All I See Is You (2016) Reviews

• All I see is a mediocre film

  andrew-marks592017-01-29

  Marc Forster has delivered some decent big budget films in the past, like World War Z and Quantum of Solace, but All I See is You is smaller and a less epic offering. The story is an interesting one, a woman who has been blind for a long time has a procedure to get her eyesight back. The recovery period is long but ultimately successful in helping her gain her eyesight back, but she slowly starts realizing her life is not at all what it seems. I thought the cast did a fine job, Blake Lively played a blind woman quite well and Jason Clarke played her supportive yet angry husband. The problem with this movie is that nothing really happens, it tried to hit the viewer with a couple twists but those ultimately fell flat. Another problem was that it tried to use sex to further the narrative but that really just got in the way and felt forced. Maybe Marc was trying to distract the viewer with sex so they don't realize his movie is boring. A sort of plus was the handful of cool visuals that were scattered throughout the film, I won't tell you what they are because I don't really know how to explain them and if you choose to see it, I don't want to give anything away. My Suggestion: See it if you like Blake Lively or Jason Clarke enough to sit through a boring movie starring them. Seen at TIFF 2016.

• All I see are unsophisticated reviewers!

  stasapfob2018-02-18

  It is a really good thing that I don't implicitly trust the raw IMDb average review score of a move before deciding whether to see it or not. This was an excellent movie, made unique specifically by the fact that it wasn't the typical feel-good, everything is explained in the end, cookie-cutter Hollywood drivel! It seems too many viewers today are looking to disengage their brain and be spoon-fed a story-line where all character arcs are complete and all questions answered - sad really. I appreciated the fact that this movie allowed us to view a complex and dynamic relationship, and afterwards do our own critical thinking and take some personal meaning away from the story. I'm also particularly amused by the hypocritical puritan nut-jobs who lambasted the film by judging Gina's actions as a negative commentary on the entire female gender - get real people!! The intent is a realistic story setting, and in reality humans actually do have sex and are fallible (have affairs/become jealous). If you are looking for a perfect (but unrealistic) fantasy world depiction ... stick to Marvel comic movies :) However, if you like being engaged with an intense and realistic story that demands some thinking by the viewer (and beautifully set in Thailand), you won't be disappointed.

• "We don't know who me is."- more a case of rediscovery inevitably gone bad than insecurity- and how not to cope with loss.

  bricslove2018-08-06

  First off, I don't see any problems with the pacing, the visuals, or the music in the movie. All were fine and in fact, although the ending felt a bit rushed, it was not just meaningful but also artistic without being pretentious. I agree, however, with some of the reviewers that it more falls into the drama genre than thriller. I have a brief moment of disappointment with good flicks that are categorized wrong, but that's about it. Now... My character analysis is somewhere between the spectrum of views from the reviewers. The movie does not clearly hint at any possibility that Clarke's character specifically went out to find someone permanently vulnerable to marry, due to a handicap. When you extrapolate the characters into the past, perhaps some of the audience would say that is very likely. Understandably so, as there are many people who actually feel so insecure as to purposely marry totally dependent partners. The problem in the movie is, though, Lively's character doesn't waste time to confirm her husband's fears, and denies it when confronted. It would be only natural for her to change her looks following the operation- she had to see herself first to know what she wanted to look like. That was not what troubled the husband. It could have been, in other cases, but the movie tells us that it is not. What critically troubled the husband was that scene on the train that he kept replaying, closing up on his wife's face as she thought no one was watching. Also the realizations: 1. she lied about the man in the park 2. she said she was pregnant, without knowing her husband was sterile. Whereas he could confront her and file a divorce or give her a second chance, the husband hatched a wicked plan to have her blind self back, failing to accept the fact that newly gained eyesight would make one discover more about oneself and have preferences with things one had no way of deciding before. As Gina said: "we don't know who me is." This was the problem. The husband could only get to know this new wife as fast as she could get to know more of herself. This problem was not mutually shared, as the wife had understandably welcomed the changes with delight. Said another way, changes happen faster than the husband is able to let sink in and upon realizing that he is losing his wife, he tries to reverse the process back to when he knows she would need him, therefore would keep him, as if he can make her unsee things, rewind time. So he tries to actually blind her. That is how mentally sick he has become. As the wife is singing this song on stage from a time when she was blind and all she saw was him, and staring straight in his eyes all the time... there's this silent conversation via exchanges of gazes of how she used to love him, how she could still see and knew what he had been up to, and how he ruined it all. He gets the messages, walks out on her and jumps in his car, and, absorbed in a very emotionally intense session of self-introspection and judgment while driving, ends up in a fatal accident. A life ends as a new one begins. Things move on, one way or another. If he had thought about it before the operation he could prepare and therefore grant himself "the serenity to accept the things he cannot change". I loved almost everything about the movie without the need to root for either of these two characters who had become very realistically unlikable as the movie proceeded. I respect this in a movie. A cold but sincere little flick.

• It's not really a thriller, so what's it supposed to be?

  cristiandeiana2018-02-02

  I feel like this had the potential to be a great thriller, but there's so many things that went wrong so sadly I can't say it is. The main problem is the pacing, there's just no build up of suspense for the majority of the movie, and so the final sequence of events happen so quickly so as to almost feel rushed. Also whereas the husband is clearly meant to be the antagonist in the story, and the wife is the heroine, there's just something that doesn't quite sit right with me about her, and I feel like both characters come off as quite unlikeable by the end. I mean I know it was really bad for him to change the eye drops, so sure I can accept him as the bad guy, he got it coming to him in the end. But as for the wife let's just put it this way, when she gets her vision back she becomes quite rude towards her husband, self centred, sleeps with another guy, then lies about it and even has a baby which she clearly tries to pass off as the husband's, and then pretends that she's still blind when she can actually see, and by the end after he kills himself and she has the baby it's like it was supposedly a good turn of events, like a sort of redemption. There's a feminist quality to the protagonist, and by regaining her sight it distills this power within her, and that by challenging her newfound self empowerment the husband became the villain. The funny thing is that I felt more sympathy for the husband for the most of the movie... hell maybe that's just me, but I wouldn't be surprised if the majority of people who like this movie are women, but either way it's just bad. So to answer the initial question 'It's not really a thriller, so what's it supposed to be?', well it's kind of like a very average drama with unlikeable characters, really not a good combination. But if we could take away any real moral from the story it's that people can change, and not just from regaining eyesight, these things happen, and you just have to be careful about heavily investing your life into someone when they can completely change. And to realise when you are both no longer compatible for each other and when to walk away. Clearly this movie deals with this in a very negative way, and ultimately the ending was just downright depressing.

• A thoughtful, well directed, beautifully shot and acted 'sort of' thriller

  alex-hornby2018-08-06

  I went into this film blind (pun intended) not really knowing much about it at all, but needing something 'romantic' from Netlix for a Saturday afternoon. Blake Lively is always interesting to me whether in engaging dramas like Age of Adeline or in engaging nonsense such as The Shallows. It's immediately interesting and the opening images arresting: a kaleidoscope of bodies, a couple in the throes of passion, silken sheets and milky skies - beautifully blended. The images make sense when we discover that Lively's character Gina, is blind - was blinded in a car accident that killed her parents. Her husband, James, dotes on her, caters for her every need, spoils her - he seems quietly, perhaps subconsciously grateful for the position of power their situation puts him in. The first 30 minutes knits together the confusion and frustration of Gina's everyday life perfectly sometimes taking us behind her eyes to experience the lights and the shapes that Gina can almost see as we follow her to the pool, teaching guitar, and to the doctors where she is told that a transplant is possible. The mood shifts dramatically when Gina regains partial sight. She gets a new lease of life. She soaks everything in. She wants to experience everything she's been missing. Gina is ecstatic in her new found sense - on a trip to Spain to visit her sister, she begins to shrug off the old Gina and starts to transform, sexing up her wardrobe, starting to wear makeup, almost purposefully seeking out moments to excite and arouse her. James starts to think that he won't be enough for her and indeed the things she took for granted are not what she expected and not necessarily what she wants. Whilst what follows is definitely psychological, and in part thrilling, this is very much a study of a relationship on the precipice and the extremes we'll go to when cornered or desperate. Gina realises that life has options, and James will do anything he can to try and limit them, to salvage what they have. I found this film incredibly satisfying. I found the union of Gina and James, the transition to a new way of living, Gina's effervescence for her new life and James's acute anxiety that he is about to lose everything really believable. There's a real tension and it's all played beautifully and naturally. There's a moment (a millisecond) near the end where it veers towards melodrama, and even though not the romantic comedy I was looking for, was a film I'm definitely glad I've seen.