A truly great movie. Really wonderfully done. Full of nuance and suggestion and believable humanity (especially in contrast to Carnage!!!). A movie that makes you change your opinion after every scene, but not in a Memento-type way, in a “TRUTH and THE FACTS are always ambiguous” type way.
Great performances by people I would love to see in more movies.
A lot of good actors in this movie but ultimately I thought it was a disappointment. And completely unrealistic that the visiting couple wouldn’t have left roughly 5 minutes into the movie. So basically the plot felt completely artificial and maintained their presence just for the sake of maintaining it (no movie without them stuck there).
Jodie Foster was incredibly shrill — my least favorite Foster performance. EVER.
A few great lines here and there but that dialogue could have been put to use in a much better film.
Waaaaay too sappy and sentimental for me. Also I found it very predictable.
I know the rest of the world went completely ga-ga for its nostalgia but it never drew me all the way in.
The most lovely, unobtrusive use of 3D I think I’ve ever seen.* And some great performances as well.
My ONLY complaint about this movie is that a) they never tell you it’s from a graphic novel by Brian Selznick and b) they never tell you that George Melies was a real person and the films they depict of his were real films (something that is clearly laid out for you at the end of the Selznick book).
They made a few changes from the book but for the most part, it really stuck to Selznick’s writing and art. It was really well-done.
*3D used for depth and texture and beauty and to ENHANCE. Not for shock value and punching the audience in the face. Gee, WHO KNEW.
Tired. Been there / done that. Why does Mark Wahlberg even take a role like this one, at this point? Wouldn’t the script have felt very familiar, even to him?
I didn’t think this was very good.
I doubt this will have been seen in the theater by many. SEEK IT OUT ON DVD, PEOPLE.
It was SO very, very good. And really not a movie about sexuality, per se, but a movie about IDENTITY.
Well-acted, -directed, -written. Truly a lovely film.
Fantastic. So well done. The tone and mood were perfect, and so much of that was due to the fantastic setting/set design/etc. Lots of great subtle touches.
I didn’t fall for this movie the way pretty much everyone else I know did. I was SO very conscious of myself being in a movie theater the WHOLE time. There were a number of things I thought either rang false or weren’t explained and I guess it just all seemed a bit contrived to me.
Man, Hawaii is beautiful though. Some day.
Wow, I really can’t believe I didn’t write this movie up before now. It’s definitely in my top five for the year. Maybe even top two, I have to give that a wee bit more thought. 🙂 I first saw it back in August and I wound up seeing it two or three more times after that. SO GOOD!!
A real black comedy about a down-and-out Irish cop played by Brendan Gleeson–not a bad dude, just a bit jaded and over it–and a visiting FBI agent played by Don Cheedle on the trail of some drug runners. The chemistry between Gleeson and Cheedle is out of this world. Cheedle as the straight man plays against his casting in many roles and he’s just so perfectly straight-backed and stone-cold serious in it. This is movie is really hilarious and not at all politically correct (I thought it was pretty honest about racism, myself). Well acted, well directed, so many nifty twists and turns.
I just loved it to pieces. GO! I’m sure it’s out on DVD by now. Or streaming somewhere.
I thought the beginning was a little rough–some things take too long to get going, others seem to leap ahead and you wonder if you’ve missed something. There are a few weird continuity errors–i.e., at one point someone appears completely across town a minute later although she drove someone else’s car to their house so how did she get back there? type of things. And there’s some stuff that just feels like it wasn’t quite well though out enough plot-wise.
But once it gets going, a LOT of the dialogue is pretty fantastic. The wacky friendship / alliance between Charlize Theron and Patton Oswalt’s characters was so great, there’s a lot of (not romantic) chemistry happening there. Dad kept saying he’d watch an entire show every week just about those two! 🙂 The going back to a small town, trying to define yourself in a different way stuff is all right on.
And the rigid unrepentive, unchangingness of the lead character really is what makes this work. She comes out of this movie the same person she went in. There’s no self reflection happening there…and it’s pretty awesome that there isn’t frankly. If this movie had ended differently, it would’ve shot itself in the foot.
Didn’t blow our minds completely, but definitely well worth seeing.