Dude Rates Movies
Classical, but nicely done biopic about M. Aznavour. I had a great time watching it, and learnt a lot (hopefully truthful things, as I can't find a French equivalent of History vs Hollywood).
This cut from Parce que tu crois to What's the Difference was fire!
This joins Don't Worry Darling in being a rather nice episode of Black Mirror in movie format. Except with a Cannes touch to make it artsy and particularly weird. I don't understand how this got Best Screenplay at Cannes, considering how unsatisfying the details of the plot are, but I guess Cannes is more interested in extended metaphors (If you do too much fillers to try to look young, you'll end up looking like a monster, and people will make fun of you.) than in compelling storytelling craft.
Ultimately, I didn't understand the maneuver the movie was trying to make. (To denounce Hollywood obsession with youth and beauty, let's film a lot of young ass shaking.)
I enjoyed the references to Kubrick.
The story is well told and had me hanging all along, but I find the main character infuriating and cannot think about the movie without getting upset.
We don't see him experiencing guilt about having killed someone. He is only focused on the transactional aspect of the justice system and strategy about avoiding jail. Doesn't he have issues with the fact that he apparently can't be trusted to drive without even realizing whether he killed someone or not? Doesn't he think about the life he has taken? He seems fine avoiding any sort of accountability if that's what will ensure he does not go to jail. Then when he realizes throwing someone else in jail is the only way, he does so, argues that because he is a well-dressed white suburban father his life if fundamentally more worthy than a ex-gangster, and goes home to play with his baby, fully knowing that someone else is in jail instead of him. The guy is a PSYCHOPATH. And the movie is like "hurr durr look those are morally interesting questions about justice, the system is obviously not perfect tadadadida."
Guy who is convinced that a man and a woman cannot be friend tries to be friend with a woman. The unpredictable ending will shock you!!
Cute movie. The beginning was a bit too childish, and the end a bit too dragging. One aspect I found interesting is how The English one is more easily spotted than the Californian one. Because it's easier to fake being sophisticated (when you're laid back) than to fake being laid back (when you're sophisticated).
Pretty good mix of drama and comedy. I particularly liked the unhinged character of Toros (played by Karren Karagulian). I admit I found the main character, Anora, a bit stupid (She mocks Ivan's proposal when he proposes, rightfully so, but then reacts like a surprised deer when Russian guys come up to deal with WTF this marriage is.)
Still scary enough.
Megalopolis is a bloated mess that feels like Francis Ford Coppola handed a blank check to ChatGPT and said, "Make me a masterpiece." The result? A pretentious, self-indulgent disaster that could've been directed by an overzealous art student with too much cash and zero oversight. Hollywood should take note — AI-generated scripts are looming, and Megalopolis feels like the first casualty.
The film reaches its creative low when Nathalie Emmanuel wanders through a heap of random scraps and hallucinates a perfect city. I'm convinced Coppola wants us to hallucinate that we're watching a masterpiece when, in reality, we're stuck with this pile of incoherent garbage. It's a prime example of what happens when a director is left unchecked, à la Terrence Malick post-Tree of Life—except even worse.
Visually, the movie is downright ugly. The sunset-yellow hues, overused in the cheapest blockbusters, create a nauseating backdrop. The acting? Atrocious. Even good actors deliver performances so stilted and awkward that you start to wonder if the director was asleep behind the camera.
The plot? Characters do random, nonsensical things. By the end, you'll be drained of your time, your patience, and your will to watch anything Coppola touches ever again. Megalopolis? More like Megacoppolas, because this movie is an ego trip that never should have left the driveway.
Source: https://chatgpt.com/share/671556d3-c174-8003-87ae-d138c6d8fef6
As unhinged as I remembered it. There is a charm in the classicism of the movie: exposition, development, resolution; one scene at a time.
I've never seen that much density of scary stuff in one movie. This is hysterical. Very neatly directed, including several impressive long takes, and overall splendid craft from beginning to end. I also noted the sound design/mixing which was "powerful" somehow. This was quite the experience watching all of this in a packed theater.
My only problem with it is that I didn't like the end of the movie, which was a big letdown for me. The end implies that quite a big chunk of the last part of the movie was hallucinated (not exactly sure from where it started being all fake), which I don't find as interesting as an alternation between reality and hallucination, with at least some kind of link to reality that the character would be able to hold onto in order to fight the hallucinations. Without that, we're just watching a pure descend into madness, which is artistic, I guess, but not narratively compelling, in my opinion. At least not as compelling as what it could have been.
Why is this shit rated 6.4 on IMDb?
Original format, good execution, moderate scares. Enjoyed the experience.
The movie basically has two parts: A first one where Trump is young, (relatively) well-meaning, a bit naive, and gets his crook education from a ruthless lawyer (Roy Cohn). And a second one, after an ellipsis, where he has basically became the Evil itself and is a definitive scumbag. I think a more gradual progression would have been a bit more interesting from a character development standpoint (as I guess it have been in reality).
I was also a bit annoyed by how much Roy Cohn's advice (particularly his "three rules") maps so well to Trump's current behavior. It feels too perfect a fit, and makes me doubt the timeline and substance of the "apprenticeship" shown to me.
It still remains a very interesting movie, with incredible vibes of the eras it takes place in, and a masterful acting demonstration from Sebastian Stan.
This isn't as bad as I expected it to be according to social media.
My gripes with it is that: 1) I didn't expect it to be a prison movie, and certainly not to be a dwelling prison movie. 2) There are too many singing acts disconnected from the main narration (many of them are (day-)dreams), as if it is a Bollywood movie with some random clips in the middle. 3) The ending doesn't make any sense at all.
Although I would say it's a cinematic success in many ways (the atmosphere, the directing, the acting, the make-up, etc), the sum of those high-quality parts unfortunately results in a low-quality whole.
There is some nice world-building in the first part, that I would have enjoyed to be exploited more, before it switched to being a scare-fest. It is a very well-crafted movie, with amazing directing and sound design, but as all other Aliens except the first one, it lacks the sort of elegance and tension from the movie that started it all. Still, it has succeeded the feat of making my entire theater collectively GASP (viewers will guess at which reveal). At any rate, that was at least a very nice entertainment.
PS: I recently tried out the video game Alien: Isolation from 2014, and the set design of this opus is exactly like in the video game.
PS2: I heard some James Horner-esque harshly metallic sounds in there. An homage from Benjamin Wallfish to Aliens' soundtrack? (foreshadowing the homage via catchline later)
I know this is an audacious comparison, but the level of tension in this movie is comparable to the one I felt while watching Portrait of a Lady in Fire, except trading seduction with... something else. The directing and acting deliver such a strong intensity out of scenes that would superficially appear mundane. It's all in the eyes, reactions, hesitations, and, ultimately, outbursts. With a touch of madness. A work of art, in my humble opinion.
I mean it's all fun and games, but what in the actual hell was this thing we saw in the window from the outside.
Having read the book recently, I didn't succeed in having an "independent" reading of the movie. So, sorry, this is an "annoying guy that read the book" type of commentary.
The main aspects that the movie failed to convey was 1) the repetitive nature of exposition to brutality, which leads to despair and PTSD (the movie kind of concentrates the violence in one harrowing scene) and 2) the constant shelling noise (this is just impractical to do with a movie, unless you want spectators to go crazy alongside the characters).
Interestingly, the movie still choose to explore some internal considerations of the main character in the book, about bureaucrats making decisions while having no "skin in the game" about the consequences of their decisions. This is done with no voice-over, but just by contrasting the visuals of war with those of the lavish food the bureaucrats are eating. However, the philosophical consideration about the failure of civilization allowing such atrocities to happen is gone (it was one of the most important aspect of the book for me).
There are some innovations in the movie, such as the scarf from the French woman being passed on as a token of survival (what does it mean?), a side plot about time trouble with the armistice (what?), as well as a particularly shocking choice to end the movie, which, unfortunately, defeats a significant theme from the book, most notably carried by none other than its title (WWI soldiers who came home couldn't really talk to their closed ones about the war, because of the unhealed trauma and also the fact that what they had seen was so outlandishly horrific that people literally couldn't compute what they were saying. So they ended up just saying that nothing was really happening: "all quiet on the western front". This is also presented in depth in Peter Jackson's documentary They Shall Not Grow Old)
For this one literature wins over cinema.
No comment
No comment
Going into this without knowing that it was a musical and about a transgender person was a wild ride! I think it's an incredibly original movie, and a well-done one. There is a segment in the middle that is a bit too long in my opinion.
Who is this director Ti West, that nobody talks about, and who just pays tribute to Hollywood with style and elegance matching what the Oscar usual favorite pets do? Who is this actress Mia Goth, who, in the space of one opening scene, showcases a sheer talent in a mise en abime, on par with similar performances we have seen with DiCaprio or Emma Stone. What is this trilogy, "X", that seems to have stayed under the radar, while being very original, very well-made, and just overall solid and consistent?
I loved the mask fitting scene where Maxine has a panic attack while remembering the events that happened in X. I initially thought it was sort of inconsistent in tone, considering that those events had a sort of "wild" "unserious" tone to it, and it was weird to revisit them with 100% psychological seriousness. Then I remembered that Maxine was a cocaine addict, and figured that those differences in tone might actually represent whether she's currently in a high or in a low.
The main weakness of the movie is the crime plot, and notably when the police are involved, which feels kind of weak. I thought it remained acceptable enough to enjoy it pretty much.
A real jewel of cinema. It achieves what recent movies like Oppenheimer failed at: a sort of feature-length montage that doesn't make you feel disconnected from the characters and the action. I don't exactly know what the magic formula is, but I guess it notably knows when to land, stop the music, stop the context switching, and just let the present moment be, when it's time for important stuff.
The seams between those "summarized montage" moments and those "present action" moment are wonderfully done, the finest instance of it being the moment in Vietnam when the rain stops and we switch from a montage to real-time action in one single shot, where Zemeckis confirms he is one of the best film blockers out there.
The story (adapted from the novel) is a mixture of an interesting overview of US history and an incredibly original character story. I enjoyed its most unhinged aspects, from the main character being named after a KKK member to him singing at a gospel church with his dumb face.
What a delightful classic I had the chance to rediscover on a big screen. I cannot look at the list of Oscars won by this, and find a single one that wasn't 100% deserved. I might however find some missing ones like Alan Silvestri's soundtrack losing to Hans Zimmer for The Lion King (I admit it's a close one).
As if Celine performance at the Eiffel Tower was not stunning enough, what we learn from this documentary makes it monumental.
I liked the Like a Prayer cover and the traveling tracking shot. I disliked everything else.
With hindsight of a second viewing, I'm realizing this is an incredible depiction of a psychopath in the making. The contrast between her cuteness and the danger she actually is, is actually brilliant. This final monologue also. 😙🤌
That's mid-Shyamalan: not bad, not a masterpiece either. Considering its never-ending, multi-climax last chapter, I thought for a moment good old M. Night had us actually trapped in the theater!
No comment
No comment
Safe to say that it's a strong contender to Anastasia!
⚠️ Spoilers
I found the atmosphere it was happening in too weird and it disconnected me from the movie. Why don't we ever see Harker talk to anybody besides her boss? Why is she working on the floor in a weird storage room? Why doesn't she call the cops when a serial killer actually trespass her home? None of this hooked me and I was already half asleep when Nic Cages was smashing his head on a table.
I think it missed some wide shots of the tornadoes; in this TikTok and drones era, images from reality have become bigger than those from fiction. https://youtu.be/IEFGKMWYD-E?si=6Og1yjD_7APxmQra
Nice entertainment overall. 🌪️
No comment
I found it to be simply brilliant. Casting and dialogues are fire.
No comment
When you're a conspiracy theorist but not really, but actually kind of a little bit, but in fact not.
French is able to describe this movie in one word: Lunaire
The rise and fall of a bikeriders gang in the 60s, under the talented eye of Jeff Nichols, with a banger soundtrack, and pretty solid cast. Not far away from a Scorcese saga, but with a raw aspect to it. Oddly captivating.
One of the few French high-budget movie that uses the money for good cinema rather than celebrities cameos. It is sufficiently faithful to the novel, keeping the most precious parts as-is, at least to my taste. I was apprehensive of Pierre Niney, but it turns out that he's very good for the cast.
Good movie.
The cat understood the assignment.
The dialogues are the worst. The whole Oscar arc got me hooked tho!
There is no exact English translation for the French « Ça ne tient pas debout » ("it doesn't make sense"). The screenplay is just very sloppy. Also not a fan of the casting. Liked the scene where they hide while out with the creatures, notably because it initially wasn't clear whether the creatures were facing them or the Coop.
Definitely a better experience than the first one, mostly because I could identify more with Anxiety. But I kept reminding me of the same weakness than bothered me in the first one: the underlying emotions are just the same as surface-level emotions; there isn't much more difference between Anxiety being anxious and Riley being anxious. Maybe Inside Out adult edition will bring the concept of introspection into the mix.
Some girl who doesn't give a damn about her boyfriend, falls for a paralyzed guy because she succeeded in breaking his shell, is upset when he still wants to die in spite of her cheering him up.
There, spared you the trouble of watching this piece of crap.
A bit too many things wrong there:
- The narrative arc is too ambitious, too big in scope, to fit into a movie with appropriate rhythm. Some parts end up rushed, and I think the whole thing should have been a miniseries. This is not as bad as Dune 2 though, because there are still some scenes taking the time to develop proper action.
- Chris Hemsworth character doesn't work for me. Any important character of the universe is in one way or another charismatic or particularly recognizable, but he just looks pretty random; too young, notably.
- Some parts of the seams of the plot are weak. Immortan Joe values Furiosa as part of a deal, but when she disappears this is a non-event? Some parts are just barely understand-able.
- Although overall the action scenes are very impressive (and there certainly are a lot of incredible stunt craft), at times the image somehow looks fake-ish (CGI? The volume?)
I give it a rating in the "positive" side of the range because I didn't get bored and still had somewhat of a good time, but that's a weak prequel.
What a drag. I didn't expect for such movies to bore me more with age, but there we are.
This is Asylum-level badness wrapped up in high budget and famous actors. But there is one thing that makes it highly watchable, which is that it just never stops; there is no stupid chatter, no filler, no boredom, it just goes on and on always with an acute sense of urgency. So it becomes a spectacle in cinematic ridicule, and a highly entertaining one at that. Not sure that was the intended effect, but I take it!
👍
There is absolutely nothing that works in this movie; a pure demonstration of film-making incompetence and bad taste.
It's hard to find anything bad to say about a movie that is well-made yet doesn't take itself seriously.
The movie opens with Kiss' I was made for loving you to a long-shot of Ryan Gosling getting prepared for a stunt which the character effectively does, and therefore makes you wonder whether this was actually Gosling that did it (since the shot is uninterrupted). I was made for loving you eventually comes back multiple times in the movie in various forms (orchestral, trailer-like cover, etc), and is just one example of the many fun artistic ideas that The Fall Guy has in store, including, for example, a meta-commentary on the usage of split screens, or how psychedelic a fight under influence looks like.
It is quite fun, and hinges on a solid story and solid performances from its leads, including what might surprisingly be the best role of Ryan Gosling, who succeeds in playing a quantum superposition of complete chill attitude and emotional vulnerability (culminating to a remarkably and bizarrely intense scene).
There is of course no lacking of action, with a complete stunt fest. The small bits of making-of shown during the credits offer a glimpse of the logistical challenge that the movie must have been, and proves the grand mastery of the art of crafting stunts from the Fall Guy crew. Bravo!
I remember when I was a little boy we watched this movie together some night. Twas fun! From an adult point of view it's not as fun as I remembered, but still okay 🙂
Moderately good and Coen-esque entertainment. Becomes sort of un-seriously goofy in the second half.
Woody Allen casually trying to expand the Overton window about banging 17 years-olds, ingeniously admitting a zest of guilt in dating a bit too young while the rest of his society doesn't bat an eye. I guess when building fantasy worlds one should follow the same principle as in "never commit more than one crime at a time": the world wasn't ready for teens gangbang, so you have one movie for the 17 years-old (Manhattan) and one movie for the gangbang (Vicky Cristina Barcelona).
Great cinematography by the way.
Both the directing (e.g. the "POV" scenes from the camera) and the screenplay (relatively deep psychological thriller) feel very modern for a 1960 movie. I understand that putting the spectators in the bad guy's shoes could be quite shocking at the time, but I'm happy the movie eventually earned recognition.
Pretty clever, surely a bit too clever in the end. I like the vibe (and the soundtrack that contributes to it).
Feels like this should have been a short movie. Nothing really happens.
I remember liking this movie when big bro and big sis were watching it. Not quite the same impact as an adult. WTF is this plot with the new fiance. He lets her there like she's a prop or something.
Didn't remember it was that good. Really solid thriller.
Would have been a B is not unnecessarily so looooong. Story is good enough, Pacino is on point, final speech is FIRE.
Psychologists: progressive exposition therapy blablablah
Me: LET'S GO KAMIKAZE THERAPY
I guess the rather lame story helped limiting the immersion and mitigating the trauma. The constant aggressive speech from the characters to one another is very distracting (apart from serving the subtext, I guess).
I went into this blind since it had a good IMDb rating, disliked it, googled it, and wondered what can of worms I had opened.
TL;DR: it's a movie from a company doing "Christian movies" about a guy who fights child trafficking inspired from the true story of a guy who, in real-life, is accused of sexual misconduct by several women. Also, Jim Caviezel lectures you during the rolling credits about how important this movie is to fight child trafficking, and gives you a QR code so that you can donate money.
Anyway, if you like nonsensical editing (or nonsensical story, for that matter), the dullest soundtrack (or dullest everything, for that matter), and long shots of thousand-yard-stare-Jim-Caviezel, watch it!
It's good, but not A-level good.
James Cameron be writing his screenplay like "so the fighter jet hovers under the crane, and he asks his daughter to jump onto the plane" and then he actually films it. Must be a nice job.
If Dogma 95 is supposed to be about authenticity, then it doesn't work because the tight constraints of its manifesto apparently forces directing towards hyper-stylized camera work and cinematography, which I found way less sober than well-equipped (but cleaner) productions.
Anyway, the story and actors are very good. Christian has only one friend, who is the cook. Those who rally once the tide has turned don't count.
Late-night TV really broadcasts the randomest movies; never heard of this before.
The project was announced as 17 Bridges in July 2018
yo they can't actually count or what
Beware, this joins the ranks of War of the Worlds in having a misleading marketing campaign about war when it's actually a more intimate and artsy movie — in this case a road movie. I re-calibrated my expectations quickly enough to enjoy it as what it is, which happens to be pretty good.
We get to see a roadshow of scenes ranging from somewhat mundane to highly stressful, but constantly accompanied by a backdrop of war. Those who expect an action movie will need to wait for all this US-under-war imagery to pass by to enjoy the finale — a very well-crafted depiction of urban warfare.
The story and character development is certainly not revolutionary, but just solid enough to hold this thing together.
Special props to the cinematography (quite beautiful, on point for the subject matter) and the incredible sound design.
It's okay entertainment but I didn't like the homage to Titanic when they decided to drag the movie by going to save people underwater. Also you're in desperate need of a globe if you think Hawaii is on the way of a flight from Vegas to China.
I thoroughly enjoyed Pride & Prejudice (book and Wright's movie), but following another Jane Austen story just feels like you could produce an infinite amount of such stories by just randomly reconfiguring the gentry social graph and add some random twists and turns here and there. I guess in the gossip-centered world of unoccupied XIXth century women, every such combination is a story worth telling.
Dunno why I rated it C first time. Holds solid even on a second viewing.
Unless you consider Adam Driver's constant long face "character development", or watching sociopaths torture prisoners "entertainment", there is no value in this movie beyond being a filmed Wikipedia article that has traded depth for bad taste.
I remember watching this as a teenager on the cathodic TV upstairs and being captivated by it. It was a time I had taken a pause on my teen-targeted blockbusters diet to dig a bit into "gems" from well-known directors, and this one certainly occupies a special place in my movie education.
Watching it again reveals to be dragging at times because much of the tension is especially relevant for a first viewing, but it's still a very solid flick.
I remember being underwhelmed when seeing it in the theater, but when you expect nothing more than fun and a good story, it's actually real good.
The raid scene is rad as hell. Overall very solid espionage movie.
My mind was kind of lost in this festival of utterly ugly green screens and CGI, rendering more a dream-like world than anything tangible I could hold onto. It doesn't matter how great the actors are when they just deliver their phony lines in their phony world for their phony stakes. I guess it's possible to connect with this kind of narrative style, but I can't.
I guess there is a metaphor in there about the powerful vs the people or whatever. But my rule is that you first need to have a compelling surface-level story if you want me to go deeper, and all I saw was teachers' drama at the school next door.
Somewhere there is a kid whose favorite movie is this one. Maybe the next S.J. Clarkson!
I wonder whether Anthony Hopkins is playing rather passively or actively. Maybe this wise old man demeanor is just the way he's and he's naturally fit for the role, or maybe he's actually acting mindfully, in which case it's yet another display of his sheer talent.
Anyway don't forget your tissues, because this hits right in the feels. Beautiful story.
I don't really know why focusing on this specific segment of Ferrari's life and work. Seem pretty forgettable to me. As usual, rather weird seeing actors imitating an accent to compensate for the fact that they're non-native (this is more of a casting problem rather than an actor's problem, Adam Driver and Penelope Cruz are pretty fine anyway).
First time I see Jeffrey Wright playing what seems to be a legitimate character and not a walking stereotype of a character as in Westworld or The Batman. Very refreshing! The story sometimes appear a bit disjointed with its different subjects (family drama, professional drama, love drama, etc), but it still lands on its two feet, with a clever take on its main storyline, and a few good laughs in there.
Two things that really bothered me were:
-
Everything is rushed. The rythm of the narrative arc is not consistent with lil' Timothée growing from desert stranger to master of the Universe. The rushing is made pretty obvious by the number of little things that left unexplained (the spy who gets carbonized), that surely are well developed in the novel, but that the screen-writers decided to just have 20 seconds of. This should have been a mini-series.
-
The power dynamics and war strategies are either inconsistent or not well-explained enough for me to understand. The Fremen are very well-armed and technologically advanced; this is not asymmetric warfare. They can even pretty much destroy everything by riding giant worms. Why are they acting as weak undercover resistant? Then suddenly a change in Harkonnen leadership makes the Harkonnen know where the Fremen are and bomb them? (The previous leader already wanted to go full genocide.) In retrospection, it makes me wonder why the Atreides could be defeated in one night if even the Fremen are that good. Or, for that matter, why battle on air, water, or desert, is relevant at all, since all those guys have giant spaceships all over the fucking planet. Why are we watching people fight with swords on the desert?
Anyway action sequences are nice and Denis Villeneuve succeeded in making a worm-riding scene compelling and spectacular (which, let's be honest, had a very high potential for ridiculous-ness). Zendaya could expand her range beyond the constipated face.
It's 2024 and we're having eco-thrillers now. And it's actually well done.
ain't nobody foolin ol anthony hopkins
The subject is pretty interesting, but this is a very poor movie on many aspect. Confusing directing and editing. Dubious casting choices (Chris Rock 😂). Colman Domingo acting is good though.
Pretty random movie, actually. Not sure what the point was, but Natalie Portman and Julian Moore's acting is on point.
Yup. Still incredible.
This movie has extraordinary qualities that definitely make up for the lack of plot: The sound design, which is basically a second movie inside the movie, and which sets up the terribly heavy atmosphere of the movie. The exploration of the psychology of the main characters, and especially Höss' wife, whose attachment to the home seems insane from an external point of view. The amount of research done by the crew ahead of filming.
Among the movies about the Holocaust I've seen so far (although I've not yet seen Claude Lanzmann' Shoah), it is the one that makes me wonder the most about the sheer magnitude and nonsensicality of the final solution. The constant low background noise constitutes the clearest signal of industrialization of death as anything I've seen in cinema before, while the mundanity of unbothered family affairs contrasting with the distant sounds of violence conveys how numb Nazis had became to their own disgusting enterprise.
A haunting piece of cinema that needs to be seen, once.
This movie feels like a nostalgia I'm not a part of whatsoever.
The idea that the whole drama came from "a joke" doesn't really work, since those people just have problems to resolve anyway, starting with anger management as I don't understand why they go off so easily shouting and whatnot whenever some idea appears to be merely displeasing. It's also never really funny.
Random movie with good actors about an interesting story.
What could I expect with Yorgos Lanthimos. 🤷 Seems like it could have been better if it leaned more on the side of the entertaining Burtonian spectacle rather than auteurish whatever-metaphor-that-is-about-patriarchy. This movie drained me.
You are an upstanding police investigator, and one of your old friends basically confessed to you that he killed an innocent man.
A. Pass him the cuffs to put him in custody, inform your colleagues that you had an off-the-record murder confession, open an investigation into a potential murder case.
B. Do a finger gun to him at the city parade.
So when it comes to Elvis we have the choice between the feature length TikTok or the feature length unintelligible whisper ASMR.
What an utter and complete bore.
Ben Affleck and Matt Damon be like yo this story is interesting let's make a movie about it I'll play the CEO you do the main character.
Feels like Bradley Cooper just having a trip mimicking his idol from archive videos he saw of him. What really is the added value of seeing a concert that was performed for real, only by an imitator this time?
Sam Esmail clearly thinks his shots through; a delight for the eyes. He also knows how to hold tension, although it's often for not so much of a release. And that is unfortunately true for the overall story, whose very intriguing Shyamalesque setup ends up resolved with some Wikipedia trivia in a car. Still had a pretty good time overall.
Girlfriend likes it.
It tries to be complete and ends up being good at nothing. In terms of screentime, it is faithful to the quote that appears at the end of the movie: "France, the army, Joséphine" (with "Joséphine" lasting a bit longer that the other two words): the whole love story with Joséphine takes a fair share of the movie; unfortunately it is really not compelling. The only compelling scene was the battle of Waterloo, which I can't even trust, considering the reputation for inaccuracy that the movie gets.
The man oversells himself on monologue before revealing to be sloppy. Pretentious John Wick wannabe.
Planes on the Dominican Republic scene look like sloppy CGI, which seems problematic coming from Fincher the-guy-with-lots-of-unnoticeable-because-perfect-CGIs.
Don't quite know what is the movie's point. Very Beau is Afraid-esque. Nick Cage is excellent, as usual.
I went to a late night screening on the movie's sixth week, only to have a woman with some sort of vertical hairstyle to sit in front of me in the almost empty room. After I shifted one sit left to have an open view, a couple came up and sat directly next to me on my left. When I had made up my mind to shift 2 sits to the right, another couple came to the right to corner me.
After accepting that I was in the fucking Truman Show, I figured that at least I would enjoy the movie, but understood how wrong I was after 30 minutes of it. People transforming into animals and a teenager wandering in the hood to make friend with some bird guy. Even the Wright Brothers back in the day figured out that you need empennage to fly. This bird guy flying with his legs lose is ridiculous and non-believable because of this. How the hell are his legs supposed to be aligned with his body?? Is he the Concorde or something?
I guess there is some metaphor about the transformations of teenagehood in there, but I don't care.
The one shot of the hunters on stilts walking on the cornfield is really great.
Sunday 10 November 2024 📽️
permalinkI spent the first half of the movie wondering what the hell I was supposed to hold onto in this collection of vignettes of generational American profiles. The second half has some drama which got me a bit more involved, but even that was rather weak. In the end, I found it to be quite uncompelling. Good idea, moderately bad execution.