Reviews

One of the most unrelentingly dark, albeit nonsensical, purposeless, hollow films I've ever seen in my life! It's suffocating to watch, unbelievably brutal to fathom, unrealistically inhumane. The generous 4 stars I gave it was for its visual effects and makeup.

What was the point of the film after all? The love of a mother for her child is a sacred thing and to be cherished, but does it justify any heinous act? Imagine if Hitler's mom would know her son would in future engulf the whole world in flames, would she still do every moral or even immoral act to save him if his life was endangered when he was a childe? Yes, if she had been a woman like Edh! The least likeable character in the film.

I just summarized and criticized it as concisely as I could: pure bul-sh-i-t! What a waste of time! Ok I need to write at least 150 characters: pure bull-sh-i-t pure bul-sh-it pure bul-sh-it.

It is worth watching, but it is not really well made. The screenplay is very good, but bad acting and editing ruin everything. Jodie Foster's performance is hit and miss. Sometimes she delivers her dialogues impeccably, but sometimes like a novice acting hopeful who gets rejected in her first audition, and parts of that audition are in this film! In some scenes, it's obvious that she has just memorized the dialogues; she doesn't put much effort into them. Worse than Foster is McGillis! With her performance, she manages to make the film a surrealistic one! She's to blame for the opaqueness of the whole film. The film feels so hazy, vague, dreamlike, all thanks to McGillis' simply bad acting. It is as if she doesn't understand her own lines, and that is why she can't provide a clear, perceptible performance.

What a waste of a good subject and screenplay.

Seriously, what a boring piece of crap! 2 hours and 20 minutes of pure boredom! I skipped a lot of the film because it was just boring and unnecessary.

There's a line where Edris says "we found an arm and look what happened to us." What happened to you?! The arm had nothing to do with the detectives' lives except for the newbie who decided he would leave the force.

I would advise Turkish filmmakers to be creative on their own, and not humiliate themselves with bad imitations of American films!

The whole film could be curtailed into a short film. There are a lot of superfluous scenes which you can take out without harming the entirety of the film. It is simply a pretentious film by an ambitious novice director-writer. The dialogues are pathetic attempts made to give the film the look and feel of an "intellectual" film but all in vain. Quite contrary to what some Iranian critics claim, the film is replete with cliches: a lonely, reticent man living in solitude of his unfurnished, run-down flat; a cat which is fed milk by Ali; geraniums; a window opening to a beautiful plant climbing the wall in contrast to the gloomy hallway; a few books; a vintage Buick with which the lead character, Ali, earns his living; and coffee, lots of it, among other references to what the director thinks represent life of an intellectual. I wonder if the director, Saheb al-Zamani, has watched too much Tarkovsky and Kiarostami. You can't help thinking if the film is not a bad imitation of Kiarostami's Taste of Cherry, although this film does not deal with the subject of suicide. However, the style is very similar. You can skip most scenes because you know it's a repeated scene (like giving milk to the cat), or a boringly long shots of insignificant scenes. I've generously given 3 stars to the film thanks the acting of Ali Mosaffa, Leyla Hatami and Mahtab Keramati.

This film is dangerous in its (unintentional) attempt to deteriorate human feelings. The feelings of savagery and blood-thirst are so confusingly mixed with feelings of compassion and love from the side of the people of the Capitol that those inhumane feelings of slaughtering and hatred have in a way been endorsed.

I don't give a D if someone defends the film by saying that this Game has turned into a tradition for the people after decades of practicing because it is, I believe, only in the most nefarious period of human spirit (if imaginable) that these kinds of traditions would be condoned or, as the film suggests, received full-heartedly and enthusiastically and that has had no instance except for the Dark Ages and the Arab Conquest! It's funny (for me, even disgusting) that the people of the Capitol show joy in watching blood spilling on the one hand and love and sacrifice on the other hand.

Innovation is good, but not in a Frankensteinian way. One might think this is preposterous, but believe me, films of this sort cannot be without psychological effects on younger people.

I can't help but restate that this film is dangerous for it fails to clear up the moral mess it creates in the film, which might not have been the director's intent, but it should have been. He's responsible for the Frankenstein he has released.

I hated the score. The score by Tiomkin was simply ridiculous. With this music it turned out to be a mock-war film rather than a heroic one! It is true that in the 60s there was a zeal among film music composers for such kind of music (lots of percussion and almost melody-less scores), but this was supposed to be a war story! When the group starts setting off and they are loading the ship the music is so idiotic one imagines they are going on a picnic!

Half the story is a lie. Such big guns did not exist in that part of Greece.

Again, terrible music. I was infuriated when I heard the first sound.

My three stars were only for the acting of Quinn and Niven, and a little bit Peck.

Dazzling! Very beautifully interwoven. Unlike many other films about the two contrary forces within human beings -borrowed from William Blake's symbolism perhaps- this was not about killing the evil inside and becoming innocent or pure, but it is about initiation into experience and letting the evil force show itself.

The sexual approaches of Thomas are not sexual abuses but only stimulations to arouse as what we call it her "evil side". The mother is the superego (or in Blake's symbolism the URizen) who has imprisoned her daughter inside the walls of innocence. She must initiate into experience so that she can perform the role of the Black Swan better. That is why Thomas is trying to do. For him, the bettering of the ballet is important, he wants a wild, energetic and evil Nina to act out the Black Swan not the meek, innocent Nina who performs the White Swan brilliantly, naturally.

I feel dismayed why "Black Swan" wasn't awarded the Academy Award for best original score. Why "The Social Network"? In my opinion, it was unfair. The music of "Social Network" was not worth winning the award. "Swan Lake" or at least "Inception" should have won. HFPS must change its jury!

This was soul-provoking! I am an Iranian, and living in th 21st century, I didn't know that such big tribes have been living in such conditions at the time of my grandfather!

You see that today, or even in 1925, on one side of the world a lady or a baby could have everything served for him or her clean and on-demand, but here 80 years ago, people ventured their life to go to somewhere with more grass. It's really interesting that these Persians bear those difficulties to find pasture for their sheep, but they lose many the sheep on their way.

I praise the Americans who accompanied this tribe, they were as tough as Bakhtiari people.

This is genuinely-made. One feels satisfied after watching it. To be honest, when I watched the starting scenes of the movie, I said, "this is another anti-Asian, anti-Islamic movie supported by Pentagon. But thinking more, and finding out the theme of the story was a "lack of communication", I got to love it. But I feel that there should have been a scene in, for instance, New York City wherein there is violence and lack of communication just as there is all over the world. This could show that the director is not racist at all! By the way, the whole movie was a nice job. I sympathized with all of the characters, mostly Yussef's and Ahmad's father, but not for Santiago, the rascal Mexican. I recommend to all intellectuals to watch this movie with a broad mind.