TheRationalist

This movie shows us the painful scenes of a loveless marriage of ten years finally coming apart. The husband and wife are played by Isabelle Huppert and Pascal Greggory, two of the best and ideally cast. But ten minutes into the movie the unsure dialog, really awful music track and the obvious manipulation by the director take over and spoil everything. The pace is jerky, too many abrupt changes of mood...nothing resonates. There are surreal scenes....guests fill the room, a lady sings a modern classical song...the couple continue their pathological exploration of what went wrong in loud voice...the guests and vocalist ignore them. All of this reeks of it's derivation from Ingmar Bergman, but Bergman did it so much better. Stick with Scenes From a Marriage and Saraband if you want to see how as failed marriage should be screened.

This movie tells of the turning point in the lives of three main characters, played by better than competent actors, against a background of gambling in Las Vegas. Sounds OK, right? But the three characters are all without any morality or redeeming qualities, the most I can say for them is none of them do drugs as far as we know. The language is unrelentingly obscene. None of the three hesitate to commit crimes whenever the occasion demands, and we're not talking about lifting a six-pack, we're talking felonies. The guy and the gal are just plain stupid, not retarded in a way to invite sympathy. I cannot imagine why Gwyneth Paltrow's agent would let her do this movie, she's a fine actress and doesn't belong in an outhouse like this. The movie begins with a plot line for the guy, which is never referred to again after the first few minutes. It proceeds on to a totally false method of screwing a casino. Then we meet the Gwyneth Paltrow gal, whom we are led to believe is a fallen angel who deserves better, but she turns out to deserve worse.I honestly believe they changed the name from Sydney to Hard Eight or vice versa, don't care which, in hope that the bad word of mouth from the earlier showings could be ducked with a new name. My advice is to run, not walk away from this one.