lisacampbell2
I saw this at the film festival here and the audience really enjoyed it, myself included. I didn't realize until the credits that it was directed by actor Liev Schreiber (and in fact that it is the first feature film he has directred), and well done to him because this is a very good film, especially for a first time director's work.The acting is also very well done. I think he deserved awards for his work as the offbeat young man trying to track down strange people in a strange place. The movie has a lot of comedy but also heart. I think in places it drags a bit or gets a bit too silly, so the script isn't perfect but it is overall a very enjoyable movie going experience.
SnoopyStyle
Jonathan Safran Foer (Elijah Wood) is a peculiar guy. He collects the most mundane everyday personal things. He is Jewish. After his grandfather's death, he goes to Ukraine in search of the ancestral home town of Trachimbrod. He hires an anti-semitic cranky old man and his American pop culture loving grandson Alex to guide him. Alex's translating ability is limited. History is long forgotten. Nobody has heard of the place he's looking for.Director Liev Schreiber is trying too hard to be quirky without actually achieving any laughs. It's weird for weird's sake. Schreiber doesn't have the necessary skills to make it fun. I sit there like Wood's character with his googly eyes staring unblinkingly. For the most part, the movie is a slow weird procession. Then the movie gets to the place and it achieves something poetic. I wonder if these characters are more real, would the story be more poignant? I think the story got a bit overwhelmed by the quirky mannerisms.
Nishant Nagar
It was basically a movie about 1-cultural misunderstanding and how people can be cruel without really knowing it. 2-How important our past is and how it is responsible for our current situtaion/condition and how it effects our view-point. Jonathan safran was a curious and disciplined man who has an obsessive- compulsive nature.Through him and his journey to his past Movie tells us how our past effect our thoughts, our views.We are unaware about the reasons behind the happenings of everything in your life.Why certain things effects you but some not?Actually we all unknowingly carry our past somewhere inside us or within our memory all along with us in our journey of life and this inside phenmenon effects our outside world which is called "Inside-Out".Most of us simply says "Past is just Past".But actually Past is the base/responsible factor of our present.We should know our past and analyze it deeply becuz this'past/memory' is what we all achieves in our life.Whatever You gain, you gain Inside.Freedom is not an external thing, it's an internal thing.At last I can say it was a very delicate and deep movie,It touches your heart.The scene where they finally found Trachimbrod is painful and gravely affecting.Past has the power to make the world a better place as after knowing the past of jews. We all have different cultures but we all are one.We all love our birth place we all love our culture but if we don't respect other's culture then we do not deserves to be called as human.
zee
There are some clever lines in the script, but the movie failed anyway because ofbad directingawful editing--seriously, just horrible pacingthe most irksome score I've heard in a long whilean unappealing protagonist in the Collector (played by Wood)unevenness of toneI really wasn't in the mood to read a movie as subtitles; this is not advertised as a foreign film, but in large part it isOne terrific actor (Hutz) shining like a diamond in a pile of dog doo gets the two stars; everything else stinks.
AD
