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Reviews
Leave the World Behind (2023)
Too Long, No Action
Another flop filled with great actors, mediocre chemistry & very little substance. The premise is incredibly relevant but there are very few scenes where anything actually happens to drive the plot forward. For over 2 hours, most of the story is told via various characters delivering a social commentary-filled soliloquy. Great concepts worthy of an old school end-of-the-world epic but done instead as a dull psychological drama without adequate character development for us to truly care about the fate of the family or their hosts. Kevin Bacon delivers, of course, but he wasn't given enough to do for us to care about him either.
80 for Brady (2023)
Seems like a rehearsal, not the final cut
I expected this to be silly, but fun & funny, a campy comedy for the older crowd that the younger crowd can watch & enjoy, too. Something with some feel-good moments, maybe a little sniffle or two and some really big laughs. It was none of that. It was filled with trite, unnatural dialogue & awkward cameos and sadly, some really disappointingly directed acting from some of the highest caliber actresses. Most of the movie felt more like a run-through or rehearsal, like they didn't know this was the final take. Just because it's a silly comedy, doesn't mean it should lack depth & substance. It's based on a true story, for goodness sake, yet none of these characters feel real, even the ones playing themselves.
Empire of Light (2022)
Real, flawed humans with unresolved issues
Much of the criticism suggests this movie touches on too many themes without ever finding its focus, but I think that's what makes it successful. Instead of isolating just one dramatic thing, it's about real people who carry around a lot of "things" that rarely get fully or satisfactorily resolved. It's a deliberately dreary story set against striking color contrasts & interesting shot composition.
The projectionist carries the theme, educating us about the illusion of film, how it's just static pictures that our brain falsely sees as continuous motion without the darkness in between. And he announces the turning point, a subtle shift from disappointment to hope, when he tells Hillary not to run away.
The Guilty (2021)
Boring
Even Jake Gyllenhaal's fantastic acting can't save this slow, pointless movie. Trying to follow an entire film by struggling to understand the person at the opposite end of the phone line is not entertaining - just a constant reminder that the production is a COVID workaround. And the so-called plot twist is just plain boring.