Film & Tv
- Watched on Thursday October 20, 2011.
- The production design is outstanding, and the visual metaphors of what you might call "generation loss" are deeply resonant. My favorite sequence comes late in the movie when the therapist's own disturbing upbringing is portrayed with a slow pan down through floors of increasingly twisted and strange imaginings of her living room and front door, conveying how she too is being sucked into the netherworld.
- Finally got to this 12 years after release. In the intervening years, Kayvan Novak made me laugh a lot as Nandor in What We Do in the Shadows, so I was happy to see him playing Bruce's Fanta-loving dance friend. On the flip side, Chris O'Dowd was truly vile as Bruce's backstabbing sexist coworker — too vile to keep the tone light. Happily, he was banished before the nice dance scenes at the end.
- Owing much to Miyazaki — especially My Neighbor Totoro and Princess Mononoke — it has some really emotional moments that made me cry. But the ending feels inconclusive.
- Rewatched in 4K with a friend this time.
- This review may contain spoilers. I ended up really liking this show. I thought it did some interesting things. It turned out that Aubrey Plaza's character was the personification of Death, "the original green witch", which totally fits with a lot of mythology about death and life being two sides of the same coin (Hades/Persephone, for example). Amongst the actors, Kathryn Hahn and Joe Locke were particularly great.
- It compresses a whole season's worth of developments into less than 2 hours, which makes some plot arcs into mere sketches. But they are done well. Having just barely watched the three seasons of the TV show, I was totally in the flow with the characters and really enjoyed this ending.
- It was absorbing, and Spielberg's film-making skills remain stellar (except for the bad CGI animals and too much lens flare), but I don't think he thought through the concept very well. I just don't believe that what happens at the end of the movie would solve anything, but he seems to be saying that it would? In any case, the end credits slammed down before any of the big questions could be dealt with. Hmph.
- Funny, sexy, and thought-provoking. Me likey!
- It spent too much time in sentimental silly land for me — especially as I am not a fan of the Back to the Future movies — but there was some real madcap humor that kept me amused. The 4th wall breaking with the camera-man (and the second one who appeared partway through) was especially fun, as were the interactions with various people who seemed to be clueless bystanders.