This is one ugly looking movie, partly to compliment the lead character's drab existence and partly because I imagine the budget was miniscule. Whereas Siegel's script for The Wrestler had more cliches and also focused on a lonely loser, it benefited a ton from Darren Aronofsky's brilliant direction and Mickey Rourke's performance made the character easy to relate to and root for... [more]

Spectacularly rich, gorgeous to look at, incredibly smart and layered in its themes, and evoking (good and bad) feelings of childhood unlike any other movie I've seen in ages. Just thoroughly captivating and beautiful all the way through... [more]

I thought it was a very effective horror movie. Very simple things like lights going on and off and creaking of staircases go a long way to be really creepy. I wish more traditional horror movie makers would learn that a lack of score during boo! scares is much more unnerving, although movies like this and [REC] have a reason for the silence. The coolest moments for me were when the woman is standing by her bedside and the clock on the bottom right fast forwards through a couple of hours. There were a couple of things I didn't enjoy like the opening and end titles trying to sell this as a true story. But knowing its origins and budget, they could not have anticipated this getting such hype and a wide release, so they must have felt the campaign would be more intriguing this way. There was also the very last shot that was a bit 'eh' and I would have liked for it to have cut out unexpectedly or something. It's not the scariest movie ever, or even one of, but thoroughly enjoyable for what it is... [more]

The two central characters played by John Krasinski and Maya Rudolph are unique in that they undergo little change through the course of the course of the movie and so there's no cloying journey capped by a lesson learned. However, in all other ways this movie is insufferable and boring. The many vignettes where we meet different married couples for about 15 or 20 minutes - all feel precious and haphazard and the supporting characters are all whiny, self-centered, and completely unrealistic. I'm a fan of Mendes, but he really doesn't put any thought into the direction because I certainly didn't feel any connection with anyone in this film. And he punctuates just about every scene with a Nick Drake-esque acoustic guitar song that sounds like Zach Braff chose the soundtrack. A smug and dull waste of time... [more]