Predestination. A... drama? thriller? puzzle? about time travel paradoxes. It start with a couple of very stylish (but also very redundant shots), but that won't come back. The next minute, we get an action sequence, but that won't come back either. A couple of minutes later, people are talking - and now we're really in the film, cause that's what happens mostly: people chatting. (Now I know why Ethan Hawke was cast!) We get a long retrospective at someone's life, and then a lot more talking while puzzle pieces are falling into place - until you fully realize near the end what the paradoxes is about. Well, I say that, but a lot of it becomes pretty obvious earlier, while the film itself goes through a little sequence to explain itself in full a couple of minutes after everything had become obvious. A little lame.
No, I wasn't impressed. The actual paradox is interesting (and for me in its most interesting aspect wholly unexplained:
if she/he is her/his own father and mother, how did that loop ever start?), but the film is pretty boring. Especially the long retrospective on the key person's life is a drag where I constantly wondered when it was going to be interesting or relevant to the plot. You can have some of that - it's a puzzle after all - but 30+ min is a bit long. In short, I think I would have preferred this as a short film, or maybe I should just have read Heinlein's original short story. (I read that it's based on
'-all you zombies-'.)
My Perfect Romance. A romantic... uhm... well, it's not funny, there is no noticeable drama, so I'll go with abomination. A romantic abomination. There. We were going for some lazy feelgood thing, but should have turned off after 5 min, cause the warning signs were very obvious: based on a Harlequin story and poorly acted. Add a dumb, inconsistent story and poor characters, and the conclusion is that I feel basically like
@Ekkie Thump just above: why didn't we pick a film that sounded good?
It's gotta be better than Red Notice though. It's a good bit shorter, so less time lost.