mike-nissley

An ill conceived film, shot with stagey blocking, bad, unrealistic lighting, poorly synced sound effects, fake blood, bad dialogue... OK I will stop there. The whole while I kept thinking "they are trying to do a western film with the gravity of The Godfather, and failing miserably." You can feel how bad they wanted these scenes to make movie history, while the scenes themselves are amateurish. The mix of family/personal with the organized crime element is masterful in Coppola's hands, here it is a weak attempt at the same with corny results. So much is off about this. A top example: they ride into a town with maybe 5 total buildings, then the horse chase and shootout as they try to escape the town becomes a chase for 10 minutes through several blocks that are never shown to exist. In reality, once you would start riding, you'd be in the desert within 30 seconds? But, they wanted a ten minute horse chase with guns blazing, in itself a waste of time. Many things like this occurred. It is amazing to me people love this film, and I suspect it is more because of what they want it to be than what it actually is. The good parts are 5-6 scenes that taken out of context are compelling, but that is about 20% of the total screen time.

A tragically dumbed-down misfire on every level. It is set in New Orleans, everyone talks like they are from Iowa. No local flavor from the the setting, which is weird - why choose NOLA then never use it in any way that enhances the film? The story is absurd and really very inane. Nothing in this is slightly funny, and it becomes witty and actually engaging for exactly one scene. The rest of this is borderline awful. The actor is smarmy and kind of a cross between Ryan Gosling and Christian Slater - neither of whom are all that great on their own. The situations shown are ridiculous and always look 100% scripted and nothing whatsoever like the way life on this planet actually occurs. The first entire 2/3 of this is a slog and a jumble of implausible and boring events, the it rises very slightly and briefly when the aforementioned One Good Scene occurs, only to divebomb very hard into a completely incomprehensibly ruinous ending. Bad storytelling, bad direction, bad script, The actors do their jobs well, but with so little to work with. A truly lightweight piece of product from an "artist" director. Not a proud moment for him, not in the slightest.

This is one of the most terrible films I have seen in quite a while. The songs which are supposed to be so good are blatantly awful commercial love songs with zero emotional content, the musical equivalent of a crayon drawing of a flower in a pot with a happy sun and maybe a bird flying in the background. In other words, completely inane garbage. Knightly's acting is a travesty -she goofily smiles her way through most situations. Her singing and performing are so boring and cringe inducing at the same time that it induces mild panic. I could feel my mind rapidly beginning to melt in my skull with each new song, so I was forced to fast forward through the music, or I feared my ears and mind would never be the same. What could be worse than her song, why of course the music of Adam Levine, which is also featured heavily throughout. The premise of this is complete fantasy, that a sensationally great songwriter would write rote, idiotic three chord songs with generic melodies, and be poised for stardom if only a record company will realize the genius of utterly terrible music. How does she live? No job, no place to live, no money, she just eats artistic integrity? I wanted to hit myself in the head with a hammer about 10 times while watching this. Ruffalo is good, Keener is good, of course, they always are, but neither should have agreed to do this film. The best part by far is the on location background of NYC, which is at least real and interesting.