Has its moment's but overall, this didn't work for me. Far too many of the scenes and choices Baker makes felt forced.
I get Simon Rex's character is supposed to be disliked but there is a LOT of Simon Rex in this so there is a LOT to dislike which, after a 130-minutes of runtime, gets very old...
This review may contain spoilers. I can handle the truth.
Sorry - couldn't get past Art Garfunkel raping people and the weird edits, silly voice-overs and non-stop zooming didn't help...
I can understand why this is every film critic's darling of 2015. It's got everything they want: dark, deadpan humor that feels uncomfortable to laugh at, outrageous social and sexual parody of modern culture very much in the vein of Being John Malkovich, an unsettling musical score which mixes well with a very bizarre script, random and shocking violence and nice slow-motion shots of people running.
It is also one of the least enjoyable films I have ever watched, downgraded tremendously by the constant reminder of just how hard Lanthimos is trying here...
Not sure if it was Thorton's direction or a complete butchering in the editing room later on, but there isn't a single scene in this film that is allowed to flow naturally.
Instead, we get two hours of manipulation and mediocrity that frustrates the hell out of the viewer because we can sense that there is real beauty underneath.
A great disappointment.
