MeIAmI

Just rewatched it. 3rd time since seeing it in the theater. Still one of the best movies I've ever seen, and my favorite Nolan movie. It's spot-on noir, and I feel more like a date give each time I watch it. The arthouse style and melodrama juxtaposed with Teddy's schtick shows how different Leonard's world is from the real one and another being fabricated by multiple people. I wish more movies were done this way, because it's gritty and realistic while being dreamy in a dark visceral sense.

This is one of the most ridiculous pretentious movies I've ever seen. It could only exist in a delicate idealistic fantasy world where things conveniently move along for the antagonist. Few of the characters are likeable or even interesting, and most are like shallow caricatures rather than layered believable characters. I suppose it's better than most of the dumb modern horror films we've grown accustomed to, and there's some shining moments and performances in it, but it really flubbed a premise that could have been done far better with some deeper thinking even with some preposterous scenarios leftover. It just doesn't have the soul or depth to pull off what it's trying to do, and I was scoffing and laughing at moments that didn't seem meant for it, especially the end credits. It's not bizarre enough to be acceptably surreal, and it's not thought-out well enough to make the horrific scenes immersive. Very disappointing try-hard movie with a beautiful talented wasted cast.

What a disappointment. I've seen a slew of recent IFC movies and they've all been bad. I get the point of it, but it's so slow and sparse and gross that I wished I'd have turned it off. You may as well watch a dead bird in a park decay. Many significant plot points were hard to catch, such as notes on the wall with hard-to-read poorly-written writing in thin pen that causes someone to cry, or too-quiet dialog from far away causing shock. There's some bizarre labyrinth scenes that go on too long, and the finale is ham-fisted. IFC tries to make A-production movies now mixed with slow navel-gazing and long drawn out scenes of people staring or slowly walking, and it just feels awkward and unnecessary. This could have been a thirty-minute arthouse short with how little happens in it, but everything's dragged out so much that it feels stretched unbearably thin. I'll be avoiding IFC movies for a while now.

I don't know why this is rated so highly. It's one of the worst movies I've ever seen. Ridiculously over the top, jarringly gruesome, juvenile in delivery, and generally dopey... though its worst "sin" is being often boring. I liked the first movie and its stories and characters. This one lost a lot of the heart and believability of the characters. It's a very surface-level schlock shock movie. Maybe Rodriguez and Miller did it for the paycheck. It focuses on cheap endless attention-grabbing thrills, and regurgitates many of the same kinds of visuals and scenes that made the first movie stand out... but gets old fast. I suppose audiences when this came out were easy to please. I found it painfully mind-numbing, and besides a few good performances form a few actors, worth tossing in the bin. Hopefully I'll forget about it soon.

This was a compelling chore to watch. It starts out interesting and then lurches through scenes inconsistently, a random mix of slow, perplexing, riveting, simplistic, dull, overwrought, pretentious, and explosive. The concept and writing may have been better than the final presentation, and since the actors were mostly good, I'll have to pin my eye rolling on the director. This really should have been better, but unfortunately it probably took the perspective of the child to an overly-technical degree, and it comes off as childish when it should have been intriguing. I suppose audiences these days aren't given much meat to chew on anymore and so can overlook a lot of cheesy fluff. I need something with a little more intelligence and depth, so I'm not caring to look forward to any apparent sequel.