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The Invisible Man is a car in a skid: it has suspense that just goes around in circles until it all falls apart predictably at the end.
Basically, this is a remake of every 80s movie where someone in control (stepfather, building superintendent, roommate) abuses the victim for 90% of the film until the 'surprise' ending that we saw coming so early it shouldn't be called the ending.
Too bad, really, because Elisabeth Moss gives it her all (and she's got so much to give) and the moments of suspense were well constructed.
Some people here seem to have the attention span of a TikTok video
Funny how most people think this is boring filler stuff, or even dislike the whole show, while I do like it more and more.
For me it seems this is the first time that Marvel puts substance over effects. There is an actually story involved instead of just knitting together CGI shots. Of course there is an agenda in all of this, there is no denying that. But I don't see this as a bad thing.
And I'm looking very much forward to the final episode now.
I do hope it will get better than this... and 22 minutes for one episode?? 7 minutes for credits? Boring !!
Eleanor and Chidi STILL have ZERO chemistry — and I honestly think their relationship has been detrimental to the show.
I've just stepped out of the cinema having watched the worst movie of the year. I feel like the director has played me for a fool. I feel like the joke here.
Joaquin Phoenix must want to shake Todd Phillips till his eyes pop out his head for he went 100% down the rabbit hole to create this performance - only for a horrendously bad director, languid editing, and a screenplay-by-numbers to fail this picture into the miserable, sodden, car-crash of a film it is.
The last time I felt so vitriolic after a 'much-hyped' film was Guy Ritchie's Revolver. Another stinker for the ages.
I particularly feel like a joke has been had at my expense by the presence of Robert De Niro, who must have had deja vu cashing his paycheck reminiscing back to his (actually a good film) The King of Comedy.
This film tries to marry that Rupert character to Taxi Driver and comes up with garbage. Much like the garbage epidemic denoted in the plot itself.
I paid 8 pounds to see this. You'd have to pay me 800 to watch it again.
It almost worked for a few minutes during the scenes with Bobby D's Johnny Carson bit. Almost. The rest was as predictable yet immensely tedious as it could be without me being handed a copy of the script on the way in.
Do yourself a favour... Don't ruin your opinion of Joaquin Phoenix by seeing this. It doesn't feel like he is to blame here. But it's best to just steer clear of the movie altogether. It offers nothing to the DC universe. It offers nothing to the Batman legacy. It actively dishounours the greatness of Heath Ledger, Jack Nicholson, Cesar Romero and all future Jokers.
This film itself IS the joker.
Utter crap.
3/10 - for the attempts made by Joaquin Phoenix saving it from 1/10.
[7.3/10] Man, this moved at a crazy pace. I’ve liked the time we’ve spent doing The Experiment, and the twists and turns along the way have largely been strong ones. But even for a show known for blowing through plot, “Help Is Other People” just races through some of the biggest bombs this season could drop at the midway point.
The experiment is ending (and we’ve apparently jumped six months). Simone has figured out that something is amiss and has concocted elaborate theories. John spills the beans about Jason not being Jianyu to the group. We’re trying desperate maneuvers to get the four humans to rack up good deeds, like putting Brent in peril and telling them that they’re in The Bad Place.
That is, well, a lot. Most of it’s good! I like almost all of those developments, if not every slice of the execution. But man, that’s packing in a lot without giving any of it time to breathe. The rapidfire pace of this show is usually a feature, not a bug, but I walked away from this one excited for what’s to come next but also wishing we could have stretched some of this out and developed more connective tissue with what came before.
Still, there’s quality material here. We haven’t really had time to get to know Chidi and Simone as a couple (despite the amusing muffin/ducky appellations), but I appreciate the cause of their break-up here. It’s a little too conceptual rather than emotional, but I like the idea that it stems from a raw philosophical difference between the two. Simone is a scientist and evidentialist -- that means she keeps secrets from Chidi because she doesn't want to taint her analysis and walks away from Brent because he’s shown them no evidence that he’s a good person worth saving. Chidi is a Kantian and deontologist, which means he keeps secrets from Simone because he can’t bear to break his oath of secrecy and he goes to save Brent because he believes he has a moral duty to do so. The pair respect one another’s positions, but realize that it makes them incompatible when push comes to shove despite some on the ground chemistry.
I truly like that notion! It’s just a lot to get through in a single episode, and it’s harder to invest in that when we’ve barely seen them be a couple in the afterlife. There’s a level of chaos that’s introduced from Simone having identified that something fishy’s going on and snooping around to figure out what it is, but the destination is more impactful than the abbreviated journey.
On the other side, I like our heroes scrambling to get the humans in the best position possible before the experiment ends, and everything going predictably awry. Some of that is just standard sitcom storytelling, but there’s an enjoyable chaos that follows from Eleanor and company putting together their supposed perfect dash across the finish line, the humans completely thwarting that possibility, and then the good guys running around trying to react.
I appreciate their plan here, to try to earn them one more set of major good deed points by rescuing Brent when, for a guy that douchey, the only reason to save him could be pure altruism and respect for human life overall. The fact that it splits this quarter apart, when these sorts of events bonded the original group together, is an interesting shift away from our usual expectations and understanding, and I appreciate the desperation of it.
There’s also something interesting about the final ploy, to tell Brent and Chidi that they’re in the bad place (or rather, give Chidi enough to guess it), so that Brent has to confront the idea that he’s a bad person. Brent denying it, having his view of himself punctured, is a really intriguing idea that I imagine we won’t get to explore in any depth until later, if at all, and the notion of him apologizing to Chidi as a moral buzzer beater is compelling as a final monkey wrench in the experiment.
There’s also some good laughs here. Michael doing “earth magic” is amusingly lame. Janet trying to get into the obelisk and talking about how she’ll need to “violently eat” her Janet-babies were both laughs. Jason’s reaction to Tahani’s London references and Tahani’s shock at Jason’s two-for-two bits of coherency are both funny bits. And Eleanor going for the margarita pitcher rather than the glass at the end is a cheap laugh, but a solid one.
I just wish we got more of this. Maybe that’s me worrying that we have a Game of Thrones situation here, where there’s a good story to be told, but smushing it into a small episode order creates pacing and development plausibility problems. Still, I trust this show to make it work, and I hope that what comes next justifies that faith.
Time to kill this show. (They find
some great new way to use their technology - >they f*ck up massively, mostly by just being idiots - > some miracle happens thats saves them) formula was done for like 20 times by now, and it's getting seriously frustrating. I'm done with this show.
When do the good episodes start?
More enjoyable and eventful than the previous episode, at least. I'm glad Geralt got focused on more with a little bit, but enough, of Yennefer, and very little of Ciri. I feel like Ciri's parts have been the least interesting to watch (but still necessary, I imagine), so I'm glad there isn't THAT much of her, yet. According to a particular comment that I've read, each timeline starts becoming intertwined in or after the fourth episode. That should make things more enjoyable without requiring you to mentally wear yourself out trying to keep up with the "when" in a general sense of all three timelines combined while at the same time, trying to follow along with everything else, what's happening at the moment for the audience. That being said, I do have a question. As far as the premiere up to this episode is concerned, Yennefer's storyline is in the past, Geralt's storyline is in the present, and Ciri's storyline is in the future, right? Or is Geralt's storyline in the present for us, the audience, but Ciri's storyline is/will be the present after each timeline is connected? That's two questions, oops.
[8.0/10] I like that after getting an episode that’s basically an origin story for Midge, we get an episode to spread the focus around a bit and show how everyone else in the Maisels’ orbit is reacting to the break-up. Particularly at the parent level, it’s interesting to see how the various folks who fostered this match feel about where it’s headed.
One of the most interesting is Midge’s father, Abe. There’s the sense of him as a very serious man (no pun intended). He’s a professor. He’s an intellectual. He likes things the way he likes them: steady and predictable. This is, to paraphrase him in reference to his lecture to his students, an unpredictable variable. It disrupts what he thought his life and the life of his children would be. But most of all, I like the push and pull between the sense in which he is frustrated with his daughter for not “rectifying” the situation in some way, but also worried for her, because he thought he’d had someone who could take care of her even when he wasn’t around, and angry on her behalf at the shlemiel who left her for some nudnik of a secretary.
I like the response of her mother too. She goes to her psychic, seeking reassurance form any source she can get it. THeir conversation is funny and mercenary, and I like how the episode focuses on how she too is supportive but concerned for her daughter, thinking that this “perfect life” would protect and preserve her.
Joel’s mom is a hoot too. There’s a certain brand of dramatic yente that’s well-represented there. Her very intense response to the news, her efforts to cook a different dish at the in-laws’ house because parisian food is too salty, and so on and so on is such a hoot. She doesn’t get as much depth as the other characters, but it’s such a recognizable type that it works.
But my favorite of them is Joel’s dad, played with such panache by Kevin Pollack. The notion of a bloviating papa who runs a tailoring concern in New York City is itself a bit of a trope. But Pollak plays the character with such great comic energy, chastising his son, making events about him, and even sniffing out the situation with Joel and his secretary with an enjoyable comic bent. I hope we see more of him.
We even get a little more insight into Joel. The realization that he is not, in any way shape or form a self-made man is an interesting one. As his own father lords over him, he got his home from his dad, his job from his uncle, and thus has made nothing of himself or provided for anyone else on his own. It’s a shock to Midge, who didn’t realize that she and her husband were near-broke (especially given how she flings money at Lenny Bruce and Susie). It adds a new viewer, and a lower station, for Joel to occupy.
What I like most though is the way that, true to form, Amy Sherman-Palladino winds all these different characters up and then sets them against one another in a dinner table scene. In keeping with the Friday night dinners of Gilmore Girls, there’s such a great result to be had from spinning each of the parents (and Joel) up and then letting them loose to play out their resentments and hopes and frustrations against one another all at once. Each scene big and small, from big family blow-ups, to debates about the maid, to Mr. Maisel’s speech about the thirteen Jews he pulled from Germany are such a hoot.
At the same time, it all comes nicely back to Midge. She initially pulls back from her plain stand-up comedy brilliance. Midge’s reaction to the veritable castle she lives in by comparison is a great comic scene, but it’s also important because you get the sense of Midge wanting to return to her normal life. She knows that it’ll be rockier given the fear that she’ll be relegated to the back corner with the rest of the divorcees, but she wants to give it an honest go.
Then she gets one more rug pulled out from under her. The necessary impetus for her to return to the stage of the Gaslighter, the nudge she needs to realize that she has more material she needs to work through in what has become a makeshift sort of therapy is the realization that her husband has not only been cheating on her, but keeping the state of their family’s finances from her, revealing even more that her “perfect life” was a farce and just for pretend, rather than the rock solid institution she thought she was occupying.
The opening flashback at the diner is sweet and sad in the right sort of way, but it’s a great contrast for how, when Midge started this journey, she was full of hope and optimism, thinking that their future and love together was bright. When she’s up on stage, playing the crowd like a fiddle, she knows that was all a lie from the beginning, with each level of social nicety and expectation revealing just another fabrication. It doesn’t stop all of this from being hilarious. To the contrary, Midge uses this all as fuel for great comic catharsis. But it’s also a story of epiphany and growing understanding, which matches nicely with the funny and poignant scenes that Amy Sherman-Palladino writes and directs at every turn.
I was super excited for this. Eternal Sunshine is one of my favorite movies of all time, and I love, love, love Being John Malkovich. But this fell pretty short for me. I loved quite a bit about this film: The acting, the cast, the cinematography, the idea -- I haven't read the book, but I did do some research on what this film (potentially) means, and I had a much better appreciation for it afterwards. But jeez, this was a slog. I felt every minute of the 2 hour 15 minute runtime, especially after the first act.
