The Giver (2014)

Very Cool!!!

Good concept, poorly executed.

This is a must-see and one of the best documentaries - and films - of this year.

A movie that not only functions as a solid scarefest but a razor-sharp satire.

That is time I will never get back. Starts well, then quickly become a terrible waste of film.

First f all, watch this film!! It's worth trying and I'm sure most of people will like it. It's a chance to see Meryl Streep in another great performance and to enjoy Jeff Bridges's work as the the Giver of the title. The visual effects are other great features of this movie, as well as the beautiful sountrack. Don't miss "The Giver". However, I think this is the kind of film that could have been longer - it lasts less than 90 minutes - for we would like to see more of the story and its details. No, I'm not to give away much of the plot - you must have learnt about it by now - but I think some of the facts and facilities of community could have been more explored and explained. Seeing this, I wouldn't grade The Giver with a 10, but it doesn't mean we can not have a good time watching it.

I watched this on Netflix, and was a bit unsure after reading some newspaper reviews from movie critics. I think this movie has been judged too harshly. I did not have any problem understanding the "how" human society got there. How it was possible to consider so much of the joys we take in life as something to be sacrificed for the opportunity not to suffer the pain we have. I did not have a problem to imagine a society orderly organizing the lives of every single member of the community. Some feature of the organization attained by the movie's society are old ideas really, out of some philosopher's dreams (or out of everybody else's nightmare): Plato's Republic came to my mind, during some parts of the movie, except that the society in the movies arrives to strikingly similar results from following objectives which are way different (getting rid of pain was not Plato's objective in an ideal organization of society). I liked the acting, especially in the character of the Giver, Fiona and Jonas. I think the use of black and white was interesting. What almost managed to ruin the whole movie was the rushed ending. It could have been much better: but as it is, it just looks like the money to keep filming suddenly finished up and they had to look for a quick way to end the movie. In any case it's still a 7.

I'll start by saying that I did read the book many years ago in school and thought it was a good book at the time with an interesting, unexpected twist. I never went back to re-read it so while I knew what the gist of the story was, I didn't remember all the details.As a movie, I thought it was just OK. It wasn't bad, but there were several things keeping it from being great. First, the focus was on Jonas and The Giver moreso than any of the other characters, which made it hard to sympathize with the society. The actor playing Jonas was fine, not very memorable though. I would have liked to understand the perspectives of Fiona and Asher rather than just see them the way Jonas does - in broad strokes. The release of memories from The Giver to Jonas could have been shown or explained differently as I did not really understand how that process worked. Were they sharing a psychic link? Was there a chip embedded in their wrists allowing the transfers? Also, sometimes Jonas would see things as if he were living the past memories while other times it was more like he was seeing everything play out like a movie or something. Finally, the ending was not very satisfying. I won't spoil anything but there were things that happened that did not feel realistic or believable at all. The final scene was confusing. I would say if you have nothing else to watch and are interested in a fairly PG story, this is a pretty good one. So many TV and movies are so focused on violence, sex, and darkness that it is kind of nice to have a straight forward movie that makes you think a little in the process of watching it.