Either Alex Honnold decided, consciously or unconsciously, to deliberately raise the bar on the degree of difficulty of this achievement by taking on the annoying, selfish, gold-digging, controlling "Sanni" as a girlfriend or he just caved-in to his wounding around never being appropriately loved by a female, he did, indeed, achieve the impossible, even with the extra drag created by a totally unnecessary and distracting "relationship". How that woman continually justified her presence in his life and endlessly coerced Alex to be the man she wanted him to be was more gut-wrenching than watching the climb itself. She doesn't "get him" at all and continually expresses this throughout the film, while reluctantly acquiescing to the singular soul purpose this master came in to execute. I have to hand it to Honnold. He made this as difficult as he could by adding her to the equation.
I was initially engaged and hopeful that this was going to be a good film, especially because Daniel Day Lewis was featured and the sets, landscapes and costumes were magnificent. But the film just loses tempo and breaks down due to its uninspired meandering and an utterly bizarre left turn 3/4 of the way in, which essentially yanked the film out of the genre it was in and placed it, unbelievably, in **** if the writers just ran out of ideas as to how to conclude and just grasped at something as the clock was ticking towards a deadline.
It's hard not to like a film with Ben Kingsley and Penelope Cruz in it. Peering into the troubled lives of New York intellectuals and the petty problems they create for themselves can be a little trying, along with all the narcissism they can afford to support, but this film actually grabbed me on a deeper level than I anticipated. Kingsley is such a master of demonstrating complex individuals in all of their dimensions with such precision, authenticity and timing. I loved, hated and had great compassion for the character he was portraying because of his ability to draw me in on such an intimate **** if I was in the film with him. Cruz, Cruz' breasts, Hopper and Clarkson were every bit as compelling and masterful in their deliveries, so the experience of this film was quite rich at every juncture. Then you realize that the film itself is eerily similar to Kingsley's real life drama and you wonder if he was chosen for the role because of this. This adds a peculiar, haunting twist (if you happen to know about **** success, the narcissism, the insecurity, the serial tempestuous relationships and marriages with women half his age. Surely, he knows this as well?
A film about a smarmy con-artist who has done his homework well and simultaneously manifests perfect acting skills to seduce and swindle the wealthy and elite, who apparently are so pathologically naive and gullible that they refuse to act upon clear evidence that they are being duped. This film is ridiculous and terribly uncomfortable to watch because it is predicated upon the notion that all the immensely successful people Will Smith preys upon have no operational awareness or intuition at all. You'll squirm because it's so totally implausible, not because it has any real tension or intrigue. Whoever is responsible for this mess should be arrested and later invited to study plumbing.
The first film I've seen that convinced me the director was actually trying to make an unwatchable film. When someone who feels that they are "**** actor/director who manages to produce something this bad, they really need to be arrested and later invited to study plumbing.
From one viewpoint, this is a film about such a highly dysfunctional group of individuals (to the point of being truly warped), that you wonder how they can get through life and even hold a job at all. As a viewer, if you can accept this incredulity as the baseline of the film, then you can get more involved with the twisted fantasy and the mystery-unraveling-solving part that is built around it. It doesn't pan out, in the end, and just adds to repository of disbelief we already have about the French and their very bizarre and unique ways of living life, as it apparently straddles the line between actual truth and fiction.
The film tries to impress us with its connection to the original, when in fact it just cannibalizes the Ridley Scott masterpiece for the only value it has. It's just not organically woven into the new film and it's painfully obvious, right down to the 'imitation Vangelis' soundtrack which is so bad it should be illegal. 2049 has no depth and dimension and points to the work of a very mediocre director re-configuring and dispensing the bland expectations of a 21st century sci-fi audience who are so dumbed-down by 21st century schlock by now that they, sadly, can't tell the difference. I had to keep telling myself that the film had nothing to do with the original just to get through, but then I was left with the stark, 2-dimensionality of a truly poor work that relies on its visual effects and darkest themes to anesthetize the audience into believing they actually saw something worthwhile.
The story of a sweet, widowed British brain surgeon who ends up having to tolerate a pushy, neurotic American woman photo-journalist through a wilderness survival ordeal that begins as a plane crash. The radical oxytocin bonding that evolves between them, as the outcome of their intense, traumatic 3-week struggle, is then mistaken by both of them to be some form of irresistible 'love', when no man in his un-oxytocin-altered mind could even like such a neurotic ****. Whoever wrote, produced and/or directed this utter waste of time should be arrested, forced to pay back the 35 million dollars it cost to make the film and then later invited to study plumbing or some other form of manual labor. Kate Winslet is at her absolute worst. There is ZERO chemistry between these two. Ironically, SHE'S trying to teach HIM the value of following your instincts over logic, when every instinct she has, and that he follows through with and has to rescue her from, ends up being a total disaster, especially for him.
This is easily the best film of this genre made in the 21st century, and quite possibly of all time. It's got great story, complexity, cinematography, action, humor, sexiness galore and just enough confusion to make you to really pay attention so that you don't miss a trick. They usually don't give Oscars for films like this, but Atomic Blonde deserves several. Never mind that the ultra-gorgeous Charlize Theron is about as believable as a ninja-spy-model can get. She did all her own stunt work, for God's sake! The idiot reviewers who are suggesting that there isn't enough action, blah, blah, blah, have obviously been dumbed-down by decades of shallow, white-sugar action productions that even a monkey could follow. They've lost their ability to concentrate and get involved with an action film that actually has a complex plot line, action that rises & falls (and then rises again) and not be perpetually on the edge of non-stop, hyper-stimulating, visually assaulting cinematic tricks that are so sliced & diced that you can't actually see anyone complete a single movement. Bloody Well Done, with the operative word being 'bloody'. I watched this last night and I'm ready to watch this one again, this time with my robe open.
It's a 2 hour clutter of borrowed and extremely overused cliches, as hollow as Hollywood itself. There is, literally, nothing original about this film and nothing worth wasting a minute of your life on unless you are as shallow and disjointed as the people who created it or the others who **** themselves to participate in this mess. I'm specifically referring to certain actors who are better than this and who should know better; Tilda Swindon, Benedict Cumberbatch, Chiwetel Ejiofor, Mads Mikkelsen, Rachel McAdams & Benedict Wong. What, were you short on cash, taken complete leave of your artistic integrity or gone brain-dead?
When a formerly talented film maker makes something this bad, there should be some sort of agency that forces that film maker to retire. In this case, I would add to the forced retirement, that Guy Ritchie be arrested and later invited to study plumbing. This may be the only film I have ever seen where I actually wanted to hunt down the film maker and do serious **** not only wasting two hours of my life, but for insulting my intelligence and torturing me for those two hours. If I could give negative marks, I would.
As is normal for Hollywood, they won't won't let a franchise die until it's so bad, it's an embarrassment. This utter waste of celluloid isn't worth watching and for those who actually enjoyed and appreciated the first or third Bourne film, this is an insult. Don't let yourself be dragged into this pointless mess. It's also proof positive that actors and actresses have no morality at all when it comes to quality in film. Matt Damon, Alicia Vikander, Tommy Lee Jones and Vincent Cassel, you should all be ashamed. In order to maintain the status **** or even a great actor, you can't prostitute yourself. You are totally diminished by this crap.
If Bobbie's character was supposed to be a direct impersonation of Woody Allen, then his casting and performance were spot on, right down to an utter absence of sexual charisma and the whiny neuroses we've all come to hate after being hammered with it, over and over again, in most of Allen's films. If this wasn't enough to destroy any chance of this film being even mildly entertaining, then Allen's narration buried it in concrete as permanently as Ben's victims. This was a total indulgence piece with yet another reworking of the now patent New York vs. L.A. dilemma. Since Allen is clearly trying to hold on to something he has only actually possessed sporadically in his entire career, and has now taken to churning out one mediocre film after another, he's a great candidate for forced retirement. Give us a break, Woody, and at least allow us to remember your works of genius with appreciation instead of regret.
If this film doesn't make you hate the profoundly arrogant, narcissistic, bullying and brilliant Assange, nothing will. There were so many essential connecting developments and links abandoned in favor of the director's stylistic compulsions that could have made the story more educational, and even more threatening.
Tom Hardy accomplishes what every great performer **** makes something that is extremely complex, nuanced and difficult look easy and simple. The writing, the acting and the film are utterly brilliant.
First of all, Cillian Murphy, Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Ellen Page and Leonardo DiCaprio should never be cast as adults in films. They are far too small of stature and too baby-faced to be believable in adult roles. Personally, I’ve never bought the Leonardo DiCaprio tough-guy persona, as hard as I have tried. Ellen Page looks like Howdy Doody’s twin sister with her porcelain skin, chubby cheeks and billboard-sized forehead…creepy, and yet she is often cast as an "attractive woman". At least Michael Caine, Marion Cotillard and Tom Hardy looked like real human beings while trying desperately to dignify a terrible storyline and a stupid, stupid script. If you’re ready for 2 ½ very long hours of watching all the actor’s urgently shouting things at each other and intensely explaining the scientific narrative so that the audience isn’t completely lost, shoot yourself up with some Novocain and see if you can make it all the way through without sticking a pencil in your eye and/or your ear. The special effects and animation were fairly impressive but not nearly enough to carry the film.
I, like Edward Snowden himself, was very disappointed with this film. Giving it to a jaded, major block-buster Hollywood director whose lost his sensitivity and nuance to the Hollywood machine, was probably the biggest, but most unavoidable mistake. Watch "Citizen Four" or any of his Edward Snowden's brilliant interviews with the media if you want the straight stuff on him. This film is a waste of time.
The attempt to create suspense is anemic, at best, but worst of all, we are forced to watch Tom Hanks, the most over-rated and self-conscious actor in the history of humans beings, watch himself act for an hour and a half.
