I was initially let down by the ending, for both the reasons you cite and because it seemed out of character. But it makes perfect sense if you refer back to an opposite sequence that more or less immediately precedes it in the film. It's actually rather satisfying in retrospect.

Good one! Better yet, it fails as a boxing movie. Colossal : Gojira :: Fight Club : Rocky.

I didn't see any mention of "empowerment" in any of the handful of reviews I read, just some descriptions of the general arc of the plot. I think you're defining it incorrectly and thus seeing it where it doesn't exist. "Empowerment" in today's psychological jargon is not about finding a practical way to gain the…

Couldn't disagree more, and that's probably because I couldn't see any discernible "empowering message" at all, most likely because none exists. Realizing that the damage you're causing to yourself also damages everyone you come into contact with isn't "empowering", it's *sobering.* (Literally, too, here.) It is,…

One of the 10 best indie science fiction films of all time. It's very high on sheer entertainment, and just as high on metaphoric depth and complexity.

Perhaps the reason it "completely fails as a kaiju film" is that it's not remotely trying to be one.

When the hippy movement started, Bening's character is a 42-year-old married mother of a two-year-old son. What do you think?

Go ask for your money back. The sound was perfectly clear in my theater; I don't recall missing a word anywhere.

I had the exact same reaction: the two slight missteps were the scene between the two men taking too long (I thought it ended nicely), and the final sex scene being a long shot, from a voyeur's POV. But since Park was clearly capable of shooting from the character's POV (as he did earlier), I'll have to think about…

Casual bigotry, eh? Let me ask you a question: is "schvartze" necessarily a racial slur? My parents used it descriptively (along with "colored") instead of "Negro." Bigoted?

Dowd is using "shiksa" because that's the term the characters in the movie would have used. And by the 60's, the term (always simply Yiddish for "gentile woman") had lost nearly all of its pejorative force, as Jews ineracted more with gentiles. It's true that the phrase "he married a shiksa" was, in this era, still…

You should see the film, because it's pretty clear to me that he's not a narcissist at all. Begin by asking yourself: why was he toxic? He was not revealed as fundamentally duplicitous; what percentage of men would lie about something as mild as sexting in order to protect their wives and avoid a professional scandal?…

I went into this knowing nothing about YSL except that his name may be on on one of my shirts. Through the 1:45 mark, I still had no idea what made him tick as a human being, why he was important, or why his life would be considered remotely interesting. (Thankfully, the film is well enough directed that it wasn't…

Far from being simpler than The Matrix, I've described this movie as The Matrix squared. It may be the single most challenging sf puzzle movie of them all, and it's pretty massively underrated as a result.

Well, let me ask you a pair of telling questions.

Having now read all the comments, I'm wondering if this movie might not be an impossibly brilliant litmus test about how people feel about relationships. I think all but one poster believes that Real Ethan left with Fake / Ideal Sophie, even though a) that directly violates the Pronounced Theme of the movie that Ethan…

Folks are missing an obvious fact that they took great pains to establish. The Ideal Couple had incomplete knowledge of the lives of the Real (Ideal Ethan had to call his boss and friends to learn facts about him.). Real Ethan wanted Real Sophie — that is, in fact, the entire point of the movie — and would have…

One more thing, which is crucial, and I missed it the first time. These are not their MAJOR interests, their passions. The Mother has shown no interest in architecture. Ted has shown no interest in ending poverty, and he's about average as a music fan. Folks, they are not going to bore one another: each has a world to…

Marshall and Lilly have each had just one partner in their lives: each other.

2030 Ted's statement that the first version of La Vie en Rose *will always be* my favorite implies she's alive and well. As in, no future version could possibly top it. If she were gone, he'd be much likelier to just say "… is my favorite."