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Well, guess I'll have to be the first to say "meh". I saw it last night, and I was really pumped going in, but I left feeling like it was more "interesting" than "enthralling". More of an experiment than a story. I certainly don't agree with all the critics who have gushed over it and given it such intense blurbs. I kind of wish I hadn't known the premise beforehand, because the "alien" angle isn't entirely hammered home until the end, so had I known nothing going in, I might have been asking more questions. Given there was a viral marketing campaign, maybe it was the producers' intention for people to have a rudimentary idea of what to expect. What really brought it down for me was the use of several art house tropes that feel kind of tired to me at this point. I couldn't help seeing a formula of static camera + avant garde score + symbolic imagery (insects, crying baby, nudity, almost any shot involving an eye) + stylistic nods to Kubrick = ART HOUSE MOVIE. The final insult for me was the last shot tilting up toward the falling snow and then cutting to black/DIRECTED BY JONATHAN GLAZER, which has sadly become the cinematic equivalent of dropping the mic and walking off stage. I just feel like I've seen all these devices used before in more memorable films. I wish they'd been a little less focused on reminding me what kind of movie I was watching and more focused on telling the story. I also don't know if I buy into the whole "Glazer drawing attention to the artifice of cinema" stuff in Professor Clumsy's review. The visuals are stunning at times (when the image isn't so drenched in shadow that you can actually tell what's going on), and the performances are wonderful (so nice to see ScarJo take a break from Marvel-land to do some actual acting), but it all seems like a lot of work just to make the statement that "women are treated differently than men". Not the most original concept, but kudos to him for using a sci-fi conceit to make that point. At the very least it draws people into the theaters, especially given who he cast as the lead. But what if it wasn't Johansson? What if it was some nobody actress? Would people be saying the same things? Would it still make the same impact? Maybe people are just so sick of all the sci-fi bullshit major studios have been feeding us that it's affected their opinion. Who knows? So, yeah. Thought provoking, and definitely worth seeing, but for something considered so "original" and "new", it feels awfully familiar to me. DammitJanet fucked around with this message at 19:51 on Apr 17, 2014 |
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Apr 17, 2014 17:48
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Tsyni posted:"women are treated differently than men" I was referring to the SA review linked earlier in the thread. My bad.
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Apr 17, 2014 19:30
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