ReadingFilm
Joined Jun 2001
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Reviews129
ReadingFilm's rating
Actually worsens the original by existing. The retcon of the original movie makes no sense. It felt like Looney Tunes at many points but at the same time it was taking it all so seriously. Denzel is just awful in it, sleep walking in his scenes then suddenly he is doing all this out of character stuff. The main story with the Gladiator guys are too generic to remember. The twin emperors sort of worked but they were acting as if they were in an entirely different movie.
The sharks in the colosseum is already drawing infamy as the dumbest scene in modern blockbusters. They should have just had Denzel shout and over act to give the movie some life. We are talking about the sharks in the colosseum movie after all.
Lastly, if there is one thing that sinks the movie the most, it was the lack of Hans Zimmer music. A great OST can sometimes elevate a bad sequel into something you remember. Remember, it was always going to be terrible no matter what. But somehow it was even worse.
The sharks in the colosseum is already drawing infamy as the dumbest scene in modern blockbusters. They should have just had Denzel shout and over act to give the movie some life. We are talking about the sharks in the colosseum movie after all.
Lastly, if there is one thing that sinks the movie the most, it was the lack of Hans Zimmer music. A great OST can sometimes elevate a bad sequel into something you remember. Remember, it was always going to be terrible no matter what. But somehow it was even worse.
This is simultaneously good, and a gigantic waste of time. It feels like your friend making funny faces during a really boring lecture. I was first confused by Joaquin's performance, but then I began to see it as a prank. It is hinging on the assumption we are bringing to the screen about Napoleon as a mythic figure. Then he goes on to underplay it and make it mundane as possible, more akin to a Gen X slacker.
This creates a fascinating puzzle, each scene you are trying to read into what he's implying, and landing in chaotic and funny directions. It's a comedic performance more so because I think they all know they can never match Brando's Desiree, the theatrical realism at once. Steiger plays him in Waterloo with explosive commitment. Steiger doesn't seem quite right in that movie but you can understand why he commands such respect among his men. Phoenix decides to not even attempt to play a charismatic, historic leader, capturing the nihilistic ethos of his generation.
All this is around a senior Ridley Scott film who likely thought he was getting Phoenix circa 2000's Gladiator, a committed, serious actor. In fact, at plenty of points it feels like how Gladiator keeps cutting to Phoenix's villain Commodus for a scene to see what the villain is up to. Except in this, there is no one else to cut back to.
The production is so good it is breathtaking, but then so were Ridley Scott's awful Robin Hood and Moses films. It does what other Scott films don't, stepping backward in the boring perfectionism and putting full trust into his lead. But this combination of the cerebral and the epic cannot work unless the elements are complimenting. I am reminded of Sofia Coppola's Marie-Antoinette that has a similar point of view but shares the director-actor belonged to the same generation. This one is an inside joke that goes nowhere; Scott is over-intellectualizing and Phoenix is anti-intellectual. At the end of the three hours, I felt like I wasted my time. But the high production value and the bizarre Phoenix performance keep you watching, always anticipating what weird inappropriate reaction he will have next, like a bad YouTube video.
This creates a fascinating puzzle, each scene you are trying to read into what he's implying, and landing in chaotic and funny directions. It's a comedic performance more so because I think they all know they can never match Brando's Desiree, the theatrical realism at once. Steiger plays him in Waterloo with explosive commitment. Steiger doesn't seem quite right in that movie but you can understand why he commands such respect among his men. Phoenix decides to not even attempt to play a charismatic, historic leader, capturing the nihilistic ethos of his generation.
All this is around a senior Ridley Scott film who likely thought he was getting Phoenix circa 2000's Gladiator, a committed, serious actor. In fact, at plenty of points it feels like how Gladiator keeps cutting to Phoenix's villain Commodus for a scene to see what the villain is up to. Except in this, there is no one else to cut back to.
The production is so good it is breathtaking, but then so were Ridley Scott's awful Robin Hood and Moses films. It does what other Scott films don't, stepping backward in the boring perfectionism and putting full trust into his lead. But this combination of the cerebral and the epic cannot work unless the elements are complimenting. I am reminded of Sofia Coppola's Marie-Antoinette that has a similar point of view but shares the director-actor belonged to the same generation. This one is an inside joke that goes nowhere; Scott is over-intellectualizing and Phoenix is anti-intellectual. At the end of the three hours, I felt like I wasted my time. But the high production value and the bizarre Phoenix performance keep you watching, always anticipating what weird inappropriate reaction he will have next, like a bad YouTube video.
This is an artistic experiment of the likes only a Hollywood director like Zemeckis can bring. He has always had a talent for integrating the new and old, with his special effects classics, pioneering work in CGI and mocap, and so on. 'Here' is easily his most out there, avant-garde film that you can see why Zemeckis was so passionate about the film with its use of one frozen space during the entire running time. First let me praise how surreal it is to see such a seamless young CGI Tom Hanks, as well, Paul Bettany, who ends up the star of this movie which is sad because we can only see him from afar.
The visual tapestry is at times brilliant in this expression of holographic, filmed theater, often feeling like a museum exhibit in AI. You will only see a cinematic experiment like this if a directors has either too much money, or no money. The problem is it is terrible. They will sometimes find these creative ways to break the rule, such as dragging a mirror in front the camera to show the other side of the room. But if the audience is focusing on the 'how' during a movie, it has failed.
They say art thrives best with limitation, and I am left thinking they could have done so much more with the staging and drama--think, would this play on stage? And who would even attend such a boring play? The worst is when we get to the lectures. Everyone is sick of Hollywood lecturing us and they can't help but bring in their messages. There are even scenes with the characters in face-masks keying in you know what, and it is just groan worthy. That is far and away not the iconic moment defining-this-era that the film thinks it is, or if it were, not for the reasons it thinks. Such moments weighs the film's good intentions into total dreck, combining artificial moralizing with artificial actors.
The film is marketed by how it re-teams the Forest Gump cast and crew. But I never liked Eric Roth as a screenwriter, in both 'Here' and 'Benjamin Button' the writing is putting too much importance on how little we end up with, like squeezing blood out a stone. Roth is always a Hallmark card writer at the end of the day, any time he doesn't have a story and must rely on fortune cookie themes and humanist moments, the film fails badly. There are writers who are able to capture what he always fails at doing--making regular life magic--such as Raymond Carver. One such example, the scene with the blue ribbon is way overplayed, with a character even saying, what an important memory for us, we will remember this some day. Inevitably, they do. Any dramatist knows this moment should not have called attention to itself to create a bigger breakthrough moment when it plays in later.
The movie plays like a first draft before it got all the notes it needed ripping it apart. Isn't that what Hollywood is supposed to do, ruthlessly advocating for the audience experience? Maybe studios are too afraid to give Ridley Scott or Robert Zemeckis notes at their age. Overall, the film is a failed experiment, nothing more, nothing less. Had they done it right, the viewer would leave the film not even remembering that it was one frozen space the whole way, instead, the film insists that is all you care about.
The visual tapestry is at times brilliant in this expression of holographic, filmed theater, often feeling like a museum exhibit in AI. You will only see a cinematic experiment like this if a directors has either too much money, or no money. The problem is it is terrible. They will sometimes find these creative ways to break the rule, such as dragging a mirror in front the camera to show the other side of the room. But if the audience is focusing on the 'how' during a movie, it has failed.
They say art thrives best with limitation, and I am left thinking they could have done so much more with the staging and drama--think, would this play on stage? And who would even attend such a boring play? The worst is when we get to the lectures. Everyone is sick of Hollywood lecturing us and they can't help but bring in their messages. There are even scenes with the characters in face-masks keying in you know what, and it is just groan worthy. That is far and away not the iconic moment defining-this-era that the film thinks it is, or if it were, not for the reasons it thinks. Such moments weighs the film's good intentions into total dreck, combining artificial moralizing with artificial actors.
The film is marketed by how it re-teams the Forest Gump cast and crew. But I never liked Eric Roth as a screenwriter, in both 'Here' and 'Benjamin Button' the writing is putting too much importance on how little we end up with, like squeezing blood out a stone. Roth is always a Hallmark card writer at the end of the day, any time he doesn't have a story and must rely on fortune cookie themes and humanist moments, the film fails badly. There are writers who are able to capture what he always fails at doing--making regular life magic--such as Raymond Carver. One such example, the scene with the blue ribbon is way overplayed, with a character even saying, what an important memory for us, we will remember this some day. Inevitably, they do. Any dramatist knows this moment should not have called attention to itself to create a bigger breakthrough moment when it plays in later.
The movie plays like a first draft before it got all the notes it needed ripping it apart. Isn't that what Hollywood is supposed to do, ruthlessly advocating for the audience experience? Maybe studios are too afraid to give Ridley Scott or Robert Zemeckis notes at their age. Overall, the film is a failed experiment, nothing more, nothing less. Had they done it right, the viewer would leave the film not even remembering that it was one frozen space the whole way, instead, the film insists that is all you care about.