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Post by Deleted on Nov 14, 2020 22:20:13 GMT
Its tonal shifts are nothing short of bizarre, it is at times comically overwrought, and yes, Howard has denuded the film of any real political thesis.
The only time the film works at all is when Glenn Close's "Mamaw" is featured. Close, the patrician leading lady, was arguably miscast as this mountain matriarch, but she is really the only actor here who succeeds at imbuing the film with the empathy it wants us to feel for these people who society supposedly "left behind." The physical commitment is admirable (Close is unrecognizable, both in looks and speech), but this is a much quieter performance than previews would have you believe. There is a real intensity in Close's eyes that relay her character's lifetime of regrets and dreams deferred, and you understand why she would gamble so much of her own security on the bet of J.D.'s future - he's her last shot... I think Close delineates this quite poignantly... She transcends the hokey colloquialisms and pounds of prosthetics to create a fully realized human being.
5/10...
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Post by Tommen_Saperstein on Nov 14, 2020 22:26:32 GMT
well this makes me excited to see Close anyways. How was Adams? I actually thought she looked the best in the previews but reports have been mixed at best.
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Post by Deleted on Nov 14, 2020 22:35:13 GMT
well this makes me excited to see Close anyways. How was Adams? I actually thought she looked the best in the previews but reports have been mixed at best. Adams' performance is definitely less successful. The tonal shifts that I think were so bizarre are hinged to her character... who I think must have had an undiagnosed mental illness - you might even recall Mo'Nique in Precious when watching her, but certainly not because of the quality of the performance... I certainly didn't get the pages of backstory that I did from Close. Adams isn't necessarily bad - definitely uneven - but I think this is more to do with Howard's ham-handed direction and Vance's portrayal of her (devoid of any nuance) than anything else. I mean, at one minute Adams is a hard-working nurse whose patients love her, and in literally the next frame, she is high on pain pills and rollerskating in the hospital where she works. (Yes, this is real.)
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Post by ibbi on Nov 24, 2020 16:14:16 GMT
Who’d a thunk it. People spent so long willing Amy Adams to the Oscar that nobody stopped to think she might end up with a Razzie first.
And if there is any justice... She will. The best way I can think to describe this performance is it’s like that bit in Monster’s Ball where Halle Berry starts kicking her sons ass (I hope I wasn’t the only one who couldn’t help laughing when that happened...) but stretched out to feature length
I mean not only does it ruin the movie by rendering horrific scenes utterly laughable on account of her complete and utterly fake, phony miscasting (it’s admirable when actors want to step outside their comfort zone but sometimes when you have become too entrenched in it then it is impossible to suspend disbelief) but it does double duty on the film at large because you’re wondering how stupid all these people are that they don’t seem at all prepared for these repeated instances of uncanny homage to Ben Stiller’s immortal turn in Friends.
Beyond her I don’t think it’s a BAD movie in that it’s very watchable, Glenn Close really is very, very good, and they don’t make Freida Pinto speak enough words in succession at any point for you to really stop and wonder what the noise coming out of her mouth is supposed to be.
This all does of course require you to ignore the intent of what this story is really trying to say (it tries for the beauty and grace of one hundred years of solitude - without the self awareness - but it’s probably closer to mein kampf), Howard (now in his EIGHTH DECADE in cinema. You LEGEND, Richie Cunningham) tries to airbrush it as much as possible, perhaps he was hoping to tap into the euphoria of a Trump reelection season without alienating everyone on the other side, but try though he might he really can’t. Somewhere down in the bowels of hell, Margaret Thatcher will be sticking this movie on repeat as soon as it ends and getting some more popcorn in the microwave.
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Post by countjohn on Nov 24, 2020 23:47:34 GMT
This wasn't as bad as I was expecting, I think there's a bit of a "piling on" effect going on with reviewers trying to top each other with venom, but it still was not good. The acting was fine, nobody deserves a nod. I actually don't think Close was as good as some are saying and Adams is not comically bad. Speaking of which, I really don't get what some people find funny here. It's not a particularly compelling drama but it was still sad and I don't see it as campy.
Howard's direction is pedestrian. Beyond that, the movie is overlit like soap opera or cheap Canadian TV movie. That creates a sanitized look that is not appropriate for the setting. I find myself increasingly making this criticism of movies these days, I don't know why.
The biggest issue here is the pacing. It's under two hours but feels longer. The movie has long stretches of feeling directionless. I haven't read the book, but there doesn't appear to be much of a central thesis in the movie and Howard certainly sanitized any kind of political context from the movie.
5/10
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Post by speeders on Nov 25, 2020 0:17:55 GMT
Glenn Close was surprisingly good! I certainly don't find her Oscar worthy but I actually found her work here to be better, more genuine and authentic than in The Wife despite her prosthetics and make-up. That is really the only good thing I can say about this turkey. The writing, directing, structure, score and Amy Adams was all just awful. It doesn't even show any insight into the subject matter and it doesn't even register as a story worth telling. Lacked any kind of momentum. What a mess.
3/10
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Post by pacinoyes on Nov 25, 2020 2:31:19 GMT
(less than) 5/10 There is a scene in this movie that turns into a quite awful, ham-fisted one that sums up everything wrong with it - it's where Close says to the kid "Stop stealing things, do your homework and get some decent friends" .........instead that scene then goes on much too long to say the same thing 3 different ways.......and everything about this movie is like that, you're like ok, this setup maybe could work and then each scene hits a point of no dramatic return........and goes far past it. Everything is double and triple underlined..... I don't think Close is bad here.....but can't imagine she's legit close (no pun) to nodworthy tbh.......and as for Amy Adams - she is spectacularly off here - it's not just that she doesn't reflect this character (usually what we mean when we say miscast, that happens to all actors).......but she doesn't reflect anyone humanly recognizable in any way at all to me.......she is a series of excruciating tics and mannered mistakes........it's a spectacular flop of a performance imo...... ibbi summed it up. Still I saw Antebellum in 2020 and this gets nearly 5 points more than that ........just like there's levels of great.........there's levels of dreck too ..........
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Post by mikediastavrone96 on Nov 25, 2020 2:39:46 GMT
This wasn't as bad as I was expecting, I think there's a bit of a "piling on" effect going on with reviewers trying to top each other with venom, but it still was not good. The acting was fine, nobody deserves a nod. I actually don't think Close was as good as some are saying and Adams is not comically bad. Speaking of which, I really don't get what some people find funny here. It's not a particularly compelling drama but it was still sad and I don't see it as campy. Howard's direction is pedestrian. Beyond that, the movie is overlit like soap opera or cheap Canadian TV movie. That creates a sanitized look that is not appropriate for the setting. I find myself increasingly making this criticism of movies these days, I don't know why.
The biggest issue here is the pacing. It's under two hours but feels longer. The movie has long stretches of feeling directionless. I haven't read the book, but there doesn't appear to be much of a central thesis in the movie and Howard certainly sanitized any kind of political context from the movie. 5/10I wonder if that has anything to do with filmmakers being cognizant that films these days are usually watched on TV through a streaming service. I'd imagine it takes less data for Netflix to process something with a more compressed dynamic range, so things need to be well-lit to prevent the loss of data.
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Post by countjohn on Nov 25, 2020 4:40:15 GMT
This wasn't as bad as I was expecting, I think there's a bit of a "piling on" effect going on with reviewers trying to top each other with venom, but it still was not good. The acting was fine, nobody deserves a nod. I actually don't think Close was as good as some are saying and Adams is not comically bad. Speaking of which, I really don't get what some people find funny here. It's not a particularly compelling drama but it was still sad and I don't see it as campy. Howard's direction is pedestrian. Beyond that, the movie is overlit like soap opera or cheap Canadian TV movie. That creates a sanitized look that is not appropriate for the setting. I find myself increasingly making this criticism of movies these days, I don't know why.
The biggest issue here is the pacing. It's under two hours but feels longer. The movie has long stretches of feeling directionless. I haven't read the book, but there doesn't appear to be much of a central thesis in the movie and Howard certainly sanitized any kind of political context from the movie. 5/10I wonder if that has anything to do with filmmakers being cognizant that films these days are usually watched on TV through a streaming service. I'd imagine it takes less data for Netflix to process something with a more compressed dynamic range, so things need to be well-lit to prevent the loss of data. Possibly, it occurred to me that it could be due to it going straight to streaming. Regardless I hate that look, it's garish and awful no matter what movie it is.
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Post by finniussnrub on Nov 25, 2020 20:26:17 GMT
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Post by JangoB on Nov 29, 2020 1:52:07 GMT
Not actively bad as the reviews suggest but still rather mediocre. Aesthetically it's just plain ugly (I can't help but LOL that there were Cinematography predictions for it from some pundits), editorially a bit of a mess, and most of all it's simply a bit boring. But there are entertaining scenes from time to time, even if it all is still pretty basic. I did like Glenn Close quite a bit, particularly in her funnier scenes where she really excelled at some decent one-liners, and I really liked Amy Adams here whose performance is automatically among the year's most underrated for me. Living your life in a state of constant self-disappointment is a bit of a hell, especially when you know it but just can't help succumbing to that pain because you feel there's no other way out, and Adams conveys that emotional conundrum very convincingly imo. Her performance is a bit of a rollercoaster but there's nothing in the movie that suggests that her character wasn't meant to be portrayed as such, and I think she did as well of a job as could've been done - I thoroughly bought her portryal.
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Post by TerryMontana on Dec 1, 2020 17:11:23 GMT
This one was a f*cking mess!! Not an awful movie but a mess. The photography and editing were bad and the pacing... Actually there was no pacing!!!
Maybe most will disagree but I didn't like Close's performance. I found it ott, like a caricature. There were very few scenes imo that might justify a nod (After leaving with her grandson).
On the other hand, although I'm not a fan of Adams, she wasn't totally off I think. As a matter of fact, afgter watching this I can see a nod happening. The category won't be very strong this year so she has a chance.
Overall, it's not garbage but I felt it was a waste of time.
5/10
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Post by Deleted on Dec 8, 2020 17:23:40 GMT
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Post by bob-coppola on Dec 11, 2020 2:14:48 GMT
this was really, really bad. a complete misfire in every department. every scene starts and ends with someone screaming their lungs out, running around and being hysterical. the first 20 minutes feel already like it's the third act climax, it's always a notch higher and louder than it should be. the back-and-forth structure is lousy and incoherent, with flashbacks within flashbacks, and killing any narrative momentum the film could achieve.
the worst part is that it's boring. it's exhausting to watch, it's dull and it's dead inside. it has no live, as much as amy adams and glenn close strut and scream around. it's not even a so-bad-it's-good type of movie. to it's just repetitive and pointless. it has nothing to say and has no character nor plot development. it drags, it feels a groundhog day of rich people cosplaying as poor people, with nothing interesting to say. every new scene is exactly like the one before and equally bad.
I couldn't care less about this set of characters, and I feel sorry for the good actors stuck with such a lousy, obvious, heavy-handed screenplay. amy adams, one of the best of her generation, delivers a truly awful performance, shocking me 'cause I didn't imagine she'd have such bad performance in her. it feels like a betrayal even to similar characters she has played brilliantly before, such as sharp objects and the fighter.
glenn close is just one-note. she's there and has very little to do, when she has meatier material, she fails to give her character any internal life. she's not as bad as adams, but it's not a good performance either and it's just slightly above caricature. she’s not as actively bad as adams, but honestly, the more I think about this performance, the less I like it.
and the less said about the two boys who play j.d. vance, the better, two non-presences that don't register at all, and when we're left alone with young adult j.d. in the last fifteen minutes of the movie, the whole thing just becomes a black hole.
when all's said and done, hillbilly elegy is the ultimate oscar thirst trap, one so obvious and poorly done that becomes a laughing stock. I honestly cannot think of one single good thing to highlight here.
1/5
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Post by Viced on Dec 29, 2020 23:22:34 GMT
I originally gave this a 5/10 because I'm a nice person, it's the holiday season, and Glenn Close deserves better..... but on reflection, I gotta knock it down to a 4... and that still feels generous.
Really, I have no clue what the hell the point of this was. A guy working his ass off to get out of the boonies and to/through law school is admirable, but doesn't really add up to much. It has nothing interesting to say about the opioid crisis (which I thought was supposed to be the crux of the story) or why there even is a crisis. The Amy Adams character is clearly mentally ill, and the way she was portrayed was mostly shameful and depressing... and even worse, random.
But two things in the movie felt real... the bond between brother and sister (Haley Bennett was pretty good)... and the legend Glenn Close. She overcame the makeup, wig, and ridiculous material and created a powerful, complicated matriarch who badly deserved a better movie around her. Sad to see another one of her performances hampered by iffy surroundings.
Was also nice to see the underrated legend of the screen and member of The Wild Bunch Bo Hopkins in a movie in 2020...
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Post by The_Cake_of_Roth on Jul 15, 2024 21:40:44 GMT
This fucking guy lol
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Post by JangoB on Jul 15, 2024 21:58:56 GMT
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Post by pacinoyes on Jul 15, 2024 22:04:58 GMT
Supposedly it's a great book though........um, what is that not the way the mob is rolling? ![:grouphug:](//storage.proboards.com/6692321/images/H7iGS0eK7Bua5qxzMOco.gif)
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Post by stephen on Jul 15, 2024 23:43:30 GMT
Motherfucker.
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Post by Brother Fease on Jul 16, 2024 0:22:36 GMT
My reaction ![](https://78.media.tumblr.com/18ccba0590b423ec092f23851011c838/tumblr_pa1lsyCSDY1qe8lb8o1_500.gif)
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Post by Film Socialism on Jul 16, 2024 15:46:49 GMT
this is probably the first time ive seen everyone on here come together about how bad something is
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Post by Ryan_MYeah on Jul 16, 2024 16:24:41 GMT
My original thoughts when I saw this movie in 2022.
My opinions have not changed. It was an awful movie, it STILL is an awful movie.
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Post by stabcaesar on Jul 16, 2024 17:01:59 GMT
My reaction ![](https://78.media.tumblr.com/18ccba0590b423ec092f23851011c838/tumblr_pa1lsyCSDY1qe8lb8o1_500.gif) MTE. America is a comedy sketch of a country.
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Post by Joaquim on Jul 16, 2024 17:28:40 GMT
Vance as VP is such a Trump pick. You know he liked the guy’s minor celebrity credentials
As for this, I have not seen the movie or read the book
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Post by TylerDeneuve on Jul 16, 2024 17:34:31 GMT
She wouldn't have missed. ![](https://i0.wp.com/www.heyuguys.com/images/2017/10/Crooked-House.jpg?fit=1200%2C675&ssl=1)
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