PodBill Just what I expected

Fairaher The film makes a home in your brain and the only cure is to see it again.

Seraherrera The movie is wonderful and true, an act of love in all its contradictions and complexity

Mandeep Tyson The acting in this movie is really good.

Paul Allaer "Days and Nights" (2013 release; 91 min.) brings the story of an extended family's happenings over one weekend. As the movie opens, we see a couple meeting up at Grand Central in New York, to take the train out to the family's countryside compound. Along the way we learn that we are into the 1984 Memorial Day weekend. Upon arriving at the countryside, we get to know more members of the extended family and friends. To tell you more would spoil your viewing experience, you'll just have to see it for yourself how it all plays out.Couple of comments: this is the directing debut of actor Christian Camargo, who also wrote the script (loosely based on/inspired by The Seagull by Anton Chekhov), and stars as Peter, the boyfriend of Elizabeth (the couple we see at Grand Central). The voice-over at the beginning of the movie mentions something about "days and nights in the grip of a memory", and I thought, hmmm, this might be interesting. Alas, I couldn't have been further from the truth. As the various scenes unfold, you start to get that uneasy feeling that what you are watching makes little sense, and whatever sense it does make, doesn't matter as you cannot make an emotional connection to any of these characters. This is very much an ensemble cast, actually an ensemble all-star cast. What a huge waste of talent! Here is William Hurt, in the role of Elizabeth's older brother Herb, and frankly Hurt is just creepy in this performance. There is English actress Juliet Rylance as Eva (Mrs. Camargo in real life). And biggest waste of all, we have Allison Janney (as Elizabeth), who looks clueless as to what she needs to do, desperately waiting for some direction. There is a scene pretty early on, where Eva and Elizabeth's son Eric (played by Ben Whishaw) put on an after-dinner multi-media live performance of some sort that is as wacky as it is mystifying. I knew from that moment on that this movie was in serious trouble. I lasted until over just an hour, and simply had had enough. An hour of my life I'll never get back.I picked up this movie while browsing at my local library for something good to watch. I see a lot of movies, and when I saw this, and saw all the acting talent assembled on the DVD's front jacket, I thought to myself "This is interesting. How come I've not heard of this movie before?". Well, now I know. I cannot recommend this movie in good consciousness to anyone, sorry.

Gordon-11 This film tells the story of a group of extended family members getting together for a reunion dinner. Things don't go as well as planned, and relationships fall apart as a result.I honestly don't know what "Days And Nights" is about. There seems to be no real plot. Characters are poorly introduced, and I don't know how they are connected with each other. The first scene is about the dinner, every person talks for a few minutes about what they want but no one is really caring about what is being said. People strangely leave the room one by one. Then in the projector scene is almost the same, as people leave one by one and not connecting - but the whole scene is just bizarre. Thirty minutes into the film, an actress announces that "it doesn't make sense", oh yes the whole film doesn't make sense, you got that right. I watched the film until the end, but it deteriorates increasingly. No one connects with another, and viewers don't care about any of the characters either. It's a family dysfunctional relationship film gone horribly wrong.

Drew Lindgren Honestly I had no idea what was happening throughout... Well, the entire film. And normally, I love obscure character driven stories like this appeared to be set up as. I also had high hopes because of the stellar cast, but that was little help. Ben Whishaw was literally the ONLY actor who managed to hold my full attention or make me feel any emotion, and I found myself becoming irritated during the parts of the film that didn't involve his character. **** spoiler alert here ****And I didn't even know what the hell his character was doing. I haven't read the play that this movie was based on, so when things were implied, I never got them. The whole thing is so disjoint, and then randomly Christian Camargo's character leaves, and then hits something with his car, which is implied to be Eva from her shoe, but this isn't ever made explicit, then it fast forwards to three years later. Then, this ending confused me so much that I just HAD to look it up. Both Camargo and Whishaw leave the table, distraught, and then you never see Camargo's character again, but Whishaw runs down and Eva shows up again - so the car crash didn't kill her, I assumed, wrongly. So she congratulates him and then runs away, we see Whishaw go after her unsuccessfully, and the scene goes back to the dinner table. You hear a gunshot, and it's clear someone has killed them self, but you're not told who. The way the ending is shot, either Camargo's or Whishaw's character could've done it, but neither had been developed enough for me to figure out who. I had to read about the play, Seagull, to figure out that it was Whishaw's character after he had apparently had a hallucination of Eva coming back - I have no idea how the hell anyone is supposed to put that together from this film!! None! ***** end spoilers *****So, to conclude, this movie is incredibly confusing and only worth watching if you're a huge Whishaw fan like myself, and are willing to put up with the rest of it for the sake of having seen all of his films; but be warned, even his captivating talent is not enough to make any sense of how the story unfolds. Camargos acting is mediocre, which upset me as I have been a fan of his in multiple other places, Katie Holmes does an okay job but is given a boring character whose presence itself does nothing for the film, and none of the other performances even warrant mentioning.Prepare to be disappointed if you go into this film hoping to get anything substantial out of it.

Ana Parrondo Right at the beginning, we hear Peter's voice in off (Camargo's character). I thought what the hell, will this film be narrated by Peter and be all about Camargo's character? Guess what? Neither of the two options. The film didn't care to develop any of these two aspects. The voice in off is just a glimpse into a thought, completely unrelated to the rest of the movie. The whole is just one meaningless quirk that anticipates the broken structure of this film.Adding to this negative first impression above: nothing got knitted together in any meaningful way. The characters meet for Memorial day at a country house. So far, that could be similar to many other films with an ensemble cast. However, no hint is given about how do they relate to each other, or what kind of tensions could develop among them, if any. Not even a subtle hint. They could have a secret that could be reveled at the climax, but no. And the film doesn't even have a proper climax. Things just happen. The film could be about their relationships, but it is not. The characters are boring, instead of transmitting the feeling that they are desperately bored. That contributes significantly to a boring film. Kathy Holmes' character is specially disconnected and unexplained, although I enjoyed her acting. In the same way, the family doctor is just there doing I don't know what. He seems to always be present for some strange reason, behaving like a family member and feeling completely at home. Equally disconnected is any symbolism regarding the bald eagle (a seagull in the original), or anything relating to the native Americans. They were included for no meaningful reason. They appear in and out. I suppose the script writers might have attached some deep meaning to all these pieces in their minds, but they were not combined into a harmonic work. Apparently someone thought it would make the film deep, but it has lots of intentions, that don't get developed. And that upside-down American flag? Also no connection to the story. This film is not a criticism of America, although it points in this direction. The film is a mess.The breaking point for me was at around minute 30, when (Elizabeth) Allison Janney says "Boring, boring, and more boring, it's all so beautifully boring." The audience laughs. An audience laughing at a dramatic scene of a dramatic film? That's the kiss of death. At least I felt that I was not alone. This was maybe the most ridiculous sentence I can remember in any film I have watched. If you have an example that is even worse, let me know, but I don't think it is possible. At this point, I realized that this film was not just kind of boring, but really bad. Nothing could redeem it from its pretentious, boring nothingness.Why they set the film in the 80s still puzzles me. The story does not relate in any way to what was happening back then. There are just a couple of loose hints pointing to the 80s. If you have some sort of 80s nostalgia, this film won't do the trick to kill it.The funny trivia: Peter (Camargo's role) is not a good director in the film, and so is the case of the real director (Camargo).The positive side: the photography was done in good taste and gives you a warm feeling. Most of the cast is first class. The exceptions are clearly Camargo and his real-life wife, who does not fit in the role of an innocent young muse at all, nor would be a fit for any serious dramatic role. She actually would be a better fit in one of those made-for-TV movies as a middle-aged housewife with a cheating husband. You get the idea.I should have paid attention to the 100% negative reviews of this film before I started to watch. But I wrongly thought, how bad can a film with this ensemble cast be? Worse than I imagined. The film is clearly the product of someone not too deep into literature, and who thought that picking a universal work like the Seagull by Chekhov could serve as a basis for a great story if they just added good actors to it. Things are not that easy. Without leading the actors into their characters and without understanding what made the Russian story so powerful, without understanding why its symbolism and its tensions are a portrait of the human condition, you end up with a broken set of images. It looks like a high-school theater project gone wrong.