This movie stressed me the fuck out.
This movie was great because I fell asleep in the theater and had an amazing nap
This was a loud non stop chaotic trip. There were very few breaks to catch your breath. Some people are going to hate it. Adam Sandler is terrific, it's great to see him doing something different than his normal Netflix crap. The music is trippy.
This is a really special movie. It honours the originals and serves as a direct sequel, expanding the lore of their universe and creating new characters that are fun to follow. It feels like an old-style adventure movie of the likes of "The Goonies", "The Sandlot" or "E.T."
A comedy should be judged by if you laugh. A horror movie should be judged by if it is frightening. If this movie was judged by its ability to put an audience to sleep, it would be great. It's a horror movie, though, so a fail. I'm not saying I saw the end coming, but all the characters acted like they were just serving the plot instead of being actual people. Toni Collette's performance (or was it the script?) was incredibly uneven as she moved from unaffected to completely traumatized...sometimes within the same sequence. I actually liked the final story reveal and it was certainly built throughout. The problem is it took forever to get there and I hated every character so much, I couldn't care less if they lived or died. Garbage that every critic wanted to use "heightened" in a review will be lining up to kiss its ass. Here's the thing...my theater was full and never even a gasp. Did hear one dude snoring, though. See at your own risk.
This is a very weird movie, but not by its content. Hard to tell whether it was worth watching.
Visually it's nice, extremely clean and ordered. But 90% of what happens has absolutely no interest. Family picnic. Wife showing the garden to her mother. Some random conversations. Dictation of work letters. Administrative work. It is very boring, soporific even.
The only interest comes from knowing who those people are and the whole context, and the contrast with the banality of their lives, with the clinical simplicity of administrative decisions.
The whole camp is hidden behind a wall. There is just a background noise, far away, muffled, some cries, some gunshots. And the chimneys smoke.
Among what is banal but extremely shocking by the context:
- The mother complaining she could not get her neighbour's curtains.
- The commander getting a new post, but her wife complaining about losing her garden
- The sales pitch of the new generation crematorium
- Being so happy that the plan is named after him that he calls his wife in the middle of the night
- Ashes used as fertilizer in the garden
The only small moments that acknowledge the violence are:
- the wife, upset, threatening the maid that she could have her incinerated just like that
- the commander having a young girl sent to his office
- in the commanders meeting, the word "extermination" is said once, but all the rest is just logistics and quotas
At the end, a cutscene shows people cleaning the camp, and it takes a while to realize they are cleaning the current day Auschwitz museum, I guess showing the continuity of mundane tasks in all circumstances.
So in the end, this is definitely a work of art that succeeds in what it's trying to achieve. However the boringness is what makes it special, and you can't avoid the fact that it is mostly boring. Not to watch when sleepy or tired.
Adam Sandler is phenomenal here. Seeing Howard failing over and over was unbearable... That last sequence got me speechless.
I think I loved this one even more than Fury Road. Yes it didn't revolutionised what was done before but it goes way further in the lore of the Mad Max saga and and that's what truly captivated me!
Once again, it's visually stunning, with action unfolding nearly every minute. Although I'm usually not a fan of movies with chapters, here it's executed superbly, which I believe greatly contributes to maintaining the movie's pace.
Anya Taylor-Joy and Chris Hemsworth have both delivered outstanding performances as well.
Edit : I watched it again today, still a rock-solid 9/10!
100% believable representation of the hubris of men.
Snoozefest. mother! 2. The way people were talking about this movie like it was the scariest thing ever in the world is just insane. I was bored for most of it. I'm done with movies that stay on the same slow zoom on a stationary character with increased buzzing and then CUT to silence. It's been done to death. And the scene that is supposedly so traumatizing, that was a great scene, I shouted, it was pretty sweet, but it's not a "things are different now" situation. This falls right in line with other "modern classics" that were hyped beyond for me like It Follows, The Babadook, and the Witch. I don't care for any of those and a lot of people do. But I'm just not seeing it. Same thing with this. I will give props to the trailer though. Great trailer.
A very interesting portrayal of the banality of evil. The horror is not in what’s shown, but what isn’t. The compartmentalization, the routine. While gunshots and screams echo and smoke billows, they have their idyllic little life, better than they dreamed. Anything that brings too much attention to the other side of their life is an intrusion, an annoyance, like the mother who can’t stand the flames. The droning score and the bright colors underscore this, banging at the door to be let in and acknowledged and shut out by this family. Most striking of these was Rudolf under a blindingly white sky while a soundscape of death paints the picture, and a close up of the flowers of their happy garden while the ashes of the people they’ve murdered rest in the soil.
The revulsion the film inspires with Rudolf sharing how the only thing he could think about at a party was the logistics of how to gas them all, as if it’s a fun thought experiment and anecdote, is impressive. As is Hedwig’s entitlement towards her idea of a perfect life and her lashing out at the Jewish servants when it’s threatened. Or the eldest son playing a cruel trick on his younger brother, licking him in a greenhouse door and imitating a gas chamber.
It’s all so innocuous to them. Just background noise of their life. The repetition is as droning as the score, leaving you desperate to escape this mindset and terrified of the ways that we too suffer from it.
Uneven, but gripping nonetheless.
Jake Gyllenhaal was fine. Dar Salim was amazing.
(In case it's driving you crazy too: Parker is Homelander. I had to look it up :joy:)
Coincidence that Alexander Skarsgård — aka. Eric Northman — stars in this movie? I think not!
Quite the butt-clenching, nail-biting, edge of your seat experience! It looked so realistic and the landscape was beautiful. The two leads did great. It does suffer from being overlong and lost some heat in the third act.
Well, Peacemaker’s time of holding the the title of best opening credits dance sequence of the year turns out to be short lived.
This is like a great Black Mirror episode (the philosophical kind, not the dystopian kind).
I’d also highly recommend it if you’re a fan of Alex Garland (the visuals in this reminded me a lot of Devs).
We’ve seen this concept of humans and AI living together done before (Westworld, Blade Runner), but this is more focussed on family relationships and drama, which makes it very fresh.
The cinematography is out of this world, acting is top notch across the board, good score, interesting storytelling that goes in directions you don’t expect, thematically rich, tight editing, it’s really great stuff.
Just know what you’re getting into: it’s reflective and meant to give you food for thought, it’s not a pulpy thriller about AI taking over the world.
8.5/10
It’s quite clear what this is trying to be: a meta whodunnit comedy like Knives Out mixed with the quirk and visual style of early Wes Anderson. Is it charming? Yes. Is it funny? Yes, though the comedy does miss at times. Is it annoying? Also yes, but only sporadically. Unfortunately it doesn’t have the same panache as Wes Anderson, nor is it as clever and subversive as Knives Out. It kinda does that Matrix Resurrections thing where it points out all of its own cliches and genre trappings in the first act, but then goes on to embrace most of them. It all culminates in a third act that I thought was frankly underwhelming and predictable. What keeps it watchable are the performances, characters, editing, music and direction, but this should’ve been a lot bolder. A decent effort from a first time feature director, but let’s see if he can come up with something where he doesn’t lean on his influences so hard.
5.5/10
If there’s something strange in your neighbourhood, stay indoors and settle down with this movie. It’s a sweet, nicely acted film, that pays homage to the original movies while still doing its own thing. Ignore the sniffy reviews written by some critics. I, for one, am not afraid of their posts!
They are real heroes! This is a very underrated movie anyone has to see! This is must watch..
20 last minutes are heartbreaking..Editing and background music just made it harder to watch...R.I.P guys....
Everything I could have hoped for. Seems like a passing of the torch, hopefully they continue and start down their own path. Great movie and made my eyes water
It would be hilarious if Michael Mann cast Lady Gaga as Laura Ferrari.
Visually magnificent, words that come to mind to describe Kogonada are rituality and aesthetic musicality, if it makes sense. A philosopher of tea, after this?
I felt an incomplete connection with the characters. Maybe it was too reflective to allow to create attachment and delve into them properly.
I think I loved Columbus more because of the exchanges of ideas, the dynamic between the characters which led to a mutual growth. Here it felt more one-sided: through Yang's eyes, a blossoming for Jake.
Still, beautiful and poetic
Full disclosure, I think Matt Damon is one of the most undervalued actors in the business. Just look at his range of performances - the butt of the joke in OCEANS, a man reduced in DOWNSIZING, a meticulous and idealistic car designer in FORD V FERRARI, an action star in the BOURNE franchise, and now, a redneck American trying to make good for his daughter in a foreign world. Matt Damon is a good actor. This is a good movie. The acting is right on it’s mark. The tone is gritty. The pace is heartfelt but real. I give this film a 7 (good) out of 10.
This is definitely classier and more polished than Bayformers, but now this franchise finds itself caught in the same corner as a lot of the Terminator or Men in Black sequels. No longer will these movies appear on anyone’s top 10 worst of the year list, instead they will have been forgotten about by then. It’s very soulless and filled with too much exposition for what is basically just another, generic macguffin hunt. The characters are boring and it doesn’t help that they picked actors that carry little screen presence. The action looks competent albeit very bland, however with that being said: I’ll still take bland over Bay’s pornographic sensibilities anyday. Pick your poison, I suppose. Overall, this is all too calculated and measured for me to get a lot out of it. For example, I really love a lot of the songs they picked, but there’s little to no reason to pick these specific tracks besides being an obvious nostalgia ploy. There’s no vision, and to put it bluntly: the movie feels like something that was conceived and made entirely by AI (just wait for that phrase to become horrendously overused over the next few years). It’s completely indistinguishable from any other big movie like it, I have a hard time telling the difference between this and your average Marvel or DC fare besides the different avatars being used. There’s even an action sequence that doesn’t look too dissimilar from the final battle in Avengers Endgame. These really need an entire creative overhaul, some fresh new talent. Right now this franchise continuously hits a creative dead end with each new installment, and this one’s no different.
4/10
I really liked this movie. You have to be OK with the SciFi aspects (robots, Dystopian future), but, if you are, this is a tremendous, slow burn thriller. People say it was predictable, I don't agree. That was the tension: Who to trust. Are there right choices? If you let it, it puts you squarely in the mind of Daughter, and that is where it excels. This is not about were it ends, its not about tying up all the loose ends, its about the journey. Great acting (Hilary Swank, as expected). But Clara Rugaard was a new talent to me and definitely someone for whom I shall be watching. Rose Byrne was the ideal voice actor for Mother. Ordinarily, I reserve ratings over 8 for films I'll want to see numerous time, but this film is a one-timer, its dynamic is in the not knowing, and I give this film a 9 (superb) out of 10. [SciFi THRILLER]
This is a really good movie, better than it's being rated. McCarthy wrote and directed Spotlight and was a creator on The Loudest Voice in the Room. It's sweet and depressing and everything is done well in it. It's not an action movie and it's slow and long, but it's wonderful.
How can you have a cast like this and somehow make everyone look crap?
- The first act which is the best part is from Kingsman: The Secret Service.
- The second act is the crap from Kingsman: The Golden Circle.
- As for the final act well honestly I don't fucking know, I was gonna suggest those scenes were something straight out of a recent Fast and Furious movie but as funny as this may sound that would have been insulting. That skating scene especially is up there as one of the stupidest scenes ever. The Bryce Dallas Howard character twist was a total miscast in the end.
- Matthew Vaughn needs to find that magic again from Kick-Ass, X-Men: First Class and certainly the first Kingsman: The Secret Service if he thinks he can keep making movies like this with massive budgets.
I wanted to like it. It had a lot of good ingredients but didn't seem able to bring it all together and figure out what sort of movie it wanted to be. Comedy was infrequent, action was occasional and drama disjointed. And the ending COULD be interpreted to be setting up for a sequel. It wasnt horrible, but the "what if my family/partner discovered I'm a spy/assassin" sub-genre is getting a bit crowded these days, and this isn't the best rendition.
The budget constraints are painfully obvious at times, and I feel the kinship between Gyllenhaal and Salim could have been fleshed out to much better effect, but overall Covenant manages to carve out a compelling, engaging war movie with a great score and some solid tension throughout.
