Stan was fine in this, especially in the progressive development of his performance, but my god, as much as I love Kieran, Strong deserved that statuette.
An origin story for a supervillain who may (or may not) lack the self-awareness to know he is a supervillain, but is presented objectively enough to be able to claim neutrality.
I liked the way the aesthetics fit the time period, but I found myself wishing the 1980s portion of the film had actually…
How did this absolute train wreck of a script attract such a talented cast?
The answer has to be “Alexa? that bitch?” which has to be by far the best line of the screenplay.
I hope Waterston, Cho, and Dastmalchian got decent paydays from this. Weitz continues to have one of the most fascinatingly inconsistent oeuvres in film. The characters are not well-drawn or developed and parts of it frankly feel as though they themselves are written by AI. The film thinks it has something profound to say but it’s really just kind of… dumb?
When we have Megan and Margaux, who really needed this?
In which Rian Johnson emerges as an heir apparent to Jonathan Demme. Wonderful probing use of the camera, goading the performance just a bit from behind the lens, and an incredibly intimate portrait of performance.
