The Road - the movie

I realize this may be moved to Entertainment but as there is a bigger audience in GD I will start it off here.

I talked to my sister tonight about it and laughed about how totally opposite we felt about it.

I thought it was one of the scariest (and well done) films I have ever seen and done in such a rich and believable way. I was there! O! the things... This was no regular fare movie, this was a portend to a possible future that some of us may see. *gulp

coast," the last inhabitable place on the planet.

It was a page turner, and sad in the end. It was the last book my wife read before she passed. I never saw the movie, but the book was great.

My son gave it to his dad for father's day one year.

I loved the book (read it three times so far), but haven't seen the movie yet.

but her movie tastes are pretty mainstream so I'm not all that surprised. If it doesn't have puppies in it or guns in car trunks it's too much for her. ;)

Especially as a father. Great movie. Great existential themes. Very well done. Acting superb.

Oscar worthy IMO

I just can't see how they could do the book justice in a movie. The book left me stunned.

Dull as a golf ball. it did have potential but the whole thing came off as drawn-out and boring. Maybe it's a fine book, but books and movies work very differently from one another.

If you want to see 180 minutes of Viggo Mortensen looking emaciated and confused, sprinkled with occasional moments that make you go "Huh? What?" then The Road is your movie. it can't make up its mind if it wants to be postapocalyptic horror, a tough drama, or "movie with a message" oscarbait. It's confused, it's long, it's boring, it's largely silent, it's long, and it was also long, perhaps because it was boring.

Every single moment of tension, every single one fizzles out. The whole movie, you're waiting for there to be a climax of some sort, you're watching it, and something starts happening... then we have a flashback and when we cut back to the present, any tension is lost, and the scene has changed.

Like I said, maybe it's a good book. But as a movie, it is absolutely horrible.

:hi:

had to think about it for a while, eh?

;)

:rofl:

:rofl:

I read the reviews, said "That sounds badass" - I have a "thing" for post-apocalyptic movies, whether they be zombie apocalypse, nuclear holocaust, environmental catastrophe, or "other."

So I rented it, and it was so... bleah. I'm not wholly sure what I expected, but what I got was "Aragorn and Frodo take the ring to Mount St. helens by mistake"

As a bit of a connoisseur of the post-apocalyptic genre, you can make it realistic (The Day After), you can make it badass (Children of Men), you can make it genuinely terrifying (World War Z), you can make it silly, even (Ever seen Radioactive Dreams? It's a hoot) or any combination of these (Mad Max Trilogy). But the one thing the post-apocalyptic media should never, ever be... is boring. You should never leave your audience going "So it's Damnation Alley without the fun" (and if you've ever seen, or READ Damnation Alley... terrible. Still looks good next to The Road)

It is the follow up book to Oryx and Crake .

i should perhaps reread it.

what I got was "Aragorn and Frodo take the ring to Mount St. helens by mistake"

Regardless of my personal view of the movie, that line is an instant classic. Well done! :rofl: :rofl: :rofl: :yourock:

It is one of the best films I have seen this year. Uncompromisingly literary, the acting is first rate. Nope, it is not Mad Max.
The Road was not boring to me. It was compelling, and it is stuck in my mind. The adaptation did not bow to film conventions.
In closing, I will point out that the film is 113 minutes, not 180. It is a great movie that I'd not recommend to everyone.
Viggo is wonderful in the film. Not a perfect film, but without a doubt a challenging and great film.

Does it want to be post-apocalyptic? Does it want to be a drama? Does it want to be "meaningful" oscarbait? I couldn't tell, it definitely tried all three and wasn't particularly good at any of them

It doesn't have to fit in your tidy boxes of movie consumption. :hi:

But nice attempt at trying to be avant garde and "hip" - it's a confused movie. The plot can't decide where it's going, the settings and scenes change, apparently randomly and without meaning, and they do so in a hurry.

A film that "doesn't fit" is fine; Is Big Trouble In Little China a standard action flick? a comedy? A Wuxia? Low Fantasy? A western? yes, to all of them. It doesn't fit neatly, but it knows where it's going with the plot, and so does the viewer. The Road doesn't do that.

I could stand The Road having slow pacing. I could stand it being low on flash and bang. I can even forgive it its false starts and constant tension letdown. But I can't forgive the stuttering of the already shaky plot.

Overall the whole thing looks more like a cinematographer's video resume than an actual movie; The shots are gorgeous - they're just strung together poorly on top of an already crippled plot.

Thanks for letting me know. :eyes:

"It doesn't have to fit in your, like, neat little 'boxes' and junk, y'know, man? Just, like... let it be, yeah..."

Sorry, I totally read your post with the stoner voice :rofl:

I'm just messing, really. However, my actual point remains; I'm not asking that it be boxed-in, just... coherent. I want it to follow its own themes. it doesn't do that, so it annoys me.

My movie recommendation - The Secret in Their Eyes. An Argentinean Film. Just brilliant. In Spanish with English subtitles. Got the Oscar for Best Foriegn Film -- but should have got it for Best Film.

Just Brill.

Older man has son with new young wife; writes book about his precious, precious gift to the world and what a Good Daddy he is. Yawn. Nice reading for those who don't like heavy lifting.

The book was even better.

again, another truly disturbing but very rich one

Both are fantastic (although not for the faint of heart, especially Blood Meridian).

but, yeah, it's bleak.

Probably not the best choice for anyone feeling down about current events.

The first time I just could not finish it. That is one painful book!

Mr McCarthy does not write lightweight entertainment.

the old man was Robert Duvall and at the end the man on the beach was Guy Pierce (the Memento Guy).

what gave them away was their voices as they sure didn't look like themselves at all here.

i still struggle to see the 'genius' behind it (the movie, at least)

The apocalypse gave him the starkest b/g against which these psychological dramas within the boy would stand in even more stark relief. Things like the mother leaving when he's in that 3-5 year old stage and how his father letting go (being let go of) once he's finally gotten the boy to a point (at the end of the film) where he's connected with a community (representing entering the adolescent and larger world.)

I thought the apocalyptic imagery was useful and vivid, but I didn't think that was the primary point of the film.

It made me think of Camus, a dark view of the world, and yet unwilling to give up, having faith that it is worthwhile to struggle on.

Sort of an arty Daddy blog. Mommy? Expendable.

achingly sad and dreary. and the ending is a true downer, even more so in the book than the movie. no spoiler here though.

i appreciate mortensen, he's doing everything he can here. but the film follows no 'country for old me' in tone. of course, cormac mccarthy is probably perfectly on track to see the post apocalypse world in such an awful light. any romanticization of the end of the human world is probably pissing in the wind.

but heck, it's what we do, right? having grown up reading heinlien, i can't help it. plucky survivors and heros of the wasteland, right?

so i much prefer 'book of eli.' or going back a little ways, the 2nd and 3rd mad max films. i love how the kids in 'thunderdome' are already telling the story of the past with their little bamboo tv and such.

Cormac McCarthy is one of the greatest living writers we have.

I also loved Oryx and Crake and the follow up The Year of the Flood . Margaret Atwood is a fantastic writer and Cormac McCarthy is a favorite

...was a fine adaptation of a riveting book. bleak, but riveting. This is a rare case where i feel the movie adaptation can give the viewer a very accurate rendition of the source material. Some parts are streamlined, (that has to happen to make any book into a 2-2.5hr movie) but the overall tone of the story and the high impact parts were done very well. Viggo was imo perfectly cast as the father.

movie was excellent. A slice-of-life movie taking place during an Armageddon future in which a father, who dearly loves his son, is teaching his son how to survive in this terrible world.

The ending is hopeful. Great acting.

:thumbsup:

others was the relationship of the father and son. This story could have well taken place during the Great Depression ala The Grapes Of Wrath, except for of course, the cannibalism.

The ending was non-climatic for me. Although I'm glad, that the boy who scored such good karma in his tender years through his compassion, was at the end rewarded almost immediately upon the death of his father, by meeting a family that wanted to take him in and join their own odyssey of survival. He was also rewarded with a new mother and siblings (which he craved).