dimitridhaese

I could watch Murphy stare at a wall watching paint dry for 2 hours and I'd still buy a ticket.

Here, as Bill Furlong, he conveys a sadness that is rarely seen or understood by the people close to him. But we (the audience) can see it's there.

I won't go into the story that much. Honestly, there's not much there. But that doesn't mean it's a bad movie. It just means that it's a simple story. But one that is very well written, beautifully shot (The whole time, I believed I was in Ireland during the eighties) and incredibly well acted.

The Magdelene laundries were a real thing up until 1996, when the last one closed. Unmarried, pregnant teens were sent to monasteries to give birth and lose their child to forced adoption. All the while, they were abused as cheap labor by the nuns who were running the laundries. Sometimes, they were also physically abused and mistreated. It has left a mark on the soul of the country.

Eileen Walsh, who plays Ms. Furlong, also starred in the Magdalene sister, a movie from 2003. Coincidence or not: I suggest that you check it out because it's a perfect bookend to this gem of a movie.

This is not a good movie. It's a nice enough story though. But the script could have used some tweaking. It's as if they had a few scenes in mind and then just worked around those. It has a few good scenes (the one with the confrontation in the cafe comes to mind) but that's not enough to keep this thing afloat.

The actors are all on top of their game. Especially, the young semi tennis pro that plays Julie. She really does her best with the material she's given. But that is also not enough. There are just too many questions left unanswered: What actually happened between Julie and Jeremy?

Why does she keep quiet? One minute she has a problem with the new trainer, the next she will only be trained by him (I mean, What the actual F..?) So, story wise, this is just a big FAIL!

But here comes my biggest problem with this movie. This director just doesn't know how to shoot a film!! The framing is just of and wrong. Lighting is non existing. There were shadows everywhere. In one scene you can only make out two silhouettes talking to each other. He never cuts in a scene between different subjects. It's as if, they only had one camera available. Now maybe (and I'm just guessing here), he thinks this brings peace and calm to his movie. But to me, it was just annoying as hell. And if you do decide to not have any cuts in your movie, then make sure to stay in a master shot and let us (the audience) glance and look where we want/need to. No, this director decides for himself, we don't need this information. So, in a lot of scenes, we see people talking to other people whose head is (half) cut of or you just can make out half of their faces. What are they teaching in film school nowadays??!!

Also, was this movie shot on an Iphone??!! When I saw that Nicolas Karakatsanis was DOP on this, my mouth fell to the ground! He really phoned (pun intended) this one in. Sometimes, it was just unwatchable.

For me, all of this comes down to one of 2 things: Either this director doesn't master the basis of film making, or he just doesn't care.

Maybe he just wants to tell his stories. And that's fine. But film is a visual medium. And it just was mishandled here. And I, as a paying customer, want more.

My God, I wanted to love this movie. I needed to love this movie. I hope it gets better on a second viewing but I don't think it will. It's a mess. A big, incoherent mess. There's some really good things going on here, but nothing that can save this movie. Ben Affleck as Batman is right on the money. So is Jeremy Iron's Alfred. But they're working from a script that couldn't save a cat from a tree. So is Gal Gadot's Wonder Woman. She looks the part and the set-up to her stand-alone movie is pretty obvious, but the script is just such a mess! There's no explanation for most of the things our heroes do. There's no real MacGuffin here. It's as if a future Justice league movie is the carrot and this movie is just the dumb donkey chasing after it. To me, it's obvious that Zack Snyder doesn't know what to do with Superman. Look, I've been a Superman collector for over 36 years now. Trust me, I love the character. I had no love for him in this movie whatsoever. I don't understand his motivation in this film. I also think that the reason he's going after Batman (as Clark as well as Superman) makes him a big hypocrite. Add to that, that most of the time when he's saving people, he does it with an expression on his face that is similar to my daughter's when I tell her to clean her room. No, I didn't like Superman in this movie! I did love the Loïs and Clark stuff. And of course the special effects are of the charts. But I needed so much more. This movie tries to do way too much and most of it fails miserably. This is a placeholder movie.... The real icing is the Justice League movie coming in 2 years. But I don't know if I still want that now.

*************EDIT AFTER SECOND VIEWING**************************

Saw it for the second time today. I liked it more this time. There isn't more coherence, it's just that I understand it a bit better now. I clearly LOVE the Batman and Wonder Woman stuff even more this time around. It's still too serious for me and I still don't like Lex Luthor and the way he's portrayed here. But all in all, I want to give DC the benefit of the doubt here. I've changed my vote from 6 to 7/10.