Written by Luke Barnes
Summary
Phil Burbank, played by Benedict Cumberbatch berates those around him for a few hours in a period setting.
To me this film embodied everything wrong with arthouse cinema. It is pretentious, it thinks it is deeper than it actually is, and none of it really leads anywhere it just a series of scenes spaced out with rants from Cumberbatch.
Honestly I found this film hard to watch as it was so slowly paced that it almost put me to sleep. Really the only interesting part of this film was seeing must how unlikeable Cumberbatch’s Phil could become and seeing how sinister he could get.
Moreover, if you like animals this may not be the film for you as there are a number of scenes where Phil is cruel to animals, and it can be distressing and hard to watch. I understand why the filmmakers choose to include these scenes, to show just how evil Phil is, but they can’t shake this overwhelming sense of needlessness.
Overall, Cumberbatch is good but the film as a whole is boring, hard to watch and far from what it thinks it is.
Pros.
Cumberbatch
It is interesting to watch Phil devolve
Cons.
It is overly pretentious
It is boring and far too long
Scenes of animal cruelty that feel needless
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Another Millennial Reviewer 