Isn't this what summer blockbusters are supposed to be? This movie has action, comedy, mystery, noir, a good script and some great actors. More importantly, I had a blast watching it. I am still in shock that this movie wasn't a giant hit.
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I think the setup for this movie is quite good: there is a good cast and the script does a nice job framing the troubled young women. One of the difficulties with a film like this is that it can be tough to wrap up the movie. There isn't going to be a resolution. So the film ends the same way that we expect it to end. In that sense, I preferred the first half of the movie to the second.
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I think your potential enjoyment of this film will be rooted in what you are looking for. If you are looking for a lurid comedy, this isn't it. In fact, it very much reminded me of When Zach and Miri Make a P*****. There is a sweet center to the film that is the result of seeing the friends interact. Beyond all of that, there is an excellent commentaries on friendship as well as dating ("lets pretend like last night never happened"). The film is far from great, but I had a good time watching it.
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I love movies that take chances and try to use new and creative methods to tell a story. Call it abstract, absurd, or whatever. I watch a couple of hundred movies a year, so I welcome different. The problem is that "different" is not always synonymous with "good". I love Swinton so much.... this movie just didn't work for me even though I gave it three chances (I fell asleep twice). I didn't love her character, although I think she may have done the best she could with the material.
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When you look at the cast and you see the names Colman, Buckley and Spall, you know you are in for a treat. I can't recall the last time that I saw a movie that was quite like this. While the movie is listed as a drama, it functions well as a black comedy. While on the surface the two leads are frenemies, there is still an undercurrent of some kind of bond. I suspect much of their connection was rooted in the way that women were treated in the not-so-distant past.
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At its heart, there is a fairly compelling story here. I like the idea of a man falling down and questioning his life and who he is. I just don't know that the delivery of the premise was very good. Reynolds and Mortimer are always good but I think that this movie had a low ceiling because of the script.
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I am admittedly not a huge fan of Terence Malick. I generally understand what he is trying to do, and I greatly enjoy some of his movies. This one kind of fell in the middle - I enjoyed the first half of the film more than the second half.
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The main problem with this movie is that there is absolutely nothing in it that is beyond pedestrian. Everything is just "meh" - the script, the acting, the chemistry, etc. The biggest problem with the cast is that the male lead is extremely meh, and there was no real connection between the leads. I couldn't have cared less if they got together, and I was indifferent when it ended.
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I think Roger Ebert nailed it in his review of this movie. There is nothing here that we haven't seen before. But as the movie draws to an end, you realized that you are enjoying it. There need not be any more analysis than that.
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I know that this may sound odd, but this movie reminded me of a rom com that masqueraded as a drama. Don't get me wrong, this movie is a straight-ahead drama and is not trying to be anything else. Sometimes a movie just grabs you from the opening scenes and doesn't let go, and this movie was that for me. The chemistry between the two leads was ridiculous, and I didn't want it to end. I think what is all the more surprising for me is that I can't recall liking Anne Hathaway in any other movie. When it ended, I wanted to go back and watch it again.
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I get the mixed reviews of this movie. After all, it is a slice-of-life drama set over the course of a few days in a rural town. That said, I really enjoyed it. I thought that the performances were excellent and I really enjoyed how they brought the story to a close in the final scenese (as an introvert, Ed Harris' speech really hit home). Lily Rabe was excellent as always - it was the first time that I have seen her in something that suited her since Miss Stevens.
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While the premise of the movie is a bit hokey, it actually kind of worked for me. The problem with the movie was the absolutely painful middle third of the movie. Watching one character try to annoy the hell out of another character was just plain annoying to the viewer (and made for some really terrible scenes). While the sum of the movie is way less than the parts, the parts made it watchable on a rom-com level. Thankfully, McConaughey has been able to rise above this kind of filler.
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This movie was a movie that was a blend of certain themes that always sucker me in. Music and dance are very prevalent in the movie, but it definitely would not be considered a musical. I like how the film portrayed how music and rhythm can influence our lives on a minute-by-minute basis. There isn't anything in this movie that we haven't seen before, but it still worked for me. Sometimes that is more than enough.
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This film confounded me a little bit. I can't say that I loved anything about it, but it still held my attention right to the end. It was never predictable and - while it reminded me of several other films - it still felt authentic.
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I thought that the premise was good: a man that has lived a fairly selfish and meaningless life is forced to address his past. As the movie played out, it just became so…. uninteresting. By the end I think I was only half-watching the movie.
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This movie is a classic case of the parts being better than the sum. There are so many fine actors in this movie – Witherspoon, Rudd, Wilson, Nicholson, and the underrated Kathryn Hahn. It was fine to watch because the characters are so likeable, but it was no better than that. I think there was a better movie in there.j
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The good: the two leads are very, very good in this movie. The bad? The movie is remarkably unremarkable. It isn't necessarily interesting or dramatic or funny. I may have been a little kinder to this than I otherwise should have because of my affinity for the two leads.
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I gave this a look because I have always had a soft spot for movies made in rural New England. It felt like a local community theater group got together and decided to make a Hallmark movie. Even for the Hallmark genre, this was very bland.
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I gave this movie a look because I live in the Western New York / Niagara Falls region. The director did a good job making Niagara Falls look better than it is - there were a lot of tight shots and a little bit of trickery going on in many of the scenes (for example, they make it look like the zipline is right next to the falls). Anyway, this is a paint-by-numbers hallmark movie that manages to be respectable because of the chemistry between the two leads.
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Over the years, I have seen a lot of movies that felt like Coen Brothers rip-offs. This movie very much has the feel of a Coen Brothers movie, but I dare say that it still managed to feel authentic. Everything about it was really fantastic - perfect casting, tight story, excellent musical choices, etc. Once the opening scene played out, I knew I was in for a treat.
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Its hard to be critical of a movie that has a good message. This movie is.... fine. Its hard to do something new in the coming-of-age genre, and we have certainly seen this movie done better and worse.
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I loved this movie far more than I probably should have. In the movie, the lead is triggered when she hears a song that she first heard with her boyfriend years ago. While watching this movie, I was very much reminded of other movies (High Fidelity, L.A. Story, What Dreams May Come, Safety Not Guaranteed, and probably more). But I don't think that this movie was derivative of any of those movies. Despite the fact that the film travelled down familiar paths, it still felt like an authentic journey. I felt a personal connection to the lead and became emotionally invested in her story. I am sure that others watched this film and did not have the same experience, but for some reason it really got to me.
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This movie was a bite-sized thriller in that the viewer is dropped almost immediately into the conflict. The might might be described as efficient in that it has no wasted scenes or dialog, and the final scene is true to the characters. If you don't have a ton of time to watch a thriller, you could do worse than this movie.
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This movie won't be considered a masterpiece by any stretch of the imagination. It is light and airy and dare I say "good enough" to be considered a worthwhile 90 minutes. It was actually refreshing to see two leads who don't look like models and have a bit of chemistry.
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To say that this film is slight would be an understatement. We are dropped into a world of people that are seemingly unknown to anyone. From the outside, it looks to be a dark and lonely place. But if you look closely, there seems to be glimpses of hope. This movie is about those flashes of hope.
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I have to admit that I was pleasantly surprised by this movie. Is it a romcom? Sure. This movie could have taken the easy way out and spent 45 minutes having Leopold try to navigate modern technology, but it did not. In a weird kind of way, Leopold's character brought a kind of credibility to the movie in the same way he brought English charm to the film. If you paid attention to the opening scenes, you probably have an idea as to how the movie is going to end (the hint is visual and not part of the dialog or story). I enjoyed the movie more than I thought I would. Hell, it was the first time that I saw Liev Schrieber in a movie where I didn't want to punch him (I think for once he found a role that fit him).
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The synopsis of this movie states that a college student struggles with mental illness when her mother is struck with cancer. This is all true, but I dare say that the movie works best in another theme. While the focus of the movie is the daughter with mental illness, all three siblings struggle with the same affliction: they aren't adults. The world revolves around them, just as it does with any other teenager struggling to grow up.
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I had seen bits and pieces of this movie over the years but never the whole thing until recently. I can't imagine what the fuss was about it - it is pretty average and uneventful. Michael Keeton does a good job playing some kind of character, but I don't think that I laughed once at anything he actually said. Not surprisingly, Catherine O'Hara was the best thing about this movie.
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This movie was mediocre on levels that I didn't even know existed. I say that while grading on a bit of a curve. After all, how hard could it be to mess this up? They started with the rough outline of a franchise that already existed, and then added in some A-list movie stars. They also had the ability to spoof so many other movies that came before it. The funny thing is that I can't really put my finger on what exactly I would have changed because it was soooooo lacking. Despite Carrell's best efforts (and he was really working it here), it wasn't funny. It wasn't a good action movie (the last 20 minutes were painful) and it wasn't silly enough to be a spoof. Worse, if you paid attention in the middle part of the movie, they told you how the movie was going to end and who was the bad guy.
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My first thought after finishing this movie was "that felt really amateurish". After all, how many times did we need to be reminded that it was just such a coincidence that the two leads ran into each other while walking down the street? Over and over again - "wow, look at my dumb luck for running into you". But then I read some of the other reviews and saw the better way of stating how this movie feels: it feels like someone fed the last 20 years of Allen movies into an Allen AI model and this was the result. It was just so... unambitious. About the only thing that this movie had going for it is that it looks absolutely gorgeous and the people look and sound lovely (speaking French probably gave it more credibility than it deserved). The music bed running through the entirety of the movie only backed up the fact that there wasn't much confidence in the material.
I was surprised to see that many people have said that this was his best movie in a decade, and maybe even since Match Point. I absolutely despised his last two movies (they really were unwatchable), but I would put this one only marginally ahead of those two (it didn't make me angry while watching it, so I guess there is that). At least with Wonder Wheel and Irrational Man there was some kind of character development. Or at the very least, extremely talented actors delivering questionable dialog. This film is a regurgitation of so many movies that have come before it. I am baffled that so many people thought that this slight and extremely simplistic movie was actually good.
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