Protecting The Private Life

Great mystery movie. It slows down a tiny bit between the crime happening and the mystery beginning, but nothing to worry about. The acting is superb, with Jude Law and Rooney Mara being as excellent as always. It provides all the information necessary for the audience to work it out in advance (which is a personal requirement for me when watching mysteries), but portrays it in a completely different light at the time. Just as it proves the importance of context when hinting at the truth, so to does it comment on the danger of context when surrounded by crazy people - suddenly everything you do can seem crazy. How do you know if someone is actually crazy, or just appears crazy because you've prejudged them? What about the reverse? 9/10

What first appears to be a simple shy-boy-meets-girl story turns into a surprisingly dark tale about child abuse and mental illness. It is an incredibly well handled example of an unreliable narrator, supplemented with superb acting. If you're willing to stick through its illusion of mediocrity, there's a lot of nuance to be found. 10/10

Some excellent speeches scattered throughout 2.5 hours of rambling Old English. It fails as a gripping political drama, and certainly isn't a war movie; it's merely a biography about a man whose personal life just doesn't seem interesting enough to warrant 2.5 hours. It's by no means a bad movie (the acting is exemplary), but I can't see it entertaining anyone beyond patriotic American intellectuals. 5/10

Very slow, but intentionally that way. It very methodically builds up to the final act, and makes the final scene very powerful. Whether that scene makes 2 hours of build-up worth it is up to the viewer. Nobody can argue that it's incredibly well crafted, but it's not designed to be "entertaining" in the traditional sense. It's a window into the real world of intelligence-gathering, and not spiced up in the slightest. 8/10

Amazing movie. The surreal-ness was handled extremely well, and Jake Gyllenhaal gives an amazing performance. It had me intrigued from start to almost-finish. And that brings me to my problem with the ending: [SPOILERS BELOW] Suddenly the time travel is actually real? Up until the tornado crashing the plane, everything could be explained as paranoid schizophrenia. It would have been really easy to have an amazing ending while keeping with the idea that it's all in his head - why the need to suddenly make the pseudo-science real? What did the ending add to the story? Unless I'm missing something? Maybe the Director's Cut is much better? 8/10

Apart from a couple of times where it slipped across the line, it walked the tightrope between cheesy and charming/old-fashioned to perfection. Harnessing the theme of ageing as a way to honour the series' past. Translating the theme of "fighting in the shadows" to literal (incredible) silhouette fight scenes with amazing background colours. So good. If it wasn't for some inexplicable character decisions and laughable "hacking", a perfect score would have been given. 9/10

Walked out after 25 minutes. I could rant for several paragraphs, but it can be summed up by saying that absolutely no respect was given to the audience's intelligence. Also, "slow motion" is not synonymous with "arty", nor "weird lens flare sparkles" with "beautiful". 2/10 And "3D" in the title? Seriously?