#2,099: Birdman
The Godfather - ★★★★★
So great. So much detail. So much that appears to be window dressing that, to the careful or repeat viewer is actually expertly laid groundwork for later use. Even the little things utterly incidental to the plot are perfect, like some of most realistic children I've seen on film. The construction of a consistent world is amazing, and ten times moreso given the conditions under which Coppola was making it.
I think this movie's famous scenes and lines do it a disservice. It's too easy to fall into the lazy pattern of knowing how it all turns out and watching for the famous bits, instead of taking in the suspense that should grip the first-time viewer or the depth available to the returning viewer.
Please Subscribe - ★★☆☆☆
I think these filmmakers made the wrong thing. This isn't a movie, it's a YouTube playlist. A dozen or so profiles of YouTubers that have nothing in common except that each subject was asked the same list of questions. No themes are explored or connections made. The best of the characters get just enough time to hint at larger, more interesting stories that go unexplained, and the worst soak up the screen time that could have been used to tell them.
The One I Love - ★★★½☆
I think I liked that everyone's lying to each other. If anything, I wish they'd been more direct and immediate in going behind each other's backs, but I was happy they strayed from the completely safe into something that challenged the premise. The characters promise to keep their behavior dialed down to a 5, proceed at an 8, and I would have liked it even more at a 10. But maybe that would have tipped us from a kind of light dramatic horror to horror-comedy? I've begun to suspect that every movie is a horror movie.
Birdman - ★★½☆☆
I like a real time or continuous shot gimmick in a movie. Or, at least I think I do. Part of what makes it impressive is the sense that a feat is being undertaken by the performers to make it happen, but this is so openly jammed full of tricks that I'm not entirely sure what the point of it is. Sometimes I think filmmakers might not always be using their powers for good...
I'm in favor of making a weird movie, but I think it might be bad form to include scenes expounding on why you can't criticize a weird movie.
The floating camera, the view of what's going on in Rigand's head vs. reality (which I did like), the repetitive sequencing of scenes, the tendency of people and things to appear and disappear, an occasional flying sequence, it all adds up to one impressionistic, dreamlike couple of hours. But, that doesn't mean it's much fun.