you know what would have been easier, faster, and would have provided the exact same audio and visual content as watching this movie? jerking terrence malick off.

the good:
- ryan gosling playing both piano and guitar and singing
- some of the soundtrack that randomly started playing for half a verse before dipping out again

the bad:
- the other 128 minutes
- seriously. over 20 people walked out of the cinema on the ground level of seating alone
- this plays like the sex dream of a cishet white dude with mommy issues
- how the fuck did this cast get attached to such a shitty project (i mean i know how but COME ON)
- can these guys learn what a fucking tripod is ??????????
- the shot framing felt like a high school project where some guy who watched one kubrick film thinks he can pull off "interesting" shot composition but ultimately felt super disjointed and took you completely out of the story
- WHAT THE FUCK WAS UP WITH TURNING THE CAMERA ON AN ANGLE WHY WERE HALF THE SHOTS ON LIKE A 30 DEGREE ANGLE THIS IS NOT A MIDDLE SCHOOL MIRROR SELFIE
- the sex scenes all felt overtly pornographic even if not seemingly meant to be. again. plays like a weird sex dream
- random lesbian with an accent appears for the sake of lesbian sex scenes that is then kind of ??? denied??? or ?? ignored ? by one of the girls later on :-) i LOVE when they do that to my sexuality, just squish it into a box labelled "only for heterosexual males to make sex scenes for their own pleasure with"
- rooney mara and cate blanchett are both in this movie but they don't start dating
- i don't know what kind of weird fisheye lens or depth of field or whatever the fuck happened to this movie but. why. why so much fisheye. i can't fucking do this
- natalie portman, yes, NATALIE PORTMAN, kills herself because of a cheating dude. i think. that's as much as i got from her randomly turning up dead
- whoever mixed this audio needs to have a good long think about their choices here
- the entire thing is full of constant random voice overs from the cast with no warning literally saying things that sound like quotes from my poetry journal from early high school with no real context 
- in the middle there's a random cut to like space animation????? like weird trippy animation ?????????? and it provides us with ABSOLUTELY NOTHING no plot no meaning no life lessons nothing it's just random fucking animation and then it just cuts back to the movie. like what the FUCK
- randomly cuts to a dude poking scissors through a hole in his nose that made the entire audience audibly gasp with disgust like really dude that was awful and again no context just like the entire film
- even the people who wrote the wikipedia page can't come up with a plot for this movie 
- as soon as the credits rolled some people started the complimentary clapping as you do at a film festival and some guy yelled "WHAT THE FUCK? NO! THAT WAS SHIT"
- i even had the old lady in the row front of me catch me laughing and comment "that was the worst film i've ever seen. robert (husband next to her) was asleep for half of it."

that was the worst film i have ever seen in my entire life. it's a one star because honestly half a star for the incredible cast and half a star for ryan gosling singing. that's it. 129 minutes of my time that could have been spent sticking my head in a garbage disposal.