UncleLongHair2

I'm surprised by the number of mediocre reviews for this film-I thought it was quite good. The central relationship between the father and daughter felt believable and emotionally genuine to me.

The film focuses primarily on these two characters, so those looking for nonstop action might find it slow. However, I appreciated the solid writing, acting, and storytelling. While it is a story that has been told before, it still felt fresh and engaging.

Interestingly, I didn't realize the entire film was shot on iPhones until I read about it afterward. The cinematography was engaging without drawing unnecessary attention to itself. In contrast to something like the Bourne series-which often overuses a shaky, pseudo-documentary style-this film employed a similar technique with far more subtlety and purpose.

Overall, this is a quiet, understated, but satisfying suspense thriller-sensitive in its themes and effective in its delivery.

The movie starts out with the beginnings of a pretty straightforward plot but quickly launches into an imaginative but abstract fantasy world. While each scene was visually interesting and some were quite beautiful, I was simply completely lost, not knowing what I was watching.

The scenes quickly came and went with almost nothing explained, events seemed random, there was no clear plot, or characters, or story line, or emotional connection or development. It was like flipping through an artist's sketchbook, it felt like 50 two to three minute animation sequences that were related only by having similar style. Or like watching a long fever dream that came in dozens of separate scenes.

It was hard to even pay attention, my wife fell asleep during the movie, a few people left the theater before the end, as we almost did. It would have been fine for 15-20 minutes but to sit through over 2 hours was torture. I am honestly perplexed by the positive reviews that call this a masterpiece or really even watchable. Perhaps there is a mythology or folklore that everyone else is aware of that somehow ties it all together? I understand that Miyazaki has a great reputation but this artistry is too abstract and unreliable for me.

Peter Dinklage is a beautiful, sensitive, unusual actor, but since Game of Thrones keeps choosing movies that are tragically terrible.

This was a movie that not only left me with a gaping pit of nothingness at the end but forced me to watch an attractive yet nihilistic pit of despair for 2 hours hoping for one single redeeming quality that never arrived.

But bit by bit, story line, theme, acting, it was a soul crushing waste of time. The plot was at turns exaggerated, unbelievable, soulless and irritating. The wasted talent was palpable. I wish someone could deliver me with the hours that I wasted watching this movie and hoping that there would be some reason why I wasted my time.