It's terribly sad to see comments that are taking the "story" for what it is worth at face value and outright dismissing the movie entirely
As loathe as I am to watch "arthouse" movies, this one certainly struck quite a few chords. The journey of the young, unsure, foolhardy knight and his misplaced sense of honor and the turn he takes into fully accepting his destiny was one I enjoyed very much. The visuals and the sounds did play a large part in it, completely selling the atmosphere of a magical kingdom with swathes of unknown and unexplored mystery. The performances, too, were excellent and Dev Patel was very convincing as Sir Gawain
I'm sorry to say but the story is very, very obvious. As with these "artsy fartsy" movies, the way it is told is what elevates it and here, I feel it was justified and used to great effect. Instead of giving us the straightforward story of Sir Gawain in the ballad, something that has been told for centuries (and something I looked up afterwards because I'm not British or European at all), this movie instead attempts to recontextualise and shroud the entire thing in an air of magic and I found myself enraptured by it
It's the classic tale of a straightforward story told in a convoluted way. As King Arthur says at the very beginning, it was always just a game. What mattered was the journey Gawain took that changed him into someone who would accept what was coming because of his honor. The fox and the mansion were distractions and tried to keep him from achieving his destiny. The sash, given by his mother and returned by the witch in the mansion, was to prevent him harm but it prevented it by making him a coward. What happens after the Knight swings his axe is just the future that awaits for him for his broken oath. He removes the sash, thus letting go of all fears and the Green Knight, satisfied with the man he sees before him, lets him go. The Green Knight was never truly harmed and there was never a reason to harm Gawain either
I loved this movie. It blended the mystical and made for an enthralling journey through beautiful lands and forests and was something truly unique that I appreciate and left me wanting more
Now having watched S1 and S2 twice in preparation of S3 and having been done with S3, I can definitively say, this is easily my top show of all time. Unfortunately it's not perfect but I can attest to the sheer quality in every single aspect of it's production and writing.
This show could have been a 10/10 contender for me and up until S3E7, it was. It was making it's way to be the perfect show but the ending is not as satisfying as I'd hoped because it doesn't live up to the promise the show establishes. Before I discuss the ending, I must assure you that almost every single mystery and question you might have had till S2 is resolved and answered. What follows is a complete spoiler for the ending so DO NOT READ UNTIL YOU WATCH ALL OF S3
Until S3E7, the show establishes that the universe the show takes place in is utterly deterministic and I loved it for that. They even tease a non-deterministic possibility only to turn it on it's head and cement even more that it definitively is. But then S3E8 comes and forces a "fix" to the whole timeline that does actually make a lot of sense with the established world. When the characters were operating on the duality of worlds, it was only obvious that if everything else operated in threes, why not the worlds? But then the resolution and the whole fix and the unnecessary scenes in between to make it a sci-fi ending doesn't pull it off completely. I love sci-fi endings and stuff like Arrival, Annihilation, Interstellar, 2001 and the game Observation are my bread and butter. But this show has established itself too much into a certain way of the universe operating that the ending seemed to fit way too clumsily into a "happy" ending. I wish the authors had established a far more bleak ending of a never ending cycle simply continuing and looping into itself to tie all the characters into their respective dooms for eternity.
That said, a somewhat weak ending doesn't ruin 25 episodes of near perfection. The show deserves a 9.5 but alas a 9 is all I can give
Without spoilers, this is a very well constructed movie that I felt wasn't written as well as it thinks it is but it's still a good watch
Now spoilers:
I'm really not particularly a fan of "it was all a dream" endings and this movie seems to have been made in the height of that phenomenon following The Sixth Sense. Despite that, I suppose what elevates this movie significantly and makes the ending work is that the movie never really lies to you. It makes it very apparent very early on that it is a dream. The choices made by the director in the editing, the clever scene transitions and the easter eggs peppered throughout make it very obvious that all is not as it seems and it disorients you constantly
In that way, the movie is very well made. A lot of very clever choices were made and the movie tells a lot just by showing. For eg. for the most part, every scene set in a stairwell is always shown with the characters going down, the use of morph transitions occasionally makes you mistrust what you see and so on
I suppose my big problem is with the writing. Now I didn't really like that the primary POV, that of Doctor Sam was fake. It seemed quite disingenuous that we see Sam losing his mind more so than Henry who gets very little screen time yet is the one who is dreaming. The movie also gave itself away far too early. Maybe it's just me having watched so many movies but it was highly apparent from the first scene of the car crash and Henry walking away that that was what had happened. Any other attempts at trying to convince me, the viewer, that maybe Sam was losing his mind really made no sense and I was expecting Sam to be a figment of his imagination. This meant I was pretty severely disappointed that Sam was a bystander helping out the dying Henry. The ending of Sam asking Lila out was also a very contrived moment that I really disliked and would have worked better if they'd exchanged numbers as witnesses to an accident. The whole movie could have tried to be more subtle but I felt the writing was trying way too hard and going "YOU GET IT YET? YOU GET IT? IT'S A DREAM DO YOU GET IT?" at me without really earning it
I'm going to pretend that I know nothing of what Alex Garland himself has said about this movie and his motivations while writing it. All I've heard is vague bad misinterpretations of what he's said anyhow and I have no interest in doing any further research.
I have a different interpretation of this movie. I don't think it's trying to be "apolitical" or be a centrist stance on anything. I'm not even sure it's trying to be much of a war movie as such or be a study of the United States and divisive politics. I don't even feel like it's a look into "war journalism" and I'm sure actual journalists would be fairly appalled at how they're portrayed and I'm reasonably certain that this is in no way accurate whatsoever. Obviously the movie isn't trying to be left or right wing and is certainly vague about party affiliations but it is also thoroughly unconcerned with trying to explain what happened that led to these events beyond vague, hand wavy concoctions. To me, the ending very much comes across as "you can try your hardest to not care but you will be forced to". I don't think it ends abruptly because it ends when the story does. There's nothing more to discuss because what would inevitably happen happened. The characters are forced to come to grips with what the maelstrom around them as they wade through the muck in the quest for their own brand of thrills. This is simply a character study of a unique set of individuals in an unusual and dangerous situation with the setting simply as set dressing.
Before I go any deeper into my thoughts that are filled with spoilers, I'll give my spoiler free opinions. This was an incredible movie but not without its fumbles. The dialog is not always good and some lines come across as quite goofy. But when it hits, it very much hits it right out of the park. The battle scenes are tense, the music choices are excellent and the performances are absolutely wonderful. Kirsten Dunst is obviously a highlight but Cailee Spiney was a revelation, not having seen her in anything else before this. Jesse Plemons' small role has already been memed into oblivion but with good reason because it certainly is one of the most memorable sequences I can think of. The movie is shot beautifully and it very much is one of the most gorgeous, well shot movies I've seen in recent memory. All that said, it's so hard to recommend this movie to anyone. It's not straightforward or plot driven like most of Alex Garland's previous works (barring Men that I have not watched as of writing this review) but to me, this would certainly count as required viewing if you want to watch a movie unlike any other with fairly unique subject matter and for a masterclass in building tension. Watch it if given the opportunity but do not go in expecting payoffs and action set pieces. This was an extremely thought provoking piece but I don't think it was for the reasons I was expecting. I think I will be thinking about this one for a long time.
Now with the spoilers:
The moment it became clear to me that the movie wasn't trying to be apolitical was when they went arrived at the town out of time. Joe asks the cashier if she knows what's happening around them to which she says "we're trying to stay out of it". This clearly initially comes off as the naive and arrogant retort of someone privileged enough by geography to afford to say that but soon after, the movie shows that the town has taken the violent steps to keep it that way and it did not come about by accident. The town is no apolitical anachronistic paradise but a haven that is enforced through guns and blood spilled conveniently off screen. In a similar vein, none of the characters by the end remain neutral or disconnected from what happens around them. Lee is clearly shaken and can barely do her job in the moments leading up to the invasion of the White House. We do know that she is not immune to the affects of her work but what changes through the runtime is her affinity for Jessie and protecting her as she figuratively passes the torch to her. Lee tried to move with the times and keep herself focused as she adopted the digital camera, struggling to upload her shots through broken wifi, as the new generation comes in with the old film camera to take up her mantle. Joe and Jessie can clearly no longer stay neutral in the conflict as they leave behind Sammy and Lee's corpses and direct their ire towards the President who they probably feel is the reason for their colleagues' deaths and they take satisfaction in almost joyfully covering the President's final moments. "War is bad" seems almost like a trite message to have to be covered in 109 minutes but ultimately that is what I feel the movie is about. It does not matter how many photos you take, the moments that will deeply affect you will remain in your mind forever, needing no reminders and war is a powerful force that will leave an indelible mark on anyone
One of the worst movies I've had the displeasure of seeing
Acting was probably the only relatively decent thing about the movie. Most of the actors did a good enough job of it
The writing was laughably stupid. I could write a novel with a list of all the plot holes and unexplained events that happen here. The dialog is legitimately terrible at times. The characters behave wildly inconsistently making absolutely brain dead decisions at almost every single moment of the movie. You'd think a zombie movie would have interesting zombies but they're overwritten and somehow overacted. This is nowhere close to being a simple zombie heist movie as was advertised. There's too much going on with so many unnecessary subplots and forced emotional moments trying their hardest to make this a serious movie. The humor is just more crap to the pile that's done poorly
The movie looks awful too. At least with Snyder you sort of think that you'll get a visual spectacle. So many scenes look blurry and out of focus and some of the CGI is legitimately ugly. As is on-brand for Snyder, none of the music is in any way subtle
All in all, this is a Snyder show and it's evident that the guy is a hack who can't write or direct and has continually failed upwards consistently. It's overly long at 2.5 hours which could just as easily have been a more digestible 1.5 hours. And all of it wasted on some of most disgusting, unpalatable writing I've seen in a movie
I'm not sure I agree with all the 10s. Thought I'd find something far more compelling than what I got. It's not bad by any means and I enjoyed the show all the way through. Does it answer all the questions you have? Not really. But some of the answers don't really matter anyway and I didn't really care about them anyhow
But it's still not something I would really care to watch or recommend particularly. It's a love story at its core. Almost everything else is merely set dressing even if it's quite compelling. The mystery pulls you through but ultimately, I don't think I liked some of the characters enough to care about what they wanted or went through. Especially in the first season, almost every character is decidedly unlikeable and even by the final season, some of them remain quite selfish and arrogant. I don't mind the ending but the off-screen resolutions to most of the characters felt throwaway. I wish we'd got more at the end with everyone involved rather than just two of the characters cause even if they're unlikeable, I was still compelled to see their journeys
Not sure I liked this show as much as everyone else did but you don't have to believe me
An actually pretty creepy and intense horror movie. Definitely deserves to be one of the "cult classics" though the very end could have been structured a bit differently to make it more solid.
The visuals, set design and effects were top notch considering this was a film made even before the matrix and for a movie set in '97 it actually makes space quite believable. The writing was fairly solid and tight. Very few wasted scenes or dialog though some characters like Cooper really felt out of place. The actors acted the shit out of their roles and were completely believable as stranded and terrified crew in an alien situation. The plot, though not particularly smart, actually tries its best to keep things going, keep the tension building and the terror as real as possible. The premise itself requires some suspension of disbelief but for what it is, it stays fairly solid through most of it. There are barely any jump scares and instead relies more on psychological horror to keep you on the edge of your seat but the directing pretty much got in the way at the end trying to make for an explosive finale in what should have been a more slow burn of a horror ending considering how the movie tries to take its time for the rest of it. The sound design was probably the weakest aspect and the foley towards the end was pretty damn bad
I really enjoyed this one. Really tight movie and a must watch for fans of horror
This film was easily an hour longer than it should have been. There's a very clear "plot" that it follows and it's actually really straightforward what happens honestly. It's just mired in so much pretension and wasted time. We didn't need 3 long conversations in the car that all say very little. I'm sure on a repeat watch I'll see more callbacks to future events or allusions to the real plot earlier on but I really don't care enough. It was much more intriguing at the beginning but felt like it lost confidence in its narrative halfway through and just petered out
If you really want to know what's happening, it was all a delusion. A delusion built by a sad, pathetic man, a janitor in a school who imagines himself younger and fetches himself a girl; a girl he might have briefly scene at a pub a long time ago. But even this delusion is marred by his own insecurities caused partly by his parents (whoop-dee-doo). The girl doesn't like him and is "thinking of ending things" but doesn't and can't bring herself to actually do it because that's not what he wants in this delusion. He's ashamed of his parents and imagines numerous scenarios of bringing this girl to meet his parents at various stages in their life but he can't even fix what the girl does or what her name is. That's really all that the movie is about. It takes 2 hours to tell this to you and literally sings and dances this whole thing to you at the end to completely drill it into your head which was supremely unnecessary.
I'm not particularly impressed. Probably one of Kaufman's weaker works
