Human Capital

In early Sept, within one day of first screening of this film at Toronto, it had 1,400 IMDB nine and ten star ratings which is more people than saw it at the festival.At this point exactly 11 of the 1,400 votes are from accounts which have rated another film. In other words this is >99% fake uprating. At Toronto most of the audience was fidgeting throughout, and look simply fatigued at the end of the film. Forget the few gushing reviews on the 'critics reviews" section here from reviewers who give everything a ten in hopes of getting free festival junkets. The legit outlets like Variety and Ebert panned this turgid nonsense. Variety: "its convoluted narrative rigging not leading to any particular sense of meaning" (the rigging and artificiality of the plot is cringeworthy) Ebert: "'Human Capital' is the type of middling, middlebrow mediocrity that strives to be about capital-I Ideas but approaches them with the savoir-faire of a toddler."

My take: 1) Can someone tell Marisa Tomei that she cannot act her way out of a paper bag? She was jarringly distracting evidence of overacting in "Frankie" and this is worse. The other actors in this, Schreiber, Betty Gabriel, Maya Hawke do OK. 2) what is the point of talking down to the audience and banging them over the head as if they are idiots?

skip this mess.

"Human Capital", directed by Marc Meyers ("My Friend Dahmer") is the second screen adaptation of Stephen Amidon's novel of the same name. I have neither seen the first one nor read the book, but this version of "Human Capital", mainly being carried on the shoulders of a great cast, is an effortful suburban tale of what happens when people get pushed to their limits, mental, physical and financial alike, a tale that sometimes hits and misses.

"Human Capital" is a character-driven drama structured in retrospective kind of way, putting a single event in the center of it and then telling each character's journey and role in said event. This story-telling works well for the first hour, but as it progresses it also gets slower, leading into a silent and unsatisfying climax which in retrospect makes "Human Capital" feel more like a build-up in its entirety. The story and themes from which it's weaved from is realistic, relevant and tries to touch your strings, but does so unsurely. Financial hardships, father/daughter and husband/wife relationship problems, depression, suicide, sexual freedom - all of these themes are there on some level, but they don't connect together as well as they should've. It is the acting work by the well put together cast that makes up for some flaws, even the smaller roles are filled in with familiar faces and commendable performances. In my opinion, the brightest highlight shines on Live Schreiber and Maya Hawke. Visually it's quite obvious that "Human Capital" is made on a limiting budget and seems like most of it went to the cast (well deserved, good choice), so visually it has come out a standard indie drama/thriller flick, with no extraordinary solutions or distinctive characteristics.

"Human Capital" is not a bad movie but neither is it memorable, it engages as a character-driven with enjoyable performances drama but has a knack to eventually underwhelm in most of the other areas. Recommended to those who are intrigued by its cast. My rating: 6/10.

You know when you have a nagging feeling that you have seen a movie (or any other kind of Deja Vu), but you know you didn't? And then you (me in this case) may think, it's because I've seen so many movies, that's why it does feel familiar. And then you search the title here on imdb and realize you've seen the Original (Italian I think) movie? Which is far better than the remake - and I'm saying this while being fully in love with Marisa Tomei in general.

I singled her out, but you have a stellar cast overall of course. But still and while this does have certain things working for it (if you are into dramas), it also has quite a lot that you may consider to annoying for you. Or if you've seen the original, have seen done better for drama and other effect ... If you don't mind subtitles then - watch the one from 2013 - you're welcome

This story tells what happens to each of the characters before the accident, and how these events intersect. To be honest, the events are interesting but not told in an engaging way. I don't care about any of the characters, which is central to the success of this film.

...and the rest of their film crew - and their family and friends, ridiculously up-vote their film. No way of the current 1,616 ratings this film is even close to a 8.8/10.

Film critic Noel Murray from the L.A. Times nailed it: "Frankly, the payoff to the movie's mystery is unsatisfying after all the buildup. None of these three stories really works as a short film on its own."

There's no excuse for this mess considering director Marc Meyers and writer Oren Moverman are not inexperienced film-makers.

A 5th grader could've written, directed and edited this film better! Think 3-4 different films put in a shredder, then random pieces taped together to make one film.

There is terrible plot transition between what you'd think is the key story, another one pops up, then a mish-mash of back and forth timelines, then an entirely new focus on another plot, etc. Add to this the terrible pacing, and the 95 min run-time felt like 3 hours of a convoluted mess.

Meyers also failed miserably in directing his cast - Schreiber and Tomei seemed barely awake, and you couldn't quite place Hawke's personality... one minute she's an introvert, then an extrovert.

This film had a lot of potential, but missed the mark big time. Maybe too many producers pulling at each other with the direction this film needed to go. Then again, with that many, the phony up-votes were easily achieved.

Skip this mess or read the novel instead. It's a very generous 5/10 from me.