I really (REALLY) liked this movie. I thought it was beautifully filmed and acted and got its point across really poignantly.

And then I got in the elevator with a ton of people who were in the same theater as me and they all HATED it.

Yes, it is really REALLY, I mean REALLY, slowly paced. One might call it glacially so. There were a couple times when I did find myself wondering “So is the camera (and the actors in the scene as well!) not going to move for an entire….song? Should I be watching the edges, is someone going to jump into the frame?” But hello, it’s Sofia Coppola, what are you expecting? This isn’t a Michael Bay film.

The film stock is all faded and dusty and super vignettey around the edges — I kept wondering if they had to treat it to achieve that effect or if they found some boxes of film that expired in the ’70s in an old warehouse and used that — and it just serves to reinforce the point.

Remember that horrific (not that I saw it and I certainly hope you didn’t see it) movie my former boyfriend Joaquin Phoenix and Casey Affleck made last year about the disintegration of celebrity and how empty and shallow that life is? Yeah, this film tells that story in a very different (and actually artistic) way. All the booze and drugs and access to ladies doesn’t make for a LIFE.

Also the ending is completely open-ended, you have to decide how you’re going to take it, and where you think he is.

Stephen Dorff is surprisingly great. (Not in that I thought he was bad previously but in that he’s never been on my radar as someone particularly good.)