A Beautiful Day

Yes I am aware that many thought this film was slow. However, it the slow and thoughtful burn of this film that makes it so unique and well done. It is, overall, a story about trauma and how this trauma has afflicted the protagonist. This is what trauma looks like. I already loved it but could further appreciate it after viewing a video by screened titled " How to Show Trauma" Just watch this video and then decide for yourself. Everything about this film was very much intentional and for good reason.

I'm still processing this. The comparisons to "Taxi Driver" are fair: the performances, the director's vision and exectution, the understated script..... those are some of the similarities. The major differences, for me include the depth to which the protagonist's trauma is not played out for us to view as observers, but drip-fed in increasing doses, often from a first-person perspective, which in my watching felt more like we were experiencing Joe's trauma with him, rather than seeing it played out for us. The film also has a lot of relevance to current discussions of modern masculinity, and here the gendering of social roles is presented very much more as a question than a statement.

If you prefer to finish watching a film with your friends and be able to agree pretty much without discussion on what it was about, then I suspect you might find this film pretentious or light on plot. If you're the type who enjoys discovering what your friends think they just saw, and don't mind spending a lot the movie time watching Joaquin Phoenix' face doing some really admirable acting, then this film might be as worthwhile for you as it was for me.

I think Joaquin Phoenix has only gotten better over the years. I mean his Oscar for Joker was no accident and I thought it was well deserved. To me he's one of those actors that once he's played a part, I could imagine no one else in the role...Freddie Quell in PT Anderson's "The Master" was just brilliant and I don't think anyone could have matched PS Hoffman in that film the same way. In this film he's the hero, but not like we're used to seeing heroes portrayed in most played-out vengeance movies with bodies that took 12 months prior to filming to sculpt, or Special Forces Navy SEaL backgrounds. Instead his background represents trauma, pain and regret, which has been the subject of films many times before, but the lack of flashiness works in this movie because I think it makes his role more believable and realistic. Which when you add the acting, I don't think anyone could have played it better than Phoenix.

I'm a huge fan of art films. This film is definitely inspired by taxi driver and that's one of the reasons why it caught my attention as I love that movie, but this film is a huge let down. It's not good. The acting is 10/10, the cinematography and camerawork is 10/10, but the plot is horrible and boring. Take blade runner 2049's slow (but awesome) pacing and slow it down, throw in an uninteresting predictable repetitive recycled plot we've seen a billion times which could have been told within 20 minutes, give the main character psychological traumatic issues and show us random crap that's going on in his mind, and you have this movie. It brings nothing new to the table and is done in a way that simply bores you. I love dramas, I know this movie is one, an art drama film, but there Wonder, no suspense, no clever conversations, no anything really. I felt like I was watching a long video demonstrating Joaquin Phoenix's phenomenal acting.

In a nutshell this film is a drama with your typical basic story line with phenomenal acting that you will forget within a couple of days. I can only recommend it if love movies with beautiful cinematography and are a huge fan of Joaquin Phoenix, but if you're looking for an original unforgettable drama, a crime revenge film, or whatever else you were expecting, I recommend staying away from this.

Probably the strangest movie I've seen in a while... It's hard to describe the feeling you get when you finish this film. The best way I can say is; there could have been more. It kind of ends on a bittersweet note, and it will piss off some, that is for sure. Overall though, it does a good job of showing how a traumatized man views the world. One word that sums up this movie would be PTSD. The film essentially is a PTSD fest. Throughout it's 1h30 runtime you aren't sure if what you're seeing is actually happening for real.