Synecdoche, New York

Beautifully filmed, acted with passion, and with a very intriguing beginning section, but ultimately just a pointless mess, seemingly designed to confuse/depress the viewer. A barrage of the most miserable events one could ever hope to experience in life, spliced together in a self-indulgent and pretentious manner.

Not entertaining, not thought-provoking, just a waste of time and talent.

This is a huge disappointment given it's lineage, and simply serves to remind one that great actors and great writers sometimes need a great editor and director too. Or you get this type of thing - navel-gazing rubbish.

For TWO LONG HOURS.

It ain't Grown Ups.

PSH aint throwing dice, breathing in petrol or enjoying the odd phone call. One of his fantastical old school moods....

painfully watched this all the way through -I do understand what some reviewers have said about it's 'beauty'; some set pieces were interesting, or were very pleasant to view, some ideas were intriguing, and some parts gruesome and noirish, and indeed some were funny; only because they were so daft. But honestly, there are better films for this kind of 'study on life', there are slicker, shorter and more poignant ways of saying everything this wheezy long-winded self-indulgent load of old cods-wallop was trying to SPELL OUT TO YOU...

Ultimately it became such a ridiculous parody of itself... I kept waiting for something to happen... and finally it did -it stopped... thank god.

see below, copy+paste for definition:

'syn·ec·do·che (si-NEK-d'e'-kee)

n.

A figure of speech in which a part is used for the whole (as hand for sailor), the whole for a part (as the law for police officer), the specific for the general (as cutthroat for assassin), the general for the specific (as thief for pickpocket), or the material for the thing made from it (as steel for sword).'

-now imagine a film specifically playing with this whole and single 'idea' for all of 1hr59min...

exactly... I wouldn't bother if I were you...

This film is like watching someone's dream life. It is extraordinary, strange and moving and, as in dreams, even though the setting is often implausible, the intensity of feeling such that you wake, aching with emotion, is intensely and brilliantly evoked cinematically.

Philip Seymour Hoffman's performance is so touching, and at times heartbreaking. The soundtrack is beautiful - some of the songs collaborated on by Charlie Kaufman.

I loved it - beautiful exploration into the nature of our expectations of life and of other people, and of our failure to grasp how fleeting it is. I was reminded of Henry David Thoreau's homily that when we are young we think we are building a palace, and that by the time we are old we realise we've built a shack!

Fabulous film, fabulous writing, fabulous acting.

Without a doubt the single greatest film I've ever seen.

Kauffman sets out with unusual intentions - a horror film that doesn't fit the horror genera. He has a point, the cliched slasher ingredients aren't scary - abandonment, isolation, pysical and mental decay, the loss of love, the loss of self, the failure to fulfil potneital. These things are truely scary.

Yes it's slow paced to start, and yes its obviously better to watch second time round. Everything profound is better the second time round.

Considering that it is devastatingly emotional in places the movie is loaded with jokes, puns, wit and satire. For the first time Kaufman has invested himself in writing, producing and directing and his presence is felt in every frame. There is a deep and rich symbolism in every scene that Kauffman breathes into the finer details of the movie.

The acting is uniformly brilliant. PSH is, as always, top notch, but it is the under cast that shines - Tom Noonan in particular.

Its difficult to convey the power or 'affect' of the film suscinctly and tangibly, but the aura that it creates is unlike anything I have ever seen. There is a deep sadness woven into the most mundande actions of all the charachters: the sense of loss that comes from playing someone else and the bluring of fiction and emotion overshadow the sheer bleakness of the characthers. There are moments of joy to punctuate and despite the increasing tradjedy of our hero the film becomes lighter and brighter towards the end.

Reviews here seem critical of the film being 'hard to follow' etc. The response to this must simply be 'try harder and pay more attention'. The film was never going to be easily digestibale or of hollywood pace and I have no idea why you eould expect this.

Profound, unique and haunting are the best words I can think of to describe this work. This is very non descript and ambiguous; thus it seems fitting.