eddie_baggins Winning last year's Canne's Film Festival coveted Palme d'Or prize and Oscar and Golden Globe nominated for Best Foreign Film at this year's awards season, Ruben Östlund's Swedish set The Square certainly comes to home release with some prestige attached to it but this bum-numbing epic that acts as a darkly humorous expose of modern art culture and more broadly an examination of humankind in general, is the type of film that will split viewers down the middle in regards to love and hate.Following on from his critically acclaimed Force Majeure from 2014, Östlund continues on with his slowly paced and methodical way of story-telling as we here follow Claes Bang's art gallery curator Christian through what feels like a collection of mini-films within the larger whole as the all of a sudden under duress big-shot finds his life hitting a few roadblocks in the lead up to his gallery's opening of an exhibition known as The Square.It's a seemingly simplistic set-up but Östlund's execution is anything but, as Christian's journey entails awkward romantic encounters with Elizabeth Moss's American Anne, a crayon carrying chimp, an extremely abnormal dinner function, an angry child and a viral video that is a catalyst to much of Christian's woes.These occurrences all add up to a whole that combines to create an almost unnerving atmosphere and tone but they don't gel to create a cohesive narrative that feels all that apparent and while many will find messages and themes that are possibly there and possibly not there, it feels like The Square squanders some chances to be a genuinely effective dark comedy/expose as it gets lost in an abundance of over-long and over-wrought scenes that needed a much tighter edit.One aspect of the film that can't be faulted however is Östlund's cast commitment to the cause with everyone giving it their all, with Bang and Moss in particular impressing in their roles, while the films few definitively laugh out loud scenes such as disrupted Q and A and the aforementioned dinner feel like scenes out of a much more well-rounded and engaging film.Final Say - An over-long and overall bloated arthouse offering, The Square has some nice ideas and potentially relevant messages but it's hard for them too shine through when the film around them is such a hard slog to endure.2 viral videos out of 5

valadas Cute because several stray scenes are funny (though a few with black humour not to mention of the very bad and ugly idea of showing a child, virtual though, exploding in the middle of the square that seems to be the movie's theme). It looks like an ambitious movie in the sense of wanting to reveal the moral contradictions of our society but it doesn't come up much to that goal. It is therefore a great way off being a good film. It develops itself in somewhat disconnected sequences starting from two basis situations: a planned exhibition in a museum and the theft of the museum curator's wallet, cellphone and cuff-links outside in a public street by means of feigned assault scene where he tried to help the supposed victim and prevent the supposed assault among the passers-by that crossed the street totally indifferent to what was going on. From then on the curator gets himseld envolved in several confusions of doubtful meaning. A movie no more than tolerable.

mitkomelnik This is, no doubt for me, one of the worst movies ever.

adventurer_ci Someone got disappointed with IMDB community for rating this movie above 1. How about developing a healthy respect for people whose opinions differ from our own? When we do not understand someone's perspective often times what they say sometimes sounds a bit 'bizarre' to us. A person interprets things according to individual perspective, biases and sensitivities. So, except of couple of scenes, which I "didn't get", I enjoyed watching this movie.