Reviews

This movie clocks in at just short of forever, or at least that's what it feels like watching it. It desperately wants to be Argento's Suspiria (and as noted, does a better job remaking Suspiria than Guadagnino ever did), right down to the music, but it doesn't really work very well, for a number of reasons.

The first and foremost is that none of the characters are remotely likeable or sympathetic, making it very hard to become invested in anything they do. In Suspiria, the characters were often simple, but they were immediately comprehensible and often sympathetic. If you didn't like them, their actions at least could make some sense, even if you weren't aware of the subtler motivations that would only come into play near to the end of the movie. With Masks, most every character is suspect and very unlikeable. Plenty of characters only appear to be extremely hard to like, and there are so many unpleasant characters that they all start to run together very quickly.

Additionally, there's no real buildup of suspense at all. Violence occurs with no real reason behind it, and we don't even know the characters well enough to be invested in them. It's just a vignette around violence, and it doesn't add anything to the story. The setting is weird and unpleasant, but it's also stupid and meaningless.

Ultimately, the whole film is pointless. It could have been ten minutes long and accomplished the same thing. In fact, it probably would have been better, because then the threadbare premise wouldn't have been stretched out so thin. There were some decent ideas in there, but none ended up done well. The acting, whether you know German or not, is very questionable and uneven, which doesn't help matters.

The sets and costumes were good. The makeup and style were generally good. There was also a lot of really engaging photography. The music, though derivative of Goblin's classic soundtrack, is well done and just distinctly different enough to work.

But the rest of the production really lets all of the good down. I've said it before, and I'll say it again: just a bunch of unpleasant people does not make for good horror. There was exactly one line, where the main character lost her temper close to the beginning, where someone got exactly what he deserved, but that was it. It would have been much more interesting and enjoyable if it had actually explored the character developing more, which it really didn't do.

All in all, it's not a movie I can recommend. It may be a better take on Suspiria than the pathetic excuse for a remake that deserves to be forgotten, but that doesn't make it really a good movie. They tried, but as with many films these days, especially homages, they would have done better to keep it brief and do a short film instead...and only then develop it if there's enough material to do so.

Cultural stereotypes abound in this test of patience from France, acted so broadly that it makes the Three Stooges look subtle. Vanessa Paradis is charming in her own way, but she can't carry this poorly-composed dumpster fire, even if it is beautifully-shot and has a gorgeous soundtrack from M83.

Make no mistake: this is a movie more about a failed lesbian love affair than it is anything else, and it's about as enjoyable as watching a series of hate crimes. Which is to say, not at all. It's unforgivably boring, and for a French film and a film dealing with gay pornography as a focus, it's also terrified of actually committing to the topic. There's barely any nudity to speak of, and certainly nothing surprising or even approaching shocking. If you're going to make a lurid horror film about a violent killer in the very sketchy territory of porn production -- especially gay porn -- you have to actually commit to it. Real giallo didn't exactly shy away from nudity or sex and, even if most of the movies weren't much count, they at least could keep an audience engaged with things happening, whether or not they led to a satisfying conclusion.

But speaking as a gay man and someone who has seen quite a lot of both French cinema and gay cinema (not to mention giallo), this was less than mediocre at best and incredibly offensive at worst. All in all, it's boring, and that's one of the worst things something supposed to entertain can be. Inane, pretentious, unhappy, unentertaining, unamusing, and incredibly superficial -- that's this movie. When it's at its lowest, it comes off as a homophobic parade of poorly-written and poorly-realized nonsense. When it's at its best, it relies on visuals and score...which makes the story pointless.

It's a shame, since the same director also did You And The Night, which was a fantastic film. You And The Night worked because it was a fantasy, with a tremendous magic to the thread of its story, and its at-times incoherent quality seemed dreamlike and engaging. It's a much better choice to watch than this turd, and it's also given a soundtrack by the brilliant M83. Watch it instead.

And not only is the tagline a lie, it's trying to bring in exactly the wrong audience for this movie.

The movie itself is beautifully shot, the music is very well done and varies between trance-chill and unsettling, and its choices to suddenly stop sounds abruptly are appropriate. It's nice to see less of the jump scare approach.

But this movie is a mess. It prefers to just show us things that it doesn't really bother developing, so that we will respond to the imagery. That might work for some, but I'd prefer to have at least some basic idea of what's going on. The unease in this is achieved primarily through incoherency and an utter lack of any effort to convey anything to the audience.

And more than that, it's annoying. No character is very interesting or has much depth to them. None of the main characters are remotely likeable or particularly sympathetic. The performances of a level half of the cast feel like they're acting in a completely different movie, and they don't understand the script either. It's a kind of awkwardness that seems to convey nothing quite so strongly as the entire cast didn't understand what they were supposed to be acting. The awkward scene probably was really awkward in real life, since no human beings ever communicate like anyone in this film.

It's also, sad to say, boring. It doesn't keep its levels of tension consistent, it doesn't maintain the suspense, and it gives you absolutely no reason to want to believe in it. It's especially irritating to cut between characters and then seem to just be done with them, in favor of far less interesting ones. The writing just makes you feel like it wasted your time, which appropriately is exactly what it does.

The problem is, this movie could have been decent. It had a decent cast, quite strong photography and imagery, an evocative soundtrack, and it seems to indicate that at least it had the seed of an idea, if not any particularly good ideas throughout. It has some unsettling, weird shots and some creepy imagery and implications, but overall it's not scary, it's not interesting, and it is not, least of all, coherent or comprehensible. It's just a collection of events.

If you like any of the actors, you might be distracted for its runtime. If you like solid visual aesthetics, you should definitely give a look. But if you're looking for a scare or for a story, look elsewhere. As a movie, it's not good and really doesn't justify its pretensions.

Lord love a duck, but this is a bad movie all on its own. To call it Suspiria just makes it worse.

The writing and direction come off as both never having seen Suspiria and not at all understanding the story...which is laughably sad, since Suspiria's story is written in the manner of a fairy tale. It's simple as can be.

This film, however, manages to completely mess it up in every way possible. Changes are made, arbitrarily and needlessly, to the point where it's absolutely unidentifiable as Suspiria; no part of it has anything to do with the real thing, aside from some similar names. It's also remarkably misogynistic, as well as being misanthropic, which the original, despite being made forty years ago, was not.

It obsesses with dance and yet doesn't do dance at all remotely well. Yet we as the audience are supposed to recognize the things they do as graceful and authentic, even that the lead Dakota Johnson -- who was terrible, and an even worse dancer than she is an actress -- trained over a year to achieve just the right look and understanding of dance...when she doesn't even do correct spotting, a fundamental aspect of dance, within the first half-hour.

And the choreography is so bad. It's embarrassing, laughable, and just execrable. It's not artistic, it's not graceful at all, and it looks like something a group of teenagers threw together to celebrate something they clearly don't understand but vehemently insist they do.

Everything about this film is wrong. It's the definition of "tryhard", like a little brother who lives in his older sibling's shadow and tries to change things to their diametric opposite extreme in order to distinguish himself. The acting is shockingly bad, though that may be due to poor direction. The photography is also pretty and atrocious, in turns. You'll see a shot and think "that's pretty", and within five minutes, there will be at least one shot that looks like someone shot it on their phone, complete with manual run-ups to zoom. Cheap and amateurish.

The soundtrack, as much as I wanted to look forward to it, is also not good. But then, neither is the sound production. It's altogether too quiet most of the time, or it's so fuzzy that it becomes impossible to understand. Not that them having huge stretches in German, which they don't subtitle, helps the coherency of the film; the extent to which the viewer feels alienated and just plainly bored is made far worse by this tendency.

The visuals are bland and boring as they are patently stupid.

There is literally no reason to watch this film calling itself by the title of something it's not, when you could watch a shorter, less pretentious, better-acted, more visually entertaining, better-directed, more coherent film with far better music, made forty years ago. This movie is a chore, and it doesn't deserve the attention for half of its runtime. This is exactly the kind of "reimagining" or "homage" everyone fears for something they love: a hackjob made by a pretentious ass who doesn't even understand what they're doing or what they're supposedly paying homage to in the first place.

It doesn't deserve the title, or the names of any of the characters...which are incidentally its only resemblance to Dario Argento's classic horror masterpiece. Is it perfect? Nah. But even Mother of Tears was better than this piece of trash.

That's basically my reaction to the ending. So that's it?

"A lot of pointlessness that thinks it's funnier than it is" makes up most of this film. There were a few points where I laughed, a few where I smiled, but it isn't a good movie and doesn't even make a good point. It's just a bunch of people doing scenes that don't really fit well together. It's not a coherent story, and it's not really a coherent movie; it's not even a cohesive artistic statement, because it's all over the place. There's nothing in it that you can pick out from all of the chaos.

And that's a shame, because the photography is good. The actors are good. I wanted to like the movie, just as I wanted to like the characters. But it tries too hard to be likable and fails even harder for when it succeeds. It uses people's horrible deaths as punchlines, but it doesn't keep up that tone, it just expects us to laugh when that turns up out of nowhere. It's not funny, and there's not a skillful balance of the heavy and the light, so it ends up being a depressing, pointless, incoherent slog of nothing much. If you have a laugh, it's going to be followed up at some "unexpected" turn by something horrific and depressing. Except it becomes incredibly predictable after the first time, so much that you could set your clock by how invariably it happens every time.

By the end, it's very tiring. You're ready for it to be over, and it considerably overstays its welcome. There really wasn't any way it could have ended well, but especially not with such a poorly-written story and not very good direction. The photography was about the only thing well-directed about it. This is, put simply, a bad movie. That doesn't mean it's without its charm or good points. It just means that it is not, by any stretch of the imagination, well-made, well-presented, or a work possessing any particular level of quality or excellence.

Evidently, I'm not the kind of person who likes John Waters. I don't believe he's some kind of brilliant creator, just someone following his urges and making films he wants to make. If he likes them, then that's probably enough for him, and that's good; some artists are like that. It doesn't make it a good movie, though, and it makes the constant references to other "artiste" filmmakers all the more annoying, as if they're supposed to lend this gravitas or hilarity. They don't. I just want to watch a Pasolini film instead of this. I'd almost rather watch Fassbinder, except he's about as depressing and difficult to like.

And I'll admit, I didn't like all of Pasolini's films either, and I don't think he's for everyone. I'm just not sure this film was for anyone. It's essentially meaningless, and it's unbelievable at every turn, yet it doesn't engage in the kind of fantasy that becomes wondrous or makes the audience want to be a part of it. It's just implausibly miserable and stupid, and that, to me, is worthy of contempt.

As much as I liked Melanie Griffith in this, and as much as I do think it shows her natural charisma as an actress, I couldn't find it in me to like the movie. Aside from a few jokes that you could easily edit down into a five-minute clip video, it's not worth watching this. And the jokes are so obvious and out-of-place that you would miss nothing by seeing them without any buildup or context, because there's no buildup or context when they appear in the movie itself.

It's a pity they didn't play the song "Is That All There Is?" at the end. That would've at least been witty.

"Titus Andronicus" is objectively a terrible mess of a play, and it's a good reminder to anyone that Shakespeare was not all great, nor was he always well-received. It's his first major tragedy, and it shows; it's a disaster, with little to redeem or recommend it. Similarly, this film is a disaster, with little to redeem or recommend it.

Taymor is an unquestionably talented and skilled artist, but she had not come fully enough into her own style and ability while doing this film. Excellent actors like Jessica Lange and Anthony Hopkins are wasted in directionless roles that are clumsily moved from one point to another, and very little connects anything into coherency of any kind. The movie comes off mainly as extremely self-indulgent, full of things that only Taymor wanted to see, and nothing much else. It smacks of a vanity project, making it all the easier to resent due to the waste of great actors. At its best, it comes off as clunky, aping Peter Greenaway's vastly superior work on his adaptation Prospero's Books.

The thing about Greenaway is that even in an adaptation of a simple enough play of Shakespeare's, he managed to bring a different perspective and vast sensory engagement. Taymor, here, shuffles through an intolerably bad play and brings nothing at all novel to the table, but every part of the production acts like it's something never before seen. Even Reign: The Conqueror was a far better production along these same fundamental storytelling lines, bringing so much new and engaging even if elements of its story were not particularly good. Closer to the material, Derek Jarman's take on "The Tempest" also brought modern elements and accessibility to an aged work and proved that Shakespeare could still be daring and even avant-garde, hundreds of years later.

It's unimaginable that anyone could really enjoy this, especially as it vastly overstays its welcome at an over-two-hours running time. None of the characters are sympathetic, and the only slightest charm brought to any of the proceedings comes from the actors...neither direction nor script contribute much of anything to the proceedings. Frankly, starting off with an obnoxious modern child and clashing with the pseudo-historical setting of the story was a massive mistake. Don't cultivate resistance from your audience straight off the bat, not in "Titus Andronicus" -- they're going to hate the characters and the story anyway, and irritating them from minute one is a poor choice.

It's admirable to have the ambition that this adaptation takes. It's just that Taymor is only ambitious enough to tackle the project, not enough to actually do anything with it. Her anachronistic touches are lazy and don't work most of the time, as well as taking away what little meaning the play originally had with its specific context. She's simultaneously too married to the play and not attached enough to it, in favor of what she imagines is a dazzling artistic message. The problem here is that most people never experience "Titus Andronicus", and that's because it's one of Shakespeare's absolute worst: cartoonish, clumsy, laughable, and a base attempt to crowd-please. But she never manages to bother making the story accessible to an audience likely to be unfamiliar with it, made even more difficult by literally none of the characters being written sympathetically or even interestingly. It's every bit as poor in her presentation, because even the best actors can't pull something out of so much nothing. It's still hilariously bad, even in its most dramatic, tragic moments, and it's not a joke people are missing the humor of or a tremendous wit: it's just a poorly-written play that fails in everything it sets out to do.

The production overall suffers, as no version of this I could find had any decent sound to it. Lines are mumbled and drowned out in parts, blathered incomprehensibly in others. The soundtrack dwarfs everything else sometimes, and at other times it barely registers. Whoever was responsible for sound, I hope they've learned how to do actual sound production since 1999. Likewise, costumes are as easy to criticize as any of Taymor's well-known work: they're either lazy and boring or ridiculous and impractical, but not in an engaging enough manner to forgive them. They all also scream "costume", no matter what the scene or character.

If you want to watch a good Shakespeare-inspired film, watch Prospero's Books. If you want to watch Taymor do Shakespeare well, watch her version of The Tempest. If you want to watch a good, straightforward adaptation of Shakespeare, watch the Zeffirelli Romeo and Juliet. But under no circumstances should you watch Titus. It will cure you of your delusions about Shakespeare's greatness and, if you have any affection for the actors involved, depress or anger you with the resentment of someone doing nothing so much as wasting their time. It's a waste of these actors' time, and it's a waste of the viewers' time. And that, especially in art or entertainment, is unforgivable.

I'll admit, it started out interesting. The pace was quick and plenty happened on the screen; it seemed to relish its sleazy circumstances, and the visuals were engaging enough to keep up interest. There was genuinely some really good photography and visual direction...unfortunately, that's where the good part ends.

This is one of the most laughably incoherent films I've ever seen, and I've seen some real turkeys in my life. By the time everything is laid out, it has a sad, perfunctory feel that not only doesn't make sense, but the killer is just some pathetic chump you won't recognize. If you're like me, you'll be left wondering...who was that guy? It doesn't help that the movie is filled with people who look similar enough to be confusing.

Several plot points are introduced, then dropped without a word. A number of worthless coincidences pop up too, which are likewise without any contribution to the story and its development, ultimately. A variety of characters parade across the screen, many of which never make the slightest contribution to either the story or the enjoyment of the movie.

The worst thing the film does is, it takes three of the most interesting characters and, in a move signaling nothing so much as complete desperation, kills them off-screen and then still keeps trying to play it for suspense. It's not only not suspenseful, it arrives at about the hour mark, where things should be tightening up for the final confrontation and resolution. Instead, it just drags on and on, boring to the last...that is, when it's not utterly confusing.

The last girl in this is woefully incompetent. She manages only to do useful things when it ultimately doesn't matter. She can't even slide down a banister! She's easily one of the least interesting or well-done characters in the whole thing, and she spends most of her time doing stupid things that are completely meaningless.

In fact, most of the people in this are about the same. That's probably why it's so easy to confuse them; everyone is a total idiot. It's impossible to care about the situation even slightly. Also, nice magic window there, which apparently looks out on whatever it needs to at the moment, regardless of what perspective it should have.

This movie is a waste of time. At first, it seemed almost like a hidden gem that would set some tropes for later slasher films to follow, but it just unwound into a sorry excuse for a giallo that wasn't even good for one of those. The contrived explanation at the end came off as incredibly awkward and forced, and the last try at a "is it or isn't it" scare was just pathetic.

Don't waste your time with this. There's not even any reason for the film to be called "torso", except for maybe the fact that there were so many naked ones on display. Not that it was titillating either. This tries to be something new and present an exciting twist on something that was, by its time, well established; it failed at both.

I grew up in a time when this would have actually been shown on television; they did an astounding job of making everything look and feel authentic. Every bit of the video looked like it could have come right out of the time period it was trying for. Bravo! Some of the parts weren't entirely accurate, but most of that was either for comedic effect, dramatic effect, or simply being able to be understood. Audio distortion on VHS recordings of the time might interfere with actually watching and enjoying the movie. I understand the choice made.

You know what the best part of it was? The inanity. The mundane quality of it. The commercials were perfect. The news broadcasts were absolutely flawless. Everything was so down to earth and believable that it made the whole thing even more unsettling. It actually scared me a little. That never happens with horror these days.

It was profoundly easy to believe in, and it never really presented anything that made it hard to swallow as an actual broadcast. I have to applaud the tremendous effort put into this production for all of the variety of things happening in it: commercials, the haunted house special, the news segments...that had to have taken a huge amount of work, and it really paid off.

Great job! This production is really fantastic. I found it suspenseful, genuinely frightening, and one of the very few "retro" productions that actually manages to keep its period immersion consistent throughout. This would be great to have on during your Halloween party, but it's also enjoyable to watch on its own, especially with others who can appreciate the effort.

I wanted to give this a chance. I really did. The introductory sequence alone should give any prospective viewers an accurate idea of how they'll feel about this, followed by the inexplicable, disorientingly asinine introduction of the protagonist, surrounded by highly unprofessional, aggressively self-aggrandizing histrionic buffoons clearly attempting to play the heels of the piece until proper villains are introduced.

Save yourself the trouble. It's not worth it. You can even tell from the markedly different quality of sound between scenes, ludicrous cutting between shots, and highly questionable choices that this was an experiment and probably meant more for the families and friends of those who produced it than an actual commercial audience.

I missed this one at the cinema and I'm glad I did. The main character Laine is so flat and utterly unlikeable, and not particularly well-portrayed. It's impossible to feel anything but contempt for her, as she annoys her friends and sister and puts everyone in danger for her inane impulses. It would be different if the character were a strongly-written and robustly-portrayed one, but as the focal protagonist, it causes the film to fall apart around her. It's not solely the actress's fault, but she nonetheless does a poor job; there was some material there for her to work with, which she failed to do.

The story is just poor all around, though. Not only is it boring, but it doesn't really feel compelling at all. It's difficult to care about any of the characters, and while some of the acting may be poor, it's more a fault of the flaccid script. It's shot like a typical teen drama, but there isn't even the exaggerated angst and nonsense to give at least some laughable amusement, since it's really trying to be a horror movie.

It's just not good. The characters and setting don't draw the viewer in, and ultimately it's hard to care with such bland characters and poor portrayals, especially on the part of Laine. A "talking board" story could be interesting, even gripping or scary...just not here. Part of what is required for that is for the main character not to be an insufferable ass, and that's true in most horror. If the viewer doesn't care if the character lives or dies or, even worse, actively wishes they'd buy the farm, then the film has failed in its chosen genre.

Ouija definitely fails on every respect. It's not even worth B-movie classification. The only good part about it is Robyn Lively, and she's in the movie for about two minutes total. Just watch a better movie: Teen Witch, starring Robyn. At least it'll make you smile because it actually tries and she has real charisma, unlike anyone in Ouija.

This is one I always kind of hesitated to watch and ended up finding reasons not to sit down and just watch it. But when I finally did...wow. I wish I hadn't.

Freshman Orientation (the better of the two titles it was best known as) is one of those movies that you watch and you can see that there were some good ideas and maybe even some good intentions in there, but literally none of them is even remotely well-realized in the resulting movie. While there may be points later where it seems to pay off, it takes too long to get there, doesn't make up for the time wasted, and really isn't worth the extremely unpleasant journey.

It takes every opportunity to toss out offensive epithets, unfunny attempts at gutter humor, and caricatures that the main audience probably wouldn't recognize. If you do recognize the characters they're supposed to be...you'll be offended at how poorly they're done. There's so much comedic potential here, it's just never brought to a point where it's funny. It could have been a fantastic satire and commentary on these types of people we all know and have met, but it failed in every respect.

And while I'm not saying low-brow gutter jokes are inappropriate -- college frat settings are perfect for that -- it takes a special kind of failure to fail at that kind of humor. How can you miss on that? Gutter humor is made to amuse the lowest common denominator!

The whole affair is so abominably poorly-done that it's really hard to figure out who you're supposed to care about, as the audience. All of the characters are horrible, stupid, or in some way completely unsympathetic. They seem to be going out of their way at every moment to be hard to like. At no point will you ever think "that character seems like somebody I'd like to be friends with" unless you are a psychopath.

When you get down to it, perhaps the largest and greatest problem this movie suffers from is that it has no audience. If you're a fan of "fun frat" style movies, you'll have no fun at all with this movie. If you're gay or lesbian, you'll find this movie unpleasantly ugly and offensive, as well as annoyingly smug and self-satisfied, with no reason for it to be. Audiences that are here for fraternity silliness and boobs (which the film does provide) won't want to experience the piled-on homophobia and hate, and they won't recognize most of the cartoonish caricatures. Audiences familiar with the hardship of being gay and out probably won't find any entertainment in experiencing one unpleasantness after another related to it that strike a little too close to home, without any real comedy that manages to work balancing it out.

Anyone else will find it difficult to watch, much less enjoy, a film that has zero likable characters, zero jokes that actually work, and zero fun. Please, watch something else. You will regret the time you spent in this horrible abomination that wastes what few decent actors it gets on something that I can't imagine they were too proud to put in their portfolio.

A friend recommended this one to me, and it sat in my list for a good long while. But I started to watch it on impulse and found myself laughing so much. There were a few jokes that didn't work, but the overwhelming majority of them were brilliant, and overall this was the kind of offbeat comedy that I would rank up with Heathers...which obviously it took one or two inspirations from!

The performances are strong across the board, the dialogue is snappy and feels not only natural (which is amazing in such an almost surreal film at times), but also extremely clever. It's rare to find such a gem of a movie that is not only insightful and moving, but also hilarious and ridiculous. It never takes itself too seriously...just seriously enough to make you think, and then it's all fun again. But it does such an excellent job of everything that it's easy to love. You can easily forgive a couple of missed laughs when you end up laughing so much more, and even getting a little warm and fuzzy feeling. Not to mention hot guys all over the place!

At the end of the day, this not only deals with serious issues, but does it well and in a hilarious way. It raises questions that should be raised, and it's a lot of fun. I think this is a film that everyone should watch, because honestly it has the right idea in every way. Bravo.

It's amazing how many people have jumped on the Ti West bandwagon. Reminds me of the story about the emperor's new clothes. This is by no means a good movie, nor is it particularly watchable. The direction is lazy, the premise patently stupid, and it's basically the kind of film where nothing really happens. Ever. There's a predictably stupid ending too, and you'll expect it.

The framing show idea was cute, but it unfortunately also suffers from lasting far too long for what it is. It's like he's never seen a television show before; even in the 60s, those sequences did not take that long and did not drag that long.

The whole experience feels like someone who has tried to make a film despite never having seen one, only heard basically what it's supposed to be like. As a result, it feels like it goes on for hours at a time, because the pacing is terrible, the acting is unexceptional, the sound engineering is nonexistent -- actors mumble all the time, but the sound effects and music are top volume -- and overall it's something that can't even be enjoyed as a sort of homage. But it's not even that. It's basically just a terrible movie from the late 60s/early 70s, except it was made now. Kind of like House of the Devil.

The Innkeepers is so far the only Ti West anything that has been watchable, and it really wasn't that great. Certainly not excellent enough to justify the blind adoration so many seem to have for him in reviews and website comments. But this one? This was just boring. I couldn't even deal with having it on as background noise, it actually just bored the bejeezus out of me no matter what. And at the end of the day, if your horror movie is boring above all, you have pretty disastrously failed in that genre.

It was okay.

Gloria Swanson stole every scene she was in, and her expressive slightly overacting perfectly reflected her character, a performer from an age where vivid facial emotion was crucial in the absence of spoken dialogue. Eric von Stroheim plays an understated role and provides a strong, often silent presence. And William Holden is pretty, but not much else.

Honestly, the only person who is remotely sympathetic or identifiable is Swanson's character of Norma Desmond, and the rest are fairly awful, aside from Stroheim's Max, who is basically very interesting scenery; I was pretty sad to reach the end and feel that everyone had basically come away with more or less just desserts. Holden's character was especially difficult to like and seemed to choose, at any given time, the worst and most idiotic possible choice of action.

Was this Wilder's attempt at self-parody? Some parts of it would seem to be more satirical than serious, and the whole thing was entirely over the top. It could work as a Gothic tongue-in- cheek work, something like the Addams Family meets the silent age of film, which had aged past its prime.

Perhaps it's just that the premise and the characters that populate it cannot really be seen the way they might have been in 1951. Desmond and Max's pathos and need for love and companionship juxtaposed with their isolation in a decaying yet still darkly splendid palace cannot fail to draw sympathy and interest. But Holden's Joe is just a stupid schmuck with a pretty face who never does anything right and was a poor choice for a protagonist.

Ultimately it's hard to feel anything for him, though part of that may be the truly asinine choice to begin a film knowing your protagonist is...well, see for yourself. Or don't. It's good for a watch. I don't think I'll ever need to see it again.