sasper

the first 80 minutes of this were not worthy of the last 10 minutes. the dance scene and the credits scene are absolutely brilliant but the rest of it was just not it. i get how it might work for people but i just didn’t really find it funny, and the style they used to try to make it funny makes it painful and stilted if you don’t laugh at the awkwardness. if it was just napoleon helping pedro to win the election it probably would have been better, but instead we just got an hour of mostly unfunny scenes that just felt like wasted time. a bit of shame because i really thought i’d love this. 3/10

properly weird stuff here from yorgos but had me absolutely hooked all the way through. keeps you guessing all the way through while remaining clear and on track, no matter what it does next. plemons was absolutely incredible playing the completely unhinged - but also deeply traumatised and lost - teddy. he was definitely robbed of *at least *an oscar nomination, and stone was excellent too. also shout out the needle drop about halfway through, got to be one of my favourites i’ve seen for a while. 9/10

it’s a good film but it just feels a bit lost in itself. the tense parts were brilliant but the quieter parts just felt a bit off, so it felt like it couldn’t make its mind up on whether it should be an intense thriller or a slow burner, and by not doing enough it was doing too much. bardem is class however, properly scary and haunting. in the end though it just felt like it was having an identity crisis, lost between intensity and reflective (also fargo was better). 6/10