{"id":3112,"date":"2022-07-12T15:00:09","date_gmt":"2022-07-12T21:00:09","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/benjamin-m-weilert.com\/?p=3112"},"modified":"2022-06-29T19:59:18","modified_gmt":"2022-06-30T01:59:18","slug":"movie-nightmare-alley-2021","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/benjamin-m-weilert.com\/index.php\/2022\/07\/12\/movie-nightmare-alley-2021\/","title":{"rendered":"MOVIE: Nightmare Alley (2021)"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"NightmareNightmare Alley<\/u><\/strong>
Year: 2021
Rating: R
Length: 150 minutes \/ 2.50 hours<\/p>\n

I appreciate Guillermo del Toro for his sense of artistic style. His genius usually comes out in movies set in the 1940s and 1950s, with such hits as Pan’s Labyrinth<\/em> (2005) and The Shape of Water<\/em><\/a> (2017). And while there are fun popcorn flicks of his that I enjoy (like Hellboy<\/em> (2004) and Pacific Rim<\/em><\/a> (2013)), I feel Nightmare Alley<\/em> (2021) is my favorite work he has done to date. After all, his best work comes from showing the audience that humans are the actual monsters of the story.<\/p>\n

A story told in a solid three acts, Nightmare Alley<\/em> is a beautiful uroboros of fame and hubris. The all-star casting of Bradley Cooper, Cate Blanchett, Toni Collette, and Willem Dafoe helped to sell the story of a grifter who gets too greedy for his own good. The twists and turns are exciting, if not wholly predictable, but that’s part of the fun of it. With no “monsters” like vampires, demons, or sea monsters shown during the whole of Nightmare Alley<\/em>, del Toro really sells the sickening human condition that drives us to these highs and lows.<\/p>\n

Of course, being a del Toro film, there are other elements of his style that always make me cringe. Certain aspects of his oeuvre almost mandate that there are a half-dozen moments of body horror sprinkled throughout this film\u2014some of which can be quite jarring. I think, as long as you prepare yourself for these brief, gory scenes, it’s not so bad. They’re never quite over the top, but they made me cringe when they happened. Still, for as entertaining as the rest of this film is, it’s worth enduring them for the greater whole.<\/p>\n

Classic Guillermo del Toro that shows the horrors humans are capable of, I give Nightmare Alley<\/em>\u00a04.5 stars out of 5.<\/p>\n

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Nightmare AlleyYear: 2021Rating: RLength: 150 minutes \/ 2.50 hours I appreciate Guillermo del Toro for his sense of artistic style. His genius usually comes out in movies set in the 1940s and 1950s, with such hits as Pan’s Labyrinth (2005) and The Shape of Water (2017). And while there are fun popcorn flicks of his […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4,370,369],"tags":[2715,3084,783,3085,2417,3086,269,13,3083,3087,8],"class_list":["post-3112","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-4-5-stars","category-nominee","category-oscar","tag-2715","tag-body-horror","tag-bradley-cooper","tag-carnival","tag-cate-blanchett","tag-grifter","tag-guillermo-del-toro","tag-movie","tag-nightmare-alley","tag-psychic","tag-review"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/benjamin-m-weilert.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3112","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/benjamin-m-weilert.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/benjamin-m-weilert.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/benjamin-m-weilert.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/benjamin-m-weilert.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3112"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/benjamin-m-weilert.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3112\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3119,"href":"https:\/\/benjamin-m-weilert.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3112\/revisions\/3119"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/benjamin-m-weilert.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3112"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/benjamin-m-weilert.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3112"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/benjamin-m-weilert.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3112"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}