Freaktana A Major Disappointment

Kien Navarro Exactly the movie you think it is, but not the movie you want it to be.

Kaydan Christian A terrific literary drama and character piece that shows how the process of creating art can be seen differently by those doing it and those looking at it from the outside.

Rosie Searle It's the kind of movie you'll want to see a second time with someone who hasn't seen it yet, to remember what it was like to watch it for the first time.

benjaminweber First of all, there was some attempt to make an original time travel film here. Secondly, it was well-acted by everyone in the cast, including the child actors. Bruce Willis and Joseph Gordon-Levitt were great choices for the hardened, older and brash, younger versions of the same man. It is well scored, and well directed. Sadly, this cannot save a film that has a hastily written plot just to make a time travel film.The central premise of the film, that in the future time travel is used to send people back in time to be assassinated because it is impossible to dispose of bodies, is immediately flawed when you realise they could just send the dead body back in time and directly into a furnace, cutting out the middleman. This is particularly of note when we see gangsters actually kill a civilian in the future, indicating they're more than happy to do the deed just to keep their operations silent and that they more than likely kill just as many in the future as they send back. So again, why bother with time travel, especially seeing as the film emphasises that time travel is especially illegal?!The actual mechanisms of time travel seem to be as confused as the reasons for it as well. It spends a lot of time setting up that when someone travels into the past, changes to the past only catch up with them once they pass the point when the change physically occurs. There is one scene making this gruesomely clear, in which a young looper is dismembered as his older self falls apart on the street outside. This is later reinforced with Bruce Willis' memories. This raises another fundamental question with the plot: why did the Rainmaker rise to power on account of his rough upbringing before Bruce Willis travelled back in time to cause his rough upbringing? In Willis' future, he shot his older self as a young man and never went near the farm, meaning the Rainmaker would not exist, at least not as a hardened criminal. He would have no one to stop upon travelling to the past, and would not have even had his loop closed since the Rainmaker was the one closing the loops. As a side note on the same topic, why did he vanish when Gordon-Levitt shot himself? As established earlier, he should have simply turned into a corpse!These weren't the only two issues I had with the plot, but they were the two that really crippled it for me. The earlier throwaway line about telekinesis seemed like forced foreshadowing in hindsight, but at least didn't create plot holes. There were other issues, but I've already written too much! 5/10

syllee B for originality, at least compared to what's out these days. F for gratuitous violence which completely detracts from a potentially good story line. Makes one wonder about the mind of someone who feels the need to create something like this. F for failure to create any sympathetic characters. You *want* to *like* someone, anyone! Sorry. By end of the movie I didn't care about any of them.

jlarmstr-425-173201 Horrid film, utterly forgettable and written/directed by a talent-less hack.

cinemajesty Director/Writer Rian Johnson, heavy-weight-lifting "Star Wars: Episode XIII" for Lucasfilm Ltd at Disney Enterprises Incorporated, had created this sophisticated Science-Fiction movie from scratch with years of research in science, Japanese graphic novels and other movie-loving historical events, but the result is unable to present a universally compelling motion picture from start to finish.Nevertheless the director's surrounding team-players, going out from cinematographer Steve Yeldin and producer Ram Bergman kept their trust in Rian Johnson to be The Director for the job to helm a 200+ Million U.S. Dollar production budget for the upcoming next installment of "Star Wars". The screenplay to "Looper" feels over-written too many gathered notions and creatively spoiled ideas packed in, but not enough emotionally arching visualizations to grip the specter for two-hours in the dark of a movie theater's auditorium.So the movie becomes a roller-coaster of sensations on a well-distributed almost-indy budget of approximately 30 Million U.S. Dollars, which had been worth every cent in production value, but could not bring Rian Johnson's vision to a breathing enduring organic state. Despite the walking-through main story-line of the life of character Joe with four alter-egos portrayed by an inspired, but unchallenged cast ranking from Bruce Willis as Old Joe, Jeff Daniels as Abe, an even older Joe in disguise, Joseph Gordon-Levitt as fair, but unimpressive choice for the lead towards child-actor Pierce Gagnon as the character of Cid, the kid Joe with his overprotective close to annoyed-raising mother, performed by not-flourishing once in any scene of "Looper" actress Emily Blunt.The first 30 minutes of the picture start with the promise of amazing film entertainment far far away from the Hollywood cliché confrontations, but as soon as actor Bruce Willis gets his underrated entrance into the movie, on his knees and with a simplistic uplifting glance into the mirror of his 30 years younger alter-ego, it becomes clear that Director Rian Johnson had lost his way on the picture's image system. Previously impressively opening "Looper" with one shot cold-blooded killing in morning glory before the title card powers on, then plain desert light, a plastic rug and four static coverage shots with the only, if any emotional peak of a copying Sergio Leone's iconic "Once Upon Time In The West" (1968) ECUs (extreme-close-ups) on Willis' & Gordon-Levitt's seemingly undirected, lost in time eyeballing.By then, it got harder to get on up back into the saddle of things for the unless promising movie "Looper" (2012) on its search for its conclusion on the mystery of the character of Rainmaker, spanning 30 years of action in some decently crafted editorials by Bob Ducsay, who could not convince Director/Writer Rian Johnson's uneven but passionate brainchild to become a picture of great simplicity without copying layering techniques already been seen from Quentin Taratino's "Pulp Fiction" as well as the even further outgoing Oliver Stone directed "Natural Born Killers" (both 1994) over to Christopher Nolan's more accessible main-character-wise "Memento" (2000), only to forget all about a just vanishing performance by actor Paul Dano as Joe's only ally besides himself over and over again in the misdirected to overacting role of Seth with no character arc fulfilled when it is time to close the loop.© 2017 Felix Alexander Dausend (Cinemajesty Entertainments LLC) Data provided by An Amazon.com Affiliate