Post by Toasted Cheese on Jan 23, 2019 14:18:03 GMT
movies of the year. This is a hilarious, thrilling, shocking and depressing look at power and love. What a movie! The more I think about it the better it gets. And the acting performances are off the charts. Olivia Colman's performance is a marvel to behold.its a bit other-wordly acting. i have no idea how they do it actors. the amount of vulnerability and emotional investment they have to be able to display and commit is crazy.
I have some quibbles, but I was intrigued as the film played out and wanted a little more. The run-time of 2hrs flew by for me and most of this credit is due to Colman's terrific portrayal of Queen Anne. There were no false notes here and she seamlessly blended from one mood to another with nuance and skill. Colman didn't allow the grotesque aspects of Anne, to overshadow her more real, intelligent and emotional side. She elicited just the right amount of pity, empathy and sadness.
Both Weisz and Stone were also both on point and Weisz won me over especially. I have only seen a couple of films she has starred in and clips of other films she has made. I thought she was perfectly cast here and very believable and authentic. Much of the credit of this film is due to the dialog the actors were given as well. Visually, I also liked the film. However, I did not like the use of the fish eye lens in some scenes. I found it too distracting and it took me out of the narrative. I found this a pretentious visual imposition.
I also came away feeling that the film was a tad underdeveloped story-wise. For a film about wicked female wiles, deception and political mind games to gain power and favor, it came up a tad short for me and ended way too ambiguously. The artistic pretense of the director was never more evident, than in this last scene. I felt like it had just run out of steam, or didn't really know what it wanted to say, or what its point was. This really annoys the crap out of me and I am not asking for the film to be rounded out in a neat package, but if it was meant as some sort of symbolic attempt at irony, it fell flat. I feel it undermined the rest of the film and I left feeling that perhaps the satirical aspect of the film wasn't that clever after all.
The film reminded me a bit of Dangerous Liaisons - 88', with Close, Pfeiffer and Malkovich, but that film's theme of deception, lust, desire and love was so much more cleverer and overall superior. Just shows, they can't quite make em like they used to, no matter how hard they try.