I procrastinated watching this movie because emotional manipulation isn't high on my list of things to do for a Tuesday evening. And Life Itself purports itself to be "sensitive" and "poignant" but really it's essentially misery porn, and I am not down for it. In short, it's a story with no realistic timeline, characters being needlessly killed as a means to develop the "plot," and all driving to a maudlin ending where we're supposed to feel like all the needless tragedy turns itself around because "things happen for a reason." It's also punctuated by some of the worst writing I've ever come across in film, but that's besides the point as you're already so defeated by all of the "shocking" deaths and ridiculous coincidences that inevitably land the story in exactly the place where Fogelman wants it to be, and I don't understand if there's a point other than to be wholly and completely co...
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Finally. After five long weeks of $0.99 cent rentals, Apple finally promoted a really good film. Hereditary is terrifying, bloody, and contains a scene where my husband had to pause the film so that I could walk around the house catching my breath. Yes, it's that scary. In short, it's a film about tragedy, it's punctuated by loss, and death propels the plot forward, but not in a slasher-everyone's-going-to-die-anyway kind of way, but more so in a scary-it's-this-close-to-real-life kind of way. The entire picture is shot in a grey-ish tone where even in the daytime scenes you feel askew in some way, that something just isn't right. Also, if Ann Dowd approaches you in any aspect of your life: RUN IN THE OTHER DIRECTION. Toni Collette plays the mom whose family is under siege, Gabriel Byrne her stalwart husband. Great performances by Alex Wolff (Peter) and Milly Shapiro (Charlie) round out the cast, and overall, despite the fact that I really don't c...