One and Two

So it's okay. It's fine. It's a movie that was made, but not made well. There's no passion, no story, no style, nothing. It's a movie that proves this director can put a movie together, outside of Rich Hill. Autumn Durald does a great job with the cinematography, despite there clearly being more budgetary constraints than Palo Alto, most notably the oval bokeh and the obvious digital grain, from the upped-ISO.

The movie is bearable, it's watchable, but not interesting. The dialogue, however, is laughable, and the Tree of Life internal monologues are baffling. This movie is practically a series of events, albeit beautiful to look at and competently put together, with no real satisfying conclusion nor moral.

This movie doesn't deserve the critical panning it has from RottenTomatoes, it's one of the better movies of the year, which I guess isn't saying much.

Kiernan Shipka, and everyone really, look bored and brooding. They have nothing to work with, and when they do, it's executed laughably and obnoxiously. I have no doubt Shipka has acting chops, but this doesn't prove it, she mopes around with a vaguely confused face the whole movie.

Timothee Chalamet is the best actor in the movie, and he barely has anything to show, possibly because no one has any characterization besides "quiet, distant, scared." I hope he stops being type-casted as Tom Cooper, because even when he's given the opportunity to act in these movies, it's quickly cut short (in this, his screaming and clawing are drowned out by a glaring score, muting any actual skill required to show emotion or character struggle).

Hopefully Jeff Nichols' Midnight Special shows this movie up, I'm pretty disappointed. (If at any point you think I'm blindly "hating" on this movie, the very fact that I was even looking forward to a movie that wasn't advertised or talked about shows my initial interest.)

Probably One And Two would be consigned to obscurity save for the fact that one of the four principal cast member Timothee Chalamet has gone on to stardom in the movie big leagues. Chalamet and Kiernan Shipka play a brother and sister who live on a remote farm and have some unusual abilities, abilities inherited from their mother Elizabeth Reaser who is subject to seizures and not long for the world.

His own kids scare the pants off their father Grant Bowler who punishes them every time they use their powers to transport themselves. The idea was clearly taken from the British science fiction series The Tomorrow People where kids could just transport themselves anywhere on a whim.

An interesting concept but the film moves so slowly it becomes unbearably dull. In the end I'm not sure what the point was.

Weird little film. Starts off promising and remains promising throughout, it just never does anything with that promise. Smart enough to come up with believable constraints on children who can teleport themselves (and yet are confined; i.e. there has to be line of sight to where they are going to poof to next, so put a bag over their head and their powers are gone), and equally clever enough to figure out ways around that.

But it moves at a pace that is, at first, leisurely, and later as the "action" ramps up (or more accurately as there are changes in the situation) the film slips even further into sleepwalking. It sets up interesting developments but then deliberately doesn't really do anything with them. The filmmakers seem averse to exploring any of the multiple concepts that are sprinkled throughout. Perhaps it's as simple as they were not as clever and smart as their own premise.

It's frustrating that so much could have been addressed but the filmmakers act just like the film's characters; dour and non-communicative to an extreme. Simple visual effects are believably handled; performances are strong; there is even a whole scene here or there that is everything you might want it to be, but then the film meanders away as if it has no clear idea where it wants to go or why it wants to get there. Or why we should stick around for the ride.

There really is nothing worth investing this movies length to endure for what you get. It was a happy enough ending but the journey there was pointless. It's basically Jumper only they truly do nothing with said abilities. Movie is composed well enough but again there's no real point for any of it. The only positive is it ending with Outro by M83, but even then I wouldn't give this a +1 even (or 6/10). It isn't good it isn't bad, it's just a neutral 5, flat and entirely nothing. If my only purpose in life is to leave some sometimes helpful reviews and sway others from wasting more valuable time then I can live with that.

I am so confused, what did I just watch? It feels like a movie that is arty and philosophical but it isn't. The only reason to watch this movie is if you have an hour and a half to kill and you really like Timotheé Chalamet. It is a beautiful film at times, aesthetically pleasing. The story goes nowhere and if there is a meaning to it, it is lost on me. Maybe I am not deep or arty enough to understand it. It seems to have some religious undertones. Sometimes it is meditative though to watch something that has a beautiful boy in it and some nice nature shots.