6 Comments
User's avatar
Robert Spottswood, M.A.'s avatar

Nice discrimination among issues. A pleasure to read.

mermcoelho's avatar

This one is going on the list. Thank you for highlighting it.

EchidnaMedia's avatar

Thank you for this. I came to "Materialists" despite having read grumpy reviews and ended up liking it a lot. The coolness is, well, refreshing.

Greg's avatar
Dec 19Edited

I watched this with Song's first film almost back and back and I don't know man, maybe I'm just not that great at media literacy but I felt both movies to be extremely cold and somewhat emotionless. Combined that with Dakota Johnson's very flat acting (tbh, I just don't think she has much range), The Materialist was very much a failure to my mind.

Noah Berlatsky's avatar

They’re definitely cold; cold doesn’t have to be emotionless though.

This is what puts people off. But you know, I love June Christie and Chris Connor and the cool jazz vocalists. It’s the same thing; formal control and icy reserve can heighten emotion rather than diminishing it.

Greg's avatar

Fair enough, I think Past Lives is definitely cold but not emotionless I definitely can't say the same about The Materialist. It was such a surface level experience and the final plot twist is also wild as fuck.