cram so much into the first hour that you think the credits are about to roll, and then a whole new development unfolds.

The film also brought back Cary Elwes as Dr Gordon, from the original (and best) Saw flick, which I wasn't expecting 

The first big Jigsaw trap takes place in broad daylight in a storefront window, which seems too public for a classic Jigsaw trap and appears to serve only to later reintroduce the survivors as members of a support group.

The main trap-driven plotline of the movie, which was presumably all set up before John Kramer (Tobin Bell) died (he appears in a telling flashback scene), centres around testing Bobby Dagen (Sean Patrick Flanery, of Young Indiana Jones fame).

Bobby has made a name for himself on the self-help circuit (which is where he crosses paths for the blokes from the storefront trap) after publishing a book documenting his supposed survival in one of Jigaw's games. Only it's all bullshit.

So Jigsaw has Bobby kidnapped and then runs him through a series of tests, with the life of one of his friends and confidantes in the balance each time.

Let's just say Bobby isn't very good at these games.

Meanwhile, the police are closing in on Jigsaw's surviving accomplice, Mark Hoffman (Costas Manylor), who escaped the "reverse bear-trap" that Kramer's ex-wife Jill Tuck (Betsy Russell) put him in at the end of the last movie.

Hoffman is now on the hunt for Jill, who turns herself over to the authorities seeking protection and immunity.

I have to say, while it eventually all comes together very satisfactorily, I haven't been impressed for a while about how the franchise got hijacked by Hoffman's story.

As becomes increasingly clear in this chapter, he's just a deranged mass murdering serial killer, without the code of ethics (and superhuman engineering skills and limitless resources) of the more charismatic - but deceased - John Kramer.

I keep coming back to the conclusion, even though killing off the main villain and then continuing his deeds posthumously is a brilliant twist, that John Kramer's Jigsaw would have made an archetypal Batman villain... and I'd have loved to have seen a gritty crossover with the Christopher Nolan era Batman movies. 

While the planned sequel to Saw VII never got made, as box office interest in the franchise was waning, I'm looking forward to finding out how this all ties in to 2017's Jigsaw... and then Spiral: From The Book of Saw.

Joker (2019)

First, some context: I have always been a strong advocate of the belief that one of the reasons The Joker - Batman's arch-nemesis - works so well as a villain, and has endured so long in comics, is because he doesn't have (and doesn't need) a definitive origin story.

As the ultimate unreliable narrator, he's had numerous possible origin stories since he first appeared in 1940, but we've never learned who he actually was as none of these possible backstories have ever stuck.

Part of my issue with prequels is that they very rarely truly complement the original material: Jedi knights were much cooler without midichlorians, xenomorphs were scarier before we knew who "engineered" them etc

However, taking all that into account, writer/director Todd Phillips' Joker is an incredibly powerful and engaging movie.

It's hard to believe that the same person responsible for the odious Hangover movies could craft this amazing Scorsese homage, a Taxi Driver for the comic book movie generation.

Set in 1970s Gotham, the rundown city is a roiling powder keg of social inequality, ready to blow at any moment.

Mentally unbalanced, clown-for-hire and would-be stand-up comedian Arthur Fleck (Joaquin Phoenix) lives with his frail mother (Frances Conroy) and suffers a serious of brutal beat-downs - both physical and emotional - that push him over the edge.

However, media coverage of his violent actions are the spark that ignites the city, and as society explodes around him, Arthur is shocked to find himself on course to meet his idol: TV chat show host Murray Franklin (Robert De Niro).

As well as a Joker origin story, the movie also stands as a Batman origin story, as Thomas Wayne (Brett Cullen) and even young Bruce (Dante Pereira-Olson) get drawn into Arthur's story.

A gritty take on the world of the Batman comics - following in the footsteps of Christopher Nolan's Batman trilogy - Joker is Taxi Driver meets King Of Comedy, with a sprinkling of Fight Club and Frank Miller's The Dark Knight Returns comic book run.

Fleck is Travis Bickle, equally awkward with women and full of pent-up aggression, but with his professional clowning substituting for Bickle's late-night cab driving, both giving them - they believe - insight into society's ills.

Echoing De Niro's riveting Oscar-nominated performance in Taxi Driver, Joaquin Phoenix owns Joker with his magnetic, and tragic, performance as the delusional Fleck, trying to find purpose in his life and an explanation for why all this shit keeps happening to him.

He brings a catalogue of tics and quirks to the character that make his Joker as shockingly memorable as that of the late Heath Ledger.

Are we supposed to feel sympathy, or even empathy, for Arthur? Or simply understand what drove him to do what he did? Or believes he did, if he really did it!

For all we know, at the end of the day, Arthur is just a Joker, but not the Joker!

A surprisingly cerebral and layered story, Joker (available from today on Sky Cinema) definitely demands multiple viewings to simply pick apart which elements - beyond the ones that are flagged up - are real and which occur only in Arthur's head.

Psychologically disturbing viewing, the 122-minute movie exquisitely encapsulates the Alan Moore quote from the highly regarded Batman/Joker graphic novel The Killing Joke:

"All it takes is one bad day to reduce the sanest man alive to lunacy. That's how far the world is from where I am. Just one bad day."

While I wouldn't want all comic book movies to follow Joker's lead, this is an excellent demonstration of how the Marvel method isn't the only way to make to make outstanding movies in this genre.