Kern’s review published on Letterboxd:
Corbet's follow up to Vox Lux, one of the most polarizing (and best, imo) films of the past decade, is a rebuke of the American Dream (as one can immediately gather from the poster image), an epic which spans decades in its 3+ hour runtime. It's perfectly paced—to my mind, at least; I overheard a few people describe it as "tedious" during the intermission, but I was shocked when both halves ended far sooner than I expected—features some of the best performances of the year, and looks absolutely stunning, especially in 70mm, but it ultimately doesn't live up to its seemingly lofty ambition. Without getting into details, I'll just say the film stumbles in its last act, making literal some of the subtext that wasn't all that sub- to begin with, and though it certainly doesn't retroactively spoil the preceding 3 hours, I walked out feeling deflated, disappointed that the film wasn't as subtle or thematically rich as it needed to be in order to cement Corbet as a modern master.
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