Movies where one act is good and the other isn't

The new version of Nightmare Alley

The first act, with them in the carnival, is about 10-20 minutes too long, the character progression of Stan, Bradley Cooper's character, from a somewhat empathetic, naive individual to a scuzzy con artist feels rushed, and there are plot threads that are barely resolved (like the thing with the guy in the cage or Stan having romantic relationships with both Madame Xena (while considering her husband his mentor) and Rooney Mara's character)

There are some good things there, the production design and cinematography, the guy with dwarfism is mostly just treated like an equal by the other characters and the movie itself (there's no "LOL he's so short, let's laugh at the shorty" jokes, which is nice), Willem Dafoe's performance, and the lengths the movie goes to show how they're conning people, but for the most part I just couldn't get into the carnival scenes

However, once they leave the carnival, and it becomes about Stan scheming common people and rich people into thinking he's a legit mentalist, and him getting his just desserts for that, it becomes a much more interesting and well written movie, with a fantastic performance by Cate Blanchett to boot

Submitted December 19, 2021 at 09:27PM by mranimal2 https://ift.tt/3J0cKS3