Intcatinfo A Masterpiece!

ChicRawIdol A brilliant film that helped define a genre

Kaelan Mccaffrey Like the great film, it's made with a great deal of visible affection both in front of and behind the camera.

Deanna There are moments in this movie where the great movie it could've been peek out... They're fleeting, here, but they're worth savoring, and they happen often enough to make it worth your while.

Scott Oh dear where to even begin. This should have been a short - the first half hour sort-of brings together some good elements with the parallel time approach. Then, it all falls apart:First: why does the main character also need to go deaf? You seriously expect us to follow and believe that he gets Struck By Lightening, recovers in a day or two, is deaf, and then gallops down the yellow brick road to NYC??Then, he meets a weirdo son of the museum director by chance, who just HAPPENS to be connected to his father. Via a book we keep seeing over & over, and some museum cabinet, that never gets explored or resolved? Then, you expect us to believe he LEARNS SIGN LANGUAGE IN A DAY? Then, after about 30 minutes of dull repetitive shots where NOTHING HAPPENS, you finally get him to the bookshop and his grandmother, and then TORTURE us to sit and listen to him read some explanation she magically hand writes at a bus stop in 5 minutes???Haynes saw 'Big FIsh' and 'Never Ending Story' and, like so many other derivative hipsters - said 'me too' and made a film. Disaster of epic proportions - and the fact that this insulting piece of tripe made it past serious executives and editors proves, once again, the McHollywood is drowning in it's own self-congratulating hype.

psysword Yes, you have to be very mean spirited to give this movie anything less than 10. I mean the kids were sensational. People can complain about the storyline, or yada yada, yada, but you must be deaf not to hear the magical music interweaving with the children's stunning acting and emotional performance. Forget about everything else, the girl was just electrifying and her expressions had me reaching for the towel. initially, I thought that the movie was so slow, but the music told me something special was in store. Then the PQ, and as the black and white scenes rolled in, it was a bit like Charlie Chaplin, some of the nostalgia captured in very different scenes. Different time periods, but captured so well. It was a real treat and if anyone concerned with the film is reading this then, you sir, have accomplished a masterpiece. Fantastic!

bartelkatherine This story has so much potential. I loved "Hugo," by the same writer. The parallel time periods and similarities in the stories of the 2 children could have been wonderful if the movie contained some cleverly written exposition.This film was so dimly lit I could hardly see it, even when it was supposedly a normally lit space. The written notes on paper were not readable and they would have probably given me a clue about the plot. It is ultimately about a newly orphaned child, a worthy subject. However, it is unclear who the boy is staying with in the beginning, unclear whether the adult women is a neighbor, a foster mother, or a friend's mother. It is unclear why the 1927 female lead leaves her home to see an actress. There are notes back and forth I couldn't read. Why is the bookseller significant? Who is he? Is he merely a device to introduce the grandmother? How did the boy get the name of this bookshop? It was hard to see the book he was looking at, so maybe there was a clue there?Why a museum setting? What will happen to the boy? Will he get lost in the fake city? Is the fake city better than his sad life? Are we to get from this that real life is too hard and we should escape in fantasy? The grandmother leaves home and never goes back. She gets incorporated into a museum. Is that the boy's fate?

secondtake Wonderstruck (2017) An interesting film for any film buff or historian, partly for how badly it conjurs up the style and format of 1927 cinema. The story has sentimental strengths and a pair of characters (and actors) who create a certain amount of empathy, but even here the progress is as plodding as it is pretty. I've come to think that Todd Haynes is a bit of a hack as a director, riding mostly a willingness to take on projects that are dripping with emotional pitfalls. His most famous film is "Far from Heaven," also starring Julianne Moore, and it combined best a combination of visual richness and personal angst. In that case there was the advantage of a theme of being a closeted gay man in a 1950s America that resonates with so many, one way or another, along with powerful issues of race. Here there are children to relate to: a girl who is deaf in 1927 and a boy who is an orphan in 1977. Brian Selznick (yes, a relative of the famous David O.) wrote the book, and it's set in 1977 because the famous New York City blackout is at the climax. For some reason Haynes has created a world that is gorgeously 1970 or 1972 instead (though it's labelled 1977 by necessity). The colors, the cars, the clothes, the hair, every detail is deliciously wrong. (I'm old enough to know, plus just check out the cars.) And his sense of the neighborhoods on the west side of Central Park is wrong, too. It's all really beautiful, but why? Why? Back to 1927, the year of the first sound picture, we have the deaf girl enjoying silent films-but these are projected on the screen in her theater as widescreen (not the standard 4:3 Academy format)! I know, who cares, right? Well, why the heck not get it right? Haynes mentions in interviews that he watched some old movies to get the feel for them right, which is a confession of incompetance. His own filming of 1927 and the girl's path through the city is naturally any format he chooses and it's very nicely photographed. In fact, the star of the movie is not the strained and obvious story, dragged out for two hours, and it's certainly not the director, but it's the cinematographer, Edward Lachman, who also shot "Far from Heaven" and several other notable films with styles drawing heavily from the past but still keeping a contemporary edge. I was able to watch this entire film partly because it looks so good. I think Haynes has a good technical crew in general, and the movie benefits. Haynes has also mentioned that he wanted this to be a film that children could watch, and he might be right in the sense that it's gentle and absorbing, without violence or adult material. I liked that. But I think a kid would as bored as any adult, and more willing to skip to the end, which is a contrived tearjerking inevitability, ponderous and thick.