Review of Birdman or (The Unexpected Virtue of Ignorance) (2014) by Franz H — 11 Oct 2015

Umm, well, this movie just sucked. I like Michael Keaton, but basically it's a camera following some pretentious, self-absorbed actors who are involved in a Broadway play. It's one of those movies where the characters fire off nonstop, pompus and pretentious, self-important dialogue, fully formed with no hesitation or thought involved.

And Edward Norton is the king of pompous and pretentious. It's like the screenwriters are trying to impress us with how cool they are. There's a scene where they forcefully and angrily argue, like it really matters, whether you should say "I didn't know the guy" in 3 lines or 1 line.

And another scene where the main character goes to get fitted for his costume and gets naked in front of some women. And there's big discussion about what he did. Like it really matters. And then the main character flies off the handle in front of the audience and they stop the play.

Like it really matters. I suppose if you're an actor then stuff like this would be interesting and pertinent, but for the rest of us it's just gimmicky and self-absorbed and pompous and stupid.

And speaking of gimmicky for the sake of being cool and gimmicky....from what I saw the entire film was continuous shot from a single camera moving with the action, no cuts whatsoever. Wow, talk about being deliberately gimmicky.

Geez people, it's about a freakin' Broadway play. It's hard to generate some serious drama about a piece of irrelevant fluff like a Broadway play. Who cares?? Another almost unwatchable movie that I turned off about halfway through.