- WOW. SO AWFUL.
- I kept hearing how despite the fact that this movie sucked over all, Sienna Miller’s performance was fairly strong and worth seeing. LIES, ALL LIES. If you cannot make me feel even an ounce of sympathy for your character (in this particular situation), you have not done your job properly. I really didn’t care when she went into her drug-induced downward spiral or that she eventually died or blah blah blah [insert trauma here]. She did get a neato wardrobe.
- Guy Pearce was pretty much the only redeeming aspect of the film as Andy Warhol. Most movies featuring Warhol as a supporting player seem to be rather one dimensional and amusing (I’m thinking David Bowie as Warhol in Basquiat), but I think he made Warhol more human than you usually get to see him on screen, which I suppose is a lovely bit of irony.
- This movie totally reminds me why I hated art students: for the most part they’re a bunch of pretentious asshats with huge entitlement complexes who think the random crap they put together is ground-breaking, thought-provoking, and generally brilliant when for the most part it is anything but. You get one, maybe two, people who are creating genuinely interesting work and the rest is just absolute trash. Oh god, I just wanted to punch all the people who were hanging out at the Factory, no kidding.
- LMFAO @ Hayden Christensen. Holy crap. Now, I am the first to admit that I am a Hayden fangirl. I loved him in Life As A House and Shattered Glass, I mocked him affectionately in The Virgin Suicides, I cringed with nothing but love for his hatred of sand in Attack of the Clones, and I fully embraced his turn to the dark side in Revenge of the Sith. But I can’t get behind him in this, I just can’t. It’s embarrassing. He plays a musician who is never referred to by name because Bob Dylan threatened legal action or something, but it’s really quite clear that he could be no one other than the great Robert Zimmerman. And this would have been fine in general if he had been able to channel a little more of Anakin Skywalker’s vaguely unnecessary brooding and a little more of Sam Monroe’s occasional ability to eviscerate you verbally. But he didn’t. Instead of trying to emulate the idea of Bob Dylan, he apparently decided that the best way to portray the character would be to put on this ridiculous slightly gravelly voice that I imagine is supposed to sound like Dylan and it’s appalling. L:KJASD:LJA:SLKJ I can’t get over it, I’m still laughing hysterically about it. Did no one think to make him sit down and watch Don’t Look Back? I thought the only part where he seemed to remotely channel Dylan was when he was brought to the Factory to be in a Warhol movie because at least then he could play off his incredulity about Edie’s world in direct opposition to something.
- The vaguely controversial sex scene that the media have been salivating over? I LAUGHED THE ENTIRE WAY THROUGH. There was something about the way it began that just seemed so untrue to the rest of the movie that I couldn’t help but start giggling hysterically. The way it was filmed seemed like it came from a completely different movie starring the same actors. Oh god, I just wanted to die, it was so ridiculous.
- Jimmy Fallon had the worst hair (which I am hoping was a wig) and was completely unnecessary to exist in this film. Like, it could have just been some random guy playing the role, it didn’t have to be Jimmy Fallon.
- Much of the movie exists as a story Edie is telling to a doctor while she’s in rehab. The way she describes things is painful in its lameness; I’m willing to bet anyone in a standard high school English class would be capable of writing something similar. It’s all very trite and awful and cliché and I wanted to punch something. Actually, she sounds like Trip Fontaine in The Virgin Suicides does when he’s older and is rehashing how he felt about Lux. Who talks like that?
- My problem with this movie is like my problem with the vast majority of biopics: it does nothing to represent the reason why pop culture was so taken with this particular icon at all. Even empty headed and vapid It Girls with no claim to fame other than being famous have some sort of je ne sais quoi that draws us to them and unfortunately this movie did not do a terribly good job of showing why Warhol might have been taken with Edie or why she served as a muse for so many. It just deals with the quick rise to the top of the hot list and the inevitable downfall that everyone waits for like a pack of jackals. I don’t find this sort of thing terribly interesting.
Factory Girl
For a movie about style over substance and flash over realism, this movie was noticeably lacking in the style and flash department.
IMDB Plot Synopsis Based on the rise and fall of socialite Edie Sedgwick, concentrating on her relationships with Andy Warhol and a folk singer.