★ 5 / 10
The viewer pays too high a price for the moments of quality in this film.
curiousviolet
Being an Alia Shawkat fan, I had to watch this. And I must applaud her, not so much for her performance here, but for her guts in taking on a role of a…
Being an Alia Shawkat fan, I had to watch this. And I must applaud her, not so much for her performance here, but for her guts in taking on a role of a character who is going to be resented a lot as a narcissistic ego case who is a drag on everyone else.When you start watching this, you think this movie will be the classic Slow Motion Train Wreck. Those are fun movies, because you know the disaster will happen, and you get to watch and satisfy your curiosity. But it doesn't happen. Instead a new band member Pat arrives and changes the tone from hopelessness to one of positivity. So the movie becomes a "personalities under stress undergo changes" slice of life movie. That's a hard movie to make, I think, because the interactions have to "smell right" -- that is, be believable to a deep extent, so that you KNOW that what is happening HAD to happen, because of the characters, and there have to be AHA moments. But it doesn't make it. Too many tiny question marks pop up, and this ensemble doesn't pull it off. I have to blame the director for this, because there should have been many scenes done differently and subtly and edited better, and maybe it could have been pulled off. Again, I think the task was gigantic and this crew just could not pull it off. Unfortunately, failure in this case makes the film such a dreary watch that a lot of the audience is going to tune out, walk out, or otherwise bail.
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★ 9 / 10
Better than most this season
catebaum
There's been a lot of negativity around this movie but it's honestly a joy. Using the British-honed style of faux documentary filmmaking, it follows a girl…
There's been a lot of negativity around this movie but it's honestly a joy. Using the British-honed style of faux documentary filmmaking, it follows a girl band Glass Heart as they work on their album at the famous Rockfield Studios in England. Their manager Mark (Nick Helm) is struggling to get Kelly (Shawkat), a pretentious and uppity American and the songwriter of the band, to crack on so they can get recording, the label breathing down his neck. Meanwhile, the band is flailing in all directions -- until the brilliant and flamboyant studio guitarist Pat (Gonzalez) arrives. I wonder if Americans will get this style of filmmaking, and that might be part of the problem, but if this had been a show like Fleabag instead of a movie, I think it would have won countless awards and would have made it majestically across the pond.
Alia Shawkat is great at being disgusting here, and is a fantastic stick in the mud for Nick Helm, also turning in a fantastic performance. Chanel Cresswell is the balance for all, a believable ballast for the band. Of course, Eiza Gonzalez takes the movie away, and is addictive watching for the second half, every little eye movement and hair flick perfectly engineered for this character, moved only by Nick's grounded wife, a brilliant cameo by Dolly Wells.
This is a great film, and much better than half the movies being touted as masterpieces this season. And it's a feminist piece, no gross sex scenes, breasts out, none of that. Just a properly made story and properly thought out acting.
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80%
AUDIENCE
3.7/10
275
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i thought it was eiza gonzales on the poster/cover