the big Lebowski

Movie Ratings

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I like movies and I’m a collector, so I love seeing how many movies I can mark off my to-watch list. I recently started rating every movie I’ve even seen and that process taught me about a lot of great (or critically acclaimed) movies that I have never seen.

I use the movie rating site Letterboxd and as of posting this, I’ve rated over 1,200 films.

View my ratings on Letterboxd

This wouldn’t be a Beard Blog post without a Top 10 list so based on my ratings found on Letterboxd, here are my top 10 movies of all time:

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Beard Blog Movie Review: Suburbicon (2017)

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Nothing like this ever happens here.

A white man living in 1950s cliche suburbia contracts the mob to kill his wife so he can collect insurance money and run off with his sister-in-law. This plan unravels faster than you can say Suburbicon.

Suburbicon
Matt Damon struggling to get through this movie

First of all, I have a few problems with this movie:

  1. The actress that plays Matt Damon’s wife and sister-in-law is the same person, Julianne Moore. They don’t look different in the beginning and then the sister-in-law character goes a step further and basically becomes the wife.  [perfectpullquote align=”right” cite=”” link=”” color=”” class=”” size=””]”…it carries a lot of white guilt through the whole film.”[/perfectpullquote]
  2. We are given little to no information upfront about what is going on in Suburbicon which would be fine, but most of it never gets explained.
  3. The characters are so bland, emotionless, and boring that you never feel for any of them. At the end I was thinking “Oh well…”

In addition to those problems, theres a bigger, more upsetting issue with this film. While the aftermath of the mob hit is going on, there’s an entire plot around a black family moving into this previously white-only neighborhood. Suburbicon spends so much time on this, you think it has something to do with the main plot, but it actually doesn’t. I’m not sure why it was written into this movie but it carries a lot of white guilt through the whole film.

I love the Coen brothers’ movies. They have written some great American classics such as Fargo, The Big Lebowski, and No Country For Old Men, to name a few. Lately their writing has been a snooze, literally. I fell asleep all three times I tried to watch Hail Caesar! That, Inside Llewyn Davis, and A Serious Man have all been very weak in my opinion. But, as a die-hard Coen bros fan, I had to see this movie.

Unlike other Coen brothers movies, Suburbicon is directed by George Clooney which probably made a difference, for the worse.

Who should watch this movie? Fans of the Coen Brothers

Who should not watch this movie? Just about everyone

Score

3 / 10 – Most of the acting was good, but the directing and writing was very weak.

 

See more of my movie reviews here

Spoilers

Caution: spoilers below

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