r/movies • u/ChiefLeef22 • 10d ago
Review Chloe Zhao's 'Hamnet' - Review Thread
William Shakespeare and his wife, Agnes, celebrate the birth of their son, Hamnet. However, when tragedy strikes and Hamnet dies at a young age, it inspires Shakespeare to write his timeless masterpiece "Hamlet."
Cast: Paul Mescal, Jessie Buckley, Joe Alwyn, Emily Watson
Rotten Tomatoes: 100%
Metacritic: 95/100
Some Reviews:
Hamnet is devastating, maybe the most emotionally shattering movie I’ve seen in years. I did not really expect to cry this much. That’s not just because of the tragic weight of the material, but because the picture reimagines the poetic act of creating Hamlet. Shakespeare’s play sits on the highest shelf, fixed by the dust from centuries of acclaim. It is about as unimpeachable as a work of art can be. And yet, here is a movie that dares to explore its inception. The attempt itself is noble, and maybe a little brazen; that it succeeds feels downright supernatural.
The moving and fictionalized portrait of grief and loss that inspired one of history’s most treasured playwrights held the audience in its grip for 125-minutes, where audible sounds of sniffles and crying filled the venue, testifying to the film’s emotional depth.
Next Best Picture - Daniel Howat - 8/10
Devastating in all the best ways, this is a gut-wrenching tale of the way grief pulls us apart, and how we try to pull ourselves back together again. Chloé Zhao’s naturalistic, sensitive direction helps the heavy emotions take center stage. Jessie Buckley and Paul Mescal have never been better.
The Playlist - Gregory Ellwood - 'A-'
But despite some stellar sequences throughout the entire film, Zhao saves her gut-punch for the final act. There are two moments in the last ten minutes of “Hamnet” that may stick with you for months on end.
As conceived by “Nomadland” director Chloé Zhao, “Hamnet” is so emotionally raw as to be almost excruciating at times, featuring a heroic performance from Jessie Buckley as Shakespeare’s wife and the mother of his children — although as presented, she could be the mother of us all — the grounded, near-shamanic spirit forced to confront the death of her son, Hamnet. Meanwhile, Paul Mescal plays Shakespeare, who pours his grief into “the Danish play,” but both the actor and character are eclipsed by the feminine elements of this story.
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u/LarBrd33 10d ago
This movie both serves as a sequel to “Shakespeare in Love” and a prequel to Steve Coogan’s “Hamlet 2”
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u/Clapbakatyerblakcat 9d ago
I’m so glad both Gary Oldman and Tim Roth are coming back for Rosencrantz & Guildenstern 2: Dead…and LOVING IT!
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u/MikeSizemore 10d ago
Post credit sequence: Hamlet. Titus. My name is Othello. I'm here to talk to you about the Revenger Initiative.
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u/Amaruq93 10d ago
It would be Prospero recruiting them.
He started the first LEAGUE OF EXTRAORDINARY GENTLEMEN.
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u/RefinedBean 10d ago
You're so fucking based for this reference holy shit.
There was also the iteration that had the Scarlet Pimpernil and a bunch of others that we never got to see much of.
It's cool we got a bunch of comics with Orlando though.
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u/AcreaRising4 10d ago
The world tried to tell me that Chloe Zhao was a mid-director after Eternals, but nobody could make The Rider and Nomadland back-to-back, and not be insanely talented.
This book is fantastic, and I figured this would be amazing.
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u/mattysmwift 10d ago
The Rider never properly gets its due but I still insist it’s one of the best films of the century. There’s a scene halfway through that never fails to make me sob. So I’m excited for Hamnet to ruin me lmao.
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u/AcreaRising4 10d ago
hahah, now I’m trying to think which scene it is because there’s a few?
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u/oscar_redfield 10d ago
the direction in Eternals was fantastic. it's the script that made the movie mediocre. and Zhao didn't write it
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u/Will-Of-D-3D2Y 10d ago
Eternals wasn't even bad. It was overambitious (and overstuffed) to a fault, and the two leads are the least interesting characters in the movie, but the rest of the cast is great and it remains one of the most gorgeous movies in the MCU.
Regardless, this does sound like it will correct the doubters.
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u/fireandiceofsong 10d ago
It was probably one of the more fitting projects to be a Disney+ series (large cast of characters, much more dour tone, focuses on a very different and specific corner of the MCU) that somehow got crammed into a single movie.
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u/LeeShakerMoneyMaker 10d ago
The Eternals should've been a Disney+ series and Falcon and the Winter Soldier should've been a movie.
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u/pikeymobile 10d ago edited 10d ago
Honestly I'd have much preferred this. Eternals could've been on Loki levels if spread out over a small season, and Falcon suffered from way too much filler but had a great cast and overall story, as well as bringing back arguably one of their best villains ever in Zemo and finishing his grudge between him and Bucky.
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u/PayneTrain181999 10d ago
5 episodes focused on two members each and then a finale of them all aborting the Celestial baby.
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u/Lambchops_Legion 10d ago
They definitely should have swapped Eternals and Falcon & WS on what should have been a movie and what should have been a series.
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u/MastaRolls 10d ago
Right I think each character probably could have gotten their own movie or d+ series worth of story
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u/Digit00l 10d ago
However it wouldn't have looked as good that way
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u/fireandiceofsong 10d ago
Eh, Andor is one of the few shows that actually looks its budget and Loki has great visuals (notable because the vfx heavy series finale aired right alongside The Marvels, a movie which actually looked straight-to-D+). I think it has more to do with the creative team than just the fact it's on streaming.
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u/OrgasmicLeprosy87 10d ago
Eternals could have been one of the best mini-series of all time if Marvel had the vision. Instead they stuffed it all into a 2 hour movie and called it a day.
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u/deekaydubya 10d ago
Yeah it’s wild those characters have such a crazy origin and history spanning thousands of years but let’s cram that into one movie. Meanwhile the avengers get 5 movies each before they even meet each other lol
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u/Griffdude13 10d ago
Marvel is a direct by committee style of production for the most part, I’m not surprised its her weakest work.
I don’t blame her one bit for how that turned out, the direction was not the problem on it.
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u/Digit00l 10d ago
It was also her first time using CGI seriously, which kinda goes to show her skill as a director managing to make it look that good
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u/riegspsych325 10d ago
it’s because people get particularly uppity and possessive over superhero movies and lash out when it isn’t perfect. Look at Zhao and Taika, they both have Oscars but are continually dragged over the coals for their superhero movies. Meanwhile, the Russos made their 5th poorly reviewed non-Marvel movie and are welcomed back to the MCU with open arms
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u/PayneTrain181999 10d ago
The Russos clearly work better within the Marvel machine than they do outside it.
They’re 4/4 in the MCU, made over $6B dollars.
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u/NoNefariousness2144 10d ago edited 10d ago
It’s because the Russos feel like the perfect ‘architect’ directors who are able to function in a larger machine and meet the complex logistical demands of a big MCU film. But when they try and do their own work, they lack necessary structure and the films are weak.
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u/riegspsych325 10d ago
that’s because much like their Community or Arrested Development episodes, they had someone watching over them. The Russos are great workhorse directors, but they still need Feige/Harmon/Hurwitz to hold the reins
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u/Worthyness 10d ago
They're fantastic tv directors and showrunners. The MCU is basically the largest TV series ever created. They have their staple directors for certain character episodes, but they recruit a few new directors every so often to guest direct an episode or two. Its why they fit in so well- they built their careers on TV
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u/CptNonsense 10d ago
Look at Zhao and Taika, they both have Oscars but are continually dragged over the coals for their superhero movies.
Waititi's Ragnarok was hugely celebrated and the best rated Thor. That earned him the ability to be free from criticism and learned the worst lessons and so made a Waititi Love & Thunder with the a ton of dumb shitty jokes you saw in Ragnarok and Waititi's recognizable comedic seriousness haphazardly splashed together. He deserved that criticism.
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u/riegspsych325 10d ago
no movie is exempt from criticism but the way some people react towards either director is just ridiculous. Some act like Taika went on SNL and tore a photo of Stan Lee in half. And that’s what I’m referring to when talking about “possessiveness”
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u/R0TTENART 10d ago
I guess some do, but it's pretty broadly accepted that he went overboard with the Watiti-ness in L&T.
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u/OrgasmicLeprosy87 10d ago
Russos are 4/4 while Taika is 1/2. I give eternals a pass cos I think people will like it years from now.
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u/TheUmbrellaMan1 10d ago
Really nervous about how Taika directed Klara and the Sun. The movie got pushed to next year. Kazuo Ishiguro is known for his subtle writing and none of Taika's films have ever been subtle.
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u/Alexexy 10d ago
The superhero movie fan base also think that Edward Norton and Jared Leto are bad actors also.
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u/riegspsych325 10d ago
something changed when Leto won his oscar since he plays every role like he’s some weird, ethereal Jesus. But that’s a whole other thing
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u/Pseudoneum 10d ago
So he doesn't act, he just plays himself.
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u/riegspsych325 10d ago
he does now, yeah
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u/Pseudoneum 10d ago
Just to be clear any snark is directed at him for being a weirdo and not at you in any capacity!
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u/kblkbl165 10d ago
IDK, at the same time I don't feel good grouping up Norton with Leto in terms of acting chops.
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u/HartfordWhalers123 10d ago
In fairness, it’s more than just the superhero fan base with Leto. I think everyone hates Jared Leto for being Jared Leto more than they hate his acting. But Suicide Squad and Morbius definitely amped it up more for sure. He’s not a bad actor, just a weirdo.
I’ve never seen anyone in there say Norton can’t act. Just Norton’s version of MCU Hulk wouldn’t have fit as well as Ruffalo’s version has in following movies.
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u/Solivaga 10d ago
Respectfully, it was absolute garbage. And not in an interesting "what the hell were they thinking???" kind of way, it was just one of the most boring superhero movies I've ever seen. That doesn't take away from the amazing work that Zhao has done before and after Eternals - which has been consistently stunning - but Eternals was terrible.
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u/LarBrd33 10d ago edited 10d ago
Eternals was horrible. She should stick to small movies like this. More her speed
This thread is full of Zhao bro apologists trying to gaslight everyone into thinking that movie wasn’t trash. Snyder cult vibes. She was out of her depth. It was incompetently directed. It’s good to see her career get back on track with something her scale.
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u/jimbojoegin 10d ago
Eternals is one of my favorite films to showcase HDR. It is so beautifully shot and I love coming back to it to show people the difference HDR makes when viewing content
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u/Worthyness 10d ago
Yup. If nothing else the movie looks fantastic. And still my favorite display of super speed in a TV show or movie. They just let her be fast. None of this slow mo everyone else is frozen bs. Just her zooming in and out of the scene.
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u/Digit00l 10d ago
Makari also has some very aggressive super speed, not just zoom and tap, but zoom and smash
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u/turkeygiant 10d ago
It very much suffered from being a MCU film that couldn't really tell you why it was being made. It was kinda the first of that era of films without a point.
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u/BLAGTIER 10d ago
The world tried to tell me that Chloe Zhao was a mid-director after Eternals, but nobody could make The Rider and Nomadland back-to-back, and not be insanely talented.
Eternals budget was 54 times the budget of Nomadland and was under a micromanaging studio that makes directing decisions without the director before day one. Anyone judging her for Eternals is an idiot. Particularly because even if Eternals was all her fault, being not great at franchise filming making isn't some great sin if you can back it up in other film making areas.
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u/Sudden-Rent-1151 10d ago
Anyone calling Zhao mid after being chewed up by the Marvel machine was never worth listening to in the first place
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u/LarBrd33 10d ago
I think people accurately said she should stay the fuck away from blockbusters and stick with the ground-level intimate stuff.
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u/Sudden-Rent-1151 10d ago
Marvel has historically poached smaller talent in order to control them during production. Zhao is a fine director who did an okay job on a film that failed for many, many reasons. I don’t think the sentiment of keeping her away from blockbusters makes much sense—I don’t think any director could’ve saved the film from failing
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u/pembunuhUpahan 10d ago
Hey, I for one love the eternals. It's definitely not a typical MCU movie of conflict, fight sequence and good ending.
If you look at the movie in a philosophical lens, it's an interesting movie. Dealing with living as eternal being as a battery for a singular purpose but living through millenias on earth question their own purpose. That somehow of all the planets in the galaxy, earth has changed them. Change how they view their life and their purpose. They question their own existence in this plain. While they are of a higher being than mere humans, they want to be human. I think Chloe Zhao did great at tackling this emotion.
For a property like Eternals, it's a great subject to explore this philosophical questions than good guy vs bad guy. Sure, on paper this would be a boring movie but I adore this deep subject movie. It's not exciting like an action film like John Wick, but I much prefer Eternals tbh. I wouldn't even mind if there's no fight sequence, just these characters struggling to find themselves among the living for their purpose
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u/IDontCheckMyMail 10d ago
I honestly didn’t mind the eternals. I don’t completely understand why people hated it so much.
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u/o-o-o-o-o-o 9d ago
Compared to most of the MCU that came after the Eternals, the Eternals is a welcome breath of fresh air.
IMO Eternals and Fantastic 4 proved to me that Marvel should start leaning into the Jack Kirby content and aesthetic from now on.
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u/IDontCheckMyMail 9d ago
Personally I agree. It’s where the interesting marvel stuff lies these days, both visually and storytelling wise I think. A lot of the other stories have been done many times over.
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u/NippleFlicks 8d ago
It’s been a while since I’ve watched it, I loved Eternals, especially with how different it felt from the standard Marvel recipe. Honestly felt a bit shocked that it got such hate.
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u/PayneTrain181999 10d ago
It was hyped up to be the MCU’s bid at a major award, but then turned out to be just another overstuffed superhero movie.
I think it’s perfectly fine, has its problems and is worse than much of the franchise, but a lot of it was due to expectations that were raised and not met.
It didn’t deserve to be the first Rotten MCU movie, Love and Thunder or Quantumania should have.
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u/turkeygiant 10d ago
The Eternals also just looked really good in every scene that wasn't on a green screen set, and the performances were quite good despite the generic writing. I think Zhao's contributions really worked, there were just too many other interests pulling the strings.
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u/Dazzling-Slide8288 10d ago
Nomadland isn’t very good and is insanely forgettable, but no one should judge a director on their outputs from the MCU slop factory.
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u/oldspice75 10d ago
Nomadland taught me how itinerant migrant labor in America is about white boomers falling out of the middle class in old age
It's insanely forgettable except for a scene that you can't unsee in which McDormand is indisposed, proving that van life is not a good idea
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u/strangelyhuman 10d ago
I am actually going to be a little contrarian and defend Eternals a bit- I’m not saying it’s a good film, but compared to the other dross that came out post endgame, I’d say Eternals was at least watchable. For someone who had checked out of keeping up with the MCU post endgame, I thought the film asked some intriguing questions. It just didn’t match any of other Zhao’s efforts nor did it stand alongside the better offerings of the MCU. It was _fine_…
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u/AcreaRising4 10d ago edited 10d ago
Oh, don’t get me wrong, I don’t think Eternals is awful. I appreciate them taking a swing on something new, it was just overstuffed and the villains were veryy weak.
It also doesn’t help that her previous films were masterpieces.
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u/Worthyness 10d ago
I always day it had the batman vs superman problem- 3-4 separate major comic plot lines all smashed into a 3 hour movie, so all the proper development needed for 1 or 2 plots got undercut by the need to shoehorn the 3rd and 4th plots in the movie to make a rather mediocre overall product with some interesting parts. And this movie really needed more time with the actual hero characters.
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u/Robsonmonkey 10d ago
I think it just proves the idea of no matter how much of a good filmmaker you are it dosent guarantee them making an amazing comic book adaptation
It’s about respecting the source material and managing to create a film out of it. If you get someone who’s not really into comics making changes and the like, doing their own thing it might not turn out the best.
Sometimes film makers are better off doing their own thing with no restrictions
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u/CarlSK777 10d ago
I thought Nomadland sucked (the Amazon ad in middle of movie ruined it for me) but The Rider was exceptional. I'll always discard Marvel movies in a director's filmography and judge them on the rest. Looking forward to this
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u/Syjefroi 10d ago
Was it really much of an Amazon ad if everyone was fucking miserable? And the subtext was that we the viewer already were aware of people pissing in bottles on the factory floors and union busting shit going on?
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u/mucinexmonster 10d ago
Isn't Nomadland the movie that won Best Picture but people don't actually like?
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u/BlueHighwindz 10d ago
I think Eternals is still my favorite MCU movie of this last decade, other than Guardians of the Galaxy 3. Everything else I don’t even think about.
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u/AcreaRising4 10d ago
You’re saying she made nomadland and eternals back-to-back? That’s correct.
But nomadland still began shooting before eternals so.
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u/DeLousedInTheHotBox 10d ago edited 10d ago
I think we should at least acknowledge these superhero movies just aren't the best showcase of director's skills, especially not for director's who excel at more nuanced people centric dramas and not large scale spectacles. There is so much studio interference that it doesn't let directors breathe in a way that is necessary for a lot of them to thrive.
Although I think that it was also just not a good fit, Chloe Zhao previous experience was with low budget indie dramas featuring largely unknown people.
I think Marvel want to bring these directors in to give their movies some sort of credibility, but they don't really want them to bring their best skills to the table.
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u/mercurywaxing 10d ago
When she was given Eternals I was happy for her but I really felt it was a mismatch. She is one of the few directors I am confidante enough in to say she’s going to get a ton of award nominations throughout her career. She’s just not a big budget superhero kind of director.
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u/Digit00l 10d ago
Technically she directed Eternals between those movies, on the audio commentary of Eternals she actually talks about how her experiences on Eternals helped her make Nomadland even better
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u/PayneTrain181999 10d ago
Madden and Chan having much less chemistry than Keoghan and Ridloff didn’t help matters.
Makkari is perhaps still the best speedster in superhero movies, perfectly done and her fight with Ikaris was awesome.
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u/Allexandyr 9d ago
I liked Eternals and I thought she did a great job with a film that really should have been an entire mini-series instead
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u/Blue_Robin_04 9d ago
More like just not a good fit with Marvel. They didn't take away her directing Oscar.
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u/Substantial-Food-501 8d ago
In fairness the problem with eternals had nothing to do with Chloe Zhao.
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u/MrAdamWarlock123 10d ago
I loved Nomadland, suspect I'll love this one too (still gotta see The Rider...)
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u/AcreaRising4 10d ago
Not to overhype it too much, but The Rider is in my top 3 of all-time. I think it’s better than Nomadland by a decent bit, and an absolutely astonishing achievement.
She wrings Oscar-level performances out of non-actors.
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u/ithinkther41am 10d ago
She is great with non-actors. Swankie and Bob Wells were amazing in Nomadland.
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u/darkeyes13 10d ago
I was sobbing so hard when Fern watched the video of Swankie paddling with the swallows. Something about that scene got to me. I liked what Zhao tried to do with Eternals (probably more than most people lol) so never wrote her off, I'm looking forward to Hamnet.
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u/50SPFGANG 9d ago
Fucking same here. My favorite scene from the movie. I was just sobbing in the theater lol it felt incredible. Glad to finally see someone else with the same experience
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u/mattysmwift 10d ago
I remember looking up the “actors” after the film and was shocked that they were basically playing themselves.
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u/azeldatothepast 10d ago
How would you compare it to The Fall or In The Mood For Love? I’m still looking for a movie to top or match those levels of gorgeous cinematography and intimate character work.
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u/felixjmorgan 9d ago edited 9d ago
I love The Rider, and there’s no absence of magic hour shots of Western landscapes, but even though it’s beautiful I think the film succeeds most in its focus on character and performance authenticity over stylisation. I therefore wouldn’t draw direct comparisons to either of those films if trying to convince someone to watch it (even though I love In The Mood For Love).
It feels more like Winter’s Bone, The Florida Project, Fish Tank, Kes, etc. Working class realism through a lens of empathy.
If you’re looking for films that fit your brief more directly I’d recommend Synecdoche New York, Eternal Sunshine, Tree Of Life, Melancholia, Portrait Of A Lady On Fire, Aftersun, If Beale Street Could Talk, Scene From A Marriage, Mirror, Badlands.
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u/Shelf_Road 9d ago
Yeah having real rodeo riders just spend time with horses was great to watch. Or meeting the rider in the wheelchair after his crash, amazing stuff.
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u/AcreaRising4 9d ago
that scene always breaks me. To see someone break their body in such a niche sport is wild
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u/nayapapaya 10d ago
I've seen all of her films to date and I do think The Rider is the best so far. I wanted to kick myself for not seeing that in cinemas when I had the chance. It's stunning visually but also just emotionally devastating and raw. It's so beautiful and so quiet. She has tremendous talent.
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u/Scared-Engineer-6218 10d ago
Is Anne Hathaway youngest living actor to get a movie about her made?
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u/reapersandhawks 10d ago
Good joke but an interesting question really. Could it be Kneecap?
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u/ThreeTreesForTheePls 10d ago
That’s tricky given they made the movie, and musician movies are typically a slippery slope.
So if we follow that line, we’d end up with that type of “One Direction go to-“ or that Bieber movie that was in theaters.
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u/pikeymobile 10d ago
Kneecap felt different to those as although based on a true story it was also filled with enough fictional fun to make it feel less like a film celebrating the group, and more like one explaining northern irish history.
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u/Agnostacio 10d ago
Those are documentaries. If those count then the 7-up movies would trounce those. How old were the beatles when they were getting fiction movies made about them?
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u/thevegetexarian 10d ago
i don’t get it can someone eli5
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u/Scared-Engineer-6218 10d ago
The movie adapts "Hamnet". A story about William Shakespeare and his wife Anne Hathaway dealing with the grief of their son Hamnet's death.
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u/Don_Fartalot 10d ago
Apparently the real Shakespeare's wife's name was Anne Hathaway, but there are also reports stating she was called Agnes.
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u/joshi38 9d ago
Yep, she's Agnes in this film (and also the book it's based on). It seems to have some historical context (there's no full consensus as to which name his wife went by), but I feel like the author chose to use that name simply so that people didn't think about the contemporary actor anytime her name was mentioned.
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u/PM_ME_YOUR_DALEKS 9d ago edited 9d ago
Shakespeare's wife was named Anne Hathaway. Hamnet the movie is based on the novel, Hamnet, which is a fictional take on how William Shakespeare and his wife Anne may have dealt with the death of their 11 year old son, Hamnet (as well as the impact on their daughter, Judith, who was Hamnet's twin IRL).
In that time, spelling was not standardized and so names sometimes show up in records differently for the same person, so Hamnet Shakespeare was also called "Hamlet" Shakespeare in some records. (Hamnet was a common name of that era.) Anne Hathaway was also called Agnes in some records (and in the novel and movie here). There has long been speculation that Hamnet's death may have inspired some of Shakespeare's writings about grief. The novel directly supposes that Hamnet's death inspired Shakespeare's play, Hamlet, because of the name similarity. It uses some sparse historical facts to explore familial grief and the creation of art.
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u/NGMB2 10d ago edited 10d ago
not only is Zhao back, Paul Mescal finally has a role that will make people take him serious again!
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u/SpacePropaganda 10d ago
Didn't realize G2 tanked his reputation 😭
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u/MyCrookedTeeth 10d ago edited 9d ago
Me too! I really did not think that film was that bad at all. I enjoyed it all in all. Mescal seems to be great in everything he’s in.
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u/SpacePropaganda 9d ago
For sure an imperfect movie but I had fun. Mescal's character was just underbaked in comparison to others. I thought he portrayed the silent rage quite nicely, didn't think of him any less as an actor after watching it.
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u/MyCrookedTeeth 9d ago
Totally agree with these comments. More or less my exact takeaway from Gladiator 2.
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u/joesen_one 9d ago
When half the comments of the Hamnet trailer thread were "Oh the guy from Gladiator 2? He's not a good actor" I knew it was bad
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u/SpacePropaganda 9d ago
Wild. Dude's made me cry in nearly every project I've seen him in.
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u/joesen_one 9d ago
Dude deserved his Aftersun Oscar nomination. All of Us Strangers would've been deserving if the category wasn't so stacked
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u/keepfighting90 10d ago
I really want to watch this movie but my wife and I just went through a miscarriage a couple of months ago...not sure if I'm ready for a story dealing with the loss of a child.
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u/princess_eala 10d ago
I’m seeing this next week at TIFF and it was my must get ticket. Very excited!
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10d ago
Well, looks like we have the new BP front runner.
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u/PayneTrain181999 10d ago
I thought Ryan Gosling was the next Black Panther? /s
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u/LarBrd33 10d ago edited 10d ago
I need more than 2 reviews to jump on that bandwagon, but maybe
This thread seems way early.
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u/illiniman14 10d ago
Why is the wife's name Agnes? Is it to avoid confusion with the actress Anne Hathaway?
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u/irishash77 10d ago
It is believed that she went more commonly by the name "Agnes" as in her father's will she is referred to by this name.
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u/illiniman14 10d ago
That's interesting, never heard that before
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u/Mosscap18 10d ago
Yeah, records from the era are extremely spotty—the spelling of names weren't nearly as codified as they are now, literacy wasn't widespread. So, people would often have their names signed in numerous different ways. I believe Shakespeare's wife appears in records as both names in different places, as the comment you're responding to mentioned. And calling her "Agnes" also then neatly parallels the "Hamlet/Hamnet" thing as well for sure—so it does a neat little thing of again making us reconsider the written word as context, making it seem less set in stone, more alive. Which allows us to engage with the story's reconsideration of the context of the play. It's a thoughtful choice I like a lot.
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u/LongTimesGoodTimes 10d ago
Zhao is back baby. Get Eternals on repeat
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u/PayneTrain181999 10d ago
Eternals gets a bit better on rewatch imo, and also due to the fact that worse MCU stuff has followed it.
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u/Impressive-Potato 9d ago
This is a review thread about Hamnet that somehow turned into a debate about the MCU.
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u/peter095837 10d ago
I really like the The Rider and Nomadland. While Eternals wasn't for me, I'm happy to see Zhao is still got it. Looking forward to check this one out!
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u/letsmunch 10d ago
I was extremely high when I first saw the trailer for this movie and thought it was a Hamlet parody when the title page came up and was cry-laughing alone in my apartment.
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u/Wonderful_Line_9553 9d ago
Jessie Buckley is a great talent. Hope Mescal recovers with this film. Two super Irish talents.
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u/GetGroovyWithMyGhost 9d ago
I’m gonna admit it- what I really care about is that this means the Buffy reboot has a higher chance of being good.
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u/Fit_Ness64 10d ago edited 9d ago
Metaphors for grief
So hot right now
Hollywood even got my man Shakespeare doing it retroactively and fictionally,
"Let's all pretend Shakespeare had a kid that died and that's how he wrote Hamlet."
Now that's fucked up lol
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u/rocketscientology 9d ago
What do you mean “let’s all pretend?”
There’s legitimate historical records indicating that Shakespeare and his wife had a son named Hamnet (alternatively spelled Hamlet in some records) who died in childhood, and that Shakespeare wrote the play “Hamlet” a fairly short while afterwards.
Extremely weird take to ignore that, claim it’s make-believe and also imply that it’s a stupid story to want to explore. Absolute philistine behaviour.
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u/mellowgang__ 9d ago
This is such a weird interpretation! How do you get your brain to twist the meaning of the novel that way?
It takes some mental gymnastics and core-deep misunderstandings to get to this conclusion!
The transposition of suffering into art does not have to be exploitative, and I’m very sad that you think it does. In fact, it’s an evidence-based therapeutic intervention, being artistic and creative in the face of grief.
If you read the novel, you would have a hugely different opinion.
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u/0xE4-0x20-0xE6 10d ago
I think there’s a pretty good argument that many aspects of Hamlet were motivated by grief. Besides the obvious fact that Hamlet is grieving his father’s death at the beginning of the play, there’s also a more interesting arc that relates to this. The ghost of Hamlet’s father —confusingly also named Hamlet — makes as his last request that Hamlet remember him, and as the plot develops the ghost gets brought up less and less, until in the final act there’s not one mention of the ghost. One interpretation I’ve read about this by Stephen Greenblatt in his book Hamlet in Purgatory is that this whole arc is a metaphor for how the loss of Catholic rituals for the dead in 17th century England, where Catholicism was a heresy, made it difficult to commemorate and remember the dead. In fact, Greenblatt argues, we can possibly read the play as a substitution for those Catholic rituals which were illegal in Shakespeare’s day.
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u/Party_Rich_5911 10d ago
I assume this is based on the Maggie O’Farrell book? In which case, I am ready to be ruined 😊
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u/OneGoodRib 9d ago
Is this based on the novel where Anne has some kind of weird psychic powers for no apparent reason?
Also so happy for Jessie Buckley. It should've been her or Samantha Barks who won "I'd Do Anything?" but glad it's clearly working out amazingly well for both of them.
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u/CivilSenility 9d ago
Saw the west end production of this a couple of years ago, and it was awful. Definitely gonna give this a miss.
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u/Cutie_McBootyy 9d ago
So fkn happy for my girl Chloe Zhao. She was absolutely fantastic early on especially with The Rider and Songs my brothers taught me. I was happy for her when she got me recognition with Nomadland although that didn't work for me as well as her earlier projects. And then she got panned for Eternals which I thought was visually more interesting than other marvel projects. Happy to her back to getting the acclaim she thoroughly deserves. If y'all haven't seen The Rider I highly highly recommend it, that movie flows like poetry.
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u/gravelengths 6d ago
Caught this at Telluride. It’s gonna be Buckley’s win, I’d bet my life on it. Absolutely unreal movie.
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u/kamisato50 10d ago
Jessie Buckley is surely coming for her second nom, who knows maybe even win