User Reviews

I am having a hard time with the comments about this movie being pretentious or a mess (and which is it, anyway, because the first is artifice and the second is reality). This movie is a very good work of art and will stand the test of time.

This is a classic movie about America and Americans...the best I have seen since Gran Torino. It's starts with pretentiousness, finding your voice, proving your theories of this country, people, what have you, and turns that upside down and inside out. Novak's character deleting his recordings at the end so that all we are left with is the story and the people/characters was beautiful, sublime and ironic (because a film is a record of course). Living is messy, both beautiful and painful, and good art captures that without having to explain it to you. And yes, most of us are afraid to admit that we too are living in the mess we see around us, let alone actively participate in it by fully intentionally murdering your former fling's killer, even when that first killing itself was careless, casual negligence.

Also, many clever, hilarious lines in this ultimately serious movie.

A+ B. J.

There's a lot of characters are actually personafied ideas or objects. Like the little brother, who is actually a dog, which explains why near end scene Ben literally tide up him in the car with an actual rope. Those visual scenes shown in the movie are how Ben would like to remembered. Be's sort of a unreliable narrator who romanticized what actually happened. He's initial conversation with the Texas family foreshadowed this perfectly.

This explains the ending as well, i.e. Ben's crazy uncharacteristic murdering of the antagonist, who is yes, also a personafied abstraction of the charming drug factories that lured the white girl and led her to death. Ben would like to think he pulled out a gun and shot the opioid factories dead, like a cowboy.

There are many more subtle hints of the romanticized narrative, for example the scene where the antagonist inspired the singer with that poetic speach. In reality, the singer simply got high. Or how the cops are cartoonishly impotent. Or the gang leader is literally in every party and wasn't actually. Or how Ben literally killed a person in a party, went back to NY and cops didn't care.

When I started this movie it just kind of felt like the movie was headed to be just another cheap hollywood push of garbage, I recognized a few of the actors and being included with my Amazon subscription I figured, why not? It started off very generic like it was trying really hard to be something, they tried painting a lot of Texas as if we are idiots or something but I soon realized it was more of the main characters view of the world and how he constantly compared the country to the city and it eventually unfolds into a story similar to a hallmark movie (but actually good) and this city kid kind of realizes he is messing with real peoples live and the death of a real person and someone who mattered greatly to those around them. The antagonist surprises him and kind of just calls him out on the hypocrisy of trying to act superior or holier than thou. That sweet sweet vengeance at the end was brilliant. I actually found this movie to be enjoyable and thought provoking, I find myself thinking about it off and on throughout the day since watching it. 9/10 easy.

While watching this film I realized I was caught up in the middle of a who done it but not at all in a usual way.

Sure the story involved a mystery, a possible crime, a prospective villain etc . It also developed slowly enough ( while still being highly entertaining on many levels) to present many facets to the underlying main theme. Is it about a crime or a rush to judge! All of the above.

First I thought I was watching a Rom-Com with a twist that soon morphed into shades of the Talking Head's David Byrne directed movie,"True Stories", another favorite (spoiler alert I loved this BJ Novak from, "The Office", film).

I noticed that the high priced writing was being deployed in Aston Kutcher's character's first scene.

Here's a kicker. While this rural but enigmatic, even hip, music producer (Kutcher) was trying to inspire a seemingly vapid young female singer to up her game with lofty truisms (to which he succeeds in wowing us), it was her wrenching transition from humming teenager to profoundly soulful, heart gripping country music master that brought the message home in a big way.

The film would now and until the end artistically sound a mantra as it dispells the notion that country folk are shallow by definition. And it was fun to boot.

I was, and I suspect any audience (along with Novak's main character), "struck by lightning" by singer Chevel Shepard's talent and further words, while welcome, weren't necessary to bring home the point.

Just one moment but the most visceral of the film for me, and I'm a jazzer ( Now a pure country music fan too!) Bravo!

Enjoyed this a lot (last night) as very thoughtful, involving, surprising and humorous. Well done by all involved with a special nod to Ashton Kutcher for a very solid turn in a supporting role. For all the film and TV I have watched, I've hardly seen any of his work. Very surprised he and the film in general received next to no awards consideration.

*SPOILER ALERT*

If I were to offer a negative view it would focus on the very end of the film. It is not so much that it strains credulity that Novak's character would commit murder, although it is very out of character, it is more that we don't don't see him "cross the bridge". I did not, anyway.

At the film's outset when vengeance is proposed to him, he rules it out categorically. The rest of the film tends very much to support that he would not commit murder in this case. Yet, in the end, he does and it felt a bit forced, as if there only to prove "Chekov's rule", as mentioned in the film, that if a gun appears in the first act, it must go off in the third.

Still, solid work across the board. A worthy film, for sure.