Review of I'm Thinking of Ending Things (2020) by Kirkender — 13 Sep 2020

First off, I absolutely hated this film. HATED. It is slow, pretentious, and very boring at times. For about 25 minutes of the 2 hour 15 minutes run time, I LOVED this film. The performances are absolutely wonderful, truly a masterclass of acting from melodrama to understated nuance.

The dinner scene and the ending scenes are amazing. Then everything else is pretentious. I have heard that the film acts more as a companion piece to the book, and honestly, I'm interested to read it.

But holy moly, Charlie Kaufman had become lost up his own butt and it shows. We get it, Charlie, you think you are an artist. Can you make things that are fun to watch again please? If people are saying you have to watch it more than once to 'get it' you have failed at your job as a filmmaker.

We are supposed to WANT to watch it again, not be so out of it was HAVE to watch it again. For the record, I never felt confused or lost, partially because the film does do a good job of setting expectations in the surreal almost immediately, and reading meaning in surreal and following emotional storytelling is for some reason, pretty natural for me, but I totally get that people would be confused by this film because it can be pretty obtuse (intentionally so).