Change Your Image
Coolaj56
Ratings
Most Recently Rated
Lists
An error has ocurred. Please try againReviews
Magnolia (1999)
A bold epic filled with masterful storytelling
Most of this film works spectacularly well, in the cinematography, writing, acting, and editing. It is immensely impressive that this over 3 hour film never feels slow and remains engrossing for most of its runtime. The characters are well-defined, layered and connected in interesting ways, and several of the story beats are tremendously effective. That is why it pains me that that some pieces of the plot don't get tied up all the way, and there are a few too many loose ends in the final act.
The setup of this film is a magnificent example of managing tension and tone. While the tension is a bit uneven, resetting with each story, I think the success of of it is far more powerful than the occasional weaknesses.
But by the end, I am marveling at how well I understand all these characters and at the story that has been built. And then the ending doesn't fully live up to the rest of the movie. It's good enough, but for a story this densely interconnected, I would have loved for writer/director P.T. Anderson to tie the story threads together a little more cohesively in the finale. This film had a strong shot at a 9 for most of its runtime, but the ending was a little too weak and underwhelming, and so it lands at an 8/10.
Seven Psychopaths (2012)
An unusual erratic mess
Writer/director Martin McDonagh had a few good ideas, that he then tried to pack with other random stuff to fill out a movie. It gets heavily self-referential and satirical, but ultimately so much of this film feels half-baked. The main characters are each fairly interesting, and their backstories are as well, but the backstories don't make sense for the characters. So they each feel more like characters on a page, than like real people. I suppose the perils of a satire is that you can't take anything seriously. And McDonagh just goes with that and doesn't want you take anything seriously...until things do get serious.
There are several pieces of this movie that are excellent, such as the interview with Zachariah (Tom Waits), and the scene in the hospital room near the end. Those were great serious moments that didn't fit into the rest of the movie, but worked well on their own. The final product feels like a season of a TV show, where some of the episodes are great, others are mediocre, and each attempt to pull it all together just falls flat.
Some people may contend that the random plot and tonal inconsistencies are all intentional, which may be so. But just because something was intentional, doesn't mean it was a good decision. And this film has a lot of bad decisions mixed in with some great ideas.
Beoning (2018)
Artistic Symbolism at its Worst
Burning is like a puzzle being built in slow motion, except the puzzle never gets completed, half the pieces laid out don't contribute to it at all, the picture attempting to be built isn't particularly interesting, and the whole things takes an incredibly long time.
The main character Lee Jong-Su was underwhelming in writing and acting. He is ineffectual and uninteresting for the entire runtime. He also has no discernible chemistry with his love-interest Hae-Mi, despite what the dialogue occasionally suggests. The film just slowly meanders as it tries to establish some ideas. Some pieces here are actually interesting, but most of them just have no payoff. In that vein, this movie is apparently supposed to be a thriller that builds to a giant reveal at the end. A large portion of the film is going for symbolism that is for the most part silly and pretentious, and occasionally outright stupid. While I don't think anything I say could ruin someone's enjoyment of this film, because it does such a good job at ruining itself, I will still avoid spoilers. But suffice to say, the 'big reveal' is more stupid symbolism that makes no sense in the context of the plot.
From the structure, to the writing, the acting, the pacing, this film fails in essentially every category. The cinematography was reasonably good, but it was undermined by shots that lasted far far too long and an excessive focus on background nature over the characters in the story. This film probably deserves a 1/10 instead of a 2/10, but there were some scenes with Hae-Mi in the beginning that were actually decent.
I can't in good conscious recommend this to anybody, but it does have quite a bit in common with Roma, so if you like Roma than I suppose you might like this as well.
Don't Worry, He Won't Get Far on Foot (2018)
Almost Amazing
The most remarkable and surprising aspect of this film is Jonah Hill's outstanding performance. Even in scenes where he has relatively emotional range, he was still embodying his character, often outshining Joaquin Pheonix, who also gave an excellent performance. That being said this is a movie about an alcoholic disabled cartoonist and it is generally very effective at telling that fascinating story very well.
For me, there were two things that pulled this down. One was some odd, distracting camera movements. Sometimes, the film was shot in a rather standard biopic style, and other times it was shot more like a documentary, where the camera struggled to adjust and find characters within the scene. There were several moments of odd camera moves and zooms, along with shaky cam being used in conversation scenes. Most of that was infrequent enough to not ruin the movie, but it was distracting every time it occurred.
The second major issue lied in the structure, which is based on establishing a major event and then showing a series of other scenes that led up to that event. I like what writer/director Gus Van Sant was trying to do here, as it juxtaposes character traits and conveys ideas to the viewer in a novel, effective way. However, there is often nothing establishing the time line as the movie jumps around in time. The result is that it becomes unclear when certain events occurred in relation to other relevant events. I was still able to follow the bulk of the plot on a moment-to-moment basis, but some major moments got confusing because of the lack of a clear timeline. This served to weaken an otherwise uniquely effective plot structure.
I must additionally mention that the idea to animate Callahan's cartoons was brilliant; the cartoons included in the film range from mildly funny to hilarious. And they are used in the some interesting ways in the plot as well.
I have also read that some people found the film to be too hokey, sentimental, and/or too obvious. I think this is a product of Gus Van Sant's style. While, I do not agree with these criticisms, as I found this film to be tonally in line with Milk, also directed by Van Sant.
The Good Lie (2014)
A Great Story Told Well Enough
The first hour drags down an otherwise solid movie. The film begins with a long title card and then spends 30 mins showing everything that the title card established. Even aside from the redundancy, this opening section was slow and the child actors were pretty bad.
Once it moves past that section though, the movie picks up and the fish out of water scenes are cute and fun. The cinematography and editing never gets very good, but the story and characters remain interesting enough and the performances are good enough for an entertaining experience. There's nothing groundbreaking here, but it's all competent enough to make for a pretty good way to spend ~2 hours.
Wonder Woman (2017)
A clumsy, ugly, disappointing mess
(This review will have major spoilers.)
To start out with, Gal Gadot looks the part of a goddess very well, but her performance is mediocre at best. Chris Pine is serviceable with a few decent scenes. The only actually good performance is from Saïd Taghmaoui, who plays Sameer. His character does basically nothing, like all the secondary characters in this film, but he was at least entertaining to watch. There is sadly not a single character arc in this film, not even from the title character, which was disappointing to say the least.
The fish-out-water scenes in the middle of the movie are decent and have most of the good lines of the movie. Aside from that though, almost nothing here works. From the exposition dump across the first half-hour, to the badly-shot fight scenes, and the ugly Zach Snyder-style cinematography, nearly every aspect of this film is incompetent.
I could list of innumerable poor decisions here, but to me the most egregious error the film makes is its second ending. (If you care, this is the spoiler-heavy section.) Ostensibly, the first ending of the film is when Diana kills the man she believes to be Aries and then the war continues unabated. For a moment, I thought she was going to be forced to learn a lesson about how she was wrong, and you can't kill just one person to stop a war. This would be a solid payoff to the naivety that had been thoroughly established up to this point, thus completing her arc. But alas, this is not what happens. Instead, she discovers the real Aries and proceeds to have a giant CGI-heavy fight with Aries that looks truly horrendous. Defeating Aries here stops the war, which means Diana was right all along and thus learned nothing. But she also defeated him in the most disgusting final fight I've ever witnessed. That ~20 min fight at the end brought the rating down 1 star, on its own.
I loved the first film Patty Jenkins directed, Monster; I view that as a near masterpiece. But here Jenkins has directed Wonder Woman as a character with no arc surrounded by other characters who also have no arc and who have essentially no impact on the plot. Wonder Woman learns nothing and gets into a lot of ugly-looking fights along the way. Her relationship with Steve Trevor (Chris Pine) is rather cute and she has a handful of funny lines with him, but sadly that's the only bits of value this film has to offer.
Can You Ever Forgive Me? (2018)
Lee Israel says she's "uninteresting". I agree
I believe the basic story this film tells would make for an interesting article, possibly even a whole book (note: I haven't read the book this film is based on). But in a film-format, this story is noticeable lacking, as there's just not enough there to make for an interesting story. The principal issue here is that the main character is far too unsympathetic and uninteresting to be an engaging protagonist, as she appears to have almost no internal conflict. Plenty of films succeed with detestable protagonists, usually by diving into their psychology in a character-study-format. Can You Ever Forgive Me? is a mildly interesting biopic with a handful of disconnected funny moments, most of which come from Richard E. Grant. Unfortunately, some funny lines and a vaguely interesting story just don't amount to a very good movie.
Hostiles (2017)
A slow but interesting character study
An interesting character study, as well as a study on trauma and nihilistic suffering. Unfortunately, the film is rather slow and certain components don't totally succeed towards that goal, but overall it's still a solid film.
Hunt for the Wilderpeople (2016)
The Peak of Waititi's Comedy
A crazy fun comedy. It is a bit slow early on, but it picks up pretty quickly and remains fun the rest of the way. The last couple chapters of the film have the best jokes as well as some strong emotional moments to round out this excellent film from Taika Waititi.
Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse (2018)
Immensely fun & beautiful, with some frustrating flaws
- This review contains very minor spoilers
Fish Tank (2009)
A surprisingly effective depressing story about poverty
There is so much in this movie that I wouldn't expect to work, but it actually does. The central protagonist, Mia, is frequently unsympathetic, but in contrast to a film like Can You Ever Forgive Me?, it is much easier to get invested in her and care about what happens to her. The environment Mia is raised in establishes an understanding for her actions, through environmental storytelling.
A film about the struggles of poverty focused on a teenager and her wanderings doesn't sound like an engaging experience to me, but the strong performances, interesting plot, and creative metaphorical elements make this film a fairly strong success. The result is a depressing but ultimately enlightening window into the effects of growing up in poverty, told through a narrow personal lens.