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Post by theatremadness on Jan 4, 2020 23:35:11 GMT
Has anyone else caught this? I know it only came out on New Years Day in the UK but me and a couple of friends were intrigued by the trailer so went to check it out. Oh my lord this was truly one of the most stunning films I‘ve ever seen. It's incredibly funny - I was genuinely laughing out loud from the very beginning until the end, with gasps and tears of heartbreak, tragedy and sadness in between. A real rollercoaster of emotions, it really is beautiful. Some will see it as controversial, especially with its language (not profanity but in its descriptions of groups of people concerned at that time), but we are laughing at the fact that these things are what Nazi's actually believed. It is firmly an anti-war, anti-hate film done with tremendous irreverent and absurd humor. It's stylistically beautiful and all the performances are fantastic, especially Roman Griffin Davis as Jojo. Taika Waititi is a very clever man indeed.
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Post by Marwood on Jan 5, 2020 0:18:08 GMT
I’ve seen it twice (first at the London Film Festival and again yesterday at the Odeon in Leicester Square) and I really, really loved it: I’d say it is my favourite film of 2019 (I had previously been edging towards Once Upon A Time In Hollywood on that front but I think this just edges it as it has a whole lot more heart and soul): I’m kind of depressed about some of the professional reviews I’ve read of this: ‘oh you can’t make fun of Hitler’ as if films like The Producers were never made (or shouldn’t have ever been made) as if there is an award out there for the taking for the most woke reviewer: at the end of the day, if you can’t at least try to laugh about terrible things, there is nothing left for you to do but cry about the awful things the human race is capable of doing to each other, and you end up no better than the sort of people that films like this are based on.
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Post by daisy24601 on Jan 5, 2020 6:40:19 GMT
Saw it last night, hated it. It seems to be a love/hate kind of film.
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Post by alece10 on Jan 5, 2020 9:26:08 GMT
You can count on one hand the number of times I go to the cinema in a year but they had a trailer for this film when I went to see Cats last week and thought it looked good.
Really enjoyed it and found it very funny indeed without mocking the serious side of it.
Really well acted and Jo Jo was superb. He is only 12 years old and don't think he has done much before this. Loved his friend with the glasses too.
I only read the reviews when I got home and some were really bad which did surprise me.
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Post by xanady on Jan 5, 2020 21:12:47 GMT
Saw it today and loved it.A dark satire with some surprisingly tender moments mixed with farcical humour and a great message about acceptance and never allowing yourself to believe in or be controlled by extremism and prejudice.
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Post by greeny11 on Jan 6, 2020 6:29:30 GMT
I did not like this unfortunately. I was bored through most of it, while there were some dodgy accents and performances from certain actors and I think I laughed once through the whole film. I did like Sam Rockwell and Stephen Merchant in the film.
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Post by horton on Jan 6, 2020 14:03:10 GMT
Taika Waititi has a very distinctive style, demonstrated in tragi-comedies such as '... Wilderness People'- he has the ability to find the comedy in the most tragic circumstances and understands that life is just so absurd- tragic and ridiculous all at once.
I think the film is a masterpiece, deeply moving, tense, hilarious and full of incredible performances- especially from Sam Rockwell, Scarlett Johansson the little lad Roman Griffin Davis. It is also very timely, exposing the vanity of the populist despot and showing how easily people can fall in unquestioningly behind a strongman tyrant.
My favourite film of the 2019- 2020 season.
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Post by maggiem on Jan 6, 2020 15:39:49 GMT
Saw it today and loved it.A dark satire with some surprisingly tender moments mixed with farcical humour and a great message about acceptance and never allowing yourself to believe in or be controlled by extremism and prejudice. You've summed this up perfectly.
I think this film will be appreciated more as time passes. With all of the anti-Semitic behaviour currently making the headlines, it's no doubt a very uncomfortable watch for some, but this kind of satirical approach will always be a good way of ridiculing pig-ignorant prejudice and hatred.
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Post by fiyero on Jan 7, 2020 19:50:00 GMT
I saw it on new years day and loved it! I wasn't sure what expect as a comedy about the Holocaust? yeesh! It was so funny at times and emotional at others and I think struck the right balance. I especially loved the Hitler Youth camp scenes which reminded me of Moonrise kingdom, another film I really adore (outside of theatre my other hobby is Scouting!)
There were some challenging scenes which hit home what boys (and girls) like Jojo had to live from. A great start to the cinematic year
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873 posts
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Post by juicy_but_terribly_drab on Jan 11, 2020 1:04:58 GMT
I was disappointed by this unfortunately, especially having really loved What We Do In The Shadows and Hunt For The Wilderpeople. It was just too tonally dissonant for me which meant it never struck the balance between the emotional and humourous moments like Hunt For The Wilderpeople managed to pull off. It wasn't as funny as I had hoped, I had quite a few chuckles but it was never hilarious and I failed to connect to it emotionally so those moments didn't make up for the lack of humour. I also kind of felt the timing was off sometimes or like the deliveries of some jokes weren't quite punchy enough? It wasn't a bad film by any means but like I said I had higher expectations considering Waititi's filmography so I'm left looking more negative about the film than I actually am.
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Post by crowblack on Jan 30, 2020 21:03:08 GMT
I've just seen this with a couple of friends and while they loved it, I absolutely hated it. I think it's the most disappointing misfire I've seen since a VVV Dark Matter, and, as with that play, I've enjoyed most of this writer/director's previous work. The Robbie Collins review (Radio 5, youtube) and Daily Beast pieces are pretty much how I felt about it, with the additional complaint that, in portraying the Nazis as a bunch of goofy, camp clowns (honestly, you wonder how the Resistance manage get themselves caught and killed by such a bunch of cartoon goons!) it bizarrely relies on lazy schoolyard stereotypes - two coded-gay buffoons (rather ignoring what the regime did to gays there!) and a dumb fat woman. |
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Post by showgirl on Jan 31, 2020 5:27:45 GMT
I saw this on my 3-film catch-up day and was both disappointed and bored. I loved Hunt For The Wilderpeople and the reviews for this had led me to expect so much more, but towards the end I was even tempted to check the time.
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Post by asfound on Jan 31, 2020 9:33:09 GMT
Thought this was pretty terrible, especially compared to Waititi's other films Boy, What We Do in the Shadows and Hunt for the Wilderpeople. The balance between farce, pathos and black comedy was all wrong. His other films were whimsical but sometimes had hard hitting moments or moments of depth and insight, whereas this seemed far too weak and light. The satire just didn't land for me and it really felt rather shallow and empty. I think a tone like The Death of Stalin would have been better, as opposed to Moonrise Kingdom with Nazis.
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