User Reviews

I've heard movies like this described rather pretentiously as "not spoon feeding you the story." There's a difference, though, in telling a story, and having a story loosely associated with a series of tangentially related washed out shots. Movies like this are very artistic. But I'm reminded of other art media which tell a story. Like poetry for instance. Imagine that you have a beautiful poem. Then someone randomly cuts out 75% of the words. What you're left with makes sense in the context of the missing pieces but by itself is an almost random collection of words. Those words might be descriptive and beautiful but they aren't cogent at all. When someone fills in the missing words, the reader may say "Oh, yes! It makes perfect sense and the fact that you tried to convey that idea incompletely makes you a genius!" I'm not that kind of person. I don't think you're a genius when you intentionally leave out part of your story or tell it out of sequence simply for art's sake. In fact, that maneuver is, by now, cliché. The first few films that experimented in partial story telling, forcing the cinematography to carry the film, may have been clever. At this point, however, it's lazy. It's a genre enjoyed almost exclusively by people who like to feel privileged and intelligent by "getting it." There's nothing really to get. It's an art film. It's meant to convey emotion, not a story. Anyone who "gets" the story is the one missing the point. These types of movies are marketed like regular movies which is dishonest. Hell, I just watched a trailer for it that seriously makes it look like an action thriller. The two minute trailer also easily managed to incorporate 90% of the film's dialogue (monologue). If it were an honest trailer, it'd have no ___logue whatsoever and would just be a series of washed out shots of a bikini clad female character who was never actually introduced and a guy running on a treadmill in a space station.

Stories have character development. They have a plot. They have a climax. They make you identify with the characters. Love had a character who changed, yes, but he didn't really develop. We were given glimpses here and there of his daily routine over the course of several years but it was basically the same scene, shot from different angles, for about 70 minutes or so. Realistically, the ending sequence could have happened 45 minutes earlier in the film and nothing would have been lost.

I didn't hate the movie but it did make me frustrated. I hung in there because I kept thinking there'd be a twist or resolution. Some kind of payoff. But in the end, it was a movie that spoke almost entirely in platitudes. It said a lot of very wise things that all seemed to mean nothing.

Sometimes I am like a moth to a flame when I see a poster covered with those awards all over them. "Winner, best international film, Siberia film festival!" I just can't resist checking them out. So, that leads me to watching Love… What a mess a movie. Someday I will learn my lesson. I didn't know anything about this movie but from the trailer it looked promising, even if it did seem to be a rip off of Moon. The premise is pretty simple. An astronaut is orbiting the earth on a space station. There is an undisclosed incident on earth and now the astronaut is trapped on the space station with no way to get home. Sounds interesting right? Nope. The movie bounces between the astronaut and another story involving a soldier during the Civil War. The soldier has been sent on a mission to investigate a mysterious object. Apparently the soldier left a diary that the astronaut has with him on the ship. The astronaut becomes enthralled with the story and with a bunch of old Polaroids that he finds. Eventually due to loneliness and boredom the astronaut starts having crazy hallucinations.

The movie for me was 90 minutes that felt like an eternity. It is a movie that doesn't really go anywhere. It is really just a prolonged music video for the band Angels & Airwaves who did the soundtrack. I would have preferred if they had just done a movie about the Civil War story. I think it would have been a much more interesting film. Love starts off fairly strong and dissolves into a mess of visuals and abstracts that made me understand why I had never heard of this movie. It is just not very good. Listen to the first line in the trailer below and I think you will get an idea of the type of movie that you are in for; "When all that is left is a simple shadow, what will we want it to say?" I want it to say "Pretentious drivel." If you are a fan of Angels & Airwaves then you may get some joy out of watching this but, I recommend everyone else go watch Moon instead. It is a much better film. Love gets 1 guy from me.

Decided to watch this on Netflix because the plot summary seemed good and because I'm a sucker for all those Indie movie awards on the covers. I will admit I was a bit lost through the most of the movie. It seemed as though the movie dragged on and didn't really go anywhere. I started thinking I should have listened to the 2.7 average rating on Netflix, but I was too far in and decided to finish. I ended up frustrated because I did not fully understand the movie and I did not believe it was simply trash as some of these other reviews have described. I like to appreciate the hard work that goes into making this form of entertainment and I love to support independent films. After reading some different views and opinions, I believe I may understand the film now. Hopefully if you are a bit lost as well, this might help; or I may be completely wrong.

The movie centers around Lee who is seen fighting in the Civil War at the beginning of the film. He is sent off to find some strange artifact. Fast forward to 2039 and Lee is the first person in 20 years aboard the International Space Station. After a few days (may have been more time) Lee loses contact, and a recorded message from Houston tells hints at something happening on Earth (so does a later scene that shows what could be explosions on the planet, followed by all the lights disappearing).

Time goes on and Lee starts losing his mind. He begins to talk to himself, and eventually finds a journal from his Civil War self. He becomes obsessed with the journal and begins drawing out what he reads all over the station. The journal stops when Lee finds the artifact, but he never wrote down what he saw. Eventually, future Lee loses hope and decides to leave the station saying he would rather die on Earth.

This is where the story gets weird and starts spinning each way without any sense of direction. It is never shown Lee unhooking from the wire holding him on to the station. However, it then shows him back in the station but with a beard that must have taken at least a year to grow. There's no way he went back in because the station did not have enough power to support him anymore, hence him leaving the station. The movie ends with him finding this server room, which to me seemed to be the memories of everyone. Someone is talking him throughout the end of the movie, and the artifact is shown to be an alien ship in a crater. However, the ship is then shown in orbit around Earth, and the voice welcomes Lee.

This is my thought on the movie, and hopefully it will help with the negative reviews. I believe Lee killed himself when he left the station. What happens after that I believe is his life "flashing before his eyes" sort of speaking. I think that when he died he joined consciousness with everyone else. Where they on that ship? Was it just their memories? I'm not sure, but there was a sense of happiness a the end, and you could hear someone tell him he was the last one. If you've ever studied "whacky" science you will understand. I think the movie is a play on social consciousness and how we are all one.

Pretty crazy stuff, I know. That's my take anyways. I don't believe the movie is as simple as it seemed. Just think it was a bit different and that no reason to hate it. Just need a broad mind and you need to think outside the box.

Sorry I just didn't feel this one. This movie let's you get to know the character only a little. A woman and a Brother with a new baby. He has some radio contact, sends and receives some data. He loses contact. Then tries halfheartedly to get it back and when he doesn't he gets a little excited. The reaction is not of a man stranded in space but that of a guy who missed a bus and has to wait for the next one. He does some drawings. He reads pages from a book he finds hidden behind equipment. Then makes some crafts with excess supplies. He hears some noise sees some lights and still doesn't show the emotions of a man stranded in space. The whole time he lacked emotion and quietly kept occupied and then the movie ends. WTF I wasted of an hour and twenty minutes so you don't have to.

Never has a film project worked so hard to eliminate as many elements so as to keep it from becoming a real story.

Its like a 90 minute trailer to a dream you had after eating too much pizza while watching Stanley Kubric's 2001.

And how dare they pretentiously call this movie "Love" It would be like me taking a crap and putting it in the Lourve and titling it, "self expression" If you want to tell us that we need human connection, then don't just make us watch a man go crazy in space. Art is art when it achieves its objective. This movie did not make me value human connection or realize it in any deeper way. It made me realize time is precious and to always check IMDb before watching movies with laurel film awards all over the cover.

OK so this films synopsis had me intrigued. I am a huge fan of realistic spaceflight films and of spaceflight/astronomy/astrophysics in general. I have recently seen 'Astronaut: The Last Push' which has a similar synopsis to this, i.e a man stranded alone in a damaged spacecraft trying to stay sane. If you have not seen that film I highly recommend seeing that instead of this as the central idea is more or less the same but that film has none of the glaring poorly researched problems that plague 'Love'.

So anyway before we begin a word on gravity and the lack of it. Gravity at the altitude of the ISS is actually 90 percent the strength it is at the earths surface. The effect of weightlessness (or micro-gravity to give it its technical name) is due to objects orbiting a celestial body travelling fast enough to remain in a constant state of free-fall. I.e they are falling to earth but travelling laterally (sideways) fast enough that the earth (being near spherical) falls away at the same rate. And they remain in that free-fall due to there being near no atmospheric drag at those altitudes until they perform a retrograde (slowing down) burn to reduce their speed below orbital velocity. Why is this important? We will get to that shortly.

So what were my biggest problems with this film?

1. There would be no perceivable gravity on board the Space Station. The protagonist would float around as would any objects not secured in some way. From the moment we are introduced to this situation I was like "hmmm he's sitting down(pointless in space)therefore there is gravity... OK well I'm sure they will explain this with a simple 'oh yeah good thing we invented the 'whatever'' line of dialogue".. Nope. Never gets an explanation. And even I, who having a massive interest in the field makes me particularly picky about these details, could have accepted an artificial gravity explanation (it is the future after all) taking up all of one line of dialogue, but no.

2. OK lets let it go that they sent him up alone. I mean, its an old rickety station and you don't want to risk to many lives. Sure lets let that go.. But my problem is that he has no method of returning to earth. What? Who the hell came up with this mission plan? He was going to a station they DON'T EVEN KNOW IS IN A HABITABLE CONDITION with no way of returning but to be collected by another mission??? This is awful awful researching on the part of the filmmakers. It literally makes no sense. Again could have been explained as maybe his return capsule being damaged but no. No explanation..

3. He's finally had enough and decides he wants to cut himself loose and fall back to earth... How exactly? Cutting the cord between him and the station will just leave him orbiting with the station forever. As i said above while travelling at orbital velocity and in the absence atmospheric drag he cannot simply 'fall back to earth'. He would need some kind of propulsion to fall below orbital velocity. This is most important because A TRAINED ASTRONAUT WOULD KNOW THIS!!! Again I cannot stress enough the lack of research that went into this film.

Obviously my review is biased at least in part by my knowledge of spaceflight and orbital mechanics but these are pretty basic things to research with 5 minutes on google. I'm actually letting an awful lot go (the 'fire' that he never puts out etc).

Personally even the 'meant to be stunning' ending was just awful. An absolute rip off of 2001 leads to the kind of CGI animation ending you might expect to see in a Nikelodeon ad break link..

I know some people found something to take away from this film and good on them, taste is not objective so I won't argue against whatever they found of value here but in my honest opinion this was an awful, awful film that simple steals a bunch of stuff from better films and puts it together without even the most basic of research.. Definitely Avoid.

An utter waste of time. This was nothing but an ego production... massaging someones attempts at writing and film making. While TECHNICALLY solid, there was NO story to be had, no conclusions and definitely no LOVE barring the grease spread so thoroughly around to get this piece made. (just check out all the credits and you can tell many, many people were schmoozed). I really don't care that it was made with a budget of $500 K, Clerks was made with just over $12 K and makes this look like a silk sow's ear.

Some of the visuals were nice and the camera work was solid but the movie fails on so many accounts I seriously don't know where to begin but I'll end it with this:

DON'T BOTHER.

Im giving this three but I'm not sure why even that high a rating. With the awards and all the festivals and the fact that its called "Love" I had some hopes this would be interesting, inspiring, touching on some divine message. It didn't. This ends up looking like pretentious crap, and like a long music video. It feels to me like its a film for intellectuals. In other words people with no spiritual understanding of life or real appreciation for what love really is. This film did nothing for me. It doesn't go anywhere. It deliberately vague in an attempt to provoke an awe of mystery. It doesn't. this technique is supposed to make the viewer think, "oh I don't get it I guess I'm just not cleaver enough to understand the profound message in this film". But that is a deceptive and contrived attempt that falls over easily because there's really nothing there in the end. This film lacks heart. I think thats the real problem here.. the director is one of the many automatons on this planet who don't lack intelligence but lack real empathy and a connection with a higher spiritual knowledge. Just my opinion.