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Simply A Masterpiece

It's funny, it's tense, it features two great performances from two actors and the director expertly creates a web of odd tension where you actually don't know what is happening for the majority of the run time.

One of the film's great tricks is that, for a time, you think it will go down a rabbit hole of unrealistic glorification.

An old-fashioned movie made with new-fashioned finesse.

Although, it may seem to many about loneliness and melancholy... its much much more than that. The movie shows a mature examination of the effects of technology, industrialization and almost everything which describes the 20th century human life, narrated by the central character Prof. Walter Zarrow. Some of the scenes are written and directed wonderfully by Tim, especially the one where Kristen Stewart shouts out loud how lonely her life is and Prof. Walter is probably just mesmerized at the young raw intelligence in so much grief. The movie also shows how inconvenient and difficult it can be to even call a friend in need, and how easily a stranger can buzz in a stranger in a tragic situation. The writing is so philosophical and intelligent that not a single sentence should be missed without digesting it. Surely its all bagel platter for philosophy and psychology students, but so it may be for others as well. The drug addict cites Augustine and Walter cites Montaigne before death and as a compliment, this movie can be and I am sure will be cited (at least by me) in many practical situations.

Professor Walter Zarrow (Sam Waterston) and another man are attacked on the streets of New York. Sam (Corey Stoll) comes to his side as he lies dying. Walter was bringing his weekly flowers to his wife Marcia (Glenn Close). His son Adam (Tim Blake Nelson) is dealing with his wife Jill (Jessica Hecht)'s cancer scare. Their kids Hal (Ben Konigsberg) and Ella (Hannah Marks) are dealing with sex issues while smoking weed on the roof. Walter's student Sophie (Kristen Stewart) is struggling with self-harm. Jeffrey (Michael Kenneth Williams) is desperate to force Joe (K. Todd Freeman) into drug treatment. Sarah (Gretchen Mol) is a soccer mom struggling with buried anger. These characters weave a tapestry of interconnected lives.The cast is top level. They deliver fine individual scenes. There is a compelling drive to uncover the connection between the characters. The connections aren't as poignant as it needs to be. The extended mugging section should come a little earlier so that the characters have more space to deal with the consequences. There is plenty of good acting. The plot is interesting although not the most compelling.

Instantly tedious, this Manhattan melodrama provides snippets into the lives of mostly unrelated characters with all sorts of problems that make a good majority of them turn into complete narcissistic animals. I can relate to the young girl who confesses to hating the obsession with devices over real interaction with people, accusing herself of being guilty of it as well. I find her hypocritical even in her honesty, and in her therapy, there seems to be nothing that she can do. She claims to be taken totally by surprise that this has taken over society, resentful that she was never told the rules (that obviously were never created), and her distaste for the lack of proper communication, ironically spoken in modern tongue that really doesn't say much but is embedded in the mind yet can't be formulated into understandable sentences. She's a perfect representation of the "safety pin" wearing, "cutting" age, taking out her self hatred in ways that most people can't fathom. I've had that distaste in my own aura for at least two decades, and in my own vision of what common decency and sensible behavior find that we live in a world of uncommon sense, each residing with an I.D. for our own state of confusion. I was hoping to care about the characters closer in social status and race and age to my own, and found myself caring more involved in issues that have long plagued our planet rather than those suffering from social insecurities brought on by their addiction to all things fake that make drugs and alcohol seem tame in comparison. Even with its attempts to show the evils of the technologies of today (something I truly believe), I found its methods not satisfying or presenting of a decent solution. That makes the film ultimately pointless and dangerous in revealing that the disease of technology is a plague we are simply stuck with whether we like it or not. Sam Waterston has several interesting monologues, but all it succeeded in doing was perplex me even more. That's what this film is, a trip to the state of confusion with characters whose own mindset is selfish at best and misanthropic at its worst. I can feel for the drug addict forced into rehab, the past retirement age professor who is brutally mugged and even the socially confused youngsters. But there is no sense of wanting a desire for improvement, no desire to be a decent loving and understanding parent, and certainly no desire to respect the parent even when disappointed in them. All this does is show how messed up society has become under certain liberal agendas. That makes it at its best, boring, and at its worst, more depressing than an Edward Albee play. While the ending tries its best to be profound, it went all over the map in trying to get there and reminded me of the issues of this era I can't even begin to sympathize with, let alone the generation of dimwits who continue to blame the problems on the world on innocent people without seeing the entire picture yet continuing to thrive on the existence of their phones. Even with talents like Sam Waterston and a totally wasted Glenn Close, I think this one to really be skipable.

Multiple lives intersect in the aftermath of the violent mugging of a Columbia University philosophy professor. Tim Blake Nelson's directional debut doesn't disappoint as you might think although some characters needed to be explored more for example Kristen Stewart's character Sophie was very interesting with a dark path never explored but there's also characters that get a lot of screen time that they were kinda uninteresting for example Corey Stoll and Gretchen Mol a man who is cheating on his wife and the other one is just having drinking problems. There were much more interesting things in this film for example we have a man who is addicted on drugs also why not explore Walter's backstory with his wife and his son? Great movie and very good characters but they needed to explore more about it instead of showing us the same things we've seen before.