Reviews

This is definitely a one of a kind movie. So I can see how reviews can deviate widely on whether it works or not.

First I would say - Dafoe A+ Ruffalo A- Stone C.

Jerrod Carmichael F Rammy Yousef B

Willen Dafoe is great in this movie. He is funny and bizarre and I can say I don't think there is another actor who could have pulled this part off as well.

Mark Ruffalo as an actor has never impressed me. Almost every role he has done he has just a kind of been there, never bad but never standing out. For the first time, I saw him really go for it and stretch and be different and he was very good. I really enjoyed his performance as 'the Cad' of the story.

What to say about Emma Stone? I'll start with this...I believe there are 10 other actresses who could have done what she did as well as she did. I'll give her credit for baring it all and hiding her beauty and letting them make her ugly and weird at times. It is a brave performance, but I wouldn't see it as special.

Everyone else was fine except Carmichael, who's stilted delivery of lines was jarring. He was completely miscast.

Now the movie is clever and fanciful and it made me think of Terry Gilliam. Odd machines and a strange sometimes dream-like setting and the bizarre outfits that our Heroine, Bella wears. There are strange vivisectionist made hybrids wandering around. This little world is certainly well realized, and is used to let us know that this is all fantasy and has nothing to do with our reality.

The Plot has some issues, though. At the end (without using a spoiler) the character who has been built up to be the main antagonist suddenly becomes irrelevant as another manufactured bad guy is exchanged for him. It obviously would have played out more strongly if the final plot point involved a resolution with the antagonist we knew, not this new character.

And then when everything concludes, we get some strange little happily ever after finish...that's it folks...go home...where we are left feeling this somewhat dark frankenstein nightmare probably would have been more effective expressing its theme with a more dystopian outcome.

The movie is definitely not boring. Whether there is some girl power message in it, or whether a philosophical twist on Gods or the darkness of humanity will be up to each viewer.

I'll probably come back and re-watch it at some point in the future because the acting and style were good enough to call for it.

I am not sure what is so difficult to understand about the basics of Comic books.

1. The Silver Age of the 1960s was the high point of the industry, with Marvel and DC both selling a fistful of characters that got 500K units per month.

2. Those stories were aimed at young boys who liked Superheroes.

When the comics moved into the 1970s...sales declined.

I understand that Sony needs to produce a Marvel product so many years to hang to character rights it purchased when Marvel was down and busted in the 1990s. So that company has more or less pushed out product without the care for detail and story and consistency that we've seen from the MCU.

So...here's a concept, let's take a 1980 Marvel character that was never overly popular and then hand it to SJ Clarkson, who never read a comic book in her life. She could care less about the underlying concepts or psychology driving Comic Book movies. This is about a lady who comes to term with her mom and then helps 3 girls because this some girl power story or something.

I saw this with Wonder Woman director Patty Jenkins. Women are being given the opportunity to helm 'major pictures' ...go girls....but when you don't understand the Genre...you get Madame Web and durn mediocre Movie that seems like a Lifetime Movie of the week.

This story lacks any real humor. It lacks any real emotional commitment between any of the characters. You got a great bunch of talent here and nobody says a damn thing worth remembering. Our heroine is just there. You've got a bunch of gorgeous women and you totally strip them of any sex appeal or charm and make them as generic as you can.

SJ Clarkson has probably never seen any of the important movies in this genre in the last twenty years, which is why the action scenes come across like they are from a 1990s movie.

When I consider the love, detail, care and obvious thrill of Favreau, Waititi the Russo Brothers, Gunn directing movies in a Genre that they loved and grew up with, and then you compare it to these female directors who are clueless about what Comic Books are about....the problem becomes obvious.

These are big budget movies, and obviously equity and social justice in choosing who gets the helm them is a bad idea.

I thought most of the actors in this movie are capable of giving you a great experience. This story, and this director just were Kryptonite for a Comic book movie.

I decided to catch up on a few missed comedies and decided to binge Season 1& 2 of the Bear, which I had seen so highly touted but for some reason had avoided. My instincts were right.

This show is put together with a lot of pizazz. Quick cut editing, timely Alt music oddities, a kind of cinema veritas feel to the closeups. Zoom in, but then move down and show us his tattooed arm, and how his hand is shaking, and then back to his face. One trick employed is everybody talking all at once to try to mimic real life. Also employed, the Scorsese like use of long continuous shots traveling through restaurant.

And some of the actors are quite good. The S02 Christmas Seven Fishes episodes blows up the concept...everybody talking, ad-libbing over one another, and Jamie Lee Curtis, Jon Bernthal, Gillian Jacob, Bob Odenkirk. All get to go for it, and 'man...they really acted'. You can tell they all felt like this 'real' acting or something. And the regulars led by Jeremy Allen White, Ayo Edebiri. Lionel Boyce are all very good. Those three characters are the guys we all root for.

The first two episodes of this show draw you in, they are really good. The story premise has some intrigue. A hot-shot Young NYC Award winning chef come running home because his brother offed-himself and the family hoagie shop in downtown Chicago needs saving...because it is all Mom and Pop left us. He comes there with half the people expecting and hoping for a shutdown and cashing out the Real Estate and moving on with life. So he starts trying to run things like a 'real' restaurant and hires a young assistant to help him line the troops up to his expectations and....well various conflict ensues.....money, loyalty, trust, honesty, We feel like a family of losers is coming together.

So there is the first problem. Everybody in this show is damaged. Everybody has a back story why they are damaged. If mom's not comatose in a hospital and you are keeping it to yourself, then she died when you were 4, or maybe she is a crazy drunk neurotic ball buster. Some of it is just too contrived. And a couple of the characters are downright annoying. Richie and Neal are meant to be comic relief for season 1 and their behaviors are so contrived and stupid that they pull the whole show down. Nobody I ever met from Chicago is actually as dumb as these guys, and the choices they make in the story are too buffoonish. There is too much angst and worry over contrived nothings that are there simply to give the characters some problem to overcome. It's not drama, it is melodrama.

But down the course of Season 1, aided by tons of filler of people sitting on buses while angsty emo-folk-rock rarities play, or quick cuts of Chefs making beautiful little plates, we get it....this little group is becoming the Cheers of Chicago hoagie stands. Or something.

And then as Season 1 ends, and you are maybe pulling for Carm to pull out a win....they blow the whole construct up and Season 2 separates all the characters you have grown to want to see interact. Big brother Mikey pulled a trick out of his hat (no..a can actually) and has bestowed on all the chowderheads a new direction for Season 2. And the problem with that season becomes all those conflicts you became engaged in are tossed aside as each character goes off by themselves to other situations. The infighting of Season 1 grew on us, and it is missed in Season 2.

Carm gets a dud of GF who is the weird chick who sat behind him in HS who now became a hot doctor. Their dialogue is so over the top angsty/aren't they so cute together that it seems forced. And he decides to blow the Hoagie shop up and defy the odds and he and his partner Sydney, the hemm-haw--passive-aggressive-nicest person on TV are going to defeat Joe Biden's horrible post-Covid Economy and open up a hotspot on a forgotten block in downtown Chicago. Everybody goes their own way and gets their background episode....and it is more filler, angsty music, edited kitchen shots and melodrama with kind of bad characters who behave stupidly but that is because everybody is messed up inside and we all need a hug now and then and say 'i love you...but'. I could go on about the plastic bizarre Superhero club of special mutants that apparently run the high-end restaurants of the world, but it is more of the same....kind of not very realistic at its core.

Much more style than substance in this show. Mediocre characters, melodramatic issues, stylish filler. Got boring.

Wow. I was really liking this movie. Although the massive bald dome is too odd, and the weasel whimp voice is a little too whiny in spots, overall this is a really good performance by Nick Cage. He gets a character that allows him to have some depth. He is a whimpy nerd, but he has intelligence and depth, and he gets to display happiness and sadness, anger and regret. And Nick shows us again that he is simply a good actor.

Equally impressive is the premise of this story. A completely unimportant random fellow learns from friends and family that he is appearing as a background player in their dreams. And suddenly, he goes viral in the dreams of people around the world. Great idea. Nobody knows why. Everybody expects him to have an answer.

At first it is fun and he becomes famous and marketable as the guy in your dreams. This is contrasted with his personal life, where his children, wife, colleagues are all not really comfortable with it.

Then things turn negative for him and as quickly as he exploded...he becomes a negative force to everyone, and everything crashes down around him.

So we get a story that gives us all kind of terrain to explore. Until the 3rd act, when everything is dropped and nothing we've been watching really matters. We get on explanation, but we get a disappointing out of the story. Where we were expecting an answer to why this strange event happened, we are just told all of this validated the collective consciousness as a fact, and that now it is a new method of communication. Our story leaves us in a muddled state, with our sad friend basically hoping he can find his way home to what is now his dreamworld: the life he no longer has.

The direction in the movie is mostly good. Once or twice the standard device of discovering what we just witnessed was really a dream sequence is used, but no big deal, that should be expected in a movie about dreams.

The pace of the movie is mostly good and it never slowed up or went too quickly. No issues with any of the actors, everyone is pretty believable in their roles. Although his wife and her motivations seem to trouble our protagonist, we are never given evidence to make us think she actually deceiving him, and that is a good choice.

In the same manner, we can ask if it makes sense that the people in his class would be unable to separate his dream persona from the reality that he does nothing wrong to anyone, but since the entire premise here is that his dream persona has gone viral, then we can go along with the idea that that persona is the only him anyone actually knows.

So, we have this nice clever funny dark little comedy that just should have come up with a bigger ending that gave us a resolution as to why what happened happened. We should have had a big ending and instead. Instead of an orgasm, we got a fart (yeah...that is in the movie.).

I hadn't been aware of this one. So I was looking for a comedy show to watch and saw that John Goodman and Danny McBride and Adam Devine were all in this show, which was enough to get me to check it out.

Eastbound was not a favorite of mine and McBride seemed pretty one note, but the idea itself was funny and there are certainly bits in that show that would make anyone laugh. And I kind of stick to that view about the RGs.

John Goodman is good in this show. Walton Goggins is all in, and he is funny and sleazy. Andy Devine is such a likable character he just fits in. Edie Patterson plays maybe the weirdest one in the bunch and by the end of the season she had me laughing. Cassidy Freeman plays McBride's wife and she is perfect in the role.

Now all that being said, this show is McBride's. It is in his style. A mixture of ego-centric retardedness and little Abbot and Costello riffs about oh...i'll go left...you go right...wait..no...I'll go left...no...you...well..nevermind. That is anytime people are leaving, or hugging or interacting...these akward little routines pop up. So that that makes or breaks the show right there. Either you think McBride is funny, or you think his setups are childish and stupid.

Now the best thing about this show is that every single character in it avoids being a stereotype at the exact same time they are all based upon archtypes. And by that I mean...not a single character is a good person, nor is any one completely evil. They are all goobers stumbling along between right and wrong. And that makes them all grow on you.

Danny McBride is basically playing the same character you are used to. He is a loud mouth braggart, egotistical, pushy, obnoxious and then he backs off or sets himself up to garner sympathy. After watching two shows of his, I can't decide is he funny or kind of annoying. But, I admit, he is compelling.

I don't think the plot matters that much here, it's all about silly pathetic people being put in situations that expose them as hypocrites. At the end, it seems like everything is just forgiven by a long speech that John Goodman's character delivers from the pulpit about how weak and pathetic we all are and how by forgiving the failures we see in others is how we know that we can be forgiven too.

I'm in for season two just to see some more Uncle Little Billy, and what in the hell Tony Cavelaro's ex Satanist character, Keefe is all about.

This is not brilliant comedy, but this is a strange oddity with some funny people being allowed to go for it with in the parameters of their character.

This one just never works for me. It is trying so hard to be stylish and cool. The music choices are banal, the Chapters that are named for the Character they follow through the convoluted and contrived plot are annoying, the dialogue is mediocre and predictable.

Justice Smith just overacts playing the whimpy emo privileged man-child that centers the story. Way too fragile and weak spirited. Briana Middleton is average in her roll, doesn't really stand up well against Stan, Moore and Smith. She is perhaps hampered by the stock nature of the character she plays and the seen-it-before story of being dragged into the world of Marks and Cons. Julianna Moore is a little past her due date as a 'trophy wife' sex kitten. And Sebastian Stan's character, like Middleton's is given so much bad dialogue and stock situations that we've seen done better in other movies that it is a little boring.

From the multi-billionaire's son who opens a book store, to the confusing plotting...she was married to him, he did give her the money...what is the issue? The underlying scenarios don't hold together and make sense, the situation is so contrived, the ending is predictable, and all the cool lighting and camera angles don't hide the flaws.

There is absolutely nothing special about this basically b-movie. Acting, plot, direction....all B at best.

This movie is right away going to generate strong opinions because it eschews conventional story telling and is meant to be a character study of a broken man and his severed relationships. It does not start, end or traverse time in normal story-telling fashion and it does not deliver a resolution to the character's conflict.

The other notable point about this movie is that it won Screenplay and Acting Oscars, as well as the National Film Board or Review's best film of 2016.

I would say this. The Screenplay starts conventionally enough, with the main character learning his brother has died. We meet him as a clearly disturbed Handyman living in a seedy apartment and indifferent to everything. He drinks and looks to start fights in bars. The death requires him to drive up to Manchester, where by flashbacks the story of his broken character is revealed to us. There is a young nephew he must try to deal with, and tragedy that drove him from this town. The idea that the geography itself has shaped these hard-scrabble characters is fed to us with endless scenes of the town and its dated architecture and tough seaside weather...and the fact that his brother's corpse can not be put into the Earth until the spring thaw.

Casey Affleck has always specialized in playing off beat loners, and his mumbling delivery is show-cased here. His Character is neither smart nor decent, he was meant to grow old and die alongside these others mediocre people, but fate would not allow him that. So he is resentful yet accepting of reality and he has no idea what the right thing to do is, yet he finds a way. Nothing about his past can be undone or made right. He is destined to be broken and he knows that and he simply communicates that in his not open to communication way to everyone. There is no place for compromise or reconnection, and he just wants to disappear as a way to allow them to survive with as little pain as possible.

And that is all that happens in the story. People's life will go on, without him to worry about if he can help it. He helps the nephew as best he can by doing as much as he can to shield him from any connection with him.

To me...the question is...would another actor have done this role as well? I think so. Casey got the part and ran with it, but a lot of others could have replaced him and you wouldn't have noticed. Much like the Oscar DiCaprio got for The Revenant, the role was not made by the actor.

Was this direction special? Not really. Too many scenes that went nowhere. Too many shots of the town. We get it...it's dreary in Winter there. It just went on too long without much happening. And even the main tragic event seemed just a little contrived in nature.

Is the tough simple Boston people are really deeper than we realize, and some New England is stuck in the past meme pushed a little too hard? Yes.

But despite the flaws, the screenplay is out of the ordinary, Michelle Williams was great in a small role, and this movie was just so different from any American movie in a while that it stands out. Melodramatic tear jerkers about Broken Men are so anti-Marvel that it was a nice change of pace.

Gal Gadot is stunningly gorgeous. Ryan Reynolds is a cute nice guy. The Rock is a cute Wrestler turned actor. Put them all together and let them do their schtick. Make it a globe-trotting CGI laden action film and as it keeps jumping from place to place, the audience is rewarded with ridiculous plot contrivances, corny humor, unrealistic action scenes and a cheap thrill ride of a movie.

If you want a dumb pop-corn movie I guess this it. There is nothing serious about this movie from the get go. From the McGuffin they are all chasing, to the ridiculous gangster and his special room that they must breach, to the finale in a treasure room, the writers went back to Mission Impossible and James Bond and about a zillion other past stories and hobbled together this thing that is based upon the charm of the three leads to overcome how everything is preposterous.

Throw Gadot into hot red ballroom gown and a bathing suit, and I'm pretty happy. If you find the oh so overdone smarmy syrupy humor that is now become Reynold's trademark acceptable, then you'll be happy. The Rock plays it fairly straight and goes along for the ride. Technically it might have worked better with someone who is not a roided out giant in the role, but for the most part he is fine as a mostly straight-man to Reynold's tiresome jokester. So his fans will be happy.

Bored is not really the right word for this movie, the leads are all so polished and the action keeps it moving. But this is definitely a sugary dumbed-down version of appealing.

It's a time killer, not a must see.

Ya OK...this is a dark comic assessment of a mentally ill fellow who has deep mommy issues. But it didn't work because the scenarios and characters are not credible, sensible or believable. Everybody definitely tried really hard, Joaquin goes all in...appearing bloated, wrestling naked in the Tub etc...but this material doesn't really ask him to stretch at all.

Patti LuPone gets a great dramatic soliloquy and she runs with it, but by that time, you're fiddling wondering when this whole boring contrived thing is going to conclude. Bloated out to 3 hours in hopes of being some epic road story, it just meanders through this series of weird unbelievable setup situations. There is a fantasy 15 minute long partly animated digression that is by itself interesting but it goes on too long and then just ends with a strange unrealistic overlap from the previous story line, that itself just has weird things in it that don't amount to much. The conclusion is dialed in and heavy handed.

I will admit that Parker Posey (who also goes all in for her part) plays a long ago teen crush that comes back to fulfill one of the deep mental roadblocks of the disturbed protagonist, and the conclusion to that is a scene that made me laugh hard. But...overall sitting thru this jumbled contrived mess and getting a few chuckles and one real laugh doesn't make it worth while. Not the best movie I've seen about the madness of the human condition, or about mothers/sons. It doesn't work for me despite the cast's efforts.

I've just completed Season 4. Barry is a tough one because Covid really damaged the momentum they had developed. In Season 1 we start with Barry, a soulless shell of a man who returns from the war empty and dead inside, but connected to his fellow soldiers by his now blossomed skill of being a ruthless killer. Returning to his father figure Fuches, a disturbed self-serving leach of a man, Barry begins a career as a hitman. This leads him to a fateful encounter with the acting class of Gene Cousineau, where Barry suddenly feels alive again and decides that acting will be the path that leads him to redemption. The next 3 seasons are simply following the story of Barry's tragic fate, as his past prevents his attempt to distance himself, and his character's flaws doom him.

During this journey, we have two separated worlds. There is Fuches and the mafia/gangland 'bad' guys, who provide us with complete absurdist humor and the core belly laugh moments of the show. On the other side, are the Hollywood wannabees of the trying-to-be-actors world, who provide us with irony, sarcasm, self-oblivious egoism, cowardice, bravado and lies. Barry, who maybe wants to be good, but simply isn't, navigates and attempts to balance the escalating absurdist plot devices that lead him deeper towards his tragic fate.

Ultimately, we learn that not a single character in this show was a good person. Barry, unable to change is doomed. Fuches, a needy prideful man chooses humanity. To me, Sarah Goldberg, who plays the love interest, Sally is the star of this show. She plays a hopeless vain, scared, desirous, self-serving, dishonest, needy egotistical woman and she is just awesome. How she didn't win an Emmy for this part escapes me. And at the end of the show, it seems that her character is the one that mattered. She is the one who emerges at the end a changed person...not better in anyway, but completely aware of her weaknesses and no longer naive about herself....she fully embraces her shallowness.

So what we get here is a pretty strong performance by Bill Hader, but the character itself is one note. Henry Winkler plays his role well, but the character is a despicable person. He is droll and oblivious, yet conniving at the same time. The humor surrounding the Gangsters is absurd. Some of it is plain funny, but overall it is simplistic and unrealistic. Ditto, with some of the police and Hollywood people. They allow the cheap gut laughs that the main characters wallowing in darkness can not give us.

At the end, the story comes to a too neat somewhat contrived conclusion. You kind of had hoped for something more lighthearted, but when there are no good guys, I guess it made sense.

It's not a truly great TV series, the timeline moves quickly over the four seasons, only Sally achieves any resolution, and the cheap nature of much of the humor spoils the higher aspirations that one had for the character arcs after Season 1. They got the horse across the finish line, but they didn't win the derby.

Nothing really wrong with the acting. Just a bad story, bad dialogue, bad characters, bad plot. It's all cut by numbers, derivative, been done before. The guy that stars in it, Gabriel Basso has no charisma. There is a line where he referred to being a hot shot basketball player...ya, whatever. Luciane Buchanan is earnest but what a bad character.... She was a super sleuth IT person who's company went bankrupt. Ya. That is real believable. Neither person is right for the fictional character they portray. There is a nice cast of diverse actors, almost each one of whom seems wrong for the part in question, each one playing a stock character. VP's daughter...bad. Spy BF...bad. Secret Service Agents guarding her....bad.

If this was not written by AI, and cast by AI...then I recommend strongly you try putting AI in charge because this is just horrible.

I do not recommend this lazy stupid contrived junk to anyone.

First, a fun premise and Natasha Lyonne seems like she is having fun. Second, like the old Columbo show, the guest actors are mostly people we recognize and they too seem to be having fun.

Natasha Lyonne seems like she is playing the younger version of the character Estelle Gettys played on the Golden Girls. Or maybe she is a Jewish Leprechaun? Or maybe she is just playing herself? But she just goes with it. She is a dizzy mess of a woman who dodges her way through the world and the obstacles it puts in front of her. And it works. The main thing you get from it is she likes playing this smart-alec, good hearted likable loser that will give you the shirt off her back and figures everyone else should just be like her.

Unfortunately, for half the show she just kind of cruises not having to really do that much except do her strange version of Columbo, stumbling and bumbling, disguising her intent as she questions people in an offhand way as she tries to piece together whatever murder fell in her lap this week. And this contrasts sharply with those episodes that ask a little more from her. She is absolutely great in a few of these episodes, which makes the Columbo imitation seem almost a waste of her talent.

That leads us to another problem. There are a number of episodes that set up the premise of the story that sets her on the run, and concludes it. This narrative is distinct from another set of episodes that are in the classic Columbo murder-of-the-week style. By nature, those episodes were more hit and miss. The episode with Tim Meadows and Ellen Barkin is great fun (mainly because of them and their exchanges). Other episodes are a little more run of the mill. The episodes that are part of the narrative work really well...and Benjamin Bratt, Adrian Brody and Ron Perlman, you can't go wrong, and all are outstanding. The 9th episode with Joseph Gordon Levitt that brings Bratt back into the story at the end is one of the best episodes of a TV show I've seen in quite a while. And when Natasha has to do more than be cute and goofy she delivers with these guys her best stuff.

Riann Johnson understands how to write good clever dialogue and gives actors good characters to inhabit. This idea...to do a take on a detective using logic to piece together an elaborate murder is fun, smart and entertaining. The conceit of how Natasha's character, Charlie, gets integrated into the environment after we witness the murder plot, is just a little contrived. And each week, we see her just kind of plop into these situations that have nothing much to do with her. So that starts to feel contrived too. But those complaints are clearly there and you just have to accept it and go for the ride.

This show is 100% based upon Natasha Lyonne's likability rating. If you find her annoying and strange, I can see you going 'Meh...." But if you enjoy her goofy big eyed street smart schmuck act, then you can hop into her 68' barracuda and have a fun ride.

This is as bad as movies get.

The acting is so stilted it is unwatchable.

The Plot is absurd. The characters have no motives to do the things they do. The direction is simplistic and uninspired.

I've never seen another movie as boring as this.

There is nothing really wrong with this movie. The movie is well directed. The acting is better than you get in this kind of horror film. The cinematography works, capturing the Pacific Northwest gloominess and the working class grit. The premise is not that bad, and the story is familiar but constructed in typical horror movie fashion, with characters that for the most part stay in character and behave as one might actually behave. (The one question that struck me given the unfolding body count, the small town sheriff might have been inclined to call in the cavalry)

The problem is the horror just never really delivers or shocks us. In the movies' opening scene...we are confronted with the monster. And we never get much more of a shock than that. We see glimpses of the monster and its effect on two characters. We get a few better looks at it. We get an explanation of what it is. There are some bodies and blood. But nothing really terrifying ever happens.

If you want to sit through a nice set of actors in a decently made movie than you won't hate this...but it fails to deliver anything new or particularly scary to the genre.

It's impossible to discuss this movie without putting it in the context of "On The Road", which could not find an audience. Knowledge of who Kerouac was is limited in the TV age; and his books, all fictionalized tales, yet autobiographical in nature (and to some a serialized mythology of an artist's life) are reduced to a cult-fan base in this era. If the iconic road story that launched Kerouac into the literary firmament was rejected by the Superhero loving movie audience of today, what chance does a psychological internal monologue about an artist's descent into alcoholism have.

So we are left with a simple dividing line: do you know the work of Kerouac and the milieu of "The Beats"? If you don't, then this movie will seem odd and slow-paced, overwhelmingly pointless and pretentious. If you are a fan, then we are confronted with another question: Is simply seeing the narratives underlying Kerouac's poetic stream of conscious writing brought to life worth dealing with the limitations of converting works of art that are not plot-based to film? Like "On The Road", "Big Sur" delivers a simple enough joy to the Kerouac fan. There it is: a dramatization of Kerouac's iconic writings, replete with tons of required voice-over narration of the jazz-based flowing verbiage that makes Kerouac Kerouac. But, you can't help but think, wow-it's just not possible to make a conventional movie out of a Kerouac story, you must have excessive narration, because Kerouac was entirely about the words - the rhythm, the cadence, the explosion of images and alliterations. None of this is bad, but it requires an acceptance of the source we are dealing with to accept such an extensive override of normal plot-driven movie storytelling.

The movie is well directed. Polish mixes imagery well, establishes mood and atmosphere, and handles the semi-hallucinatory descent into alcoholic stupor with a pleasant restraint.

The actors all do top-notch work, although some of the peripheral characters such as Lew Welch, Ferlinghetti, and Whalen seem to have no emotional connection to the main character or his problems. They are just there. Even Neal Cassady ultimately fades away at the end.

Kate Bosworth enters the movie halfway through the story and becomes the last lifeline that Kerouac throws away. While undeveloped as a character, she does a fine job representing the last real thing left to hold onto. She fits the role well, and plays out the heart-wrenching string aptly, as a character smart enough and jaded enough to cope with her fate.

As a fan of Kerouac, I can say that there is so much good about this movie and it's straight forward attempt at delivering Kerouac's last important novel as a film, that I would recommend it highly to anyone that enjoyed "On the Road" as a film. If you were bored with OTR, or didn't get it, you will not enjoy this subtle intelligent movie.

What's positive about this film: The laconic direction is centered on a dreamer roaming through a melancholic dream-haze view of a quasi-futuristic Los Angeles. Isolated high-rises, interspersed with anonymous crowds of people rushing nowhere, are matched with flash-back and dream sequences set to a mellow mixture of almost new age sounding Muzak. All of this is artful and enticing and lures you into a world that seems much more grounded and real than the vast majority of CGI'd futures we normally are fed in Hollywood Sci-if. Kudos to Jones, his cinematography, and musical score.

Joaguin Phoenix and Amy Adams are fine as melancholic loners in a world of bland vacuity. Phoenix carries the film on his shoulders and few can play the not-quite-right oddball as well as him. Adams is pretty and vulnerable in an understated performance. Scarlett Johannson has the sexy voice to carry the part of the disembodied OS that catches Phoenix's eye?....well...ear anyways.

What's negative about this film: Rod Serling would have edited it all down to the 30 minutes of core plot and called it an episode of the Twilight Zone. This isn't much different than Burgess Meredith being a bookworm who loses his glasses in a world of books. Too much of the movie is fluff and filler hammering and overemphasizing the plot points again and again, and ultimately this drags the movie down to a snail's pace.

This did not deserve a best pic nod in my opinion.