★ 6 / 10
Good watch at best, probably won't watch again
Kamurai
Good watch at best, probably won't watch again, but can recommend for time-shift loop fans ("Groundhog's Day"). I was all excited to stumble into another…
Good watch at best, probably won't watch again, but can recommend for time-shift loop fans ("Groundhog's Day").
I was all excited to stumble into another tim-shift loop movie, with Amanda Palmer no less. She's wildly underrated as an actress, mostly to having (probably) the worst role written on "Silicon Valley".
This movie is basically "Groundhog's Day" for drug addicts. While the protagonist in the other movie was an egotistical jerk, he wasn't an evil person, but this movie decides to "Chronicle" with it and go with a "might makes right attitude" with one of the characters.
The idea of an infinite war is actually pretty boring, and I think getting up everyday to run around shooting and raping people would grow old pretty fast. Usually the "high" of doing things like that is that you're taking agency to overcome rules and you're "special" because you're getting away with something other people won't.
Usually there is also only one protagonist experiencing the loop because it gets funny when multiple people are looping ("Paradise Falls" actually does a good version of it.), and this movie doesn't make it fun. In fact, what could have been a fun, hilarious, and impressive movie actually really takes a hit for wanting to be dark and dirty when it really didn't need to be.
Normally something like that adds substance and power to the movie, but I felt like it was just taxing to deal with. It didn't play into the plot heavily enough that it would have been a different movie without it, and it cheaply uses rape as a throwaway to example the character's removal from civil behavior.
Those points aside, I really think this is a good movie, and I'm just more upset that it isn't a great movie.
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★ 7 / 10
Welcome to Purgatory
Spacebaby1
This remake of Groundhog Day has some things to recommend it. It is not the greatest movie ever made, and it is skating the clichés. You have to have some guts…
This remake of Groundhog Day has some things to recommend it. It is not the greatest movie ever made, and it is skating the clichés. You have to have some guts to remake a big successful movie, and work the clichés and not drop into crap movie territory. This movie remains a good solid flick. It takes advantage firstly of an implicit nondescript but plaintive Canadian tone, which reminded me of Atom Egoyan's 'Exotica' or 1989's 'Roadkill.' It looks American, but little things scream that it isn't. Interesting, and this kept the film from becoming hackneyed and obvious.
On top of this, I thought solid acting from the 3 leads and supporting actors, especially Alexia Fast, allowed some of this peculiar non-American tone of introspection to surface. The three leads all had clear trajectories, and I think de Klerk really anchored them. The acting was not over the top and it stayed forlorn and gritty, even when two characters are redeemed. It is likely that the characters have already left the mortal plane, at the beginning of the film, so their experiences are basically spiritual - but their mortal free will remains. I thought they could have gone deeper with the purgatory idea - especially the day after Sonia comes back the first time. It would have been intriguing to pursue de Klerk's descent.
Instead of going deeper into what was happening on a spiritual level, the director opted to keep the action going, and keep the film clipping along at a good pace. What it lost in depth, it gained somewhat in some good physical acting between de Klerk and Milligan. Milligan in particular settled by the end of the film into the central role, a kind of scrapped up gilded hero that made him really look like Hollywood star material. But I don't think he could have gotten there without de Klerk, Crew and Fast supporting him.
Crew did a very nice job of opening up. Her intimate scenes with Milligan were extremely well done - touching and not contrived. They cultivated some gentleness and actual on screen chemistry. She faced a similar connundrum to Heather Donahue in 'Blair Witch' - a low grade wardrobe role where a girl with the same hat on all the way through has to become the psychological and emotional catalyst for two males.
All in all, some choppy bits, but a good enough film that got the job done. It could have been deeper, could have been more big budget and glossier, but frankly only the former would have made the pretty good performances here even better.
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TOMATOMETER
· 5 reviews
33%
AUDIENCE
· 500 ratings
5.7/10
7.3K
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RE-SEED PLEASE!!!!!!!!!