I've seen Lifetime original Christmas movies starring Madeleine Stowe better than this.
LOL, I think veri is just overreacting because the film touched him so much that he doesn't want to admit it.
Like if you guys said a film was the ultimate siowafc film (whatever the hell that might be), of course I would say it was the complete opposite because admitting that it was would reveal my innermost truth.
I HAVE MY CERTAINTY!
WE'RE GONNA FIGHT!
This weekend...one last chance to save Halle's career from complete oblivion. Oh, wait...
"...it's already done."
#THECALL.
Originally Posted by veritas
That was the thing I kept asking myself over and over again. Why did they even have to make this movie in the first place? And to know that they changed the ethnicity of the family? It's absurd.I'm too cynical for this shit.
What disgusts me the most is that this is a true story, yet you can still clearly see where they thought it wasn't dramatic enough, so they laid it on extra thick at those points. The Coca Cola can! The curtain between Watts and McGregor (OMG, are they going to miss each other?)! Nanny Watts rises from the water! And in case we missed those points, there's always the music to guide us to them. Absolutely nauseating. I was in betweenand
for two hours. The acting was totally one-note. Holland was probably the best, Watts and McGregor had nothing to do. Watts is going to get nominated for this? So AMPAS! So the techs are nice, who cares?
And I don't get what's so special about this story? Remarkable, they found each other again! Big deal. They all survived, they all still had their wits, at some point they would have been repatriated and then reunited there.
Among the worst films of the year.
Breaks my heart to know that Nanny's leogendary work in Mulholland Dr. wasn't nominated, but this shit was.
Also, Les Mis is clearly "the ultimate veritas movie" because I admittedly weep through its entirety every time I see it.
:sio:
Welcome me on your teamOkay, get ready for the ultimate joke: I hated this. So, so much. Didn't cry once.
Found it nearly insufferable. And I couldn't stop mentally calling Naomi "Nanny."
AND HER SLO-MO REACH FOR ALL THE OSCARS WITH THE CRESCENDOING VIOLINS?
I even fell asleep. And the whole theatre was crying out loud.
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The film lost some of its impact with me on 2nd viewing, but I still like the film quite a lot.
But this forum's reaction to the film is AWFUL, but expected.
LOL, you watched this a SECOND time?!The film lost some of its impact with me on 2nd viewing, but I still like the film quite a lot.
But this forum's reaction to the film is AWFUL, but expected.
But...you can already find .gifs of Nayomah on the internet.
The true sign you've acquired Legend status!But...you can already find .gifs of Nayomah on the internet.
The Nanny that Became a Legend.
Starring Nicole Kidman as Naomi Watts.
Directed by Kidman's favorite auteur, Lee Daniels.
Hm, Legend Kidman's favorite auteur is socratically-inspired SSS Daldry.
But I like this idea for a movie. It's like the female version of Gladiator.
The Nanny that wanted to be an actress.
The actress that wanted to be a Legend.
The Legend that defied an empire (AMPAS) and achieved The Imposible: an Oscar nomination.
I'm rooting for you, Nayomah.
I just want to make clear we're talking about Kidman's Favorite Auteurs that she can work with. Oytherwise it would be Haneke, but that's only within True Legend's reach.
:truelegend:
This certainly has its admirable qualities (how this didn't make the Makeup shortlist is beyond me) and the acting is mostly good, but it's sooooo damn sentimentalized and so in love with cheesy cliches of the inspirational disaster genre that it's difficult to take much of it seriously. And obviously, this material really deserves to be taken seriously. This didn't work for me, but it's not some horrible movie with nothing commendable at all. It's actually decent in places, but those places are under about a mile of syrup. Here's my review:
THE IMPOSSIBLE
Cinematic sentimental gestures don't come much more desperately inspirational than the slow motion shot of a person reaching skyward with a swelling score accompanying their ascent. In his syrupy drama The Impossible, director J.A. Bayona reserves this moment for the third act, but it's not like the sentimentality sneaks up on us. This kind of exaggerated emotion is in the movie's DNA right from the start, when some onscreen text reminding us of the 2004 tsunami lingers on the words "true story," guaranteeing that we can't ignore the dramatic importance of the impending narrative. Before we see a single frame of footage, the movie already hits a suggestively syrupy chord.
Introducing us to Maria (Naomi Watts), Henry (Ewan McGregor) and their three sons Lucas (Tom Holland), Thomas (Samuel Joslin) and Simon (Oaklee Pendergast) in a stilted scene of worried banter aboard a plane doesn't help secure that sense of realism that Bayona desires, but before long, we're on the ground and Bayona is fully invested in foreshadowing. The vacationing family are shown around the Thai resort that they're staying at and the tour of the place is solely focused on how amazing and new and wonderful and lovely and relaxing this place is. Hmm... I think I hear a wave coming to prove you wrong, bellhop.
Even after they settle in, Maria, Henry, and the kids share a few moments together, but Bayona's camera keeps drifting off to solemnly stare out at the ocean. Building suspense is one thing, but constantly reminding us of the imminent disaster that we know is on its way just feels obnoxious. At the very least, it's dramatically inert. It seems as though Bayona doesn't want to miss a clichéd beat, so eager is he to lend every scene, every moment a touch of gooey resonance. But when he gets to the tsunami sequence quite early on, he manages to mix surging horror with the sentimental flourishes that he seemingly can't resist.
This particular sequence still takes stops along the way to get in touch with its sappy side (close-ups of hands reaching for each other, the nearly muted soundtrack that depicts a character's disorienting experience), but the overall effect is undeniably frightening and intense. We see the water topple tall palm trees before it smashes into the resort, engulfing everything. Bayona hurls us into the powerful pull of the water with Maria, who clings to a tree in a claustrophobically tight shot that soon switches to a higher, wider angle to reveal the sheer immensity of the surging water and the emptiness of its surface.
This pair of juxtaposed shots, the individual in close-up and then the individual as a small piece in a vast wasteland, is a favourite visual motif of Bayona's. It soon becomes tired and obvious, but he does manage to conjure some impactful moments during the disaster sequence. Convincingly capturing the hellish horror of underwater obstacles that threaten to impale at a moment's notice, Bayona, cinematographer Óscar Faura and the astonishing effects team turn the roiling, muddy sea into a treacherous enigma that maliciously hides its greatest threats just below the surface. The nightmare of the wave eventually subsides, but it's left many a mark on Maria, her body badly torn up from her nasty journey.
Along the way, Maria soon reconnects with Lucas, while we later catch up with Henry and their other two boys. With the water no longer flowing, Bayona turns to sap and quickly embraces his freedom to explore the story's sentimentality with an arsenal of weepy clichés. A phone call home isn't just about the emotion of the onscreen caller, but also the looks on the faces of other sad survivors and the encouragement to revisit the phone call for maximum dramatic effect. Meanwhile, Lucas's search for something to do in a crowded Thai hospital leads to him running around and recording the names of missing loved ones currently sought by ailing patients. He then runs around some more while yelling out their names, hoping to reconnect two separated souls. In Bayona's hands, this act of good samaritanism is wringed of its dramatic potential and reduced to one more shamelessly sentimental distractions.
Such is the case with most of The Impossible, post-tsunami attack. This is a supposedly impossible tale of a severed family finding each other again across a greatly devastated divide, so the potential for sappiness is clearly high. But the potential for quiet, contemplative drama is also present. Bayona simply seems so enamoured with the cinematic familiarity of recycled sentimentality that he's willing to settle for empty emotions. When it comes time for a metaphor about the "beautiful mystery" of dead or dying stars to rear its ugly head, it's clear that the movie has crossed the syrupy point of no return.
Oddly enough, while the performances are all compliant with the sentimentality, each actor feeding it in their own way, the acting itself is more of a highlight than a detriment. Watts is quite good in a demanding and punishing role that leaves her either floating through debris or clinging to life in a hospital bed. The sudden change from a physically active role to an inactive one gives her interestingly opposing shades of experience to work with. The kids are all pretty decent, with each of them managing to be relatively believable in the context of a harrowing journey. McGregor is the weakest link and the most susceptible to the sap, but for all the bad scenes he has, he still convinces as a downtrodden dad.
None of the performances are able to elevate the material above the syrupy space where Bayona has anchored it and that is the insurmountable problem. For everything the movie gets right, either in relatively commendable performances or absolutely phenomenal makeup effects, it can't rise up from its modest ambitions to tackle the truth of its story with dramatically fortified focus. The movie is seemingly always searching for a cliché it hasn't already dragged through the mud. And while he does the dragging with gusto, Bayona seems only capable of cheapening the drama. After all, he's clearly just waiting to reveal that skyward thrust he practically promises the whole way through. The force with which he tugs at our heartstrings rivals that of the tsunami. This is a tidal wave of treacle, eager to unleash a flood of tears. Well, will you settle for an eyeroll?
Yeah, the problem with this film is that a disaster of this magnitude befalling this family is already tragic and devastating by itself and yet Bayone et al feels the need to emphasize this even more hammering the viewer with utterly cheap and shameless tricks as to make it even more sentimental and it ends up being so manipulative it borders on the offensive.
No.
Yes.
The "ofensive" bullshit has been thoroughly debunked, you priest. You'd have a better target with that arrogance-filled thingie Haneke has made, but you'd never dare with an established auteur.
Yes? ...
Bayona makes clear his heartstring-tugging agenda from the very beginning of the movie ("this is a true story... TRUE STORY") and I actually think the first few scenes that lead up to the tsunami are among the worst of the whole picture, but he still could have eased off with the sentimentality later on and saved the picture to some extent. There are some beautiful and harrowing images here, plus as I said before, the acting is good, so this isn't all bad by any means. But instead, Bayona goes full force with the treacle, tossing in images of other survivors just looking sad in close-ups and dragging out the weepy phone conversation between Henry and his father-in-law and having Lucas run around the hospital looking for people to hug and then the shot of the little kid reunited with his dad while the score swells!!?! Ack! I'm choking on the syrup!
ETA: Erik beat me to the "yes" response!
Oh, I agree with lots of your review! The "No" was at affy and all the "I'm so deeply offended by this film" self-congratulatory bullshit.Yes? ...
Bayona makes clear his heartstring-tugging agenda from the very beginning of the movie ("this is a true story... TRUE STORY") and I actually think the first few scenes that lead up to the tsunami are among the worst of the whole picture, but he still could have eased off with the sentimentality later on and saved the picture to some extent. There are some beautiful and harrowing images here, plus as I said before, the acting is good, so this isn't all bad by any means. But instead, Bayona goes full force with the treacle, tossing in images of other survivors just looking sad in close-ups and dragging out the weepy phone conversation between Henry and his father-in-law and having Lucas run around the hospital looking for people to hug and then the shot of the little kid reunited with his dad while the score swells!!?! Ack! I'm choking on the syrup!
however you're like objectively wrong about many things. For instance, the phone scene happened like that. Unless you find reality offensive, which would be some big bullshit, there's no way you can find that offensive. Only if you want to, like, misguidedly try to show off how politically correct and unracist and wonderful you are?
Okay, haha, cool!
I am offended by bullshit reality! Well, okay, fair enough about the phone scene happening that way in real life. It just bothered me how the scene was shot with these closeups of other survivors that, at that point, felt unnecessary to me. Clearly tons of people were hit by this tragedy and I feel like Bayona's camera lingering on more sad faces is just another way of going for that quick shock of emotion instead of just focusing on Henry's experience. Plus, I found the acting a bit awkward in that scene, with the guy who becomes Henry's buddy never being particularly convincing and then McGregor struggling with his emotional explosion. If that's the way the scene happened in real life, then I respect Bayona for sticking to the facts, but I wish something as emotional as that had a more raw, wounded feel instead of being dressed up with a grab bag of sentimental cliches.
But I'm glad we agree on some stuff!
Your taste really has taken a nosedive this year. Since when are you so taken by emotional claptrap like this?
I will marshall all the forces of darkness to hound you to an assisted suicide - Peter Capaldi, In The Loop
The phone scene was, in many ways, the best and the worst scene in the movie for me. The best in the sense that McGregor was so good in it and it's the best acting moment in the film. The worst because when he's trying to find a phone to use he gets shut down by the American and then the benevolent Spaniard comes in as the Saint of Mobile Phones and saves the day by letting him use his cell. It's like Bayona's shout out to the fact that they original family is Spanish but since he has the subtlety of Uwe Boll it comes off so fucking awful.
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