Good story, Not enough for a whole film

Awesome Movie

As Good As It Gets

It's a good bad... and worth a popcorn matinée. While it's easy to lament what could have been...

I really liked this film because it wasn't over the top and all Hollywood milked. It was a chilled film with a story of a marriage where there is control and change is making it disruptive. Blake Lively is always the charming actress she always is.

Most reviewers seem to agree that this was a boring and rather pointless film. One of the "positive" reviews suggests that everyone who disliked this film is "unsophisticated". Well, I can't speak for the others, but personally I consider myself a reasonably sophisticated film buff. I tend to prefer films that are less "artsy", but as a former film student and someone who has worked in theatre, film, and TV since the age of 14, I have been exposed to (and enjoyed) a wide and eclectic range of dramatic entertainment - and art - over the years, and I still found ALL I SEE IS YOU to be a boring and pretentious load of twaddle.Technically it is very well made, from a visual standpoint at least, and the actors do a passable job with the weak material they are given. But it is in the writing and directing that this film falls down. There just isn't enough in it to justify such lavish visuals, as on their own they amount to little more than directorial masturbation. More solid storytelling was required - and it didn't have to be conventional if it didn't want to; experimental would have been fine - but there needed to me a stronger and more coherent narrative upon which to hang all those visuals. And the visuals themselves needed to be better contained, more cohesive, and more sparingly used.For example, the POV shots are great, particularly the eye-blinks, which are the best I've ever seen. And mostly they illustrate the varying degrees of vision-loss in an interesting and creative way. If the film limited itself to just these, as the sum-total of weird, psychedelic imagery, it may have been a lot better. But unfortunately we are given more of the same sort of imagery to illustrate the character's internal thoughts. And more again as just general shots of places and things, that are neither POV's or internal imagery. They're just the director getting off on too much VFX. The net product is a confusing and rather irritating mishmash that makes it very hard to follow the paper-thin narrative, and inclined this particular viewer to keep dozing off - aided by the trance-inducing music and sound design!All in all, there wasn't enough plot to keep me interested, none of the characters were particularly engaging or likeable, the visuals, music, and sound design threatened to put me in a coma, and there wasn't nearly as much sex and nudity as Netflix's hysterical warnings led me to expect, so I didn't even get to enjoy a psychedelic boner!Disappointing all round. I gave it three stars for effort and nice locations.

Ok, this film has a lot of twists and turns and moves fast. and several disconnects. which I am still trying to piece together...but it's not horrible.

I went into this film blind (pun intended) not really knowing much about it at all, but needing something 'romantic' from Netlix for a Saturday afternoon. Blake Lively is always interesting to me whether in engaging dramas like Age of Adeline or in engaging nonsense such as The Shallows. It's immediately interesting and the opening images arresting: a kaleidoscope of bodies, a couple in the throes of passion, silken sheets and milky skies - beautifully blended. The images make sense when we discover that Lively's character Gina, is blind - was blinded in a car accident that killed her parents. Her husband, James, dotes on her, caters for her every need, spoils her - he seems quietly, perhaps subconsciously grateful for the position of power their situation puts him in. The first 30 minutes knits together the confusion and frustration of Gina's everyday life perfectly sometimes taking us behind her eyes to experience the lights and the shapes that Gina can almost see as we follow her to the pool, teaching guitar, and to the doctors where she is told that a transplant is possible. The mood shifts dramatically when Gina regains partial sight. She gets a new lease of life. She soaks everything in. She wants to experience everything she's been missing. Gina is ecstatic in her new found sense - on a trip to Spain to visit her sister, she begins to shrug off the old Gina and starts to transform, sexing up her wardrobe, starting to wear makeup, almost purposefully seeking out moments to excite and arouse her. James starts to think that he won't be enough for her and indeed the things she took for granted are not what she expected and not necessarily what she wants.Whilst what follows is definitely psychological, and in part thrilling, this is very much a study of a relationship on the precipice and the extremes we'll go to when cornered or desperate. Gina realises that life has options, and James will do anything he can to try and limit them, to salvage what they have. I found this film incredibly satisfying. I found the union of Gina and James, the transition to a new way of living, Gina's effervescence for her new life and James's acute anxiety that he is about to lose everything really believable. There's a real tension and it's all played beautifully and naturally. There's a moment (a millisecond) near the end where it veers towards melodrama, and even though not the romantic comedy I was looking for, was a film I'm definitely glad I've seen.