The last 13 minutes are phenomenal—genuinely apocalyptic, surreal, chaotic, everything I was promised. But my god… the 2 hours and 11 minutes before that are dreadful. I get that it’s supposed to show the hollowness and repetition of Hollywood, but there are ways to do that without making me feel hollow for two straight hours.
The film just stalls. Nothing escalates, nothing deepens, nothing gets stranger. It’s the same emotional note played on repeat. Todd’s desperation should feel like part of Hollywood’s sickness, but it just comes across as sad romantic yearning. None of it builds to anything. It’s pretty to look at, sure, but it’s emotionally flat and narratively static.
Honestly, everything before the riot could’ve been trimmed down to 15 minutes and it would’ve made an incredible short film. Instead, the drag is so severe that by the time the film finally explodes into that perfect nightmare of an ending, I was too drained to actually give a fuck. I loved the ending—but the slog before it was so shattering that it diluted its own impact.
Phenomenal finale. Painfully dead middle. A masterpiece trapped inside a movie that refuses to wake up.
The last 13 minutes are phenomenal—genuinely apocalyptic, surreal, chaotic, everything I was promised. But my god… the 2 hours and 11 minutes before that are dreadful. I get that it’s supposed to show the hollowness and repetition of Hollywood, but there are ways to do that without making me feel hollow for two straight hours.
The film just stalls. Nothing escalates, nothing deepens, nothing gets stranger. It’s the same emotional note played on repeat. Todd’s desperation should feel like part of Hollywood’s sickness, but it just comes across as sad romantic yearning. None of it builds to anything. It’s pretty to look at, sure, but it’s emotionally flat and narratively static.
Honestly, everything before the riot could’ve been trimmed down to 15 minutes and it would’ve made an incredible short film. Instead, the drag is so severe that by the time the film finally explodes into that perfect nightmare of an ending, I was too drained to actually give a fuck. I loved the ending—but the slog before it was so shattering that it diluted its own impact.
Phenomenal finale. Painfully dead middle. A masterpiece trapped inside a movie that refuses to wake up.