"Sitting in Bars with Cake" is the strongest of all the Amazon Prime movies I've seen so far. Its intimate focus on the friendship between the two lead characters is beautiful and I think with some stronger acting and filmmaking it could have been great.
The strength of this movie is its nearly complete focus on portraying the lives of the two main characters -- they feel like real developed people and there is genuine growth and emotion by the end of the film.
However it is held back from elevating to the likes of "Dallas Buyer's Club" by some technical factors, including -- the movie's lighting in half the scenes is far too dark and it is difficult to see what's going on, the audio seems to get garbled and the dialogue approaches Nolan levels of inaudible at times, and while Yara Shahidi did a serviceable job a stronger actress could have brought more out of the relationship (this is on full display whenever Ron Livingston and Martha Kelly are on screen as they elevate every scene they're in).
I'm between a 6 and 7 on this -- overall it is a good movie and great story that could have achieved even more if they had just ironed out a few small kinks.
The strength of this movie is its nearly complete focus on portraying the lives of the two main characters -- they feel like real developed people and there is genuine growth and emotion by the end of the film.
However it is held back from elevating to the likes of "Dallas Buyer's Club" by some technical factors, including -- the movie's lighting in half the scenes is far too dark and it is difficult to see what's going on, the audio seems to get garbled and the dialogue approaches Nolan levels of inaudible at times, and while Yara Shahidi did a serviceable job a stronger actress could have brought more out of the relationship (this is on full display whenever Ron Livingston and Martha Kelly are on screen as they elevate every scene they're in).
I'm between a 6 and 7 on this -- overall it is a good movie and great story that could have achieved even more if they had just ironed out a few small kinks.