My Review of Ryusuke Hamaguchi's WHEEL OF FORTUNE & FANTASY

2021 was a banner year for Japanese filmmaker Ryusuke Hamaguchi.

Not only did he give us his finest work to date with Drive My Car, but he also gave us what may be his second-best outing to date with Wheel of Fortune & Fantasy. 

First off...no... the film has nothing to do with the game show, so don't expect this to be some kind of ridiculous and overblown film like Slumdog Millionaire.

This is a minor nitpick, but I would actually argue that the title of Wheel of Fortune & Fantasy doesn't quite fit the film. It isn't the literal English translation of the original Japanese title; that would actually be "Coincidence & Imagination". I would argue that is far more apt.

Wheel (which I will call it for short) is a film told in three acts that are connected more by similar themes rather than a straight-through plot or even the same actors.

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PART ONE:

Magic (or Something Less Assuring)

Our first installment begins with two friends, Meiko and Tsugumi, who are in a taxicab heading home from a photo shoot. Meiko has heard that Tsugumi has a new lover...along to realize that her lover is a former boyfriend of hers whom she still loves.

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PART TWO:

Door Wide Open 

College student Sasaki is seen begging a professor of his not to fail him in class as it would ruin his chances in pursuing his career after school. Right after, we see Sasaki is having an affair with an older woman named Nao and when they discover that this same professor just won a prestigious award for a novel he just wrote, the scorned Sasaki coerces Nao to seduce the professor and create a scandal to ruin him.

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PART THREE: 

Once Again

Two women connect thinking they both went to the same high school, only to realize that they may not be the people that they expected. However, they may actually be able to offer each other some solace that they weren't expecting,

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I would say that each part improved upon the other and it led to a truly wonderful final third in which I loved watching the scenes with Fusako Urabe as Natsuko and Aoba Kawai as Aya as the two friends who may not have been friends after all...along to discover that maybe they could be the friend neither knew they needed.

Wheel is a movie that felt very refreshing and unassuming.

I honestly don't know if I have much to say about it as I feel like a lot of what makes the film work is watching it unfold for yourself.

 It is a subtly powerful film that accomplishes a sort of wistful and bittersweet feel that I don't find often in films.

RATING: 4.5/5

My Review of Mike Mills' C'MON C'MON (Starring Joaquin Phoenix)

It is always something of a miracle when you watch a film that you expected to be good, but it ends up surprising you as being something more.

Mike Mills has always been a truly compassionate filmmaker, but he has managed to give his warmest, sweetest, and best work to date with C'mon C'mon. This may sound a little cheap, but it is the prime example of being a film in which it seems like nothing is happening and everything is happening all at once.

Joaquin Phoenix plays Johnny, a documentarian who is currently working on a film interviewing children from all across the country. While in Detroit, he calls his sister Viv (Gaby Hoffman); they haven't spoken for the past year since their mother's death from dementia. Viv asks Johnny if he can come to Los Angeles and watch her nine-year-old son Jesse (Woody Norman), as she has to travel to Oakland to care for her estranged husband Paul struggling with Bipolar. Johnny agrees, and he and Jesse quickly forge a bond despite Jesse's obnoxious personality and Johnny's unwillingness to talk about his own life.

When it becomes apparent that Viv won't be able to come back when she expected, Johnny asks Jesse if he would like to go back to New York with him. He is excited at the prospect, but Viv is apprehensive at first. 

While in New York, the two start to experience the rougher moments but also still manage to build a relationship they never really had.

I cannot even begin to express how much I loved watching Phoenix and Norman interact. It goes without saying that Joaquin Phoenix is one of the greatest actors working today and here, he gives such a subtle and truly lovely performance. Considering this basically his follow-up to Joker, it just goes to show what range he has. I suppose you could say he is more in the Her territory here in terms of style.

Gaby Hoffman, who recently had a bit of a career resurgence on Transparent after being a child star in the 90s, is also fantastic as Viv. She more than holds her own against Phoenix when they share the screen, and she provides such a tired and harried energy that works perfectly for her character.

Though as much as these two wowed me, I have to commend the young Woody Norman. 

I say this with confidence: Woody Norman gives one of the best performances by a child I have ever seen in a film. He is so real and honest and quirky and funny and sweet and his chemistry with Phoenix is simply impeccable.

On top of this, Phoenix and his team in the film actually do interview real children which also gives us moments in which the film does turn into a quasi-documentary. This additional authenticity only added to my complete joy of watching the film. 

The fact that this film is barely getting any kind of buzz or awards attention is simply a shame...but I do feel like time will be kind to this movie. In my world, I would nominate it across the board.

I honestly don't know if I want to say much else.

I feel like I could go on forever to the point of rambling. The film doesn't deserve a ramble...even if it's message would lead me to believe that is okay to ramble.

It was beautiful.

It was the definition of warmth.

Just watch it.

I hope you agree with me.

RATING: 5/5

My Review of Julia Ducournau's TITANE (w/some spoilers)

Just before the holiday season, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts & Sciences released their shortlist for films that will be eligible for a Best International Feature Film nomination. Every year, each country can submit one film that they feel represents the best from their roster. From there, the Academy narrows down the options to 15 films from which the final 5 nominees will be selected.

One film that got snubbed from the shortlist was the selection submitted by France: Julia Ducournau's Titane.

Titane is a body horror film that had divided a lot of critics and film fanatics alike but still managed to have enough passion to take the prestigious Palme D'or at the Cannes Film Festival.

Upon watching the film after putting it on hold for a few months, I could understand why the Academy would look at this film and run away as fast as they could.

That doesn't mean I agree with their opinion, of course.

Titane is an uncomfortable film that can be brutal and disgusting and bizarre and yet...it has this beautifully intriguing relationship that develops as the film moves along.

It begins with a young girl named Alexia sitting in the backseat of her father's car annoying him while he drives. When she unbuckles her seatbelt, he turns around to scold her and he crashes the car. Alexia suffers severe head trauma and must have a titanium plate put in her head. Upon leaving the hospital, she ignores her parents and chooses to hug the family car.

Fast forwarding 20 years or so later, Alexia (now played by Agathe Rouselle) is working as a show girl at a motor show and seems to have many admirers who seek her autograph. After leaving the venue all by herself, a guy stalks and chases after Alexia as she hurries to her car. He wants her autograph but then he confesses his love for her and forces her to kiss him. 

Alexia appears to enjoy the kissing but then abruptly stabs him in the ear with her hairpin causing him to seizure violently before dying.

Pulling his body into the car, Alexia realizes she needs to clean herself and goes back inside the venue to shower. While showering, she hears loud banging from the show room space and finds the car she performs with has turned on by itself. She then proceeds to have sex with the car and is able to bring herself to climax.

So, not only does Alexia have a sexual attraction to cars but we also learn she is a serial killer who has been murdering multiple men and women after sexual encounters over the last several months. Her own parents, whom she still lives and has a distant relationship, don't seem to have a clue about her other life.

When a sketch of Alexia's face becomes plastered all over the news after a botched incident murdering multiple people in one house, she ends up trying to pose as a young man named Adrien who has been missing for ten years.

This is when the movie takes a turn that I wasn't quite expecting...not that I was expecting a lot of what happened before. A man named Vincent (Vincent Lindon) shows up at the police station when he is notified that a young man is there claiming to be his long-lost son.

Despite them offering to do a DNA test, Vincent refuses knowing in his heart of hearts that this is his son. 

Oh yeah...and Alexia is pregnant...

Yep...she's pregnant...and she is binding her breasts and her stomach as well since it is starting to pop. The film also seems to imply that she got pregnant by the car...

Titane is Julia Docournau's second feature film following Raw, which received a lot of acclaim (though not on the awards circuit) back in 2016. She is already establishing herself as a true visionary who has no shame in going for uncomfortable shock value. She is someone that we all need to watch out for in the film world.

As Alexia, this marks the feature film debut of Agathe Rouselle, who had primarily worked as a writer and model until Docournau discovered her via an Instagram post. Rouselle is more than up for the challenge here. Very few performances have ever been as bold and relentless as her take on Alexia. She comes across as intense and terrifying in the first portion of the film but there is still a lot underneath the surface.

You cannot condone her actions, even if you know she seemingly didn't have the best relationship with her parents...but in the final half of the film, it is remarkable how this fucked up story ended up turning into a portrait of grief and how one person ends up finally finding a father figure they so desperately needed.

YouTuber "The Oscar Expert" referred to Titane as "the most fucked up wholesome movie". While I think he meant that in a tongue-in-cheek way for obvious reasons, there is definitely an underlying sweetness when you realize that Alexia is serving as some form of replacement for Vincent's dead son while Vincent is serving as the warm father figure Alexia needed in her life. 

It leads to a climax that was quite chilling...and uncomfortable...and somehow oddly beautiful all at once.

I do think I will have to sit on this one for a bit. I did find some of it a little indulgent or that certain things maybe could've been made clearer rather than being ambiguous for the sake of being ambiguous. 

I don't feel that I will knock the film a lot for that though, because it succeeded in almost every department. It manages even to be a comment on gender identity and fluidity in ways you weren't even expecting. I would recommend seeking out articles written on the film that go deeper into film analysis as if any film that has come out in recent years warrants such a reading, it would be Titane.

Lastly, I have to commend this film and the work of Ducournau, Rouselle, Lindon, and the rest for being truly unafraid to be what it is, and it doesn't care if we like it or not. 

TITANE will be rated as follows:

Rating: 4.5/5

My Review of Maggie Gyllenhaal's THE LOST DAUGHTER (w/Spoilers)

I can see why Maggie Gyllenhaal would've had an interest in choosing a book like The Lost Daughter to adapt into a film. Roles for women in Hollywood...or rather roles for women that have great complexity and substance...can be very hard to come by. 

As written by Elena Ferrante, the character of Leda is rather cold at times and alienating. She has a lot of flaws and regrets, and the source material certainly doesn't shy away from that. Putting a character like this on film would be a challenge for any actor to find the layers so you don't find them insufferable or unlikable.

Two actresses are given the task to play Leda. In the present-day scenes, we get Olivia Colman while in the flashback scenes, we get Jessie Buckley.

In a lot of ways, Buckley is tasked with playing Leda at her worst...but here is where I am going to argue that her "worst" isn't necessarily something I would judge the character on.

Leda is a woman who has two daughters. When the movie begins, we learn that they are 25 (Bianca) and 23 (Martha) and we can tell from the moment we see the first couple of flashbacks that older Leda has a lot of regrets while younger Leda is on the verge of a collapse.

Leda is someone who, perhaps, was never meant to be a mother...and that helps serve as the core and catalyst to The Lost Daughter, which dropped on Netflix New Years Eve 2021.

It is being pushed as possible dark horse candidate for a Best Picture nomination while also netting potential noms for stars Olivia Colman and Jessie Buckley while also slipping into the Adapted Screenplay race.

I can't say that I loved The Lost Daughter as a film, but I can say that I loved it as a character study. Leda is one of the more interesting characters I have seen in a movie in quite some time. As I said before, Leda can be cold and alienating but the stroke of genius was casting someone like Olivia Colman in the role.

Colman continues the tradition of British actresses who are just too damned remarkable for their own good. In the history books, Colman deserves to be placed alongside the likes of Dame Maggie Smith, Dame Judi Dench, and Dame Vanessa Redgrave. It is an old saying that has been said countless times, but she simply is able to convey so much with her eyes that you simply feel the depths of the character's life she is playing.

Colman is able to give Leda those layers that don't make you hate her, even at her most standoffish moments. Instead, I found myself wanting her to open up and perhaps try to connect with these people. As for "these people", Leda is currently on holiday in Greece and has managed to be drawn towards to a family that contains a young mother named Nina (Dakota Johnson) who has a very young daughter who is very willful and overly emotional. This is what sets off Leda into thinking a lot about her past with her two daughters where we see them begging for her attention and she simply wants to be anywhere else. 

We watch young Bianca crying because she cut herself with a knife while Leda just sort of stands at the sink trying to almost tune out everything around her. Typing out that sentence, it almost sounds as if Leda was worthy to be reported to CPS for neglect. She wasn't an overly warm mother, but as present-day Leda admits, she is a "selfish" person.

The film doesn't really go into why she had children: did she think she wanted them or was she forced into it by her husband? Without that to go off of, all we know is that she doesn't have the maternal instinct and eventually that does grow into her feeling like she wants to somehow try to make up for it.

A lot of this further manifests when she abruptly steals Nina's daughter's doll. At first, you don't really get why she did and then when you realize Nina's family is actively seeking it out and offering a reward, you think Leda will return it. Instead, she keeps it and is trying to clean it up assumingly because she wants to make a good impression.

We also get a flashback in which young Bianca completely destroys a doll that Leda gave her that was her own as a little girl, which causes Leda to throw the doll out the window and it shatters all over the street. This further seems to solidify has some sort of personal agenda within herself to get this doll back in order.

The film does take a bit of drastic turn towards the end when Leda confesses to Nina that she stole the day. At first, you think she is going to say she found it and cleaned it up but instead she owns up to it and admits to being a selfish person and a horrible mother.

Nina freaks out and stabs Leda in the stomach with a hat pin that Leda herself bought for her.

The film ends on something of an ambiguous note as Leda proceeds to leave her villa with a puncture wound and then stops on a rocky beach where she collapses by the waves. The following morning, she wakes up when a wave hits her face. She promptly calls her adult daughters who had been trying to reach her...and we see that a relationship between them could be actually warming up.

I almost wondered if this was some kind of fantasy in her mind...but the obvious intention on Gyllenhaal's part is ambiguity.

So, the final results of The Lost Daughter are a little jumbled and unfocused with the script, but the script also provides a great opportunity for its actresses to play a truly interesting and complex character. Gyllenhaal also shows immense promise behind the camera as the film does have a truly dreamy and surreal atmosphere that helped aid to the film's somewhat sinister tone.

The Lost Daughter will be rated as follows:

Rating: 4/5

My Review of Ryusuke Hamaguchi's DRIVE MY CAR

Anyone who has followed my love of film for as long as they've known me are probably aware that I have an immense love for Asian cinema. 

We are currently seeing a huge resurgence with South Korea as the immense success of films like Parasite, Minari, and the TV series Squid Game have led to significant interest in their culture. I also wish we could something of a surge for Japanese cinema as well.

In the past, filmmakers like Yosujiro Ozu, Akira Kurosawa, Kenji Mizoguchi, and Hiroshi Teshigahara not only helped shape and define Japanese or Asian cinema as a whole...but world cinema in general. I hold great admiration and respect for all of these filmmakers. 

In recent years, one of the preeminent Japanese artists who has garnered much attention is that of Ryusuke Hamaguchi, who gained prominence in 2018 with Asako 1 & II and this year, he has a one-two punch of Wheel of Fortune & Fantasy (more on that film another time) and Drive My Car, which is an adapatation of a Haruki Murakami short story.

There is one major connection to Drive My Car that instantly pulled me in: Anton Chekhov. 

I feel like very few theatre artists from the history of the medium are as difficult to master and as remarkable to study as Chekhov. Many in recent years have written his plays off as being dry and stuffy but something about Chekhov always spoke to me dating back to years ago when I saw a magnificent production of Uncle Vanya that starred Derek Jacobi, Laura Linney, Roger Rees, and Amy Ryan (yes...Holly Flax is a stunning theatre actress in case you weren't aware).

Drive My Car tells the story of Japanese actor/theatre director Yusuke Kafuku (Hidetoshi Nishijima) who has accepted an offer to take on a two-month residency at a theatre company in Hiroshima. There, he will stage an experimental, multi-lingual production of Uncle Vanya. 

The movie begins two years prior where he and his screenwriter wife Oto (Reika Kirishima) are having problems with their marriage following the abrupt death of their young daughter, but she still serves as a source of inspiration of him when preparing for his own artistic endeavors. In one fell swoop, he discovers she is having an affair with a younger actor named Koji Takatsuki (Masaki Okada) and then after choosing not to confront her about it, she dies of a brain hemorrhage. 

This is the place that Yusuke is in when he goes into rehearsals for Uncle Vanya and it is further made complicated when his deceased wife's younger lover Koji walks in for an audition.

Yusuke also still relies on his wife's creative sensibilities to prepare and requests the theatre company to give him lodging an hour away from Hiroshima so that he can have time to listen to a cassette tape in the car that features Oto. He hires a driver to take him to and from Hiroshima, a young woman named Misaki Watari (Toko Miura) with whom he develops a rather deep rapport on their commutes together.

Drive My Car is one of those movies that I knew upon hearing about its plot that I was going to respond to it rather strongly. The question was how strong it would be as some films aren't bound to live up to their reputation.

Critics have been embracing this film, even to the point that both the NY Film Critics Circle and the LA Film Critics Circle awarded the film Best Picture of the Year.

Critics aren't always right but sometimes, I love when they acknowledge great cinema even if it isn't in English...something the Oscars never did truly until they embraced Parasite.

Drive My Car lived up to its praise for me and it will definitely contend for a top slot on my Best of the Year list (battling with a film like The Worst Person in the World for example). 

The film is very long: 3 hours. It is certainly one that you have to make time for as you will have to be sitting there reading subtitles for quite a bit. That may not be for everyone...just like you would have to practically bolt me down in a chair a la A Clockwork Orange to watch the latest Spiderman movie.

Drive My Car is also one of the best portrayals of grief I have ever seen...especially in how it relates to art. It sort of reminds me of Krystof Kieslowski's Blue in that respect. In that particular movie, Juliette Binoche's character Julie starts to overcome her grief by listening to a piece of music that her late husband was trying to compose. Here, Nishijima's Yusuke is trying to hold onto his wife by repeatedly listening to her cassettes while having her lover in the same rehearsal space as if he is trying to understand what exactly was going on truthfully in her mind. 

He also finding a new connection with Watari on their car rides and both of them reveal a lot about their own grief and their regrets in life.

He also helps bridge the connections between the actors he is directing as many of them cannot connect due to language barriers between them...including one who is deaf. 

The whole movie feels like a lesson on how to overcome grief and how to build connections with others whether it be simply because you are taking an hour-long car ride twice a day or you are staging a production of a very difficult piece of theatre.

This was a world that I felt blessed to be watching even if it may have been uncomfortable and difficult at times to witness.

Drive My Car will be rated as follows:

RATING: 5/5 

(That was easy...)

My Review of Joachim Trier's THE WORST PERSON IN THE WORLD

 

When I first heard that there was a movie entitled The Worst Person in the World, I thought it was an intriguing title. You don't quite know what to expect from a movie with such a title.

I could almost envision it as some kind of R-rated Judd Apatow comedy that would be reminiscent of the criminally underrated and now ended FX series You're the Worst. 

Instead, I was little bewildered when I discovered that it was considered a romantic dramedy about a young female Millennial navigating through life whether that be not knowing which career path or major in college to choose or not knowing what man she wants to be with.

It even seemed stranger to have that title paired with the movie poster. See below:

On top of this, the film was a huge success at the prestigious Cannes Film Festival where its star, Renate Reinsve, won the Best Actress Prize. 

With this pedigree, I was very interested in viewing the film along with the fact that it was considered the final installment of Norwegian filmmaker Joachim Trier's "OSLO" Trilogy which had consisted of Reprise and Oslo, 31 August which were both very well-made films.

It was a close call, but I think The Worst Person in the World serves as Trier's finest work to date as he delivers a film that felt so real and cathartic while also feeling almost fantastical and surreal in others.

The film is split up into 12 chapters plus a prologue and epilogue. 

Renate Reinsve plays Julie, who is a medical student living in Oslo who suddenly has an epiphany and decides to major in Psychology. However, not long after having this epiphany, she soon realizes that maybe she will take up photography.

While at a party with her boyfriend, she encounters acclaimed graphic novelist Aksel (Anders Danielsen Lee, whom Trier has used in his previous films) and despite their 15-year age difference, they hit it off and end up sleeping together.

Soon after, we see Julie and Aksel have remained a couple and that she is now trying to pursue a writing career as well. Aksel is ready to settle down and have a family, but Julie isn't so sure she is ready for that. 

On a whim, Julie crashes a party after attending a publishing event with Aksel and encounters a young barista named Eivind (Herbert Nordrum) and despite both being involved with people, they spend the night together even though they don't officially cheat...at least not at first.

From there, Julie sort of seems to go into a spiral of sorts as to who she wants and what she wants out of life.

The Worst Person in the World just feels very honest and open about how it wants to portray relationships...especially in today's society. Julie is a character we may not always agree with...or perhaps a character we may see ourselves in for better or for worse...but you still have a desire to see her happy. You want her to find bliss and her sense of self...and I think a lot of the success of that is due to Trier's work and also that of Reinsve. I had never heard of Reinsve prior to this film but if there were any justice in the world, she would get an Oscar nomination and contend for a win with this performance. 

I did relate to Julie in some ways. I am at a point where I feel fairly lost in various aspects of my life and that I don't know how certain things may pan out. I will also say I haven't made some of the best choices...but I don't shame myself for some of them. I don't think Julie as a character should either. 

You could say that when you do something bad that you might just immediately jump to the old adage: "Oh no, I feel like the worst person in the world".

Odds are, you probably aren't.

And Julie isn't either.

If I were to nitpick anything with this movie, they probably could've trimmed a smidge off the running time to help the pacing, plus I have some mixed feelings about the ending. Still though, I found this movie to be a rewarding experience that left me thinking about my own life and what I should try to aim for in the coming decade...or if I want to be a little more realistic, the coming year. 

I am glad I watched this movie on 12/30/2021 because it does serve as a nice boost as we approach the beginning of 2022.

In addition to that Oscar nom that I would send towards Renate Reinsve, this film should also get nominations for Best Picture, Director, and Screenplay. 

Very few movies have truly made me feel rather cathartic in a way that this one has. It might not have been perfect, but it is great when a movie can make you feel very alive and take stock in your own life and your goals.

So, for that...

THE WORST PERSON IN THE WORLD is rated as follows:

RATING: 5/5

My Review (w/spoilers) of Adam McKay's DON'T LOOK UP

It is interesting to look at the trajectory of Adam McKay's career and how he has managed to reinvent himself.

25 years ago, McKay was hired by Lorne Michaels to be his new headwriter for SNL at one of the worst times in the show's history...and his contributions helped save the show. His first season as headwriter ended up being one of the best in SNL history: 1995-1996, which was the first season of such cast members as Will Ferrell, Darrell Hammond, and Cheri Oteri. 

Following his SNL departure, he teamed up with Will Ferrell (with whom he wrote some truly classic sketches on SNL such as "Wake Up & Smile" or "Bill Brasky") and made some of the more prominent comedies of the 2000s such as Anchorman, Talladega Nights, and Step Brothers.

Then...he decided to take a little detour.

In 2015, he achieved critical acclaim and awards attention for his semi-comedic look at the 2008 Financial Crisis entitled The Big Short. However, right off the bat, the film did seem to divide people who didn't take to its cynical and humorous tone. I actually was part of the group who responded highly to the film, even to the point where I actually wanted it to win the Oscar for Best Picture at the time.

In 2018, he made Vice, a movie that took a less than serious approach at telling the story of one of the worst people to ever hold the office of Vice President, Dick Cheney. Once again, acclaim and award nominations were sent McKay's way, but the film seemed even more divisive with critics and audiences alike. I probably liked that film more than hated it, but I can't say I was overly enamored with it.

I wasn't sure what to expect with Don't Look Up other than it was probably going to divide people. Perhaps what did surprise me was how sharp the divide seems to be. 

While these scores aren't always the best gauge, Don't Look Up currently has the following:

Rotten Tomatoes Critics: 55% (which is considered a rotten score)

Rotten Tomatoes Audience Score: 77%

Metacritic: 50%

Letterboxd: 3.2/5

So yes, Don't Look Up has divided people more harshly than any of McKay's "serious comedies" to date...and where do I fall on that spectrum?

I am right in the middle.

Don't Look Up is essentially a film that acts as a mirror to society, particularly how portions of the country are willfully ignoring everything from COVID to Climate Change. When a PhD candidate named Kate Dibiasky (Jennifer Lawrence) makes a discovery of a previously unknown object that is approaching Earth, her professor Dr. Randall Mindy (Leonardo DiCaprio) calculates that it will hit Earth in just over 6 months and cause extinction.

From there, they are tasked to warn the President of the United States, Janie Orlean (Meryl Streep) who is basically the female Trump all the way down to having a child, in this case her son Jason (Jonah Hill) working in her administration. As one might expect, they don't seem overly concerned about the apocalypse until they realize they can spin it for their own benefit to avoid a scandal.

Before I discuss further plot details and the performances, I want to discuss McKay's direction and screenplay as I feel like this is where most of my issues lie.

The movie has about as much subtlety as a sledgehammer to your face...and one might argue that it needed to be as such. Don't get me wrong, I fully understand how frustrating it is to listen to the complete and utter nonsense and ignorance from the Right. Instead, I sort of felt like a lot of the film came off as smug and that it thought it was being cleverer than it actually was.

This is further exacerbated by the run-time as I feel like McKay could have had his editing team trim about 20-25 minutes off the film to make it run more smoothly. 

Performance wise, DiCaprio and Lawrence do quite well with what they were given, and I especially loved Cate Blanchett as Brie Evantee, the co-host of a morning show called The Daily Rip who ends up having an affair with DiCaprio (it took me a second to recall that this was an Aviator reunion). 

Lawrence, in particular, gets a runner in the film that is so random but hilarious that I actually might consider it my favorite part of the movie. Very early on, Lawrence is sitting at the White House with DiCaprio and they are there with Dr. Teddy Oglethrope (Rob Morgan) and a Pentagon General who offers to go grab snacks and water for the group. Upon his return, he moans about how pricey the kitchen is to which DiCaprio and Morgan give the General money for his purchases...only later to realize that the kitchen supplies are free. This sends Lawrence's Diabisky into a bit of a tail-spin and she will bring it up to people at random times throughout the movie. It offers nothing directly to the plot and yet it was perhaps my favorite thing about it because it seemed like the kind of theme that McKay would've written an SNL sketch about.

The film does manage to find sturdy footing by the time it reaches its final moments. When it is obvious that doom is inevitable, people rush to be with their families or, in the case of Cate Blanchett and Tyler Perry (who plays her co-host on The Daily Rip, they drink their sorrows away in an empty bar. 

McKay manages to find a slight bit of intrigue in the small role of Yule played by Timothee Chalamet. Yule is something of an outsider who admits to having been raised an Evangelical Christian. While he looks down on his religious upbringing, he tells Diabisky that he found a way to work around it and maintain some form of faith. 

I was also raised in an Evangelical environment, and I struggle quite a bit with how that world made me feel. However, there was a certain comfort to seeing Chalamet's character turn to faith in his final moments. When he says a prayer at the table surrounded by DiCaprio, Lawrence, Morgan, and Melanie Lynskey (playing DiCaprio's wife June), it brings a levity to the film that was much needed and then once we realize that the destruction is about to hit the house, I actually got a bit of a chill when their actions freeze but we see the water about to burst in from every angle.

As a whole, Don't Look Up was a film that was not a slog to sit through by any means, but it was a little too long and the first half got a bit exhausting with its brash tone. The final third is where the film really began to shine, and we also had a pretty solid ensemble of actors to see us through.

RATING: 3.5/5