Nickel Boys

The Nickel Boys offers a powerful, emotionally charged narrative about friendship and resilience amidst historical turmoil. The dual perspectives of Elwood and Turner bring depth to their bond and highlight the stark contrasts in their experiences. The film's deliberate pacing and outstanding performances ensure a heartfelt, poignant exploration of personal and societal struggles. While familiar in theme, its raw portrayal of friendship and systemic oppression lingers long after the credits roll.

With incredibly expert direction, Nickel Boys really isn't that hard to understand. The first person narrative flows naturally and never tries to deceive, even though it certainly has some tricks up its sleeve. RaMell Ross brilliantly weaves a story that insists you pay attention, aided significantly by the soundtrack and editing that is quite literally out of this world. You will truly be amazed at how vivid and real this film becomes, how perfectly it captures the time period it inhabits and how powerfully it communicates its message. This is film making at the highest level.

First person filming makes it dizzying to watch. A little hard to follow with flashbacks and flash forward plus artsy scenes that are trying to drive home some point, but don't necessarily work. Film style gets in the way of the story. Longer than it needed to be.

Good movie, I would recommend it.

This is an epitome of a wasted effort in a great proportion. It's a muddled Mess in presentation and the whole project suffocates Under Visual Chaos to who ever read the book. Never to imitate European mess like movie making.

This book was amazing. The movie was a disappointment to say the least. Unlike the book the movie never allowed you to engage with the characters on an emotional level. Things like the alligator were difficult to place without having to Google the "why" of an alligator showing up. The "gut punch" that the book ended with was lost in the midst of the confusing editing and the unrelated clips that failed to add any sort of depth to the movie but instead frequently caused confusion. So sad that such a great book was so poorly served by the movie.

It has its innovations such as: first-person recording. However, it is repetitive and a bit boring.

Yes, it’s different. No, it’s not good.

The creativity and intrigue of the cinematic approach and style is more impactful than the story, which there isn’t much of for much of it’s runtime, until it finally puts a twist on it that makes things interesting for a bit before you realize it was just a blip. In the end, there’s a lot of loose ends and the story could have been a lot tighter and impactful.

If it ain't broke, don't fix it. The novel was wonderful. Rather than create greater intimacy, the first person POV made the film too abstract and distant. The technique ruined the narrative. I was disengaged and disappointed.