Lost Transmissions

Simon Pegg is stretching his acting skills here and does a great job. It's a confusing, impact laden fire fight. Which is exactly what a schizophrenic episode is all about. It also does well in showing the love that his friends have. Mental illness like this cannot be objective as everyone's experience is different. Juno Temple does a very muted performance, so does really well as a depressive. You can feel she has so much more life. The drugs oppress that. Adam Driver would possibly have been better suited to the Pegg role but schiz and depression doesn't deal with cliches. It hits everyone. A very good film. Underestimated as it deals with irregular people. It's not a "sandwich" film. Well done to the director. She's nailed the mental illness aspect superbly. It's random remember. It just covers you in a sheet and you have to find that ray of light.

Hannah (Juno Temple) is a struggling songwriter working as a receptionist. At a party, she is befriended by record producer Theo Ross (Simon Pegg) who starts working with her. He had stopped taking his pills and is soon suffering a mental breakdown. Simon Pegg is allowed to stretch his acting legs but this movie needs to do more. First, it needs one more scene of their relationship outside of music at the beginning. In fact, it may work better if she's his daughter or a close relative. I can see her caring about him as a route to music success but this kind of emotional involvement needs more connectivity. The ending with the princess is oddly unreal. There is a scene that is staged in a weird way. I don't believe in it. I end up not liking the ending. This is more compelling as an acting exercise.

I really wanted to like this, esp after seeing the beginning but then it just went on and on and became annoying. It made no sense whatsoever. Yeah sure Simon has a condition, but how he was able to get Juno intertwined in his messed up condition just didn't add up! Was it love, stupidity or pity? Whatever it was, it made me just hate her more for doing that to herself. Nothing of any real worth in here.

Normally reviewing a bad movie there's something to get your teeth into, examples of the inanity or sheer woefulness that you can chuckle about. With this though, there's nothing...it's a vapid, frustrating vacuum. There's simply nothing there. Things float briefly into sight...there's Juno Temple! There's Shaun of the Dead! Doesn't he look rough? A snotty Katy Perry style rock star drifts by...Shaun has voices in his head (mental illness, see?). Juno learns to sing a tearjerking song with the lights off because Shaun taught her to. That's it. I paid to stream this, and consider it a waste of money. Shaun and Juno have done far better work, and will again, but this is an aberration.