BrianVLau

They screened this before a showing of Victoria at the SIFF Egyptian Theater in Capital Hill, no warning or anything, and I thought we were all being fooled.

Or PTA lost his f---ing mind.

I found myself transfixed, horrified, laughing, and nauseated simultaneously.

I'm sure that if I re-watch it, I'll have some strange urge to kill the Koch brothers and burn down JP Morgan Chase.

If you do get the chance to see it, help me analyze the cryptic Illuminati code, and maybe bring noise canceling headphones, and blinders.

This is not a masterpiece music video like "Hot Knife," this, to me, is closer to cinematic masturbation, like Victoria, than anything else.

There's so much symbolism, I can't even fathom how a masterpiece like this could be constructed, so simply, so tightly...

When I saw Miles Teller in Whiplash as yet another "Andrew," I thought this was in the same universe: I was wrong. If Lars Von Trier, Andrei Tarkovsky, and Alejandro Jodorowsky could construct The Holy Mountain, Stalker, and Anti-Christ into 11 minutes, this is what that would be.

One can only draw comparisons to the Greek God Hermes and his plight delivering messages to and from Mount Olympus, and the conceptual implications of Camus' Sisyphus with Andrew's (and the plot's) repetitive, redundant, and haunting loop.

Miles Teller surpasses Daniel Day-Lewis' portrayal as Daniel Plainview in this short film as a flush cheeked, baby-fat slithering, stalker, and don't even get me started on the methodical, slow-moving pans and delicate lighting. If Lubezki could see this, he'd be forced to hang himself.

Truly, truly, a masterpiece. 10/10.

(Ok, but seriously, it's fine, it's cool seeing what Miles Teller was before he got big, but God damn, if this isn't the quintessential "film student" project I don't know what is, and this is coming from one, kinda. 2/10, story is clear, it is bearable to watch, nothing more)

So it's okay. It's fine. It's a movie that was made, but not made well. There's no passion, no story, no style, nothing. It's a movie that proves this director can put a movie together, outside of Rich Hill. Autumn Durald does a great job with the cinematography, despite there clearly being more budgetary constraints than Palo Alto, most notably the oval bokeh and the obvious digital grain, from the upped-ISO.

The movie is bearable, it's watchable, but not interesting. The dialogue, however, is laughable, and the Tree of Life internal monologues are baffling. This movie is practically a series of events, albeit beautiful to look at and competently put together, with no real satisfying conclusion nor moral.

This movie doesn't deserve the critical panning it has from RottenTomatoes, it's one of the better movies of the year, which I guess isn't saying much.

Kiernan Shipka, and everyone really, look bored and brooding. They have nothing to work with, and when they do, it's executed laughably and obnoxiously. I have no doubt Shipka has acting chops, but this doesn't prove it, she mopes around with a vaguely confused face the whole movie.

Timothee Chalamet is the best actor in the movie, and he barely has anything to show, possibly because no one has any characterization besides "quiet, distant, scared." I hope he stops being type-casted as Tom Cooper, because even when he's given the opportunity to act in these movies, it's quickly cut short (in this, his screaming and clawing are drowned out by a glaring score, muting any actual skill required to show emotion or character struggle).

Hopefully Jeff Nichols' Midnight Special shows this movie up, I'm pretty disappointed. (If at any point you think I'm blindly "hating" on this movie, the very fact that I was even looking forward to a movie that wasn't advertised or talked about shows my initial interest.)