What Happened to Monday

Slydice

Staring Noomi Rapace, Glenn Close & Willem Dafoe
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1536537/

Surprised there was no thread for this. Saw it this evening. Way more graphic than I was expecting. It did well handling Rapace doing 7 characters.

Willem Dafoes role was less than I expected. Glenn Close really looks like she could do an insane dictator role really well.

Also the twist with Monday having kids totally caught me. Was all happy thinking I'd guessed most of it. Did not see that coming though.

TerrorFirmer

Just saw this and loved it - way more adult and gritty than I expected, Hunger Games, Maze Runner or Divergent it most certainly is not. A simple movie on one level, but the whole thing just works so well, largely due to the great performances.... Noomi Rapace really is superb.

pixelburp

Given Orphan Black finished up only a couple of a weeks back, itself streamed on Netflix, it feels remarkably coincidental they then release a film whose main selling point is about an actor playing a bunch of identical sisters.

TerrorFirmer wrote: »

Just saw this and loved it - way more adult and gritty than I expected, Hunger Games, Maze Runner or Divergent it most certainly is not. A simple movie on one level, but the whole thing just works so well, largely due to the great performances.... Noomi Rapace really is superb.

How does she rate on the Tatiana Maslany scale of multitasking actors?

longshanks

pixelburp wrote: »

How does she rate on the Tatiana Maslany scale of multitasking actors?

Easily as good as, if not better.

meep

Intriguing concept, decent acting but poor enough movie overall with some jarring moments that just took me out of it;

eg One of the characters says they're going to the processing centre/HQ to take to set things right but the means of the takedown only presents itself after they get there. What was the plan otehrwise?

The main character was interesting and I liked the idea of the different personalities reacting differently to the unified persona, however, I felt there was just too much distinction drawn between them all - would 7 siblings living in such confined circumstances turn out so different from each other? (perhaps this was a deliberate on the part of the grandad).

Though I felt all the rest of the characters were complete caricature and I didn't feel much connection to them at all.

I enjoyed and was repulsed in equal measure by the finger scene and the logical necessity for it.

Overall, I enjoyed the idea of the movie more than the realisation.

Lost interest on Orphan Black early in the 2nd season as well - maybe that's something to do with it.

LionelNashe

I thought that was pretty good. I laughed out loud when I saw the bathroom finger-scene developing.

Mr E

Watched it last night and thought it was excellent. I'm easy to please, though. Very gruesome in places too (which the girlfriend didn't appreciate)

kunst nugget

longshanks wrote: »

Easily as good as, if not better.

Not a chance was she as good as Maslany in portraying multiple characters.

judeboy101

Great idea, but needed fleshing out. Where did Grandad go?was it world wide ban or just europe? Why not just bring kid to hospital with finger? Why close running as a td and not for head job?

meep

judeboy101 wrote: »

Why not just bring kid to hospital with finger? QUOTE]
Because all the girls needed to be identical in order for them all to play the combined character. Couldn't have her with a missing finger one day of the week!

judeboy101

meep wrote: »

judeboy101 wrote: »

Why not just bring kid to hospital with finger? QUOTE]
Because all the girls needed to be identical in order for them all to play the combined character. Couldn't have her with a missing finger one day of the week!

They can grow babies in artificial womb but can't reattach finger?

LionelNashe

They borrowed the finger bit from another film that I won't name (or even hint at) because it would spoil the other film for people. Good point about them not reattaching it, but it was worth it for the drama of the scene, and the dark comedy when she was trapped in the bathroom.

judeboy101

meep wrote: »

judeboy101 wrote: »

Why not just bring kid to hospital with finger? QUOTE]
Because all the girls needed to be identical in order for them all to play the combined character. Couldn't have her with a missing finger one day of the week!

longshanks

kunst nugget wrote: »

Not a chance was she as good as Maslany in portraying multiple characters.

She was better, she even seemed more muscular as one of the sisters.

TerrorFirmer

meep wrote: »

They can grow babies in artificial womb but can't reattach finger?

I think that's easy to explain away, even if they did reattach it, there would be a very obvious scar that the others would not have.

johnny_adidas

Wasnt expecting much as films like this can be very hit and miss but really enjoyed it. Nice to catch one that might have fallen through the cracks

pixelburp

I dunno, I feel it suffered from the usual problem that can plague these sorts of dystopian films; wherein the world is centred around this single, very specific conceit, but for the sake of drama & lazy narrative it's ramped up to an almost comically evil degree, past the point of believability or even existing as a cautionary tale for the audience. It's not like overpopulation isn't a very real & relevant topic, yet the way the script in '...Monday' handled it was both simplistic & a little tone deaf by the end of the movie.

Rapace did well enough, but the differences in the 7 siblings was postage-stamp sized; I think there was perhaps one scene that allowed her to display the varying personas, but ultimately it felt more like a gimmick within the body of what was essentially an action thriller. And given

the speed with which the sisters either disappear or die, it's not like there was much chance to actually get to know many of them

If the script had taken a breath & step back, allowed the characters to drive the drama instead of morphing into a chase film we might have seen more range. A lot of wasted potential here.

longshanks wrote: »

She was better, she even seemed more muscular as one of the sisters.

It's probably a little unfair comparing a TV show of 50 episodes vs. a 2 hour film, but honestly I can't agree with that at all; Maslany's various performances were so seamless & varied I often genuinely forgot it was just one actor playing these parts. They also had a baseline of physical ticks & mannerisms down to how each sister carried herself: uptight Alison & her pencil-straight posture, against Sarah's slouchiness, vs. Helenas wiry, almost animal-like stance (equally amazing was when she played a sister who in turn was playing a character, such as when Cosima had to pretend to be Alison).

Mara did her best, but there was nothing to work with here: sure one of the sister was pretty ripped, but that's nothing good lightning, post-production & some cropped tops can't achieve. The rest just felt like Mara wearing different wigs & hairstyles, nothing tangible. When

the nerf-sister blew herself up, that came out of nowhere. I mean sure she was obviously supposed to be quiet & mousy, but the script never established any neurotic dependence or anything that made that moment feel remotely earned or shocking. Heck I couldn't even remember which 'day' she was supposed to be.

kunst nugget

pixelburp wrote: »

It's probably a little unfair comparing a TV show of 50 episodes vs. a 2 hour film, but honestly I can't agree with that at all; Maslany's various performances were so seamless & varied I often genuinely forgot it was just one actor playing these parts. They also had a baseline of physical ticks & mannerisms down to how each sister carried herself: uptight Alison & her pencil-straight posture, against Sarah's slouchiness, vs. Helenas wiry, almost animal-like stance (equally amazing was when she played a sister who in turn was playing a character, such as when Cosima had to pretend to be Alison).

Honestly, the that part blew me away was when Sarah impersonated Cosmia, how she was able to play that so convincingly was just astonishing.

TherapyBoy

pixelburp wrote: »

Mara did well enough..

Mixing up your Stieg Larssen adaptations? :pac:

pixelburp

TherapyBoy wrote: »

Mixing up your Stieg Larssen adaptations? :pac:

lol, ok that's a bit weird all right

Occono

I enjoyed it. Several twists caught me off guard,

and the body count,
though the twist they weren't actually freezing children was predictable from the start (and one scene basically gives it away early on.) An enjoyable movie I won't remember a year from now, far better than some other crap they've bought like TMHWIA and Death Note.

Fysh

I lasted about halfway through this before giving up and just reading the Wikipedia plot summary, which confirmed that the rest of it played out pretty much as I expected (bar

having two sisters survive rather than one

, not that it makes much difference). Rapace wasn't bad, but she wasn't given much to work with in terms of fleshing out the sisters rather than giving superficial depictions of broadly different character archetypes.

As pixelburp mentioned above, it's basically a chase thriller with a gimmicky high-concept bolted onto it (without the consideration for repercussions or non-obvious consequences that makes thematically similar films like Gattaca so much more effective). The plot and setup has more holes than a colander, and the thing doesn't move fast enough or hit a good rhythm or tone to convince you to ignore them. E.g.

Cayman moans to Tuesday about the food they've taken from others, but apparently the CAB don't think to check when apartments are using 7 times the expected volume of water. Or tells her goons to keep things quiet, at which point they send kill squads to two different buildings, including killing the building attendant for no obvious reason except to establish that they're Bastards With A Capital B.