Frank Longo Member since Nov 18th 2003 86693 posts
Sat Sep-09-17 03:04 PM
"Molly's Game (Sorkin, 2017)"
Um, reviews from TIFF are absolutely through the roof. Calling it Chastain's Oscar flick, calling it Sorkin's best crowd-pleaser since Few Good Men, calling it the best poker movie ever.
8. "It's my favorite written Sorkin thing since Charlie Wilson's War" In response to Reply # 0
or Moneyball
and honestly cause Chastain and Idris are such beautiful humans and great actors, they made his usually mechanical dialogue flow
over all in terms of direction it could've looked better and moved more dynamically. very little was done with the stakes of the poker games though
Yet, I was invested from jump.
thematically, a very odd thing occurs: the white girl can do no wrong narrative or the manic pixie white girl movie, where instead of her being the protagonist's flawed desire, she is the narrator of her own world. also the Freudian subtext with her psychologist pop, F O H
lastly, Jessica Chastain is a stunning fucn women. Like gah damn she bad
9. "there is a scene towards the end of this movie..." In response to Reply # 0 Fri Feb-23-18 03:21 PM by The Analyst
that is in contention for the most cringeworthy scene from all of 2017, at least in terms of how outright cornball it is. It's so Sorkin it hurts. (Yes, I'm talking about the park bench scene with Costner.)
Has good some good moments. The opening scene was great. Chastain is unsurprisingly excellent. Filmmaking is merely pedestrian most of the time, though. Looks about on par with a made-for-network-TV movie. Elba's big monologue at the end was unintentionally comical to me (despite his very valiant delivery), mostly because of how cliche it was.
(MILD SPOILER: The whole case against Molly hinging on a misunderstanding between her name and slang for ecstasy was borderline lol-worthy to me...)
Oh, Michael Cera was miserably miscast. Miserably.
And it's a little strange that a movie that is ostensibly about a self-made woman controlling her own destiny and exerting some power over powerful men...doesn't have a room for a single speaking role for any other women. Like, there are two female characters with bit parts (an unnamed poker dealer and Elba's daughter) who share about 1 scene each with Chastain. And that's it. This is situation where a female filmmaker would have surely brought a more interesting perspective to the movie.
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