Claire in Motion (2017)

Sorry, this movie sucks

Good movie but grossly overrated

The story-telling is good with flashbacks.The film is both funny and heartbreaking. You smile in a scene and get a soulcrushing revelation in the next.

It’s sentimental, ridiculously long and only occasionally funny

Do not ignore the hyperbolic "If you can think of THE worst movie imaginable as a mole hill, this is Mt. Everest" - cuz, you know what, for some folks this really isn't "a good movie". But with all due respect, I think those looking for resolution are really missing the point. No, this is not so much a 'mystery' as it is a study of human nature and, well, life itself. Sometimes we ARE left without answers (although, in this case, it's pretty clear to me that Paul likely disappeared to start a new life, leaving a LOT of loose ends behind). What I find really astonishing is that this was written and directed by two WOMEN! Reason? The sentiment of I don't feel like I'm appreciated, let alone loved, was what Paul felt, and he's a guy! Now, of course, they could just be flipping the husband/wife thing around, and perhaps a WOMAN disappearing would be perhaps less believable unless her safety or that of her children are at stake. I can honestly say that there have been times when I feel like pulling a stunt like that. We know that he didn't cheat on his wife - that'd be too cliched. But if I have to find fault with the plot, it is the failure to fully establish Paul's desire to disappear like that - that little video clip where he says she's not looking at him doesn't carry with it that broad a shoulder. Still, I enjoyed this as a thought-provoking movie, and I'd watch a thousand of these, flaws and all, over watching some mindless special-effect, 'clever dialogue' crap that Hollywood is habitually churning out of its butt hole on a regular basis - those and the 'sequels' and remakes. GAG!

I've just watched this for the second time, not remembering if I had seen it before. It's not the kind of movie that hits you over the head or leaves you gasping. But I believe it's a lot better than many of the reviews here say. First off, I believe Betsy Brandt did a fine acting job. She seemed perfect for the part: controlled and contained while giving small signs that she's full of emotion underneath her calm exterior.One of the reviews here questioned how she leaves her son alone... in my opinion she played a mother who was trusting and almost all the time her son listened to what she told him or asked of him. She is also a math professor so that tells you something. Math/Art - Opposites? I admit there were a couple of times in the film when I thought, if it were me I'd be shouting and carrying on, but that's not her personality. Ultimately that's what she winds up questioning because her husband accuses her, before he's disappeared, of not really looking at him. I think this is the essence of the film: a woman is forced by people and events to confront herself and who she is. I have to agree that the ending was a surprise. I also agree I would have preferred a more specific ending, but this one was part of the writer's and director's vision. Maybe they'll do something similar in which the ending is more satisfying.

do not watch this film. I wish there was a way of given it no stars because if there ever was a zero star film this is it. It starts off slow and keeps going until the end when nothing happens. Got to be the worst film ever made, and I have watched some poor films in my time but this stands head and shoulders above them all. Just think of the worst film you have ever watched that is like a mole hill this is mount Everest that will be the gap between them. This the first time I have reviewed a film. But I feel I had to write something so if only one person reads this and does not watch it I have done my good deed for the year. The plot was so poor and the directing that it was so hard to write 10 lines about this film.

If you're one of those who need your movie's to be wrapped up nice and neat and complete with a little bow at their conclusion, with all the loose ends securely tied tight, and each and every question fully answered, then "Claire in Motion" is definitely not the flick for you, my friend.However, if you appreciate a provocative story unfolding layer upon layer, allowing the viewer to absorb and assess what they believe may be happening as the chronicle progresses, and then to subjectively determine on their own what may or may not have happened in the end, then I can not recommend "Claire in Motion" more highly to you.Co-Writers and Directors Annie J. Howell and Lisa Robinson have fashioned an impressively unconventional and beguiling mystery. Their narrative reaches that uncommon emotional place of being both fascinating and unnerving, often times even outright uncomfortable, in terms of how we are moved to feel in our experience as an audience.Betsy Brandt, so extraordinary as Marie Schrader in the eternally iconic "Breaking Bad", is once again superb here as Claire. Brandt gives us a multifarious character whose faith in practically everything in her seemingly idyllic life is joltingly shattered when she comes to learn how she had completely failed to recognize she was systematically losing that which she holds most dear. Claire struggles to remain strong and hold out hope in the face of an increasingly devastating reality which threatens to crush her very soul into shards of regret. Brandt's embodiment of a woman living an endless nightmare day after day after wrenchingly draining day is a powerfully genuine portrayal. It is a mesmeric and stirring personification which, left to a lesser actress, would have almost assuredly registered as merely moribund and morose. Brandt imbues Claire with a far more fully-dimensional sensibility than that which we may typically expect as she creates an unusually complex rendering. Her performance borders on, if it doesn't launch fully into, brilliance.Zev Haworth, appearing in his first feature film, is Claire's adolescent son, Connor. He is a quiet boy, but we sense early on that there is a lot going on inside this young man which he refuses to release, even to his mother. Connor's counselor-recommended letter to his dad near the end of "Claire in Motion" is at once heartfelt and heart destroying. Haworth is a natural wonder. Watch for him in the years to come.And can we get some love for veteran supporting player Anna Margaret Hollyman ("White Reindeer") already? Can we manage to do this, all you Hollywood string-pullers out there? Hollyman's strange yet stunning depiction of the other woman Allison is not only an important role in "Claire", it is a critical component. For it is Allison who provides the voice, as well as the conscience, for the missing husband Paul. We would have never come to at least in part understand Paul if not for this curiously enigmatic art school grad student revealing to us some manner of the "why for" behind a man's bafflingly bizarre behavior. Hollyman's Allison changes as the situation dictates, and her versatility and poignance is as striking as it is searing.Howell and Robinson team in tantalizing tandem with Cinematographer Andreas Burgess's irregular scene framing and unorthodox camera angles and Xander Duell's cosmically disquieting musical score. Their inspired work comes together seamlessly to craft a consistent and entirely appropriate vibe of disorienting otherworldliness which mimics the near-hallucinatory state of being we watch Claire slowly descend into.Ultimately, and in keeping with the dynamic implicit in it's title, "Claire in Motion" is an unflinching examination of the excruciatingly painful process of "moving on" in the wake of unbearable loss, cruelly compounded in this case by the not conclusively knowing if your loved one is truly lost at all.At least in the physical interpretation of the word.******Incidentally, I do not work for a Motion Picture Studio, nor have I ever. I genuinely like the movie. To each his own...kinna makes this ol' world go 'round, don't it? ;]