Glass

The biggest flop of the year? Quite possibly. I saw the film in the cinema two weeks ago and it smoked out of my head so quickly that I'm only writing about it now, and that doesn't bode damn well. I don't know if Shyamalan has family problems, is drowning in debt or has turned to drugs because after The Visit and Split it looked like he was back to where we wanted him to be, but now he's plummeting down again and has made perhaps the most boring film I've ever seen in the cinema. The acting aces did not please at all. James McAvoy overacts horribly and is not interesting at all, Bruce Willis is a clear candidate to the Golden Raspberry and Samuel L. Jackson unfortunately didn't say much. The film offers almost nothing. It's not action, horror, thriller, funny or suspenseful. It fits the drama, but it's properly tedious, visually unappealing and strangely overwrought at the end. A strange, uninteresting and unentertaining film and I hate that wholeheartedly. I felt like I went to a restaurant and ordered a beef steak medium well with mushrooms, asparagus and chips and ended up getting a steak well done with roast potatoes, carrots and salad. This is not how I imagined my first cinema visit this year. 30% (02/08/2019)

Well… Given that I was mentally prepared for the worst, I’m not disappointed. In fact, I’m relatively a tiny bit pleasantly surprised that, at least conceptually, it makes some sense. IMHO, it is well though-out. In Glass, Shyalaman explores a well known but slightly different motif of comics films - how it would be in the real world - without the viewer actually anticipating it until de last moment. For the closure of a trilogy, it makes sense overall. Unfortunately, the film is almost impossible to enjoy purely at the level of the viewer, but only after it finishes, if you are able and willing to appreciate its structure. There are several stupid moments that ruin what could be a pleasant experience, along with empty dialogues and inconsistent performances (I like Sarah Paulson, but here she was badly cast). What’s utter nonsense is the character of Taylor-Joy (what she’s forced to do there is unbelievable), as well as the final alliance of some of the characters. (02/13/2019)

M. Night Shyamalan goes back to his roots and disappoints badly. In everything. Glass is a film that will probably make you a little embarrassed for the filmmaker himself. It looks televisual, but above all it's all incredibly stupid and self-aware at the same time. The twists and turns are absurd, the pacing is awfully slow and any attempts at philosophising are inhumanly off, and the decent Bruce Willis and James McAvoy can't pull it up to average. Watching Glass is like watching M. Night Shyamalan destroy his own legacy for two hours. And it's not a pretty sight. (01/16/2019)

McAvoy and Willis are outstanding, as they finally have some good roles after a long time. Samuel L. Jackson doesn't take any chances, but he is surprisingly pushed into the background. Glass picks up nicely where we left off twenty years ago. Yes, times have changed since Unbreakable and maybe we don’t need another movie like that. But still it makes for a pleasant and down-to-earth contrast to today’s comic-book blockbusters. It works as it should, but it just lacks anything shocking after all of the X-Men movies. Even so, Shy offers solid and quite surprising twists. This had to have been an unpleasant surprise for those who have only seen Split, but not Unbreakable. They wouldn't be able to make heads or tails out of it. (01/20/2019)

Shyamalan played with his child, for sure, but it’s hard to deny that it lacks the mystery of the “first part” and the surprise of the “second part”. The imaginary highlight of this rather chatty but well-written film is the conversation of all three protagonists in the pink cell of the psychiatric hospital. After that, you just count how many times The Beast will be on the scene and how many security guards he'll beat up. James McAvoy is superb in his role and it's worth going to the cinema for him alone, to see his performance on the big screen. (01/27/2019)