Human Capital

In early Sept, within one day of first screening of this film at Toronto, it had 1,400 IMDB nine and ten star ratings which is more people than saw it at the festival.At this point exactly 11 of the 1,400 votes are from accounts which have rated another film. In other words this is >99% fake uprating. At Toronto most of the audience was fidgeting throughout, and look simply fatigued at the end of the film. Forget the few gushing reviews on the 'critics reviews" section here from reviewers who give everything a ten in hopes of getting free festival junkets. The legit outlets like Variety and Ebert panned this turgid nonsense. Variety: "its convoluted narrative rigging not leading to any particular sense of meaning" (the rigging and artificiality of the plot is cringeworthy) Ebert: "'Human Capital' is the type of middling, middlebrow mediocrity that strives to be about capital-I Ideas but approaches them with the savoir-faire of a toddler."

My take: 1) Can someone tell Marisa Tomei that she cannot act her way out of a paper bag? She was jarringly distracting evidence of overacting in "Frankie" and this is worse. The other actors in this, Schreiber, Betty Gabriel, Maya Hawke do OK. 2) what is the point of talking down to the audience and banging them over the head as if they are idiots?

skip this mess.

People don't like being lied to, but the movie is not that bad. The large amount of initial fake up voting has come back to hit this one in the head, reaping a harvest of dissatisfied low voters. That being said, the film is very watchable with a level of political correctness and snowflake character insertions, not too difficult to overcome. Like most this is by no means great, but then quoting other critics is not a review. There's a lot of that going on here by those who have nothing to say.

The only ones raging against that are the millenials and snowflakes who probably feel misrepresented by some of the characters who are them. Liev Schreiber is not Ray Donovan here, and no one should expect him to be; Marisa Tomei plays her part just fine, as does Peter Sarsgaard who has always been very consistent in my view. There's seems to be a growing mob of millenials who've discovered this site in recent years, whose depth and knowledge of cinema is almost non-existent. They know how they feel and sometimes even what they want, but not much else.

Both the film and the characters in it are fractured, portraying people who are broken self absorbed and a bit lost. Not in some deep meaningful way, but in the shallow selfish amoral way that our society has become. The series Succession and recently Mare of Easttown, are very much that same way. Where people lack both identity and loyalty as well as the sense of community that used to undergird most of society. Much of the dialog is that of the insider where you are expected to know, so you'll have to pay attention to find meaning. The Counselor was misunderstood and disliked for the same reasons.

Cold distant detached people living for themselves in their own little wreckage of something that used to be made up of caring and giving with just a little bit of respect. Crash was like that, so was Heat, just earlier versions. Though this is not as good as either of those films, especially Heat. The problem a lot of youngster reviewers have with it is that it does not resolve anything, it just shows you the problems but it does not answer. Only God can do that, but no one wants to hear it. It's worth watching for what it is, and I would watch it again.

Tribulation Saints and The God Haters, our 2 books on fb.

...and the rest of their film crew - and their family and friends, ridiculously up-vote their film. No way of the current 1,616 ratings this film is even close to a 8.8/10.

Film critic Noel Murray from the L.A. Times nailed it: "Frankly, the payoff to the movie's mystery is unsatisfying after all the buildup. None of these three stories really works as a short film on its own."

There's no excuse for this mess considering director Marc Meyers and writer Oren Moverman are not inexperienced film-makers.

A 5th grader could've written, directed and edited this film better! Think 3-4 different films put in a shredder, then random pieces taped together to make one film.

There is terrible plot transition between what you'd think is the key story, another one pops up, then a mish-mash of back and forth timelines, then an entirely new focus on another plot, etc. Add to this the terrible pacing, and the 95 min run-time felt like 3 hours of a convoluted mess.

Meyers also failed miserably in directing his cast - Schreiber and Tomei seemed barely awake, and you couldn't quite place Hawke's personality... one minute she's an introvert, then an extrovert.

This film had a lot of potential, but missed the mark big time. Maybe too many producers pulling at each other with the direction this film needed to go. Then again, with that many, the phony up-votes were easily achieved.

Skip this mess or read the novel instead. It's a very generous 5/10 from me.

This story tells what happens to each of the characters before the accident, and how these events intersect. To be honest, the events are interesting but not told in an engaging way. I don't care about any of the characters, which is central to the success of this film.

But the movie is a letdown. Its to rushed, jumps around and then at the end its much to hurried. The cast in name is good, but thats about it. Its a one done.