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andrewpcsmith
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Les frères Sisters (2018)
Great cast, interesting premise, failure to launch
What happens when you get all this amazing talent in one movie? The answer is a meandering journey desperately searching for a theme or purpose. But it comes up short. Is it brotherhood? Friendship? Betrayal? Greed? We never get a satisfying answer, things are constantly setup and never pay off, like some strange postmodern filmmaking style where nothing matters in the end.
It's fairly well shot, but it is not a beautiful film. There are exceptions to this, a gold panning scene being one of them. I would've forgiven a lot if every shot would've looked like a painting. But the pace of this film will lull you to sleep, about halfway through we get to our first interesting conflict and character development between the brothers. I don't think we would've missed Jake Gyllenhaal's character had he been entirely cut from the film.
It's a slow burn of a film, but instead of a roaring inferno, this one fizzles out. Skip this and go watch a Clint Eastwood or John Wayne film.
The Veil (2017)
Alternative Logline Suggestion
Alternate logline: Once upon a time, two films got together to have a child. Melancholia the mother; Conan the Barbarian the father. Unfortunately, the film they birthed was dropped on it's head during delivery and is now known as The Veil.
Many of the other reviews handled some of the finer details of the film's shortcomings with more precision, but the story is a mess, it's overreaching and underachieving, the stakes seem lacking. One small example that's not a spoiler because it's so early in the film: We're expected to believe this is an alien planet, (or possibly an alternate Earth) but there are no aliens, only a shot in the sky for VFX to support such a thing. There are no likable characters or performances (aside from the old man at the end) and not any humor to speak of other than some painfully long pauses in the middle of fight choreography here and there.
As a couple of pros for the movie: The film's makeup and wardrobes were great. The scenery is fine. It's shot decently.
TLDR; The writing was horrible. It doesn't go anywhere. Watch Conan or Melancholia instead.