The LEGO Movie 2: The Second Part
Green Book
Widows
The Walking Dead
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Critics Consensus: A lean and unsettlingly thriller.
Critic Consensus: A lean and unsettlingly thriller.
All Critics (56) | Top Critics (17) | Fresh (36) | Rotten (20) | DVD (7)
Although the scenes are often dark and shrouded in mist, the film is replete with cinematic portraiture that sears itself into memory.
The questions the film raises are more interesting than the film itself.
A gravely realized and often chilling look at what might happen to ordinary people if all their support systems suddenly collapsed.
The French-language film traipses through such familiar territory, it's hard to be as moved and devastated as we're clearly supposed to be.
More than watchable, if less than compelling.
Subtlety is one of the tools utilized by the brilliant Haneke, who wisely learned from the masters instead of the hacks.
I found it pretty compelling to watch how quickly the group of survivors rediscovers first rationality, then subjectivism and nihilism, and finally a sort of Rortyish attempt to re-found human society on storytelling.
[Dawn of the Dead] manages to comment with wit and excitement on the same ideas that Time of the Wolf treats so seriously and glumly.
This quiet, contemplative look at a social apocalypse is intensely harrowing and stark.
Has a feral intensity.
Couldn't be more boring and less entertaining, though it certainly was masterfully photographed.
It has the effect of a game in which the viewer needs to fill in the missing pieces.
Time of the Wolf is competently made with solid, realistic acting. However it has too many characters, too little plot, and lacks in a coherent theme or message. Oddly enough, though, the ending is quite good and overall the film has some merit.
Super Reviewer
Haneke does come up with some interesting post-apocalyptic scenarios, but for the most part the film is boring and the characters are flat as can be.
Of course it is bleak, slow, and ambiguous - it's Michael Haneke! I did indeed like this one, though only having seen Funny Games, Funny Games, and this, I do believe Haneke to be obsessed with the themes of home invasion and "bourgeois" people forced into humility. I CAN tolerate what some will describe as unbearable "slowness" and over-calculation of shot composition that many accuse Haneke guilty of, but mostly because I am sick of seeing shoddily edited, overcut, and underthought movies that will always flood the market. It's tough to be a legitimate film maker, because then you actually have to meet standards, which is why I imagine so many people to be very callous in regards to assessments of Haneke's work. I am always pleased to see apocalyptic/end of society films done in this realistic tone, especially in today's flooded market of action apocalyptica and sensationalized armageddon. This film most closely reminds me of Threads with its bleak presentation and closeness to reality. A wonderful film, but you must be a patient fim viewer (read: not an ADD crazed artificial adrenaline junkie plucked from the teeming masses). I must confess that I dislike the ending, not because it is ambiguous; indeed I like to think I know what awaits the characters after the reel ceases to roll, and I delight in imagining the specifics of how they will deal with yet another difficult and wholly new situation. I dislike the ending not for the final shot, but for the scene right before it, and the haste with which all of the dangling storylines are abandoned for this overhanded symbolic moment which will contribute to many viewers feeling similarly abandoned and befuddled by the director's choice, but as is often the way with Haneke, that mau be indeed precisely what he wants the audience to feel. Viewed from that perspective, I can accept that scene, but I cannot accept the countless storylines which were just moments ago being adequately nourished and developed, but are now suddenly left desperately open to interpretation.
Sorry, I couldn't really handle this one. My patience imploded about halfway in. I may try and finish it later in the week...or I may not and I'll never get around to it again. Easily Haneke's flattest directing (Funny Games, for all my problems with it, was strikingly filmed); the surety of aesthetic and tone belie the fact that there's really nothing to take in here. This is a worse job of creating post-apocalyptic scope than The Signal. And it's a crying shame to take a prize actress like Huppert and give her absolutely nothing to interact with outside of about four interesting scenes. Whatever, I'm a plebe and you guys can take me off your friend lists now.
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