Primetime — 2.5/5
What an ugly movie. Aesthetically, I understand its early '00s intentions, but the camera feels like it's been slathered with vaseline; it's oily to the touch. I understand its intentions to feel how it looks but, uh, I hate it? It's the nastier side of the coin to Wes Anderson, which is a ridiculous comparison, but I'll justify it as extreme art direction that does more work than the story. And that story is all over the place. There's three main characters who never rise to the place of main character, three stories that the movie doesn't know how to choose between. The disrespected reporter, the disrespected producer, the disrespected actor, all seeming to circle around the justification and the means, a moral validation that acts like a layer of clear packaging tape to hold together a jumble of character traits that don't quite make a person. Predator is prey to their own self-defense mechanisms. Or something? I dunno, I'm just saying words. When Alex Winter appears, the child predator seems to be the most realistic human we'd met so far. Generally speaking, all of the predators fell into that same schema; they felt like real people caught in the worst moments of their lives. I think I'd have preferred their stories being the focus, or Decoy Dan as their stand-in, but Robert Pattinson is famous and plays the famous guy so he takes the fore and his face just communicates a blankness. I look at the guy generally and see Patrick Bateman, easy charm and beauty. He moves like a man, but just wears that skin like a suit. But I'll wait for 'The Odyssey' to try to peddle my 'is Robert Pattinson actually a bad actor...?' thesis.
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