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Post by KAMALARAMBO: BOOMSHAKALAKA!!! on Sept 1, 2014 16:35:46 GMT -5
I just watched this super late last night/early this morning. Good God! It's a very well made film and the performances are great, but it's one of the most depressing movies I've ever watched. Particularly tough if you know someone who is dying of cancer or I'd imagine much, much worse if you actually have cancer. The only movie I think that is more depressing than this one is The Elephant Man.
So it is definitely worth a watch, but it is a tough one.
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Bobeddy
Bill S. Preston, Esq.
Made a Terrible Mistake
Posts: 15,143
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Post by Bobeddy on Sept 1, 2014 17:25:06 GMT -5
I found the movie incredibly frustrating. Shaliene Woodley was really good in it, Willem Dafoe is the highlight but the movie is completely hobbled by Ansel Elgort as Augustus.
Augustus as a character is completely unbelievable. Everything the character says is either insightful or motivational or a joke and it never sounds natural. It comes off as prepared and rehearsed, to the point that I couldn’t figure out whether Elgort was just a poor actor or if he was fantastic and Augustus was meant to be trying to trick Hazel the whole time.
Obviously the story is built upon Augustus and Hazel’s relationship meaning the viewer needs to care about the two of them in order to care about the story. I cared about Hazel but I couldn’t care about THEM because the Augustus character prevented this from happening. In the movie they mention the idea of hamartia, meaning a fatal flaw. By making the character flawless they end up making him completely unrealistic and unrelatable. Paradoxically this faultlessness ends up making him the movie’s greatest fault. Augustus becomes the fatal flaw.
Having read the book and really liking it (and liking Augustus because he's actually not treated infallible), I wanted to like this movie but ultimately the way they handled the Augustus character killed any investment I had in the main story.
(Most of this is copied from a review I wrote, so this rant was about 90% pre-prepared)
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Post by "Gentleman" AJ Powell on Sept 1, 2014 18:24:45 GMT -5
My sister decided to watch it alone a couple of nights ago. She came into the living room 2 hours later in floods of tears blubbering about "leg cancer" and choosing who hurts you.
So yeah, doesn't sound like my cup of tea.
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Post by MC Blowfish on Sept 1, 2014 18:46:39 GMT -5
I want to read the book and maybe see the movie. My wife read it and she unleashed a flood of tears at the end of the book. It was very hard for her since I had just got done with my battle with cancer, so she kind of took it a little more personal.
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Post by Milkman Norm on Sept 1, 2014 18:55:43 GMT -5
I balled my eyes out at the end of the book.
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Post by Rumble McSkirmish on Sept 1, 2014 21:18:00 GMT -5
I haven't read the book or watched the film, but I still can't wrap my head around the fact that the book was written by the same happy go lucky John Green from those numerous youtube videos. Maybe his novels are the outlet for his angst?
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Post by Raskovnik on Sept 2, 2014 0:25:16 GMT -5
I did not like the book so I have yet to see the movie.
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Post by "Evil Brood" Jackson Vanik on Sept 2, 2014 11:57:03 GMT -5
Everyone said I would cry while watching the movie. I told myself I wouldn't. I did anyway. Damn you John Green! (seriously, loved the movie...)
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Post by tigermaskxxxvii on Sept 2, 2014 14:46:12 GMT -5
I'm not a big novel reader (I'm more of a non-fiction reader myself, the only fiction I tend to read is comic books) and even if I was it doesn't like something I would read. And the movie is not something I would watch (willingly). But that's ok, it's not a crime for authors to write books and screenwriters to write movies that don't appeal to me. That being said, in one of the trailers where Hazel says something about how she will emotionally destroy Augustus and Augustus responded by saying something how that he would be honored for her to do that to him, my first thought hearing that was "Oh, f*** you!!!" (basically Patton Oswalt's brother's reaction to some sappy line from Jerry Maguire from Patton' Finest Hour special/album).
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Deleted
Deleted Member
Posts: 0
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Post by Deleted on Sept 2, 2014 14:57:23 GMT -5
looks like a cry-bait movie, not my thing.
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Brood Lone Wolf Funker
Ozymandius
Got fined anyway. Possibly a Moose
James Franco is the white Donald Glover
Posts: 61,212
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Post by Brood Lone Wolf Funker on Sept 2, 2014 15:14:36 GMT -5
Great movie and a great book, knowing the back story behind why it was written makes it even sadder
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kidglov3s
Bill S. Preston, Esq.
Wants her Shot
Who is Tiger Maskooo?
Posts: 15,870
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Post by kidglov3s on Sept 2, 2014 16:13:11 GMT -5
I went to see this at a packed dollar theater screening a few weeks ago, thought it was a perfectly decent retread of Love Story. I'm happy to see a movie like this be relatively well made and connect with people the way that it has. A movie about people, not comic books.
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