Favorite films
Don’t forget to select your favorite films!
Don’t forget to select your favorite films!
This review may contain spoilers. I can handle the truth.
Until the final minutes, this film is a masterpiece. Structured around Adrien Brody’s singular performance, the narrative holds its cards close to its chest, crafting a tense and mysterious viewing experience through patient and focused cinematography.
But while the movie as a whole is considered, distant, and brutal… the finale turns toward schmaltz. Though the epilogue provides necessary context, its methodology is incongruous. No, the movie is still great. But the ending strikes a false note.
This movie should be taught in film school—a negation of everything that makes a movie. A paean to collaboration, to editing, to criticism by illuminating the effects of their absence.
From conception to execution and start to finish, this movie is rotten. And to watch, that’s delightful. Coppola melts the rules of filmmaking to absolutely no end. It’s audacious and shocking, peppered with Latin and Shakespeare and inexplicable eyebrows and characters named Francis. Watching it is watching Coppola set fire…