The Girl on the Train (Tate Taylor)

[Spinal]

IMDb

[Spinal]

A quality mystery elevated to excellence by a stellar lead performance. Good stuff.

[Dukefrukem]

A quality mystery elevated to excellence by a stellar lead performance. Good stuff.

Put it up against some more recent high profile mystery movies like, Gone Girl and Girl with the Dragon Tattoo. Better? Worse? Middle of the road?

[TGM]

It's not as good as those two, but still pretty damn solid.

[Spinal]

Put it up against some more recent high profile mystery movies like, Gone Girl and Girl with the Dragon Tattoo. Better? Worse? Middle of the road?

Haven't seen Gone Girl. Haven't seen Fincher's movie. I liked it more than the Swedish version of Dragon Tattoo. I went into it knowing almost nothing. Only that it had Emily Blunt and that it was based on a book. It was really surprising to see how bad the reviews are.

[TGM]

Giving it some more thought, I would say this movie is definitely better paced than Fincher's Dragon Tattoo, but the sheer visceral direction in that movie certainly leaves a bigger impact.

[Peng]

This book is pretty bad, but the conception of its lead as a drunk, bumbling, unreliable protagonist is certainly clever/intriguing (even if the actual writing fails to measure up to that) and Emily Blunt in that role ensures me that I will see it some time.

[Spinal]

This book is pretty bad, but the conception of its lead as a drunk, bumbling, unreliable protagonist is certainly clever/intriguing (even if the actual writing fails to measure up to that) and Emily Blunt in that role ensures me that I will see it some time.

I can imagine people having issues with the movie, but Blunt is really compelling here. Worth seeing for that alone.

[Mal]

Damn, Emily Blunt really convinced me she needed a hug in this film. It's obviously a little silly but it is dramaa with a dash of trashy fun.

[DavidSeven]

Definitely passable as a "shut-your-mind-off-and-enjoy" movie. I did read about 70% of the novel a year or so ago and thought it was trash. But here, you don't have to suffer through the poor writing. The focus, instead, is on Blunt's performance, which is superb. I'm not sure the surrounding film is entirely worthy of it. It's average in almost every other respect and comes no where close to Gone Girl in its precision. Fincher's film was an exciting cinematic piece; Girl on the Train is something you watch on HBO when your brain is already fried.

[Dukefrukem]

This was really boring. Lisa Kudrow looks so old. It made me sad.

[Rico]

Most forgettable movie of 2016. I wouldn't say it's bad per se, but at no point did I think to myself "Ok, that was interesting." The one thing I took away from it was that Rebecca Ferguson has a perfect symmetrical face.

[Peng]

I thought the book is pretty dreadful, so just the adaptation's virtue of being competently filmed rather than badly prosed is already a plus. Also, the film is more streamlined in pivoting around three women, making it clearer and cleaner in both storytelling and thematic purpose. The interlude of the past in the presence during the climax, which can't be done for the book's chapters, makes the wrongs done to these three women and their lack/reclaiming of agency especially pointed and way more moving than in the book. Too bad the contrivances, coincidences, and just plain unbeliveability (especially in how the police operates) of the plot can't be erased unless they start from scratch. Majority of the positive must go to Emily Blunt though; she's the sole reason why I wanted to see this despite the source material, and doesn't disappoint with such an intriguing concept of a protagonist. So raw and invested that she helped elevate the material consistently to the verge of being something more. 5/10

[transmogrifier]

Tate Taylor needs to thank whatever deity he believes in that Suicide Squad exists, because otherwise he would be the proud owner of the most dismal film of 2016. This is a hot mess: a poorly constructed whodunnit that relies on what might be the flimsiest conceit in a mystery writer's playbook - memories coming back at convenient points in the story - and that totally fucks up subjective/objective viewpoint (either we the audience should be finding things out at the same time as the main character, or we should be fully aware of the facts and be seeing how the main character catches up, but instead the entire fucking movie plays coy, filling in backstory when it feels like, keeping things hidden when it realizes that there is actually nothing at all going on underneath). The fact that it turns out to be a wish fulfillment fantasy for all fuck ups who feel that it was never their fault all along is just icing on a very shitty cake.

And it looks like balls. This is fucking terrible on every level.

[dreamdead]

Echoing everyone else who both lavish praise on Blunt's performance (though all three female leads are compelling generally) and then critical of how the time orchestration plays out. The biggest thing is how time is a cheat here -- by highlighting the randomness of where we are chronologically, the film doesn't play fair. Beyond the pure cinematic work of Fincher, Flynn's script there doesn't hold off on revealing Pike through plot machinations; instead, it's brazen in its exploration of how that jump alters and challenges what has come before.

Here, the men are far more flatly conceived (though I liked Edgar Ramirez's performance and hope he continues to venture into ensemble roles), and the final reveals are just indifferently placed together. The actual Megan murder, which anchors the film, is almost unnecessary in its depiction--it doesn't reveal anything new about either her or the killer.

[Spinal]

I still think Blunt's performance was possibly the best I saw all of last year, with perhaps Mahershala Ali being a contender as well. Too bad the lackluster response to the film kept her from getting much in the way of awards recognition, although I see she was nominated for at least a couple of things.