GurlyIamBeach Instant Favorite.

Listonixio Fresh and Exciting

TrueHello Fun premise, good actors, bad writing. This film seemed to have potential at the beginning but it quickly devolves into a trite action film. Ultimately it's very boring.

Bob This is one of the best movies I’ve seen in a very long time. You have to go and see this on the big screen.

LilyDaleLady And Whit Stillman. And Wes Anderson. No question here who first time director Peter Glanz looks up to and idolizes! He has even copied the whole idea of setting a film in the 60s....but I assume (from the "making of" featurette on the DVD) that he is far, far too young to have even been a small child in the 60s. This isn't nostalgia or history...it is just homage to directors who are 30 years older than himself.If you are going to go to the expense and trouble of setting a film in a specific historical setting, you'd think you would have a POINT to it...it has some link to history of that era....or it references something in your personal life, or that of a relative. Or it's based on a novel or incident from the past. Otherwise, it feels pointless. The director clearly has no real feeling or nostalgia for the past, except for "mod fashions of the 60s". Or maybe it has something to do with the success of "Mad Men", which has done more to make the 60s have a comeback than anything else I know. But "Mad Men" is making a point about how the history of the 60s, is the underpinnings of so many things we think and do today...part of our evolution as a culture. "The Longest Week" has no point. It is utterly trivial.The story is about a useless trust fund brat (Jason Bateman) who is 40ish and suddenly his absent parents cut him off (for no real reason). He has to crash with his best friend, a successful pop artist (Billy Crudup). He meets a beautiful model (Olivia Wilde, a little long in the tooth for a fashion model of the era -- Twiggy was SIXTEEN) and they have a week-long affair while he is displaced from his lavish lifestyle in his parent's luxe hotel suite.That's IT. He "suffers" (stealing money from his friends) for ONE WEEK. This week is so transformative, he grows up (sort of).I don't know a thing about the director, but it made me wonder if he was this same sort of trust fund brat. In the post 2008 economic climate, it is REALLY hard to work up sympathy for some billionaire's spoiled man-child.No surprise this film was shelved for over 2 years before going direct to video, based I am sure solely on the star names. In that time, bit part player Jenny Slate (she plays a blind date of the hero) rose to prominence in the (much better) indie film "Obvious Child"; as a result, she is given TOP BILLING. But she only has a couple of brief scenes.I enjoy 60s nostalgia as much as anyone (I was actually around then!) but this feels as fake and sterile as a display in department store window.It did occur to me watching this...it is clearly set in about 1966 (from the clothes model Beatrice wears). If Conrad Valmont (Bateman) is 40....today, in 2016, he would be...90. That shook me up a bit. It's worth thinking about. Clearly it never crossed the director's mind (i.e., what happened through the 60s, 70s, 80s, 90s, to these vapid characters).(I would have been interested to see the original B&W short that the director showed at Sundance. Too bad, it is not included on the DVD extras and I can't even find a link to it on Vimeo or anywhere on IMDb.)

blanche-2 I adore Jason Bateman and when I see he's in something, I watch him. I just love his no-nonsense delivery. He never tries to be funny; he reacts to the situation at hand.He stars in "The Longest Week" from 2014, and like another reviewer here, I'm wondering why Jenny Slate is top-billed. I didn't know who she was until I looked it up.Bateman plays 40-year-old Conrad Valmont who lives, as he has always lived, in the Valmont Hotel, owned by his parents. One morning the phone wakes him up, informing him that security will be up shortly to escort him and his dog Napoleon out of the hotel. The reason: his parents are divorcing and aren't paying any of his bills any longer.He is able to get his chauffeur (Barry Primus) to care for Napoleon, but as far as caring for him, he really doesn't know where to go. He does something he never does - takes the subway. On the train he makes eye contact with a beautiful young woman (Olivia Wilde), who gives him her number. Dylan moves in on his friend and rival, a successful artist, Dylan Tate.Dylan has recently dropped his girlfriend Jocelyn and has met a fabulous woman he thinks that he's in love with. When he attends Dylan's art show, the subway woman is there, and she's the same woman with whom Dylan is in love. He promises Dylan that he will not make a play for her, but he does, and they fall in love.Beautifully photographed, this is a pleasant film, somewhat humorous, until it nears the end. I don't now if the filmmaker ran out of money, script, or what, but the film has a constant narration for a good ten minutes as scenes are being shown with no dialogue.Kind of left me flat, despite all of the good acting.Tony Roberts plays Conrad's therapist, who gives him a low-cost loan. As his chauffeur, Primus plays a man who knows Conrad better than anyone and has real affection for him. Billy Crudup, whom I saw on stage in Arcadia and who was so marvelous in Stage Beauty, is wonderful, as a friend resigned to the fact that Conrad is a woman-stealing jerk who has been in the research phase of his great novel for years. House's Olivia Wilde (that's how I know her) looks fantastic and is believable as the object of both Conrad's and Dylan's affections.This should have been better.

secondtake The Longest Week (2014)What a strangely almost good movie. It has lots of compelling elements, including Jason Bateman as the nice guy leading man (though here he plays a spoiled rich boy). It's a complex enough story, and a love story, and it's set in lovely Brooklyn (an almost Manhattan). It should work. And second leading man Billy Crudup is terrific—better than Bateman.So enjoy it for what it is? Sure. But it will kludge along at times, and will get a bit obvious at other times. The women (girlfriends, mainly) are weakly cast (or weakly directed), which doesn't help. But mostly it's a matter of originality—which is missing.In fact, the whole thing is alike a Woody Allen mashup wannabe. The voice-over will make you think too much of "Vicky Christina Barcelona" and some of the photography of "Manhattan" but in color. (They even cast Allen regular Tony Roberts in a role as, yes, a shrink.) But mostly it's "Annie Hall" redux. In fact, it's almost a remake—girl meets unlikely boy, they have a romance, it goes south, and then boy re-evaluates (with direct stealing of ideas like having the plot reappear as a play, or in this case as a novel). And even if you don't like "Annie Hall" (which I do), you have to admit it came first, and is wonderfully original.To add insult to injury, the whole set design and shooting style is straight out of Wed Anderson, though toned down to the point of being dull. (Anderson is never dull, at least visually.)So what is left? Lots of little moments—quaint remarks (skipping over the brazenly sexist stuff that is meant to be funny and is mostly embarrassing, like the soccer practice) and a generally nice flow of events. It's easy to watch even if you aren't enthralled.Director and writer Peter Glanz is fairly new to the scene, and this movie is a seven day expansion of an earlier indie success, "A Relationship in Four Days." No wonder this one feels about three days too long. See it? Maybe, if you already know you like the cast or the genre. Or maybe just give the Allen films a second try. Worlds apart.

Counthaku "The girls that I like as human beings I'm not sexually attracted to, and the ones that I am sexually attracted to I don't particularly like as human beings." Such is the type of quote that characterizes the dialogue of "The Longest Week," a movie I watched without ever having read anything about (which is pretty rare for me). Despite (or perhaps because of) that fact, I was pleasantly surprised by "The Longest Week," and found its running narration- complete with character descriptions such as "an anti-social socialist" and "closet conversationalist"- bantery dialogue between the two male leads, and overall visual style to be endearing rather than simply derivative as its critics classify it.I also enjoyed the film's flirtations with being "meta"- the novel published by the film's protagonist is actually the same story as the film, and references are made to Fitzgerald and Wharton.That being said, the film assuredly has its weaknesses- namely that we never feel fully connected to the romantic leads, and are thus unable to empathize with them, and that the narrative structure/arc doesn't quite feel fleshed out/complete enough.