10 Movies You Have To Watch AGAIN To Fully Understand

2. Tenet (2020)

Outstripping the frankly bonkers concepts on which he made his name, Christopher Nolan had one word for us in 2020: Tenet.

Turning James Bond into sci-fi, John David Washington's ex-CIA agent is swept up in a battle for the survival of the Earth and time itself, involving machines that reverse the entropy of objects and people, inverting their subjective time.

The plot is at once straightforward: suave American agent stops mad Russian villain from destroying the world; and dense as all heck: there are a collection of nine spare-part-looking algorithmic whatchimicallems disguised as uranium that somehow have the power to reverse the entropy of the entire planet, which have been sent back (or not?) by someone (or someones) who want to help destroy the world (or not?).

Seeing two scenes play against each other from either end of the film is where Tenet comes into its own - and where, at least in the finer details, it will lose first-time viewers. Amongst these sequences there is a mind-bending two-way time reversal car chase and a nigh-incomprehensible third act battle that aches for a carefully plotted wall-chart and the pause, study and rewind treatment on Blu-ray.

Though several a-ha! moments will give a sense of satisfaction on the first watch - such as Neil's final revelation - the sheer magnitude and pinpoint execution of this film's every frame means that much of its treasures can't be fully comprehended without a great deal more excavation.

Buckle up, this one's going to take a few round trips.