Had to smile when someone complains about "the vampiric nature of modern-day capitalism" - though maybe it's more of an ouroboros, pop will eat itself and so on. A vampire sucking on the blood of a barely-there franchise, in any case, though the working-class drama of the early scenes is surprisingly okay (cf. suburban white boy Shia in the first Transformers). Then it goes wrong and stays wrong, utterly witless dialogue, non-starter bids for pathos and conventional spectacle as opposed…

Seems like the diffuse, expansive structure gets in the way here, replacing what might've been a very specific portrait of a blocked, stunted woman with a little-bit-of-everything life story (it's partly a biopic, based on the experience of one of Chou's friends). Freddie is scarred - by the end literally, asking her dad to literally touch the scar he (metaphorically) caused - and impulsive with a certain desperation, not the impulsiveness of someone whose joie de vivre keeps spilling over…

Held me spellbound for three hours, if nothing else (extended cut, fwiw). 25th HOUR-ish - New York movie, moral drama about Doing the Right Thing, symphonic score over jagged rhythms - also Desplechin-ish for the sweep and scale, but more ambitious than either: an epic of human disconnection, based around the fact that language is such an imperfect way of trying to connect - emotion is easier, but we lose it as we grow older ("It is Margaret you mourn…