Randy Kravis

I have mixed feelings about this movie. I really wanted to like the premise of the staged deaths and I really wanted to see them as these brilliant darkly comical metaphors that they were meant be. But what really drew me in were the other moments in the movie; the moments when Dick Johnson and his daughter were vulnerably honest about their fears; the moments that just focused on Dick Johnson's face where you could see the tension between his fears and his attempts go past those fears and accept the situation as it was. And frankly, every time the film broke out of those wonderfully intimate moments and went back to yet another staged death, it just felt hokey. Worse, it severed the connection that I myself was feeling with Dick Johnson in those moments. I got to a point where I was hoping the staged death scenes would end quickly so that the film could get back to the real moments that actually did captivate me.