ric_mer-742-289903

i have watched this movie (not film), and i feel compelled to warn everyone who are pondering about wasting their time on it. it is a bad one. the first thing to notice is the horrendous, bad "acting". if they were to come and say it was on purpose, to depict the average mainstream Joe and his family in the u.s. of a., it would be only an excuse. it is obvious this is a very low quality independent film that "has to" recur to the pathetic guerrilla filmmaking card, as though that itself were worthy of cinematic grandeur or merit of whatever kind. i am utterly baffled by the good reviews and comparisons to the works of Polanski or David Lynch! certainly, those who express such opinions are ignorant people who have very little knowledge of cinema (or even common sense), and have not watched quality work (ever?), mostly by European and some Asian filmmakers, who have a deeper human sensibility. but, compare it to David Lynch?! we are talking about a master artist here. have these people watched David Lynch films at all? if they have, they must have very bad perception problems (no, it is not about people having different tastes and all that; you don't compare plastic bottles with The Beatles' Blackbird). then, the plot: totally childish. does one have to praise this director for stating the obvious Disney's superficial appeal on the unthinking mass? umm, no. this looks more like a high school project, at best. then, the "surrealism" in this is so weak it's not even surrealism, it is a botched attempt at it, rather. all the situations are but puerile ideas that are as shallow as the criticism they pretend to attack. it all has a very "american" reek to it, but it cannot be claimed that it was on purpose. all in all, a very bad waste of resources. oh, wait! i may have missed the point! maybe these guys were just having a laugh! maybe they were like, hey guys, what if we make this "guerrilla film" at Disney...? hey dude, that would be awesome! let's do it! and then, it all turned even better, with promotion and people praising it and comparing it to a Lynch film!!!!! hmmm...maybe i could make a guerrilla film about a bunch of guys making a guerrilla film and being compared to David Lynch...! maybe i could even be compared to David Lynch...!!!

If you like anime, think of Kisei jûi · Suzune: Genesis as anime with people. Indeed, anime is better in cartoon format than with people. The plot is somewhat sloppy and the movie goes by slow: the usual girl/woman with short hair that saves people with determination, supernatural power and a sidekick (a frog!), but who has her own sad story. Nothing special here. The cinematography is simply bad. This, more than a film, is an attempt, a thesis, something that could have been entertaining but failed at different levels. The acting is bad, even for this kind of genre! I found myself looking at the time several times and in the end wanted to feel entertained but felt more like i had wasted my time. Then again, they make these movies to start franchises or sell the idea and give cosplayers new (old) characters to dress up and wish they could be like. That is why i shall give it a three star vote. Just my opinion, compelled by another reviewer who gave it a quite poetic (and utterly undeserved) review with a 10 vote!

As i wrote on another website, Upstream color is a film that tries too hard. There are several problems with it: one is that the director/"actor"/producer/editor/cinematographer/writer/music scorer crammed it with "weird for weird's sake", the end result being a piece so unintelligible that it can hardly be a story. It is obvious that Carruth is influenced by many good directors; one of them is David Lynch, however,in all of Lynch's films, surrealistic in style as most of them are, there is a story, a baseline, an order in the chaos. It is easy to put a lot of "weird" situations together and call it a film, but human beings need to relate in order to react, to be touched, for us to find a meaning in the work the artist attempts to convey. This movie leaves one cold. There doesn't seem to have a human touch. I think that Carruth's need to control most of the movie's production himself reflects his overcrowding of senselessness (not Lynch's absurdity) in the movie claiming it is Art, which takes me to another of the film's weakest points: the acting is overdone (though Amy Seimetz alone makes the film watchable), but Carruth's especially; he "acts like he wants to act naturally". In other words, his acting results very artificial. He wants to seem real, and the result is a forced character, quite unlikable (or perhaps that was the point of the character? to be unlikable?). Every time he was in a scene he ruined the flow of the movie for me. I never read reviews before watching a movie, sometimes I do after. This time I did and it was no surprise that this is the work of a very big ego (which is quite evident in the film). I think Upstream Color could have been good, but then again, I enjoy Terrence Malick's work (this movie boldly steals Malick's beautiful lyrical style). All in all, if the film had had a real story one can stand on (of course, an artist can say one just didn't get it, right? but then, the piece becomes just too personal to be appreciated), and if it had not had Carruth in the starring role, repeating his Primer mistake, then it could have been good. The idea sounds good, it only needed humanity.