Reviews

I was afraid this was going to be one long, boring horror movie. It turned out to be just the opposite. It was riveting from the beginning till the end. A far cry from a typical scary movie. The story appears to be non-linear at times due to the flashbacks that slowly give hints that nothing is as it seems. The way the narrative plays out reminds me a lot of the movie Hereditary. If you don't have any idea about Tibetan mysticism the movie might be confusing you. It was well done, good cinematography, quality editing job and the great use of music painted the whole thing with a sense of often impalpable unease and eeriness. Maybe it leaves some questions half answered, but that only adds to its mind twisting quality. In the end I really liked the movie bcs it left me with an unsettling, head scratching aftertaste.

In the awful flood of a decade of mediocre, shoot'em all films, the Star Wars that no longer resemble the franchise, the idiotic and generic super hero films this movie was surprisingly deep. To me, on the narrative and philosophical level it could very well measure up to Interstellar.

It is not perfect, I've seen people bringing up some doubtful astrophysical concepts, the slow pace. Yes, to a certain extent this may be true. However, this movie asks deeper questions that can disturb our narrow minded, popular science addicted, devoid of imagination, intellectually lazy and immature, VFX and action-shooting driven expectations. It is a beautiful, thought provoking, paradigm and imagination challenging movie. A visual contemplation of possibilities and ramifications. Not at all naive or shallow. VFX was very good, cinematography as well. As for characters and acting. Well, some depth does lack. Characters could be more dimensional, but IMHO the good acting makes up for that. In my opinion it is not easy to portray in a realistic fashion confused, opinionated, highly specialized experts, yet sincere and truth seeking scientists in a documentary like fashion. For example, Matt Damon on Mars portrayed a scientist or a botanist much less convincing than those portrayed in this movie. I must say this was a refreshing view of the idea of an extraterrestrial contact, away from warp drives and our belief that the alien intelligence just has bigger rockets and guns than us.

To me it was brilliant in asking meaningful questions about the Universe and the different intelligence forms than ours. A good mixture of Contact, Arrival, Interstellar and Space Odyssey ... as tho the script was written by Arthur C. Clarke.

If you are mature enough and search for more substance in a movie and don't mind the smart play of imagination and asking existential and philosophical questions and possible outcomes this movie presents, you'd want to see it.

We all have our specific affinities when it comes to certain a genre. So, if your bar is set at Star Wars and Star Trek (which are ok movies in their own right), you may not find this move quite interesting.

At first I was content with the cinematography and the story. It got me sucked in feeling cosy and poetic about the choreography of killing people in large numbers. This film has a covert aura that wants to make you feel good about seeing hundred bad guys shot in an aesthetic manner. I realized I was enjoying how the lead character was shooting people skilfully and with style. There is no artistic aspiration or audacious in-depth exploration of the drama of life. In 'Kill Bill' maybe there was an attempt of that. In John Wick it is just a guy that uses his guns like a ninja his swords.

From the cinematographic viewpoint, however, this is a film well done.