Popular reviews

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  Review by Lucy ★★★★★ 62

  “the end is built into the beginning”

  the most ridiculous thing about living is that childhood is its own eternity and then suddenly you’re an adult. time moves faster and faster and life is sectioned off into sleeping eating working blinking repeating, and deja vu happens more and more. i forget what day of the week it is all the time. i sleep until after 5pm some days just because i can. i can go into a store and buy whatever they’ll let me and whatever i have the money for. nothing means anything but also everything means something. i work so hard and get paid almost nothing. i stare into space between customers and think of being somewhere else.…

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  Review by karsten ★★★★★ 50

  Watched this morning and have since been going back, rewatching scenes, figuring out how to write this review, and reading up on some other people's takes. This film is much bigger and more personal than...anything I've seen in my life. To summarize everything I have to say about this and everything it meant to me in one review would be absolutely silly. Will probably be making a video on it soon, but even that won't do it justice. Something (many things) about this film is too powerful, too personal, and too honest for me to put into words. Sometimes you just know when you've seen the best movie you've ever seen, that's what happened with Synecdoche, New York. Why am I so sad?

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  Review by Lucy ★★★★★ 8

  someone, eventually: why do u like this movie so much
  me: i have depression

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  Review by James (Schaffrillas) ★★★★★ 21

  Charlie Kaufman movies are really cool because they make you sob uncontrollably and regret all your life choices and also there's a silly man sleeping in the basement of a house that's on fire. That's not a good place to sleep, sillyhead!

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  Review by #1 gizmo fan ★★½ 28

  damn charlie kaufman pick a struggle

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  Review by DirkH ★★★★★ 37

  This review may contain spoilers. I can handle the truth.

  This is Charlie Kaufman's crowning achievement. It is not only his best film to date, it is one of the best films I have ever seen.

  I rarely come across films anymore that manage to ensnare me in a narrative so disjointed, yet so enthralling I cannot help but be absorbed by it wholly. This film stretches the medium to its limits in a non-obfuscating way that is refreshing, unique and despite the deep layers it possesses, accessible in so far that there is an appealing and universal truth at the surface of it all.

  Creation is art is life.

  Kaufman's story has to be a film. It was created purposefully for it and he understands the medium so well.…

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  Review by YI JIAN ★★★★★ 24

  Get busy living, or get busy dying.

  Weeks lost in one cut, years lost between scenes, lives lost in a blink of an eye. Time is slipping through our fingers. You may mind your own problems, sort your own miseries as if they are the only thing in this world worthy of your attention. You may play pretend; pretend you are a fairy, or an actor, or an actor playing an actor playing an actor. Set a daily routine for yourself as a distraction from the fact that we are all hurtling towards death. Still, before you know it, reality will catch up with you. You will suddenly wake up on what soon to be your own deathbed and realize…

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  Review by Wes ★★★★★

  "Most of your time is spent being dead or not yet born. But while alive, you wait in vain, wasting years, for a phone call or a letter or a look from someone or something to make it all right. And it never comes or it seems to but it doesn't really. And so you spend your time in vague regret or vaguer hope that something good will come along. Something to make you feel connected, something to make you feel whole, something to make you feel loved. And the truth is I feel so angry, and the truth is I feel so fucking sad, and the truth is I've felt so fucking hurt for so fucking long and for…

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  Review by truman ★★★★★

  we out here sad as fuck on a monday morning

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  Review by elvisthealien ★★★★½ 10

  Art is meaningless and it also means everything. Is creating art and establishing a legacy worth the suffering? Sometimes the innate struggle to determine what is "worth it" is enough to keep someone from trying at all. Sometimes trying to create something incredible that provides joy for others can cause the creator endless suffering. Life is synonymous with mess; and this movie displays that perfectly. Death is a reoccurring theme in this movie. The protagonist races the clock to create his magnum opus. Poisoned by regret and loneliness he desperately tries to embody his suffering into a play. Whether he succeeded to make something incredible or not is almost inconsequential. This movie is about accepting your insignificance. Being reminded of the meaninglessness of life in such a surreal, cruel way isn't very enjoyable for me; but at the same time I can't help but see the beauty in it.

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  Review by matt lynch ★★★ 2

  Conceptually complicated, thematically rich, structurally audacious, and often bleakly funny, and still I find it as suffocating and unforgiving as Charlie Kaufman appears to find his own life.

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  Review by kinsey ★ 37

  Sometimes I reflect on why I made a Letterboxd account in the first place. The last thing I have ever wanted to become is a critic. I don't want to insult the work people spend years putting together, and I never want to hurt someone or judge them for the art they put out into the world. There is something for everyone and I don't want to put down an artist or the person who identifies with and loves said art. I hate it when I write negative reviews, especially when I criticise something like editing or acting or whatever, because a) what do I know? and b) who cares? It's not my place to judge. So I try to…