- Joined
- Jul 3, 2010
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- 49,143
- Reaction score
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Okja (2017)
I can't believe how much I disliked this movie. I really thought I was going to enjoy it. It had a good premise, and a good cast was recruited, but this cast was directed INTO THE FUCKING GROUND by Joon-Ho Bong.
I don't want to see Bong direct English-speaking actors for several years to come, and I hope he doesn't team up with Tilda Swinton again. That is an unholy alliance that makes John Woo and John Travolta look like De Palma and Pacino. Swinton and Bong step onto the set and any remote possibility or semblance of the slightest bit of subtlety in a performance goes completely out the window.
This is two movies in a row (Snowpiercer) where he has guided Swinton to a performance that didn't just produce a detestable character (which can be a good thing - Burke in Aliens) but a character that was so unpleasant to watch that this character alone ensures the movie never gets a repeat viewing.
And this time, Bong unleashed Jake Gyllenhaal in such a manner that another such character was portrayed, in the same movie. This was easily the worst performance of Gyllenhaal's career, and while he should have reined himself in (even in the absence of any guidance), it seems like Bong was pushing him further and further over the edge beyond acting like anything that remotely resembled a human being.
The little kid was good and carried her role and the movie quite well. The CGI superpig was good and a likable character. I respect Paul Dano for NOT letting Bong turn his performance into some LSD caricature that reads false at every turn.
And what was with the profanity? The movie had something like 20 F-words, when only one of them ("it needs to taste fucking good") was even remotely purposeful. The rest of them just sounded improved because the actors couldn't put emotion onto the lines as written, so they just started swearing.
I really wanted to like this. It had the potential to be one of the best movies of its kind, and recruited the kind of cast that should have been able to get the ball across the goal line with room to spare. Instead they were directed to absolutely horrendous performances that sank the whole thing. There were so many "caricature" roles playing off each other (Swinton, Gyllenhaal, the short woman with the Lisa Simpson voice) that there weren't enough regular humans to make the caricatures effective. Instead the humans with natural mannerisms and emotions (Paul Dano and Giancarlo Esposito) were the ones that stood out as being odd.
I was actually cringing while watching Jake Gyllenhaal act. How does a director manage to achieve this? That's like a coach putting Kobe Bryant in the lineup and then sticking his foot out and tripping him every time he runs past the bench.
4.5 / 10
Two for the little kid, two for the CGI pig, another 0.5 for Dano resisting whatever the director probably tried to make him do.
I can't believe how much I disliked this movie. I really thought I was going to enjoy it. It had a good premise, and a good cast was recruited, but this cast was directed INTO THE FUCKING GROUND by Joon-Ho Bong.
I don't want to see Bong direct English-speaking actors for several years to come, and I hope he doesn't team up with Tilda Swinton again. That is an unholy alliance that makes John Woo and John Travolta look like De Palma and Pacino. Swinton and Bong step onto the set and any remote possibility or semblance of the slightest bit of subtlety in a performance goes completely out the window.
This is two movies in a row (Snowpiercer) where he has guided Swinton to a performance that didn't just produce a detestable character (which can be a good thing - Burke in Aliens) but a character that was so unpleasant to watch that this character alone ensures the movie never gets a repeat viewing.
And this time, Bong unleashed Jake Gyllenhaal in such a manner that another such character was portrayed, in the same movie. This was easily the worst performance of Gyllenhaal's career, and while he should have reined himself in (even in the absence of any guidance), it seems like Bong was pushing him further and further over the edge beyond acting like anything that remotely resembled a human being.
The little kid was good and carried her role and the movie quite well. The CGI superpig was good and a likable character. I respect Paul Dano for NOT letting Bong turn his performance into some LSD caricature that reads false at every turn.
And what was with the profanity? The movie had something like 20 F-words, when only one of them ("it needs to taste fucking good") was even remotely purposeful. The rest of them just sounded improved because the actors couldn't put emotion onto the lines as written, so they just started swearing.
I really wanted to like this. It had the potential to be one of the best movies of its kind, and recruited the kind of cast that should have been able to get the ball across the goal line with room to spare. Instead they were directed to absolutely horrendous performances that sank the whole thing. There were so many "caricature" roles playing off each other (Swinton, Gyllenhaal, the short woman with the Lisa Simpson voice) that there weren't enough regular humans to make the caricatures effective. Instead the humans with natural mannerisms and emotions (Paul Dano and Giancarlo Esposito) were the ones that stood out as being odd.
I was actually cringing while watching Jake Gyllenhaal act. How does a director manage to achieve this? That's like a coach putting Kobe Bryant in the lineup and then sticking his foot out and tripping him every time he runs past the bench.
4.5 / 10
Two for the little kid, two for the CGI pig, another 0.5 for Dano resisting whatever the director probably tried to make him do.
