The Weight of Water

The theme is a little detached

Polley and Penn are good, obviously, and the central idea comes through and is genuinely interesting, but Bigelow makes some bad missteps in presenting aspects that you can tell probably worked better in the novel. The music is god-awful, but it's not as bad as Hurley's performance.

Pretty good flick with strong performances. The look of the film is quite good with some interesting and varied locations. The script is fairly interesting with its dual timelines and is perhaps a bit slow at times. The acting is very good, especially McCormack and Polley, and I still have memory burn 10 years later of the lovely Hurley in that white bikini.

Bigelow knows what she's doing but the script really let her down here. Bonus points for casting Sarah Polley and Ciaran Hinds, however.

The movie has a lot of good talent involved, but the story was uninteresting to me and I did not care about any of the characters.

48.500

It has aged pretty bad mostly because it looks like one of those foggy-softcore-porn-thrillers-set-in-boats-of-the-late-80s-and-early-90s -- but at least Kathryn keeps in mind that the crime story, that involves a family drama centered in a young lady with sex issues -- she slept with her brother once, was move to US and was forced to marry so she could be "healed" -- is way more interesting than this New Hampshire trip. Edgy as hell -- incest is all over -- but also kitschy with lots sax tunes.

Kathryn Bigelow reaches a bit too high, with a jumble of artistic pretentions... there are moments where her Bergman and Antonioni influences show far too prominently. Sean Penn and Elizabeth Hurley trading off meaningful snippets of poetry is just embarassing. Another minor quibble: the movie hints too strongly at a major plot twist, ruining the big surprise. But it's different, or at least more different than most movies, and worth watching for Polley's performance if nothing else.

"In the end, The Weight of Water comes to resemble the kind of soft-core twaddle you'd expect to see on Showtime's 'Red Shoe Diaries.'" - Ed Gonzalez