Letterboxd — Your life in film

Not the perfect follow up to Blue Valentine that I wanted it to be but it is still a very good movie. The first two acts are wonderful, I really liked Gosling and Cooper a lot and while the third act does have some good moments, it is by far the weakest part of the film and keeps it from being truly great.

Shane Carruth made a very memorable debut nine years ago with Primer, while I wasn't a big fan of the movie I certainly respected what he did even if it didn't totally work for me. When Upstream was announced, kind of out of nowhere, I was excited just to see what Carruth was going to try to do next but wasn't sure how good the end product would actually be. Upstream is such an ambitious movie trying to mix a love story, a drama, a thriller and even some sci-fi elements into one movie but it somehow just works so well. I hope it doesn't take another nine years for Carruth to release his next movie but if it's as good as this was it'll certainly be worth the wait.

Nothing groundbreaking but it's a good solid movie from Redford, the almost two hour runtime flies by. The LaBeouf parts of this movie were great, the highlight of the movie for me and one of his best roles so far. The Redford and the rest of the older cast parts of the movie were fine, but most of the time I just wanted the movie to get back to LaBeouf.

By now when I see Malick has directed a new movie I know what I'm going into, something that looks really nice and maybe not jam packed with story but enough to keep me satisfied. While To The Wonder is another very nice looking movie I didn't care for the story at all because there really isn't anything there, and what little story it does have I didn't think was very good. Disappointing and my least favorite Malick so far and while I'm looking forward to his next movie I really hope it isn't full of narration over orchestral music.