Diary from Jan 19
Reviews/Ratings from Jan 20
Doesn’t break any new ground in the field of ‘interloper stranger slowly takes over the lives of a family’ other than the subtext of China’s one child policy, so doesn’t have a lot of surprising twists and turns to offer but really sturdy dramatically & very stylishly shot. This might be some of the most unexpectedly nice shot composition I’ve seen all year. Very interested to see more from Lin Jianjie.
Has enough of Joon Ho and Pattinson‘s respective style and charm to avoid feeling like a total dud but also so messy & all over the place, that it is certainly a lessor Joon Ho work.
Love the Creeper aliens and find Pattinson’s total commitment to playing a weird freak enjoyable. The opening section is actually pretty strong too, finding a good balance between the existentialism of the lead character with the director’s sense of humour.
But there’s simply far too…
An absolute mess.
There’s so much potential here with Lee, Lindo, Peters, Whitlock Jr, Majors & Hauser, I can’t tell whether Lee had his worst excesses indulged by an eager to please online distributor or whether those indulgences were what led to Netlfix picking this up.
Lindo is certainly good, even if his late monologues don’t always land. You can always rely on Lee to deliver the big non-fiction montages, like the one that opens the film. And the minefield sequence…
This review may contain spoilers. I can handle the truth.
As a noted Wes Anderson stan and as someone who really liked Boy, Shadows, Wilderpeople & Ragnarok, I have to say this was irredeemably awful.
Not one joke landed, not one good performance (McKenzie comes closest but through no fault of her own, her introduction is terrible), irritating jaunty score, suspect politically & morally. Utter garbage.
Quite taken aback by the claims of unusually great child performances. Thought it was full of obnoxious stage school shit lacking in all naturalism and warm.…