Love (2011) Reviews

• I think I got it

  josh-gillette6192012-12-28

  Decided to watch this on Netflix because the plot summary seemed good and because I'm a sucker for all those Indie movie awards on the covers. I will admit I was a bit lost through the most of the movie. It seemed as though the movie dragged on and didn't really go anywhere. I started thinking I should have listened to the 2.7 average rating on Netflix, but I was too far in and decided to finish. I ended up frustrated because I did not fully understand the movie and I did not believe it was simply trash as some of these other reviews have described. I like to appreciate the hard work that goes into making this form of entertainment and I love to support independent films. After reading some different views and opinions, I believe I may understand the film now. Hopefully if you are a bit lost as well, this might help; or I may be completely wrong. The movie centers around Lee who is seen fighting in the Civil War at the beginning of the film. He is sent off to find some strange artifact. Fast forward to 2039 and Lee is the first person in 20 years aboard the International Space Station. After a few days (may have been more time) Lee loses contact, and a recorded message from Houston tells hints at something happening on Earth (so does a later scene that shows what could be explosions on the planet, followed by all the lights disappearing). Time goes on and Lee starts losing his mind. He begins to talk to himself, and eventually finds a journal from his Civil War self. He becomes obsessed with the journal and begins drawing out what he reads all over the station. The journal stops when Lee finds the artifact, but he never wrote down what he saw. Eventually, future Lee loses hope and decides to leave the station saying he would rather die on Earth. This is where the story gets weird and starts spinning each way without any sense of direction. It is never shown Lee unhooking from the wire holding him on to the station. However, it then shows him back in the station but with a beard that must have taken at least a year to grow. There's no way he went back in because the station did not have enough power to support him anymore, hence him leaving the station. The movie ends with him finding this server room, which to me seemed to be the memories of everyone. Someone is talking him throughout the end of the movie, and the artifact is shown to be an alien ship in a crater. However, the ship is then shown in orbit around Earth, and the voice welcomes Lee. This is my thought on the movie, and hopefully it will help with the negative reviews. I believe Lee killed himself when he left the station. What happens after that I believe is his life "flashing before his eyes" sort of speaking. I think that when he died he joined consciousness with everyone else. Where they on that ship? Was it just their memories? I'm not sure, but there was a sense of happiness a the end, and you could hear someone tell him he was the last one. If you've ever studied "whacky" science you will understand. I think the movie is a play on social consciousness and how we are all one. Pretty crazy stuff, I know. That's my take anyways. I don't believe the movie is as simple as it seemed. Just think it was a bit different and that no reason to hate it. Just need a broad mind and you need to think outside the box.

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• Agonizingly slow and disjointed, very disappointing

  brmelez2011-12-02

  Typically I have a soft spot in my heart for Indie and low budget films. When I saw that this film had a decent user rating (at the time of this writing) I thought I might be in for a treat much as I was when I watched other great Sci-Fi Indie films such as "Moon", "Pandorum", "The Man from Earth", "Melancholia" and "Another Earth". Sadly, I had to force myself to watch this through to its end, in the hope there would be something redeeming to justify the agony of watching what I had already put myself through. While I did not anticipate the "revelation" at the end, it certainly did not leave me whole. Great films, even if only moderately good, take you on a ride of ups and downs… I am very sorry to say this was just plain boring and full of unnecessary scenes and shots.

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• No Love Lost for This Stinker

  ThreeGuysOneMovie2012-02-18

  Sometimes I am like a moth to a flame when I see a poster covered with those awards all over them. "Winner, best international film, Siberia film festival!" I just can't resist checking them out. So, that leads me to watching Love… What a mess a movie. Someday I will learn my lesson. I didn't know anything about this movie but from the trailer it looked promising, even if it did seem to be a rip off of Moon. The premise is pretty simple. An astronaut is orbiting the earth on a space station. There is an undisclosed incident on earth and now the astronaut is trapped on the space station with no way to get home. Sounds interesting right? Nope. The movie bounces between the astronaut and another story involving a soldier during the Civil War. The soldier has been sent on a mission to investigate a mysterious object. Apparently the soldier left a diary that the astronaut has with him on the ship. The astronaut becomes enthralled with the story and with a bunch of old Polaroids that he finds. Eventually due to loneliness and boredom the astronaut starts having crazy hallucinations. The movie for me was 90 minutes that felt like an eternity. It is a movie that doesn't really go anywhere. It is really just a prolonged music video for the band Angels & Airwaves who did the soundtrack. I would have preferred if they had just done a movie about the Civil War story. I think it would have been a much more interesting film. Love starts off fairly strong and dissolves into a mess of visuals and abstracts that made me understand why I had never heard of this movie. It is just not very good. Listen to the first line in the trailer below and I think you will get an idea of the type of movie that you are in for; "When all that is left is a simple shadow, what will we want it to say?" I want it to say "Pretentious drivel." If you are a fan of Angels & Airwaves then you may get some joy out of watching this but, I recommend everyone else go watch Moon instead. It is a much better film. Love gets 1 guy from me.

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• What did I just see?

  Tehmeh2013-08-29

  Comparisons to "Moon" and "2001: Space odyssey" are well placed. I do not want to set anyone's expectations so high though. This movie will (and has) divided its few viewers very aggressively, but there are many strong elements that bow to those films. I also thought of "Fountain" at some point during watching this. This is a hard review to write. This feels like an experience instead of a clear image everyone sees the same way. For me, the experience was thrilling, emotional and also confusing. But here I am, thinking about life and...everything. Life in general, human nature, myself, loved ones, universe, God, dreams, hope...that certain longing we all probably have deep inside us. That something that keeps us wondering and always has since the dawn of man. I think I had the perfect mindset when I started watching this movie. I was in a somewhat melancholic, pondering and slow state of mind. I'm also somewhat of a loner, so it was easy for me to appreciate the theme of isolation. "Love" deals heavily with human need to contact one another. I do not know what exactly happened in the movie, but it certainly got me thinking. Yes, it is confusing, however I do not believe this was because of lazy writing. I'm fairly sure it's intentional and smart enough to get my imagination running and slowly pick up the pieces. I hope I get there. Right now I'm reading Carl Sagan's quotes from "Pale blue dot", as other reviewers have advised. Cinematography is beautiful. I watched the blu-ray, and some scenes were clearly optimized for HD experience, others were not. Fear not, because this is one beautifully and skillfully shot movie. Soundtrack is perfect. Not only it fits, but enhances the experience without forcing anything on you. Technically "Love" is one well crafted film. Gunner Wright does a fantastic job as the lonely astronaut. William Eubank went straight to my imaginary "if that man makes another movie, I want to see it" - list. This is a rather artsy film, and in this case the movie benefits from it. I don't want to sound like a hipster, not at all. I just hope that anyone who is about to see this film knows what to expect, to prepare themselves. I recommend this to everyone. Half will like it and the other half will hate it, and many from both halves will be confused. Still, I truly recommend this one. I believe this is an important movie. Well made, low budget film that needs to exist. There may come a time when we stop creating something like this. I'm glad we still get a few every now and then. I hope as many people as possible see this movie. The more I think of what I just saw, I don't think it's coincidence that the movie is titled "Love".

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• For a budget so small, they did so much...

  Chaseism2011-08-11

  Usually, I think a work of art should stand on it's own without the viewer every having to hear a single word from those behind the project. Because in the end, the real art is what we see, not what they see. But in the case of Love, I feel like the filmmakers' feedback turned me from just being okay with the movie, to loving the work they came up with. Love is a film that was made, not to tell us a story, but to get us thinking about what it means to connect with another human being and how essential that connection is to survival. Our Space captain returns to a new International Space Station and after a few days of communication, he is cut off. Unbeknownst to him, the world below him has completely destroyed themselves. As I said before, Love is about inspiring thought within the viewer more than it's about telling a linear story. Their story of connection and how little we mean to the rest of the universe is quite clear. The sparse writing involved isn't too preachy and doesn't give away all meaning, giving the audience a bit of work to do. Gunner Wright does a decent job of playing the lonely astronaut, although I wish we could have gotten a bit more emotion out of him at times. The visuals of the film were fantastic. The ultra slow motion of the Civil War battle scene up to the spectacular visuals at the end of the film, these guys did an amazing job. Also, there is an intense sense of isolation and desperation going on. Routine becomes the only way our captain stays together, but it's obvious there is a thin string holding him. There were just two problems I had with Love...one of which I immediately wrote off after the talk back. Certain portions of the film looked professional and absolutely amazing for an budgeted film. But there were aspects, such as the astronaut's joke of a space suit and the obvious wall of box fans oddly added to the space station. The space station itself was supposed to supersede our current one, but the interior still looked like it was from the 1970. There was also unexplained gravity. After the film, we learned it was made for $500,000. What a phenomenal job. The director talk about how he filmed the battle scene in his parent's backyard and built every aspect of the film himself just by going to Home Depot was ridiculously awesome. The Space Station was built in the driveway by him and his little bother. Still, a lot of those very distracting things could have been taken care of in the script. Instead of a new Space Station, make it the one we've used for years. Mention we discovered artificial gravity. But those were left out. My other (and really only) problem was Love was full of thought, but no love. We have this guy in space that is completely alone for years and the only thing we see him do is lose track of his sanity at times. But we never see moments where he breaks down There are moments of him missing his family, but the filmmakers spend too much time with the mundane tasks of life in Space rather than the emotional journey he is going through. Love was well worth the wait and I almost wish they could do the film again with more money and small changes in the script. But I would say if you can excuse a few budget problems, you're going to have a glorious time watching the movie. I'd also recommend reading that Carl Sagan quote on Pale Blue Dot before hand. You'll see the film closer to the filmmakers if you do... I encourage people to read the quote from Carl Sagan about the photo "Pale Blue Dot" before going to see the film.

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