madmad

This aimless exercise was a complete waste of time, I want that two hours of my life back. Plot less, characters with no motivations, long, agonizing takes with excessive "street noise" for faux-effect. In one scene inside a third-floor apartment with the windows closed, the soundtrack sounded like the action was taking place in the middle of a busy street.

The set-up might have been intriguing, if it went anywhere. It did not.

In one scene, the audience was actually subjected to viewing a guy falling asleep in his car while stopped at a traffic light. In real time. He nodded off, he napped, the light changed, traffic started to move.... Yawn!

This is, quite simply, one of the worst movies I've seen in 2007, and may be one of the worst films of all time. The thing was utterly devoid of plot, the characters were a deadly combination of unlikeable and uninteresting, the cinematography was dull and ugly. Baumbach must think movie viewers are extremely stupid: In the beginning scenes it's obviously winter or very early spring -- the trees are all bare, and later on in the movie, which takes place over the course of one weekend, the trees are all in full leaf like it's high summer.

Sad, pretentious, overly talky. Ugh! I would have walked out, as some did during the performance, but I was with other people and didn't want to cause a disruption. Save the price of a ticket and give it to charity.

One of the rare movies that actually deserves the category "thriller." I've seen it many times, and each viewing reveals more detail, more structure. There are numerous shots of various clocks. Because of the time-frame of the story (early sixties) everything is analog. Found a couple of plot-holes, but they're so nit-picky I won't even bother putting them out there.

Also found the early interrogation scenes much, much more disturbing since the Abu Ghraib scandals became public.

Be patient, not every scene is action-packed, and you will be richly rewarded.