TanakaK

I share others' opinions that the film is flat. It should win an award for Cooper's makeup. But this comes off like a 2 hour trailer for a bigger movie. We get countless close-up clips of LB smoking and mugging in situations that are not always clear. Anonymous characters slide in and out.

And how could music play such a distant role in such a bio? And yet it does. Again, we get snippets of LB composing or playing a piano or conducting. But the title is "Maestro"?

My wife and I came away feeling we had just browsed a book, reading a page or two of all its chapters. Maestro borders on chaos and incoherence. Only the viewer's knowledge of the main character holds it together. And I wonder how many viewers are too young to know or care who Bernstein was?

This indy film is, contrary to its description, not really about a lottery winner blowing-out. It's a much more human and traditional tale about one woman's painful physical and social recovery from addiction (alcoholism, in this case) in west Texas. The casting is tight and the scenes tend to be spare. But the acting is top-notch and the editing becomes an unseen character in telling the story well. The best films of this genre are those that draw you in so deeply that you find yourself screaming "Don't do it! Drop that drink and run away!". "To Leslie" brought me to that point several times.

"To Leslie" is certainly worth a viewing. Just don't expect to see anything new if you're a cinemaphile.

I know I'm 23 years late with these notes but I finally got 'round to watching this highly-celebrated film. I was shocked at how thin and unentertaining it was. After all the yabba dabba about Kingsley's "genius" performance I expected Ghandi. Not even close.

The story is old (retired thief recruited "one more time") and, here, is told very thinly. There's barely enough writing to fill even the <90 mins. Most of the screen time is devoted to the characters either staring blankly at each other or screaming at each other in unintelligible cockney slang.

I concluded that this must be a film that appeals only to Kingsley die-hard fans or British cockney audiences. I just found no entertainment in it.