Comparison is the thief of joy.

- Theodore Roosevelt

Westworld S2E10 - The Passenger

I certainly didn’t plan to wait this long to post about the Westworld finale, but here we are. I had such a negative reaction to it that I wanted to watch it again before I shared my opinion. However, I have still not watched it for a 2nd time. I really haven’t had a desire to.

I had commented that I thought the entire fate of the 2nd season rested on how successful the finale was. That does not bode well for Westworld season two.

The finale had so much going on. I don’t really even know how to start parsing exactly what happened. When I first watched the episode I had this feeling that it was an objectively bad episode of television. I was not able to envision a world where somebody enjoyed that episode as a satisfying conclusion to the season. However, I have expanded my thinking and acknowledge that some people may have enjoyed the episode and even the season as a whole.

I didn’t do a great job of communicating this in my last post, but my largest desire with the finale was to see a resolution for William. I thought about several things that William might be confronted with when he reached “the door”. I thought about what would happen when William & Delores met up again now that we were aware of their long history with one another. I wanted William to face the reality that he had killed his daughter and see how that experience shaped him. I wanted to know what in the hell Ford’s game was.

While some of this was explored in the finale, I don’t feel like any of it was satisfactorily answered or given a satisfying conclusion. To me this really felt like it was going to be William’s season, but in the end it appears he is living on to possibly make an appearance in season 3. Going into the finale it felt like this was going to be the end of William’s arc. We didn’t get an ending for him, and now I am not sure where it will go from here.

I thought the meeting between William and Delores made absolutely no sense. It did nothing to capitalize on the history that the show built with them this season. I was amazed at how awkward and pointless their whole interaction seemed. I hated every minute of it. After being set up as key characters that were on a crash coarse into one another this whole season the ending was a blunder.

We got the post credit sequence with William. I took that as a time in the distant future where he is forced to relive his decisions continuously only to come to the end and find out he was unable to change his true nature and he always arrives at the point where he kills his daughter. I wonder about the scope of this game he is forced to play. Does he have to relive his entire life from the beginning and he always arrives back at that same point? Or is he only reliving the very end part of his life then where does it pick up?

There really aren’t good answers for the man in black. It felt like the whole show was built around him. From early on in season 1 he was the most interesting thing about the show to me. I thought he would get a better resolution to his story this year. I’ve come to terms that my favorite character didn’t get a very nice 3rd act.

I enjoyed Season 1, but thought the ending and the resolution to “the maze” was sort of lame. I enjoyed a lot about Season 2. It had a couple of the best episodes of television I’ve seen in a while. However, the ending was so weird and unsatisfying that it left me wary of the entire show. I am not excited to see what happens next. I’m not sure I even care that much.

When you invest in a show too much it is almost certainly going to let you down. I expected something really great out of this season of Westworld. I didn’t get it.

Westworld S2E09 - Vanishing Point

I’m going right down to the wire, but I thought I should write something before the final episode of season 2.

I have a few thoughts about episode 9…

• Holy cow! William killed his own daughter! Of all the violence in the tv show that might be the most messed up thing I have seen yet.
• I am very confident that William is not a host. That would be lame from a storytelling perspective to have that shocking of a revelation right now. It would also downplay the importance of everything that has happened. I think he wishes he were a host, and that is why he is cutting his arm open at the end.
• I don’t understand what “the forge” is. At the beginning of the season I was so excited for everyone to meet up at “the valley beyond” aka “the door”. Now that it is the forge I have somehow lost some interest in it.

Overall season 2 has been extremely uneven. I was so excited at first to see Westworld come back. I might have been clouded by my excitement, but I thought the first 4 episodes of the season were great. The back half of the season has been all over the place. There were these two artistic side-episodes that loosely connected with the rest of what was going on this season. There was a very strange siege on “The Mesa” that highlighted a lot of the weaknesses of how this season was laid out.

With all of its ups and downs I think this has been a solid 2nd season that really hinges on the finale. If the finale is terrible, I will likely think of the entire season as terrible. If the finale is great I will forget the nit-picks and think of this as a great season of television.

I’m not sure how the finale would fall to one side or the other. I don’t even really know what I am hoping to see. I just hope it is good, and it makes sense. There have been so many things in the season that just don’t quite make sense. I’m ready for those things to be resolved. I don’t want to have to call on any further suspension of disbelief to make the season make sense.

It is hard for me to compare the 1st & 2nd seasons from an enjoyment perspective. To its credit, season 2 has made me want to go back and watch the 1st season over again, and I think it would be more meaningful to me this time around. It will be nice to see Delores as we once knew her, and try to forget about the murderous nonsensical Delores that we have seen much of this season. I think I enjoyed season 1 better because it was a new concept with all new characters. At the end of the first season I had no clue how they were going to keep it going strong for a second season. I have been pleasantly surprised.

I’d classify Westworld as one of my favorite shows. It is one of the few shows that I’ve gotten completely invested in the mystery. I listen to a podcast every week to keep up with what the heck is going on. I’ll be sad to see it go after tonights episode is over, but I will be cautiously optimistic for a 3rd season.

Westworld S2E08 - Kiksuya

Much like “Akane no Mai”, this episode was an aside to the main events happening in this season of Westworld. The time we learn the back story of Akecheta the leader of the Ghost Nation… taking us all the way back to the day Delores shot Arnold. It was a very well-made episode. Unlike “Akane No Mai” this one tied into the backstory of the park and helped us understand several questions from season one. I like it… but at the same time it is frustrating to completely step away from the main storylines. It did highlight the Valley Beyond, where everybody seems to be heading this season.

The imagery of the “the maze” was a big mystery in season one. At the end of that first season I still felt unsatisfied with the explanation. I still don’t think they have clearly defined what the maze is, but they showed us just how it seemed to appear everywhere last season and why certain hosts might be carving it into random things around the park. I don’t completely understand the concept of putting it under the scalps, but I’m willing to let that slide.

This episode highlighted something I have been thinking about quite a bit this season. The “woke” hosts seem to identify with a true version of themselves. For Maeve it is her role as a mother on the homestead. That seems to be what she identifies as her “true” self. She spends all of her energy trying to get back to her daughter from that role. In this episode Akecheta seems to identify with the role where he was the husband of Kohana. Similar to Maeve, he has dedicated the rest of his life to finding a way to reconnect with her… hopefully when he finds “the door” and enters the “right” world for him.

For the hosts it is unclear how these roles resonate for them as they become awoken. For Maeve & Ake they connect to someone they were programmed to love, in such a way that it has become real love. For Delores she seems to have embraced the Wyatt character and is hellbent on bringing her wrath onto the world. The sweet rancher’s daughter was there, but the persona of the murderous Wyatt seems to have won out. I’m not sure why or how that all works, but it doesn’t seem to be extremely consistent.

I’ve been a little down on Westworld the last couple episodes. I’d say “Kiksuya” was a really great episode, and it got me back on board with the mythology of the show. I really can’t wait to find out what happens at the end of this season, but I am also tempering my expectations for a satisfying ending. With only two episodes left I really don’t know what we are going to get.

Westworld S2E06 - Phase Space

I failed my mission to post about every single episode of season 2 of Westworld. I was traveling for work and watched most of last week’s “Akane no Mai” sitting in an airport at 1am. I’m not sure if my negative impression of the episode was from the environment, or the fact that it was a complete side-track from the show we had been watching.

There were two main things we learned from the episode. Maeve was able to further her powers of control so that she didn’t even need to speak in order to make a host do whatever she wants. Delores turned Teddy into an aggressive murderous host that would do her bidding.

Season two has been building and getting better up through episode 4. Episode 5 was a strange one that didn’t fit in with the overall story very much. Episode 6 “Phase Space” was a regression for me. It felt like we were spinning our wheels. The season felt pretty tight and focused up to the last two episodes.

I didn’t like how Delores looks immediately regretful of creating evil Teddy, but he wasn’t doing anything that she wouldn’t have done a couple episodes ago. It feels like they are setting up a major betrayal that will lead to Teddy dead in the water. I just don’t think the storytelling has been very well done up to this point.

I keep waiting for the Maeve storyline to connect with me. I’ve tried to stay on board with the symbolism and meaning we are getting from Samuri World, but I am not sure how important it will be in the end. I hated out surprised Maeve was that “her daughter” had another mother at the homestead. What did she expect?!? Maeve is supposed to be smart. Didn’t she realize her robot daughter would have been programmed to love another? Maybe Maeve can use her powers of persuasion to bring the daughter back to her side.

I also feel conflicted about “the cradle”. This is a concept that we had no idea about before this episode. It is a game changer that allows them to do so many tricks with time and reality. It explains how Ford has still been able to have control over things, but it also feels unfair in some way. The introduction of this further-removed-from-reality copy of Westworld just seems like a bridge too far for my appreciation of the show. I’m not sure where I am willing to draw those lines, but it just does’t feel fair.

I do like the concept of Delores running the fidelity tests on Bernard/Arnold in the cradle. I am not how that came about or where that is going to go, but I feel like when Bernard disconnects from “the matrix” he is going to have an Arnold concisoness in his mind egg.

Anthony Hopkins playing Ford was my favorite thing about Westworld season 1. I enjoyed his philosophical ramblings. I feel his absence in this season. They need something to make the show feel more profound. Nobody else in the cast has been able to step into that role that Hopkins filled last year. I am excited to see him back. I don’t know how much of a role he will play in the rest of the season. Presumably “the cradle” gets destroyed somewhere in the next 4 episodes. I imagine it will play a big role in the next couple episodes anyway. Hopefully we get some of the Hopkins magic.

I think the last 3 episodes were the strongest of Westworld season 1. I am hoping for the same strong ending in season 2 as well.

Westworld S2E04 - The Riddle of the Sphinx

This was another great episode of Westworld. I was really happy to see Grace come back this episode. I was pretty sure we would see her again, but I still had my doubts. The last episode I described her as the “Man-in-black of Raj world”, and that turned out to be way more accurate than I expected by the end of this episode.

I am excited to see what happens with her and her daddy for the rest of the season. I am not sure if they will get along. I have a feeling they will not be on the same page about what is happening in the park. We will find out.

The beginning of this episode in “the hatch” (LOST reference) was pretty awesome. As soon as we started panning around the room I was reminded of Desmond from season 2 of lost. I also immediately had the sense that we were with Jim Delos, and he had been turned into a robot. That was immediately confirmed for me when I saw his hand shaking as he tried to pour his coffee. It was a great sequence. I loved almost everything about it.

I think there is some question about exactly what is going on here. I believe they did a series of interviews with Jim the person after they made his red ball of consciousness but before they created the robot version. When William showed up he was re-enacting one of those interviews to see how robot Delos would react.

He said the same thing every time, which I suspect is what he said as a person. Which makes me wonder how much free-will the robot Delos actually has. Is this scripted in his programming, or are they just making sure the artificial brain acts the same way as the real brain once did. I thought when we saw the sequence repeat over and over there would be some slight changes to the script as Delos was ad-libbbing. However, that didn’t appear to be the case. Maybe this was a test script that they created in order to have Delos be introduced to the concept that he was now a robot. However, when that fact was given to him his new brain could not make it work and he would start to glitch out.

I am not sure I understand the rationale behind the program. I thought maybe they would just let the robot version believe he was the actual person. Why did they need to go to the trouble of making sure he knew he wasn’t actually human anymore. However, when he doesn’t age for several years I guess he would catch onto it anyway, so maybe better to address it now instead of letting it come up down the road.

I am not exactly sure what the criteria was for him to be able to get out of the hatch… but I guess that really doesn’t matter. I can’t believe they burned the whole thing down every time it failed. That seemed a bit excessive and overly costly. Burn the robot, but leave the sweet furniture. And that fish didn’t do anything wrong.

The rest of the episode was centered around Bernard and the long lost Elsie. We all assumed she was still alive somewhere, and we were proven right. Bernard had her stashed away in a cave because she was a risk to Ford’s plan. “She knew too much.”

Her and Bernard go into a secret drone lab where we get just ask confused as Bernard is. It was an effective sequence, but it was one that I feel like I should watch a few times to make sure I understand what (and when) this stuff is going on.

The main takeaways is that Bernard was a cold-blooded killer and curb-stoped a dude. He also saved the red ball of some human consciousness. I have a feeling that is going to come into play later. I don’t know who’s consciousness that is, but if I had to guess I would say Arnold. No real reason why that would be the case…. it is just my feeling.

We also find out that this lab is the exact same one where Daddy Delos has been re-created time and time again only to be burnt in the hellfires of his circular prison. For some reason this time he has been left alive and he has clawed his face off. He is looking very scary and demonic and he is coming after Elsie until Bernard steps in and shows his ninja skills. Ultimately they burn Delos one last time.

So what did we learn?

They were trying to figure out a way to make humans immortal by taking a snapshot of their consciousness and implanting it into a host body. They store these snapshots in little red balls. They haven’t been able to make the human-to-host transfer work, despite years of trying.

That tells us that any host walking around (even Bernard) is operating via a computer program and not a human consciousness. Even though Bernard looks like Arnold, presumably there is not a red Arnold ball inside of his head.

That is all I have for now. I don’t know what to expect in the next episode. It could go anywhere. I’m sure we will get back to Delores and the sack-head gang, as well as Maeve in Samuri World.

The storylines I am most looking forward to are finding out how William and Grace (Emily?) are going to combine forces? What is her end game? Is it the same as daddy’s?

I want to find out what is up with the Ghost Nation. Why are they capturing humans and keeping them?

This has been a great season so far. It is setting up for a solid ending.

Westworld S2E03 - Virtú e Fortuna

At this point in the season I think we have three main storylines…

• Delores takes over the world
• Maeve looks for her robot kid
• WIlliam burns it all down

We also have the “future” timeline where Bernard is laying on the beach and all the hosts are dead in the water. It appears that we will continue to get snippets of story from that timeline as well.

This episode doesn’t visit William at all, but introduces us to a potential new storyline that we will start following with a brand new character, Grace.

I did not enjoy the scene where Grace shot the dude to make sure he wasn’t a host. It felt awkward. I think it does anchor us in time. When she shoots him and they get it on it is probably the night when Delores killed Ford. The next day when Grace and her beau go for an elephant ride the robot rebellion has begun.

I do really like Grace. She seems like a badass. As evidenced by her hand-drawn maps with hexagons, and her insistence of not depositing DNA on a host, she seems to be up to some covert shit. I’m thinking of her as the man-in-black from Raj World. I can’t wait to find out what she was up to. What’s going to happen to her now that she has met up with the ghost nation from Westworld?

Speaking of the ghost nation, that plot line from season 1 was really intriguing, but nothing ever came of it. I am excited to find out more. This has quickly become my favorite element of season two.

We found out why Rebus went from shooting a woman in the head to sticking up for women just as he was being executed on the beach. It was Bernard.

Right after the massacre we see Bernard and Charlotte teaming up to try to find Abernathy and get help to the park. In this episode we see a continuation of their efforts, during which they get separated from each other. We jump back to the two weeks forward time where Charlotte meets Bernard again on the beach. I don’t know about you, but it really seems like Charlotte knows he is a robot at that point. I guess we will see if they crossed paths again between then and now. I’m guessing we will get to see how Charlotte finally realized that Bernard was a host sometime in the rest of the season. It really seems like the jig is up for him.

One of the things about the show that I haven’t quite figured out is Delores & Maeve’s connection to people from their host storylines. It doesn’t make sense to me that they are aware that they are robots have been forced to play out false narratives created by humans yet they still feel a connection to their pseudo family members. We’ve seen terminator Delores all season, yet when she sees her father the steps right back into her rancher’s daughter persona. Abernathy himself is seeming switching between a few different roles that he has played during his time in Westworld. Why are they still controlled by these false identities if they have awakened to their situation?

We also see that Teddy isn’t able to overcome his nice guy programming and Delores looks none too happy about that. I don’t think things look good for Teddy… and not just because we see him dead in the water in episode one.

This episode wasn’t great. It was exciting to see the reality of the other parks, however much of the rest of the episode was table setting for what is coming next. Even though this episode wasn’t my favorite I can’t complain.

We are only three episodes into season two and I feel like we have come so far and gotten so much great story that builds upon what happened in season one in a satisfying way. My expectations have been surpassed with this season so far and I am looking forward to seeing what happens in the next seven episodes. I don’t want to speak too soon, but I feel like this is shaping up to be a great season of television.

Westworld S2E02 - Reunion

The 2nd episode of season 2 is up there among my favorite episodes of the entire series. In a show that presents us with so many mysteries it is nice to get some of the back story. I actually felt like I knew what was going on in most of the scenes.

There is a lot to process here. We go all the way back to the beginning of Argos, the company that Arnold and Ford created. We see Delores is among the first hosts ever created, which we probably already knew. It was so neat to see the hosts in the “real” world, which appears to be somewhere in China.[1] Delores looks completely different in the tight white dress, but she still has that farmer’s daughter demeanor, unlike the Delores in current time (which has a pretty serious God complex).

We were introduced to a few knew hosts that I am sure we will see more of later. We got to see the cool sequence where they initially convinced Logan (Delos) to invest in their technology and start the Westworld experience. We got to see the fallout from William & Logan’s trip into the park in season 1, and how William came out with confidence and a purpose. It is still unclear exactly what that purpose is, but I think it has something to do with figuring out a way to make peoples’ consciousness live forever.

I really enjoyed the callbacks to last season. It reminded me to why I love the show so much. The sequence with Lawrence and El Lazo was pretty neat. I loved seeing Giancarlo Esposito in Westworld. That scene was a lot of fun.

Overall we didn’t move the plot forward a ton. We got a good view into some of the backstory of our main characters as well as setting them all up to be heading for “the weapon”. I don’t think it is a literal weapon, but I really don’t have a good theory of what it is. I think it is a place, and it is one of William’s biggest mistakes, but it’s not clear what that means.

I think the most powerful thing from this episode was to see just how connected William & Delores are. It wasn’t clear last season how deep their relationship was or how far it went back.

The worst thing about this episode is seeing Delores in badass cowgirl mode, telling everybody she is the Messiah, and the only way out of this place. I’m not sure how long this Delores is going to last, but it will get old really quickly.

Did we get any answers to our questions?

• Delores is taking Teddy to the host repair facility so he can see his history of deaths. Another nice callback to Teddy dying nearly every episode in season 1.
• It isn’t an answer, but I really believe that all the hosts floating in the water (that Bernard said he killed) are going to come back alive. Delores showed how easy it was in this episode.

What questions are we left with?

• What is “the weapon”? Where are they all heading?
• Is Maeve ever going to find her daughter. Will her daughter remember her?
• Why exactly is everybody recruiting an army?
• What was Delos’s real end-game with the host technology? What did William pitch to Jim Delos that worked so well?
• Why is Logan so pissed off about whatever they are doing?
• How many more times is the Man in Black going to get shot before this is over?

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1. There is plenty of evidence now to suggest that Westworld is somewhere in the South China Sea.  ↩

Westworld S2E01 - Journey Into Night

I’ve debated on posting about Westworld. There is a ton of good writing on the show. I am not going to add anything different to the conversation that hasn’t already been said. Still, I think it might be fun to write out what I think and see how wrong I am as Season 2 progresses. I will plan to write a weekly series about the show for the next 10 weeks.

I wish I had started by posting my thoughts before the first episode even aired. It feels like a long time since season 1 wrapped up, but I thought I would better remember everything that was going on. From the first few minutes of Journey Into Night I felt disoriented just like Bernard. The longer it went the more confused I got. This is why I want to work out my thoughts via this blog, and see what comes of it.

What interests me most about the show is the mystery of the maze and the game William (The Man in Black) is playing. I find very little attachment to Maeve’s story. I haven’t from the beginning, and I don’t this season either.

It is clear Maeve is the most woke of the hosts. She seems to be completely doing her own thing. I’m sure she will be key to the robot uprising once she has her daughter by her side. Conversely, I think Dolores is still following a storyline that Ford set in motion. I am not convinced of her total enlightenment.

Teddy is a wildcard. Dolores is Teddy’s girl. Teddy has been on a mission to get Wyatt. Dolores is also Wyatt. I have a feeling that Teddy is going to be conflicted this season. And was that Teddy they rolled over in the water at the very end of the episode? What’s up with that?

The biggest things I took away from Journey Into Night is that all of the hosts have an egg inside their heads that records all of the things they see. Delos also has drone hosts that collect DNA off of the hosts after the guests are finished with them. This means Delos has a ton of data about the rich and powerful people that may have visited Westworld at some point in the last 32 years. For some reason Delos has not been able to get this data out of the park… and they want to badly. They jammed it all into Delores’s dad, but nobody knows where he is at right now. Presumably they won’t send help for the people stranded in the park with killer robots until the “package is delivered”.

That all feels too basic. I am sure there is much more to the story that I am not picking up on. I don’t know if any time tricks are going on this season, but I don’t think so. We just see events from right after the massacre, and then 2 weeks in the future.[1] I will always be on the lookout for more time trickery.

Overall I enjoyed the first episode quite a bit. When we saw the beginnings of the robot uprising and the possibility of other parks at the end of season 1 I was worried that the series would go off the rails. However, it is still as weird and beautiful as ever.

I’d forgotten how brutal the show can be, but they were sure to remind us plenty of times in this first episode. I think I will be more prepared for the episode this week.

We’ve seen a lot of this show through Bernard’s eyes. It is clear that he is a completely unreliable narrator with his brain fluid leaks and all. I don’t think we can trust anything he says or does… which is going to keep us on our toes.

Some questions I am asking after episode one…

• What is Dolores going to show Teddy?
• Why did Bernard kill all the hosts? Or did he?
• Why was a host (Rebus?) killing people at one point, but seemingly reverted back to his story character later on the beach when he is executed? 
• Did Ford know about the secret bunkers? Does it matter? 
• What is William’s game going to consist of? Just getting out of the park alive? “It ends with how it started”… that is Delores right?

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1. Except for the very beginning with Delores and Bernard. Who knows when that all happened.  ↩
   

The End Of The F***ing World

The End of the F*king World is a Netflix series about a couple of weirdo teenagers who find each other and go on an adventure. There are only 8 episodes, each 20ish minutes long, so this is a quick watch.

I liked it pretty well. Because it is so short I would recommend checking it out and seeing how it hits you. Some people will hate it, and I understand where they are coming from. However, it was interesting enough for me to want to watch all the way through.

It is a strange show, with a unique style. It oddly seemed out-of-time. It is modern and retro all at once. The visual style reminded me of Wes Andersen, with flares of ultra-violence like Tarantino.

I felt like the show was split into two parts. The first 4 episodes were almost funny, in an irreverent teenage angsty sort of way. Even though some of the subject matter was serious, the tone was pretty light. It presented some disturbing things in a nonchalant way.

Our two protagonists meet and form a quick, albeit strange, relationship. They embark on an adventure together. The first half of the season builds toward a pivotal event. Once that happens, everything changes.

The 2nd half took a much different tone. It wasn’t much fun, and it spent too much of its very short runtime with a side plot that was completely pointless. In the very end there were a few moments of beauty and I liked some of the final scenes. After finishing it I continued to think about it a bit. It took our main character through quite a journey, and I think he came out the other side a better person. For that, I liked it.

La La Land

The other day I was thinking about just how much I miss writing in this blog. It has been a long time since I written consistently. I go back and forth on whether it is a worthwhile use of my time. I doubt anybody reads what I write… so what is the point. The Internet isn’t lacking for media criticism, so I don’t know that there is demand for anything I have to say. Either way, here we are. I am writing.

Even though it has been over a year since La La Land was relevant, I finally got around to watching it. I remember how much praise was heaped on this movie last Oscar season. I went in cautiously. I had recently seen The Greatest Showman, and I was kind of in the mood for another fun musical. I also loved Whiplash, the last film by the same director Damien Chazelle.

La La Land at the same time had too little music and too much music. If you are going to make a musical… let there be music. If not… don’t have any. I liked the beginning, but then was very frustrated by the lack of music for much of the second act. The music they did have was without largely without lyrics, which I also found frustrating.

The middle of the film dragged on way too long. It lost all momentum that it had built. I found myself getting bored and wondering what all the fuss was about.

The ending saved the movie for me. The sequence when Sebastian played the piano and he imagined an alternate history was so good. That “short film” sequence was worth the watch of the film all by itself.

There was a little confusion about what I was supposed to take away from the film. I read some reviews and considered some of the other takes on the movie. I was amazed by how many people talked about the central relationship and how much chemistry they had. I couldn’t disagree more. For me, there wasn’t much of a relationship there. Much of their time “together” was spent apart. They were two people that found each other a the right time, and were able to push one another to achieving their ultimate dreams in life. I did not feel sad that they didn’t end up together. In Seb’s fantasy at the end he seemed to have gotten the girl, but I don’t think he had his own jazz club. When he gives her the smile he is telling us the trade-off was totally worth it for him.

La La Land was a pretty good movie. I doubt I will ever watch it all the way through again. I could easily skip the middle half of the film and not lose much. The music is okay, but there isn’t enough of it.

I did find myself thinking about the film for a couple days after watching it, which is usually the sign of something good. I liked it more the further I got away from it. Still, I can’t say I enjoyed it, and I don’t share in much of the praise that I have seen from other reviews.