Queen of Earth (2015) Reviews

• Ponderous & Irritating

  larrys32016-04-29

  To me, this was one of those supposed deep dramas that produced only unlikable characters, espousing psychological drivel throughout, and thus in the end just became ponderous and irritating to watch. Often told through flashbacks, it held my interest for a while, wondering where it was all going. I should have known better because it ended up going nowhere, all the way to its highly ambiguous finale. Elisabeth Moss and Katherine Waterston star as Catherine and Virginia respectively. Catherine has come up to her best friend Virginia's family vacation home to get some rest and relaxation. Her emotional state is quite unstable, after her father, a renowned artist committed suicide, and her partner has told her he's having an affair with another woman. If these two women are best friends, I wouldn't like to meet their enemies, because Catherine and Virginia are constantly bickering at their best moments and being cruel and hostile to each other at their worst. They're joined from time to time by Virginia's neighbor Rich (Patrick Fugit), who's in a relationship of some sorts with Virginia, and who seems to delight in "adding fuel to the fire" whenever he can to provoke the unstable Catherine. All in all, I imagine the writer and director here Alex Ross Perry, was aiming for a deep meaningful film, but all I found it to be was a tedious and irritating waste of time.

• I can understand if some people like it but I just found it rather dull

  Seth_Rogue_One2016-07-22

  Slowmoving psychological drama about a woman with a mental state that's on a downward spiral after her father died. Has a bit of a eerie 70's mystery feeling to it stylewise both visually and emotionally (even though it takes place in now time). But instead of getting intrigued I just found it rather dull instead, perhaps a bit to do with the fact that I didn't find anything particularly likable about any of the characters (or interesting for that matter) and they were all fairly self-absorbed. And some scenes just go on forever with mumbling monologues of which I often found myself not knowing what exactly they were talking about because for one they mumbled quietly and also the eerie music was really loud, so that didn't really help, and the ending is rather abrupt. So yeah what can I say, not for me I guess.

• "I don't deserve this." I know the feeling

  Quinoa19842016-01-06

  I went into Queen of the Earth with so much good will. The premise sounds like it has a great deal of potential - a woman's (Elizabeth Moss) father dies and she goes to try and get away from everything in the wake of this and breaking up with her boyfriend to a cabin by a lake that her best friend (Katharine Waterston) has, and from there she starts to lose her mind. I hadn't seen The Color Wheel or Listen up Phillip, the previous Alex Ross Perry films, but I am an admirer of Elizabeth Moss (just last year she was in a little seen but awesome indie movie, The One I Love), and I thought she could pull off a deep and interesting character. The trouble is, the resulting film Queen of the Earth isn't deep or interesting, though it would very much like to be and pretends to be. It paigns me to rag on a film that is trying to be ambitious in the psychological/interior sense. It's not that the world lacks independent film dramas dealing with loss and mental instability, but it's always good to have well made ones that let the audience in to the character's pain and, perhaps, see that person grow. But the core problem with the movie is that it doesn't give enough context for the main character's misery. In a sense the format reminded me of Lars von Trier's Antichrist, only without the hilarious fox or over-the-top antics involving castration: someone loses a loved one, they go off to the middle of the woods with a close friend, and then the bile spews out. And Queen of the Earth is nothing but an experience where characters are loaded with bile to one another scene after scene. Of course a story dealing with grief and loss and mental fractions should be taking itself seriously, of course... but maybe it should also allow a tone that doesn't hit the same ugly sensations. Even in the flashbacks Moss and Waterston's characters are sniping at one another in passive-aggressive or just aggressive ways, and even the (very) few semi-happy moments are tinged with the flavor of dread. After an opening shot where we see Moss crying and in hysterics - and to be fair, it's an amazingly acted and shot scene - it never really loses that tone, and yet we also never get a sense of WHERE and WHO this character was at before all of this; it's all told to us (that she had a father who was reviled, that she is reviled as a "spoiled brat", that she should get over herself, her art, etc). Part of the approach may be due to the low-budget - Perry didn't quite get started with the 'mumblecore' filmmakers, but he's in the same ballpark - and yet there's little actual creativity, or any sense of empathy that the audience can have in the writing, at least from my perspective. Part of the problem too is due to the style, where Perry gets composer Keegan DeWitt to hit the same ominous, horror-movie notes, and it's draining. In scene after scene it's as though we are locked in with one woman, Catherine, who is a head-case and is becoming undone further and further along (the same tone is basically, 'why can't they leave me alone') and she is not that interesting as a miserable character, and Virginia is even worse. There's no arc with either of these people, no sense of growth whether it's up or down (well, I guess Catherine DOES get worse, but you know what I mean, the trajectory is muddled and shallow); that may be part of the point, but it doesn't work in this case. I can see why the film was made, to bring a full atmospheric experience through eerie-grainy 16mm cinematography, and to highlight how, well I guess, society people are people too. But aside from Moss's performance, as she really is trying and going for this full- throttle (she produced too), Queen of the Earth comes off as a miserable, empty time.

• Some of the Worst Dialogue I've Ever Heard in a Movie

  SquigglyCrunch2016-06-10

  Queen of Earth follows a woman who, after her boyfriend breaks up with her, goes on a trip to a somewhat secluded cabin with her best friend, and ultimately they run into some troubles in their relationship. I liked how this movie was shot. There were some pretty lengthy shots that were just people talking, meaning that they had to memorize a lengthy set of lines and recite them while maintaining their character. Moreover, some of the shots were just kind of pretty to look at. There were some cool ideas. The way it tried to use symbolism and portray the main character's ongoing conflict was kind of cool, but unfortunately it didn't work out. The biggest thing that really brought this movie down was the dialogue. I've seen bad dialogue and writing before, but this tops all of those. Characters often embark on long lectures and speeches that sound like they were both pre-written and practiced. Not only was the dialogue unrealistic, but the meaning of it was also awful. The two main characters, who are supposedly best friends, spend the entire movie elaborately telling each other why they are each horrible people. And they definitely aren't being sarcastic. How are these people still friends? Even in their flashback conversations they just trash-talk each other. Now you could argue that maybe I'm pointing out only the bad conversations they have, but they never say anything nice to each other. I recall one line from the entire movie where one of them says that she likes the other. That line was immediately followed by hate, however. So the movie never actually shows us that the two main characters are best friends despite stating that they are. Overall Queen of Earth is a bad movie. Sure, there were some cool ideas and pretty shots, but the dialogue is so incredibly awful that it's hard to enjoy really any part of this movie. In the end I definitely wouldn't recommend this movie.

• "Artsy" film that most mainstream viewers will NOT like one bit.

  TxMike2016-01-03

  I like movies, all kinds. I've probably seen upwards of 4000 to 4500 movies. Occasionally I like to see a smaller, independent film like this one, it is good to see what types of new approaches are being tried. I found this on Netflix streaming movies. The reviews and comments are all over the place, from "I hated this trash" to "A really fine character study." My own evaluation is somewhere in between the two extremes, it is an interesting experiment but to me fails on most accounts. Elisabeth Moss is Catherine, whose successful and well-known artist father has recently died. She too is an artist, not as accomplished, and has gone into a funk of sorts. To refresh herself she travels to spend a week with her "best friend" at the friend's secluded lake house and do some drawing too. The friend is British actress Katherine Waterston doing a very authentic American accent as Virginia. We really get no backstory and are struck by how severe, judgmental, and uncaring Virginia seems to be. In fact she talks at one point about how she relishes getting people out of her life, including her newborn that we never really find out about. Then there is Patrick Fugit who is the intrusive lake house neighbor Rich. He is good but I hadn't seen him in anything since he was a teenager in "Almost Famous" and seeing him as a 30-something is a bit disconcerting. My fault, not the movie's. Anyway the problem I have with the movie is I never saw the main characters as having realistic conversations and discussions, as normal friends might. I was always aware that they were working off a script that someone wrote. And if the interactions between friends didn't seem real, what does that leave us with? Nothing because there is no big "ah-ha" moment before the ending. I am glad I saw it, I could not recommend it to anyone else.