Cinemadharma

Holy Motors is a haunting, silly, serious, surrealist meta-acid trip in the mind of a filmmaker about cinema? death? life? performance? acting? angels? which could have only come from the French. A brilliant tour de force performance by lead actor Denis Levant who plays eleven characters in the film won't help the film make any more sense to you, but if you like films that make you giggle with WTF-ness and don't mind not completely understanding what the hell you just watched, then this fever- dream is a masterpiece of avant-garde, experi-mental craziness that I am still thinking about several days later and will most likely dream about the next time I have the flu.

The only thing Silver Linings Playbook suffers from is a case of a studio not knowing exactly how to market it. The marketing lead me (and others, judging by the mostly female audience in the theater) to believe this was just north of a rom com chick flick. The only reason I went to see it was because I couldn't believe that David O. Russell, notorious nutbag director of The Fighter, Three Kings and I ♥ Huckabees would make a rom com chick flick. I was right. This is a funny, painful, heartbreaking, heartwarming, complex romantic tale about real, complex people and families. Bradley Cooper delivers his best performance to date, De Niro doesn't phone this one in, and Jennifer Lawrence is adorable but perhaps only very slightly miscast. Can absolutely see this in the running for this year's Best Adapted Screenplay.

I fully appreciate the scope of what this film was trying to achieve. They were going for epic human exploration rife with deep symbolism and meaning. Questioning the origin and meaning of life, the existence of a creator, science vs faith -- This was not supposed to be your mama's Alien, and in that and perhaps that alone, they succeeded.

But despite their effort towards well-thought out intelligence and some beautiful moving pictures, ultimately the film suffers from some horribly written dialogue, pointless characters, completely illogical character choices, and gaping plot/story issues -- and makes me scared shitless at the possibility of Ridley Scott going anywhere near Blade Runner again, which he full intends to do. Please Mr. Scott, you are usually a genius. Please find something else to occupy your creative mind. Do not revisit perfection.