Leave the World Behind

YOU HAVE GOT TO BE KIDDING!! This one of the year's worst pieces of garbage. A total waste of time and so flawed it would take all evening to list the ways this movie misfired. Junk. The Rotten Tomatoes Audience score is only 34% -- and even that is being very, very generous.
 
Doug Jensen said:
YOU HAVE GOT TO BE KIDDING!! This one of the year's worst pieces of garbage. A total waste of time and so flawed it would take all evening to list the ways this movie misfired. Junk. The Rotten Tomatoes Audience score is only 34% -- and even that is being very, very generous.
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What??? The cinematography was incredible and served the story well. The score was fantastic. The acting was by and large excellent. The screenplay had better dialogue and story than anything I've seen in months. The effects were plentiful and seamless (aside from a few animal shots that looked fake to me.)

I mean, this literally had some of the best cinematography I've ever seen. So many interesting choices, and so well executed. I went back on so many shots to see what they had done and to try to figure out how. But aside from the fancy moves, there were just so many wonderful and unusual compositions. Total breath of fresh air.

And the story was subtle and nuanced. So much better than many similar stories I've seen.

I couldn't care less what Rotten Tomatoes thinks but the critics score is 76% and many of the "negative" reviews they list seem to praise the film and only take issue with the ending, which I loved.

The movie was like The Birds but meaningful. (Yes, the meaninglessness of Birds (or at least lack of an explanation) was the point of the movie, but I didn't find it satisfying.)

And the editing -- PHENOMENAL

I'm reading the audience reviews of the film on Rotten tomatoes... these are not people you want to be associated with... these negative reviewers have no appreciation for dialogue scenes and just wanted more action. That's literally all it comes down to. There were many people who gave it 4 and 5 stars but the people who disliked it gave it 1, which makes no sense because even if you dislike the story, it deserves more for than for the craftsmanship alone.
 
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I couldn't disagree with you more on this. It was one of the worst things I've seen. I kept watching just to see if it would get worse, and it did . . . over and over again.
Dumb. Dumb. Dumb. Made for morons. No offense intended.
 
BTW, once cinematography passes a certain threshold of competency, it is almost irrelevant to the rest of the film. It takes a back seat to story, script, acting, character development, etc. Cinematography never makes or breaks a movie. So to praise the cinematography in this film is a little like putting chocolate chips in a turd and saying they tasted good.
 
Doug Jensen said:
I couldn't disagree with you more on this. It was one of the worst things I've seen. I kept watching just to see if it would get worse, and it did . . . over and over again.
Dumb. Dumb. Dumb. Made for morons. No offense intended.
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Made for morons? There was a bidding war for the 2020 novel it was based on. Most movies have far, far more simplistic story, characters, and dialogue. And a much lower bar for comprehension. Such as The Creator, which I recently saw. This movie was made for the opposite of morons.

Maybe you have criticisms of plot points, but the interesting thing to me is the psychology, choices, character development and interplay. Way more important to me.
 
Doug Jensen said:
BTW, once cinematography passes a certain threshold of competency, it is almost irrelevant to the rest of the film.
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Obviously, beauty is in the eye of the beholder. But to me this is the most untrue statement I've ever read.

I get visceral pleasure from good cinematography. I also can't tell if you're agreeing that it had good cinematography.

Cinematography is not a binary "competent/incompetent." There's a great variety of differences within competent cinematography. And a great range of quality within that category which will enhance the film.

Like Barry Lyndon -- a film that doesn't quite work for me, mostly because of the acting (which was probably Kubrick's fault.) But it's still breathtaking to watch, and that's its own pleasure.

In any case, as practitioners of cinematography it would be worth it to learn from good cinematography even in a bad film.

I'm saying-- this shooting was very novel to me, in several ways. And all effective and in service to the story.
 
ahalpert said:
I get visceral pleasure from good cinematography.
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Oh, I do too. I love great cinematography. But I can't think of a single film where the cinematography alone elevated a mediocre film into a great movie. Can you?
Cinematography is like the icing that makes a a good cake better. But all the icing in the world can't make a cake that has bad ingredients worth eating.

I didn't read the book so I can't comment on the source material. But I can say that literally hundreds of great books have been made into some of the worst movies. One has very little to do with the other.

As some critics put it, "I find it ironic that Leave The World Behind is split into 4 Acts when the entire movie never gets past the opening. This is an absolute chore to site through with zero payoff at the end." "Leave the World Behind is shameless manipulation that wields provocation like a shotgun blast. It drove me nuts." "An apocalyptic thriller where a series of cataclysmic events don't add up to much of anything, really."

Garbage.
 
Doug Jensen said:
Oh, I do too. I love great cinematography. But I can't think of a single film where the cinematography alone elevated a mediocre film into a great movie. Can you?
Cinematography is like the icing that makes a a good cake better. But all the icing in the world can't make a cake that has bad ingredients worth eating.

I didn't read the book so I can't comment on the source material. But I can say that literally hundreds of great books have been made into some of the worst movies. One has very little to do with the other.

As some critics put it, "I find it ironic that Leave The World Behind is split into 4 Acts when the entire movie never gets past the opening. This is an absolute chore to site through with zero payoff at the end." "Leave the World Behind is shameless manipulation that wields provocation like a shotgun blast. It drove me nuts." "An apocalyptic thriller where a series of cataclysmic events don't add up to much of anything, really."

Garbage.
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I mean, all the action is in the psychology. And I love psychological thrillers. There was tons of payoff in this movie. And it had a lot of philosophical discussion, mostly implicit which is best.

I would say that most of the criticism, including what you wrote here, strongly suggests that the movie went over their heads rather than under it.

I mean -- how can they say that it doesn't add up to much of anything? It's a 2-hour movie, focused entirely on the most interesting aspect of the broader story unfolding. And utterly true to the reality that if you're in a situation like that, you're not going to know what's going on. This is not a movie like War of the Worlds.

But if you ask me, the ending was perfect. It so neatly slid into the bigger theme of the movie, especially the commentary on living a mediated reality. Some people say it was abrupt, but the beauty of it is that you know a lot of what is going to happen next. So, feel free to fill in the holes. You get more ending than you pay for in viewing time.

Cinematography is only one part of the equation. And I've definitely seen otherwise good movies that are held back by their cinematography (though more common is a crappy story that's shot well.) But for me, this movie had exceptional cinematography worthy of study even if you hated the story. But I really enjoyed the story, the scene work, the dialogue, the acting, the music, the editing. Almost all the emotional beats worked for me.
 
Doug Jensen said:
Some great comments on Reddit.
https://www.reddit.com/r/netflix/comments/18ish2u/leave_the_world_behind_is_hot_garbage/
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After you get past the first few comments, a lot of the comments are positive.

Spoiler: discussion of specifics
It's funny they complain that Kevin Bacon was in it for only 5 minutes. Who cares? That was his part. He did a great job and the character did well in the story.

I cared about all of the characters. They all oscillated between being unlikable and likable. That's pretty true to reality. Except Ali's character -- he was unusually good-natured. But maybe he's a people-pleaser and that's how he succeeds at this job. Obviously, he was also going through a lot of emotions because he thinks his wife is dead but doesn't even know for sure.

The music was definitely overt but first of all, I just really enjoyed it from a musical perspective and second, it seemed appropriate to me since the action was so understated.

The stuff with the deer and the flamingos was a little silly, but it was wonderful visually (if the effects had been perfect -- it's hard to do CGI animals). And there might be some explanation for it we just don't know. That was one of the aspects that reminded me of The Birds. And anyway, it was just indicative of how nature was horribly askew. The people are cornered by prey animals. Birds aren't where they're supposed to be. Etc. Maybe the animals are going crazy because of the microwave weapon. Who knows. It was an interesting plot device and motif.

I was definitely expecting jump scares often. But is it a problem when they didn't come? Especially when the Hispanic maid was screaming in his car window. (Terrific performance.) I thought she was going to get struck or carried away by something offscreen at any moment.

Someone complains that Rose wasn't as smart as she was in the book. But I loved how she had this insightfulness and ability to observe unusual things happening around her while everyone else was so complacent. She seemed to go by instinct. I loved the line where her mom asks her if she watched The West Wing (presumably because it's a sophisticated show for her age). And she gives a sophisticated answer ("Only the Aaron Sorkin seasons").

One commenter says the son was the only likable character. What??? He was intentionally unlikable. They say he helped out his sister -- but he constantly tormented her in immature fashion from his very first line. They relate to him checking out hot bodies... Yeah, but he was kind of a peeping tom.

Someone else complains about the ending leaving questions unanswered. What questions do they want answered? Like, do the families survive the war? How long do they want the movie to be? Anyway, material outcomes are sort of less interesting to me than psychology, choices, character development. But we know that everyone is going to converge on the doomsday bunker, so they're all going to be together and safe for now and probably have as good a chance as anyone of surviving the war. What more do these viewers want? Sheesh.

My one criticism would be that sometimes the themes and conclusions are stated very plainly. It's not necessarily a bad thing in a movie which answers so few questions. But it does hit you over the head a bit with some of the ideas of the writer. Some ideas were more implicit/understated, which I appreciated.
 
What if there were a massive cyberattack on the United States? And what would the experience of that be like on the ground, with chaos mounting and with no way to find out what’s happening?

The thought of that situation alone is enough to hold an audience from beginning to end, but almost all the little details, the dialogue and the interplay between characters, as well as the movie’s pace, are either phony, unbelievable or disappointing.

Mick LaSalle - SF Chronicle
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Mick is my go to for movie reviews, but the gratuitous swearing, potty mouth dialogue and incessant f-bombs turned me off as well.
 
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Regarding the animals, if you go up Red Cone Pass or Mount Evans you may encounter a herd of expectant mountain goats that will approach you uncomfortably, with keen interest in the snacks in your pockets or pack. They are wild and can be aggressive.
 
Add me to the list of people who really enjoyed it. I've not seen everything he's done, but Esmail ticks so many of my boxes. I feel like he was a bit more conservative than average (for him) here and that restrain really worked. Completely agree with Ahalpert.

The bizarre moments, be it with the animals, the teeth or the tanker at the beginning were so conceptually unsettling, even though the CGI didn't work for me, I loved the concept enough to not care.


​​​​​​Thought the soundtrack was fantastic, made me think of the British Utopia series soundtrack which blew my mind back in the day and it had a twist of Netflix Dark just toned down enough for my taste.

Loved the ending, literally laughed out loud at the audacity and how well it had been built up to by Rosie's story.

Then again, so much of enjoining fiction has to do with implicit values that I'm not surprised a lot of people didn't like it.

I recently watched Saltburn and thought it was great, in the tradition of American Psycho or Night Crawler, and have seen a lot of people really hate the movie and couldn't help but notice that most of the specific criticism has more to do with politics/morals than with anything that had to do with the quality of the film.
 
Making judgments as to WHY (you think) others like or dislike something is the fool's errand when they are already straight up telling you why. That's where Rotten Tomatoes fits in. It's the purely democratic relevant number. The movie fails 66 to 34%.
 
But it's necessary. People often don't really know why they don't like something or they do but won't admit it because what it looks like.

They'll say it's bad, but often provide no reasons or reasons that are only the result of their not having paid attention.

As an opposite example of someone who does give his reasons, at least in this case, there's you, Tom Roper, saying that "gratuitous swearing, potty mouth dialogue and incessant f-bombs" turned you off.

I believe that. That's a legitimate reason to not like the film if you don't like that kind of thing.

Many of the criticisms about Saltburn I've seen go "the plot is stupid... Movie makes no sense... The sex and gay **** is disgusting". I thought the plot was fine, everything made perfect sense to me and if there was something that I overlooked, I overlooked it because I was having a great time. There was quite a bit of disturbing sex stuff in the film. I'm not bothered by it, but it clearly bothered these people.

So of all their statements only two implicit ones are true "the movie has a plot and there was sex and gay stuff". Ultimately, I can only read that they had issues with the sex and gay stuff, which they describe as disgusting. Nothing else really mattered about the film, once they were that put off by it. They were never going to engage with the film at the level that it required (which was not that much, really) doesn't matter what the film was like (I thought it looked great and the acting was fantastic considering his crazy the characters are).

When a person says or indicates they were put off by something that's objectively there, that's it. It's almost guaranteed that every other opinion they state is no longer worth listening to, because they won't really have engaged with anything else at a level that deserves consideration.

So to summarise: of all the things that people say to justify not liking a film, very little is worth listening to and it's almost always up to you to figure out why they didn't like it, wether they actually say it among the noise or not say it at all


Also, as much as I like democracy as a political system, I'll be damned if I'm going to let other people decide for me what I enjoy or not!
 
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Too bad. Your post was maybe more confrontational than it needed to be (ha, ha, the pot calling the kettle black now) but the points you made were spot on. I might gather up some of my specific criticisms of this film nad post them later. I look forward to having Aram explain to me how the total failure of this movie to entertain was all my fault because I didn't pay enough attention.
 
Tom Roper said:
Making judgments as to WHY (you think) others like or dislike something is the fool's errand when they are already straight up telling you why. That's where Rotten Tomatoes fits in. It's the purely democratic relevant number. The movie fails 66 to 34%.
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The 3rd review listed on the audience reviews page on RT is explicit about disliking the movie for its politics:

"The movie starts with intrigue but becomes increasingly frustrating in its implausibility and obvious partisan subtext. In the end, the movie is a superficial left-wing rant disguised as a sci-fi mystery. There is no depth or insight. The characters are repellent caricatures of feckless privilege."
 
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