Letterboxd — Your life in film

This movie grabs you by the throat with the first scene and doesn't let go for 90 minutes. It is a "bad cop" story, compressed almost entirely into a french nightclub. The span of the film is barely more than one night (hence the title). All of this whittling down makes for a claustrophobic, neurotic thriller.

The action is in your face, and in the characters faces as well. The close ups in this movie are very well used. They convey panic, confusion, and hysteria. The bookends to the film are a bit weak, but very few movies can pull that off, and they are not offensively bad.

I'm a little on this fence about this film. I work as a manager in a non-union factory for my "real job". But I am liberal and believe in a workers right to organize and strike if needed. I also don't see much need for striking now a days. What I see is most companies wanting to take of their employees.

This film is about the coal miners strike in Harlan County Kentucky during the early 1970's. I feel like the movie was a bit one sided and that side favored the miners. But the film was not too heavy handed in pressing a political opinion. Normally I like that type of ambiguity in my documentaries. I feel at times though that this film lost a bit of its focus.

The characters in the movie are real salt of the earth, country folk and they speak in simple and backwoodsy ways. That left me wanting a strong and intelligent person to stand up and expound on the working conditions and reasons for the strike. Even the Union bosses sounded out matched by the coal companies lawyers.

This strike elevated in tension until guns were drawn and even a couple of people were murdered. The resolution of the conflict seemed to come too quickly in the movie for me too. After 13 months of striking, and 80 minutes of movie, the film was sown up in 10 minutes and the strike seemed to end without much change to anything.

This is an engrossing sci-fi thriller. The plot is that the sun is dying and earth has sent 2 groups of people out into space to drop nuclear bombs into the core of the sun to rejuvenate it. The first mission failed 5 years ago, and the movie start with the second group approaching the sun.

The movie mainly stays inside the spaceship creating tension and claustrophobia, like so many other sci-fi, space films do. Where this film differs is that in many ways it is like a zombie movie. By this I mean that the greater dangers are inside the space, and less to do with the mission as a whole.

The performances in this movie are very solid. I am a huge Cillian Murphy fan, and he doesn't disappoint. Chris Evans (of Captain America fame) is also very strong in his role. Michelle Yeoh is given less to do than others, but she makes the most of her screen time.

I hear a lot of people complain about the third act, where the movie turns tonally a bit into much more of an actual zombie flick. It doesn't bother me at. I have seen this movie several times and each time I look for what people find so offensive and I really don't see it. Yes, it is a different film in the final 20 minutes, but it is still a good film at that point. I like that Danny Boyle turned the genre on its head. People don't complain when ALIEN does the same thing.

The visuals and sound design in this movie are intense! Boyle always has a very heavy style in his films and this one isn't any different.

This is a baffling puzzle of a film.

I first noticed the cinematography. I love the shallow focus used in this movie. The next thing that drew my attention was the performance of Amy Seimetz. I didn't like her at first, then as the movie went on I found myself enjoying her more and more.

This is a very sensory movie. The visuals and soundscape set the mood and atmosphere and the movie relies on these things heavily. There is a plot here, but it is woven in mystery and ambiguity. This allows the film to mean different things to different people.

It is clear that a mad scientist is behind the camera. When I read that Shane Carruth not only directed the movie, which I already knew, he also wrote, scored and edited the film, I wasn't surprised.

I think I will be rewatching this film again soon. I think it will totally pay off with a second viewing.

This movie is filled with a lot of misfires. It has some seriously clunky moments, and even a few technical oversights, but during the movie I didn't care. I was really taken in by the movie.

Much of what took me in was 2 of the lead performances. I'll start with Leo. I have never read the book, so I can't say anything about how he embodied the original source material. But what I can say is that I can't think of any other living actor that would be better suited to play J. Gatsby. He embodied the character that the movie needed, and his charisma and charm oozed out of every frame of the film. The other performance that took me in was Carrey Mulligan. I am constantly watching for how characters are introduced in movies. Mulligan's introduction to this film is lush and lavish and one of the most memorable in a long time. She has an effortless about her, and that really stood out in a movie that was working so hard at everything else.

This film puts in the work. It shouldn't come as any surprise that Baz Lurhman has made an extravagant and bloated movie. That's his thing. I do wish that a slightly more subtle film maker could have been there as an advisor and whispered in his ear "back it off Baz".

Another thing of note with this (and all of Baz's films) is the soundtrack. Here, he uses modern hip hop at times in the movie. It didn't bother me, but like I said, I was too wrapped up with the romance at the center of the films conflict.

There is a scene in a hotel room at the end of the movie that is intense and it is a powerhouse of acting. Poor Toby McGuire. He is a bit out of his league in this movie.