I Care a Lot

Of course, I'm glad it turned out the way it did .... but had it ended a few minutes earlier, I would’ve tipped my proverbial hat because a film with such big cynical balls would be remembered years from now. Blakeson just went soft, but it doesn’t matter, my idealistic little soul was relieved, so at least I send my kisses to Rosamund, those mischievously ironic pursed lips of hers at exactly the right moment, that eye play, it was an acting recital. (02/26/2021)

An excellent, cynical, motherfucking thriller about the conflict between two assholes. Rosamund Pike enjoys herself plenty playing a despicable being who abuses defenceless old people, until one day she messes with an old woman who has very dangerous friends. It’s brisk, with excellent performances and a lot of fun, but unfortunately not so well written. In the last act things go a bit too over-the-top and the script begins to rely too much on unlikely coincidences. But I’m willing to turn a blind eye to it, because the ending was pleasant. In short, great satisfaction. (02/19/2021)

With our government’s policies, I probably (luckily) won’t survive until my retirement. It’s just a matter of time until Marla inspires somebody to open a similar professional care service in this country. This cynical, female version of Scarface surfs on the waves of modern trends and, but still comes across subversively. It has a perfect screenplay which doesn’t falter, even at the end, and it manages to squeeze both comedy and a good portion of tension from the ridiculous premise about a "carer" who (completely legally) robs the mother of a white slave trade boss. Rosamund Pike’s acting recital is tastefully seconded by Peter Dinklage. Unexpectedly satisfying. (02/24/2021)

It hasn’t happened to me in a long time that I've had this much trouble rooting for a character in a movie. Because the problem here is the lack of any "character" in the good sense of the word. Besides, the way the main character justifies his own actions here (lioness or lambs) is insanely banal in every way. Of course I can't say that I don't care how the whole thing turns out and that I wasn't entertained. I Care a Lot combines thriller elements with Coen-esque absurdity quite playfully, and of course tries to put everything into a current social context. Rosamund Pike is OK, though she was a bit more demonic and believable in Gone Girl. In the end, though, it's a pretty cool one-off with a cool story. The ending is a bit overladen and makes a statement more tragicomic than believable on the current status of women in society, but who cares. As long as you don't have exaggerated expectations involving major statements and don't look for any deeper meanings, you'll be reasonably satisfied. It's such a nice play on the genre. [65%] (04/12/2021)

It’s pretty much a slam dunk by the halfway point since the central pensioner scam is a believably foul business, the plot unravels slowly and suspensefully, Peter Dinklage has a great accent and charisma, and Rosamund Pike successfully makes progress in her acting struggle not to come across as a living being. Plus, it has an interesting unspoken subplot at the start about there being a skeleton crew of women in executive positions across the system who look out each other and watch each other's backs in various types of semi-legal trouble. Once the cards are laid on the table, it knocks itself down a few times, stops making sense, and starts peppering us with one tendentious cliché after another. In bullet points (spoilers): 1) the film outright states several times that this will be a conflict of different ways of solving problems, i.e. the fear and brutal violence the mafia antagonist works with versus the cunning and outwitting of the system within it, which is the protagonist's domain. In the end, however, she achieves victory by electrifying the antagonist's security guard with tasers and then drugging him and leaving him dumped in the woods, thus achieving victory over him by his own means, in exact opposition to what she has convinced us of so far 2) Rosamund Pike's character here comes across as a clichéd Strong Woman (TM). To support her, the film thus puts her in situations where a dirty redneck in a red baseball cap threatens to rape her. I find this translation of the Twitter mindset into the medium of film extremely annoying 3) the film is shot in such a way that it could take place practically anywhere there are a few houses, as the camera doesn't take up any space at all and we mostly watch static focused faces in a narrow focus strip with a completely blurred background. Most of the semi-closeups and closeups of faces look like something out of a corporate annual report. 4) When the film does dare to go all in with everything and familiarize us with the space where the scene takes place, for some reason some places are completely nonsensically lit in purple or red, for example, and there's a turquoise light shining out of the windows of a normal apartment building that no one really shines at home. This isn't the first contemporary film where I've seen this, and I'd like someone to explain why they’re doing this to me. (02/28/2021)