The full realization of Nolan’s obsessions with Stanley Kubrick and Ridley Scott, but without the same strong sense of independent visual identity. Nolan apes his predecessors, but I never feel like he’s captured the essence of their visual inventiveness.
Pfister’s cinematography and DiCaprio are both excellent.
The editing is a far cry better than The Dark Knight. There are only a couple shots where I wonder how we got there, and that’s an improvement. (They’re all towards the end, when Nolan needs to conclude, but he can’t unwind his plot enough to make sense of it.) Pfister’s camera work and the editing all come together this time in a viscerally confusing way.
The 4K Blu-ray, which I got to see for the first time, fixes the black crush present in the 1080p disc. But it raises the blacks too much, and the image is a little washed out. Highlights are also tinted yellow, which is absolutely not something Pfister ever did, and I dislike it. Very Hoyte van Hoytema, which is great for him, but these tinted highlights are not accurate to the film’s original presentation.
Watched in preparation for Oppenheimer in 70mm IMAX.