Watch The Future For Free

I love this movie so much

Save your money for something good and enjoyable

Good story, Not enough for a whole film

Pretty good movie overall. First half was nothing special but it got better as it went along.

Some fine moments, but overall doesn't hang together. However, the t-shirt dance (which I take it started out as part of a performance piece) conjured the sort of eeriness David Lynch achieved in some of his early films (before they turned all forced and self-conscious). The strangeness and physicality of it transcended the rest of the movie and, perhaps unfortunately, showed up what it was lacking. But it's one of the best film presentations (lighting, music, camera) of a "live" performance I've seen. Also reminded me a bit of the wonderful scene in "Chuck and Buck" in which Buck seduces his old friend in a bar. Are we nothing but human? Are we not also something else?

Art star Miranda July picked up a lot of mainstream cred with "Me and You…," but I felt like she was taking a step backward, deeper into the indie fringe, with this sometimes perplexing tale of two LA slackers (MJ and Hamish Linklater) whose lives are thrown into disarray when they try to adopt a cat. Sophie teaches a dance class ("Frisky Feet"!) for undemanding toddlers; Jason works tech support from home. The cat will arrive in 30 days, so they decide to quit their jobs and devote the last of their unburdened youth (as they see it) to an intensive campaign of self-realization. Jason becomes a canvasser for an environmental group; Sophie declares herself "free to dance," but soon discovers the awful truth—she's a dance teacher, not a dancer…. There's nothing here as perfect as, say, the online flirtation between the little kid and the randy curator in "Me and You…," but there are lots of enjoyable moments (starting maybe with the way the receptionist at the dance studio says "Circus DES Soleil"). The script incorporates magic-realist elements from MJ's performance pieces (soliloquies for an anxious stray cat, which are pretty great; a climactic scene in which a distraught lover tries to stop time and avert a breakup), and she's discovered a great nonactor, an 81-yr-old man named Joe Putterlik who sold "refixed" small appliances through the "Pennysaver" (the subject of another of MJ's noncinematic art projects) and was encouraged to improvise his dialogue.

I would like to meet someone I respect who liked this movie. Maybe I'm missing something, and he or she could point it out to me.I suspect that I don't, though, and that "The Future" is just a really bad and cryptic movie. That's a shame because I really liked Miranda July's first movie, "Me And You And Everyone We Know", which was truly oddball but still managed to be absorbing. "The Future" is just bizarre and boring. It came out of one of a performance by July, which is just a really bad idea to begin with. Just like turning a nice cake or a well-knitted pair of socks into a building. Next time you can: don't. Next time you're trying to turn a few neat ideas into a movie, make sure the audience at least has a chance to understand them, and that there's at least some semblance of a plot or a story.

I found The Future somewhat tolerable, and in the days since I watched this "filmovie" I've found myself struggling to interpret Miranda July's work. In that sense, it's "art," but I can't say it's good art. There were some sincerely endearing and moving moments, mixed with quirk, pity and despair. That shouldn't necessarily be a negative; how many great pieces of art evoke whimsy, sadness, tears, hopelessness, fear for our future? This filmovie, however, left me fearful of the future of so called up-and-coming film artists. I struggled to realize a genuine point of contention between the two main characters (or the state of their lives), which is the fault of narration and direction. Atop this, there wasn't enough of a tipping point for me to realistically believe the after-climax narration. I understand that this "filmoive" was trying to deeply and critically analyze that point when adulthood becomes less of a choice and more of a fact of life, but it fails. Sizably.