Guillermo del Toro's Nightmare Alley - Review Megathread

Rotten Tomatoes: 69% (6.60 in average rating) with 13 top critic reviews

Metacritic: 69/100 (8 critics)

As with other movies, the scores are set to change as time passes. Meanwhile, I'll post some short reviews on the movie.

A gorgeous, fantastically sinister moral fable about the cruel predictability of human nature and the way entire systems — from carnies and con men to shrinks and Sunday preachers — are engineered to exploit it.

-Peter Debruge, Variety

Stunningly-detailed, with an A-list cast up and down the line, it’s a gorgeous and gloomy dip into the dark side, immersive and bleak from start to finish.

-Roger Moore, Movie Nation: 3.5/4

With a semi-playful nod to the 1945 film Detour and more than a few rain-drenched streets, Nightmare Alley pays tribute to noir. But it’s also its own dark snow globe, luminous and finely faceted, and one of del Toro’s most fluent features.

-Sheri Linden, The Hollywood Reporter

This sordid excavation into the hollowness of a human soul is a strange fit for a director who’s spent his career searching for magic in the darkest margins of our world, but del Toro’s natural empathy for even the most damnable creatures he finds there sparks new life into “Nightmare Alley” as it narrows towards its inevitable dead end.

-David Ehrlich, Indiewire: Grade B

The period details are impeccable, the look and feel are seductive, but the muddled script lacks the killer instinct of its central figures.

-Tim Grierson, Screen Daily

From a rain-soaked carnival midway to a glossy, Art Deco therapist’s office, everything in Guillermo del Toro’s Nightmare Alley looks gorgeous. There just doesn’t seem to be a lot going on under the art direction.

-Alonso Duralde, The Wrap

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PLOT

When charismatic but down-on-his-luck Stanton Carlisle (Bradley Cooper) endears himself to clairvoyant Zeena (Toni Collette) and her has-been mentalist husband Pete (David Strathairn) at a traveling carnival, he crafts a golden ticket to success, using this newly acquired knowledge to grift the wealthy elite of 1940s New York society. With the virtuous Molly (Rooney Mara) loyally by his side, Stanton plots to con a dangerous tycoon (Richard Jenkins) with the aid of a mysterious psychiatrist (Cate Blanchett) who might be his most formidable opponent yet.

DIRECTOR

Guillermo del Toro

WRITER

Book By William Lindsay Gresham

Screenplay By Guillermo del Toro & Kim Morgan

MUSIC

Nathan Johnson

CINEMATOGRAPHY

Dan Laustsen

EDITOR

Cam McLauchlin

Release date:

December 17, 2021 (USA)

STARRING

• Rooney Mara as Molly

• Bradley Cooper as Stanton 'Stan' Carlisle

• Cate Blanchett as Lilith Ritter

• Willem Dafoe as Clem Hoately

• Mary Steenburgen as Miss Harrington

• Toni Collette as Zeena Krumbein

• Ron Perlman as Bruno

Submitted December 02, 2021 at 10:32PM by denzel4684864 https://ift.tt/3G7NPtp