The Book of Henry (Colin Trevorrow, 2017)

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CSM126
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Re: The Book of Henry (Colin Trevorrow, 2017)

#26 Post by CSM126 » Sat Jun 17, 2017 10:42 pm

I haven't seen a film this incoherent since Dream House, which was literally unfinished. Henry has been in production for twenty years, so what's the excuse? The script jumps from one random plot thread to another all Willy-nilly for like eight hours before settling in on the absurd revenge plot. The acting is generally appalling (especially the kid playing Henry and, my god, Naomi Watts - in full retard mode here). The editing is haphazard, at best.

This is barely a movie. Like, the only thing qualifying it for that moniker is the fact that the pictures move at all. And I'm not entirely certain that I wasn't hallucinating even that, because I'm pretty sure I had a stroke induced by excessive confusion and entered a fever dream state where I saw Naomi Watts assembling a sniper rifle at her child's behest, and trying to take the shot from her perch inside a live-action replica of Dexter's Lab, while simultaneously three random girls were tap-dancing to Skinamarink-A-Dinky-Dink!

I mean, what the actual fuck, people?

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colinr0380
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Re: The Book of Henry (Colin Trevorrow, 2017)

#27 Post by colinr0380 » Sun Jun 18, 2017 8:11 am

Ribs wrote:(I broke out my lowest-possible 1/2 score on Letterboxd for the first time in 3 years, for the little its worth, though this is probably worse than any of the other things I've given that rating to by some margin).
Just an aside but you inspired me to look out which films I have given the lowest 1/2 star rating to since I started adding viewings to Letterboxd at the beginning of 2014. They are: Coyote Ugly, Buster, The Boy In The Striped Pyjamas, Taken and Billy Elliot! (Billy Elliot and Coyote Ugly obviously being gender swapped versions of each other :wink: ) They've got to have something in them which I really find problematic to get that rating, though generally anything under 2 stars is something I find pretty bad, with 2 stars being the point that I'd consider a film uninspired but watchable! (But then even Diana, Silent Hill: Revelations and Bewitched have one or two bright moments, enough to earn a 1 and a half star rating from me!)

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Ribs
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Re: The Book of Henry (Colin Trevorrow, 2017)

#28 Post by Ribs » Sun Jun 18, 2017 9:17 am

Mine are a little more scattered; The Congress, Star Wars: The Clone Wars, The Bourne Legacy, and After the Dark. I really don't like not liking movies so severely but all of these were just unforgivably and unfathomably ill-conceived from every single level that I cannot deign to give them even the faintest praise.

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domino harvey
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Re: The Book of Henry (Colin Trevorrow, 2017)

#29 Post by domino harvey » Sun Jun 18, 2017 10:53 am

Let's try to stay focused on how much we hate this film, folks

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Rayon Vert
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Re: The Book of Henry (Colin Trevorrow, 2017)

#30 Post by Rayon Vert » Sun Jun 18, 2017 11:16 am

I watched all of the youtube review videos I could find, and was surprised to see the majority were positive or much more lenient on the film than official critics. Having not seen it, just from reading about it I'd wager my opinion would probably be more like the forum posters here, but I was still surprised to see such contrasting opinions.

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Re: The Book of Henry (Colin Trevorrow, 2017)

#31 Post by cdnchris » Sun Jun 18, 2017 11:20 am

If you read audience reviews oddly the people who love it seemed to know what they were getting into and the people that hate it didn't think it had enough of Watts trying to snipe people.

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Magic Hate Ball
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Re: The Book of Henry (Colin Trevorrow, 2017)

#32 Post by Magic Hate Ball » Sun Jun 18, 2017 1:02 pm

The funniest thing about this is people panicking that Trevorrow might not be up to snuff for Star Wars, as if Safety Not Guaranteed hadn't been crushingly mediocre-to-bad and Jurassic World wasn't a micromanaged corporate advertisement.

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domino harvey
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Re: The Book of Henry (Colin Trevorrow, 2017)

#33 Post by domino harvey » Sun Jun 18, 2017 1:06 pm

I have no doubt he talked a big game to secure the Star Wars gig, as he made Jurassic World sound far more fully realized and insightful before we all saw it and realized we'd been bamboozled. You would think though, at 3/3 on films no one really likes, the execs would be looking into exercising exit clauses and hiring virtually anyone else

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Rayon Vert
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Re: The Book of Henry (Colin Trevorrow, 2017)

#34 Post by Rayon Vert » Sun Jun 18, 2017 1:13 pm

Frank Marshall and Spielberg liked Safety, though. Episode IX will no doubt be tightly supervised, so I'd be surprised he'd get pulled.

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All the Best People
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Re: The Book of Henry (Colin Trevorrow, 2017)

#35 Post by All the Best People » Sun Jun 18, 2017 2:07 pm

I found Safety Not Guaranteed pleasant. Though a lot of that was the cast -- though, again, Trevorrow should get some credit for casting them and getting out of the way.

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colinr0380
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Re: The Book of Henry (Colin Trevorrow, 2017)

#36 Post by colinr0380 » Mon Jun 19, 2017 4:24 am

You know the amusing thing about this situation of Trevorrow directing the next Star Wars film is that when A Force Awakens came out at the same time as Jurassic World (both of which I've not seen as yet) I got waylaid by a co-worker who apparently loved A Force Awakens, took me for a Jurassic World fan when they found out I hadn't seen the Star Wars film and proceeded to tell me how terrible that film was in comparison! So if there's another gushing when that Star Wars film comes out (which there inevitably will be!), I may need to casually mention that it was made by the director of that film they did not like!
swo17 wrote:Now I can only see your username as colintr038er0.
Sadly its not me, If it were, I'd have at least gone for a pulpy title like "Ghost Sniper From Beyond The Grave!"
domino harvey wrote:I read somewhere that the script had been in various stages of production for almost twenty years. This was someone's passion project. It's like when we finally saw Cameron Crowe's passion project and realized it was Aloha
This could be interesting to debate. Are strange films like this, Sea of Trees, Aloha, Atlas Shrugged and Collateral Beauty being made because they're the product of some sort of crazed 'visionary' who just needs to get their urgent points about capitalism, smartypants terminally ill children and sexy, sexy Hawaii across to an audience? Or are they attempts to try and find some sort of new material in a studio system totally geared around franchises and remakes? These seem entirely like those kinds of 'middle range $20-30 million character dramas' that actors have been lamenting the demise of and directors like Soderbergh have been saying were not being made anymore by the big studios (the kind of film that ten years ago was characterised by the 'multiple narrative' trend of Crash, 21 Grams, Babel, The Burning Plain, etc). But they seem problematic works at best, and complete disasters at worst, flailing around trying to find a trend that works for audiences.

Is it because of the television and streaming market having beaten the studios at this aspect of dramatic narrative, so they're having trouble competing with anything but the wackiest of storylines? Are we in a new era of insecure Hollywood silliness to match the late 60s Skidoo era? Or is it just that there have been a few really bad films lately that its probably reading too much into lumping together?

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Rayon Vert
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Re: The Book of Henry (Second Director Fired From Star Wars,

#37 Post by Rayon Vert » Sat Jun 24, 2017 5:24 pm

The Narrator Returns wrote:I made the comparison to Radio Flyer when the trailer came out
Starting at 41:00, these guys make this comparison also, and to Jack the Bear, and point to the age of the script that fits in with these types of movies.

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Foam
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Re: The Book of Henry (Colin Trevorrow, 2017)

#38 Post by Foam » Sat Jun 24, 2017 8:09 pm

Colin Trevorrow wrote:I went to make a film that is narratively experimental, that allows me to face my fears as a filmmaker and is extremely ambitious and complex in what it attempts to do, and also a film that very clearly works potently for many, then does not work potently for many others.
http://www.vulture.com/2017/06/colin-tr ... views.html" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

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