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Welcome to Marwen

2018

Robert Zemeckis

Steve Carell, Leslie Mann, Janelle Monáe, Diane Kruger ...

5.8

2,710

Drama. Fantasy According to The Hollywood Reporter, the movie is based on 2010 documentary Marwencol, which tells the unique story of Mark Hogancamp and the way he coped with the severe memory loss he suffered after he was attacked and beaten by a group of teenagers. a man who builds a miniature WWII-era village with action figures and dolls as a way to recover from a violent assault. Hogancamp spent nine days in a coma and when he re-emerged, had no ... [+]

	Media	Author	Review
		Owen Gleiberman Variety	"The documentary was better (...) The film is far from incompetent, and it brims with ambition, but too much of the time what’s happening just sits there"
		Peter Travers Rolling Stone	"A major missed opportunity (...) There are ideas buried beneath its high-gloss surface (...) But good luck trying to dig them out (…) Rating: ★★ (out of 5)"
		Keith Uhlich The Hollywood Reporter	"Strange and affecting (...) Zemeckis and co-screenwriter Caroline Thompson manage to balance the demands of a crowd-pleasing production while keeping Hogancamp's idiosyncrasies"
		Peter Bradshaw The Guardian	"Zemeckis tries too hard to sentimentalise Mark Hogancamp’s story (...) An elaborate and misjudged movie of baffling pass-agg ickiness and pointlessness (…) Rating: ★★ (out of 5)"
		Michael O'Sullivan The Washington Post	"A sometimes jarring but ultimately effective extended metaphor for healing (...) The animation is excellent (…) Rating: ★★½ (out of 4)"
		Robbie Collin Telegraph	"The result is a self-defeating, yikes-a-minute hodge-podge, and a film it’s impossible to get a grip on from one scene to the next (…) Rating: ★★ (out of 5)"
		Ian Freer Empire	"It doesn't completely work, but it swings for the fences (...) [It] may not hit the emotional highs but mixes high-concept fun with a sincere attempt to describe trauma in an original visceral way (…) Rating: ★★★ (out of 5)"
		David Ehrlich IndieWire	"The drama of 'Welcome to Marwen' winds up feeling as artificially manufactured as the miniature figurines who bring it to life"
		Chris Nashawaty Entertainment Weekly	"If 'Marwencol' made your heart go out to Mark, 'Welcome to Marwen' does something quite different. It makes you want to back away from him slowly"
		Stephen Whitty Screendaily	"A peculiar hybrid that feels too strange for multiplex audiences and too schmaltzy for the arthouse crowd."
		Candice Frederick The Wrap	"A film that seems to shy away from uncomfortable truths (...) Some parts of 'Marwen' just seem empty, and (...) the film ultimately has no real impact."
		Matt Goldberg Collider	"An absolutely fascinating disaster (...) There are elements that work beautifully and there are others that are a total fiasco (...) There’s something worth discussing and worth considering in the mess Zemeckis has created."
		Matthew Dougherty IGN	"Even the fantasies themselves lack a necessary visual hook to generate interest, let alone entertain (...) A film that mistakes schmaltz for substance"
		Emily Yoshida Vulture	"A totally confounding movie (...) [The story is] rich and wild and full of pathos (...) [It adds] too many layers of abstraction over a story that already contains multitudes"
		Glenn Kenny rogerebert.com	"I left 'Welcome to Marwen' feeling that Hogancamp had been cut off from agency from his own story (…) Rating: ★½ (out of 4)"

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