We lived here.

Here — 2.5/5

The first 15 minutes are awful. Just trash. What an ugly space, what ugly choices. It feels like BTS of a VFX reel, an addendum on some dumb DVD. I could have turned the TV off and never looked back. But I kept watching!! And eventually I got used to the unreality of the spectacle. Which is the rub: here is a place trying to showcase the infinite realities that exist inside of a space, and it's entirely presented with such uncanniness. Robert Zemeckis' fascination with new technology to create movies is his own personal fetish porn, and he's caught Tom Hanks in his unearthly grasp. They constantly remind you that you're watching a movie. Look at the artifice, the wigs, the makeup, the AI, the acting. You look around and see nothing but choices. Eventually, it settles onto a more standard narrative and forgoes all the bits of history that occupy the place and it forms a fine enough narrative to follow—but only also by forgoing its most interesting aspect. I love the book on which this is based. For me, it says, "oh, you've run out of stories? Try harder." There are infinite realities that exist inside of a space. And I think it's a bold attempt to take the same approach to making a movie. But it lacks poetry. It is not fragments of feelings; it's a cascade of weird choice after weird choice. There's some version of this that's closer to Cloud Atlas, or Tree of Life, equally weird and equally awkward—movies made by artists as much as technicians—that I think would sit on top of this movie and make it better. Unfortunately it's not, but all that to say—a fascinating watch.