Sexyloutak
Absolutely the worst movie.
Hadrina
The movie's neither hopeful in contrived ways, nor hopeless in different contrived ways. Somehow it manages to be wonderful
Brendon Jones
It’s fine. It's literally the definition of a fine movie. You’ve seen it before, you know every beat and outcome before the characters even do. Only question is how much escapism you’re looking for.
Kinley
This movie feels like it was made purely to piss off people who want good shows
rgcustomer
It continues to amaze how gullible the viewers are with this film. When something is as bleak, tedious, pointless, and indecipherable as this, that does not signify that it is good. Rather, it signifies that it is bad. This is a basic point that I think many in the artistic community fail to perceive, intentionally, so to protect their own careers, which are often based on telling the public that there is more to film than meets the eye. Sorry, but there isn't, and that's the point.I didn't fall asleep during this one, but it was so boring that I found myself not even looking at the screen for minutes at a time, which is saying something since there isn't much else to look at. It didn't matter. Most of the time, the characters were speaking in a foreign language, with no subtitles. Their speech was unimportant. They never did anything particularly interesting, and the cinematography was horrible, so it wasn't even worth looking at. As a curiosity in an "anti-film" designed to antagonize the viewer, I suppose this succeeded, but as a film it is a failure. It has its good points (which is how it earned a 5 from me) but they aren't worth detailing since there are many here happy to sing the praises of this work.I've seen summaries of the film that indicate that women invited to eat at the photographer's place were in fact escorts. I saw or heard no evidence of that in the film. Maybe they revealed that in a language I do not speak. I have no intention of sitting through this again to find out what I missed.
m_ats
Questions of diasporic national identity are brilliantly addressed in the concept of a modern society, through various media, paralleled to more personal and private issues such as jealousy, stubbornness and personal pride. Only a person with very little life experience could not comprehend anything to what is going on in this movie. Atom Egoyan succeeded in making a very universal film that is touching at more than only one level. With this film, he proves that he is more than a good film director, but truly an artist who is able to transpose a world view through simple a medium, with low budget. This is personally my favorite Egoyan film, though it's by no means the longest or most commercially successful.
claudemercure
Atom Egoyan's been very consistent in his career about two things. He likes messing with time frames, and his movies can come across as distant bordering on pretentious. Over the years he's been perfecting the former, and making improvements on the latter, as evidenced in Exotica, and, especially, in the beautiful, devastating The Sweet Hereafter. Calendar came before those films, and it is even more experimental than they are. It would feel pretentious if it wasn't for the fact that Egoyan (more or less playing himself) portrays himself in a very unflattering light. But the whole enterprise does have that familiar Egoyan chill. He plays a photographer who is taking pictures of old Armenian churches for a calendar.In what is perhaps an expression of self-doubt regarding his aesthetic instincts, his character seeks only to capture the superficial beauty of the churches, paying little attention to the history behind them. He is on this trip with his wife (played by Egoyan's wife), and both of them are of Armenian origin. In Calendar, Egoyan could be trying to comment on any number of things, about his relationship to his wife, to his roots, and to his art. At times it seems like you can almost discern a message coming through, and the film does become somewhat intriguing, but in the end the director is simply too subtle for his own good. And thus he keeps his audience at arm's length.The shots of churches, though, are beautiful enough to make one want to visit Armenia.
omarazam
I have to speak out at how mediocre I felt this film to be. It has some creative gestures, such as the use of the calendar sequence and the once a month dinner dates, but these wore thin; I found the film not to be dynamic and highly predictable, if not in its outcome then at least in its process. The dialogue lacks, consisting mostly of monologues. It can be perceived as poignant and inventive, but not nearly enough to redeem it.