Lumsdal Good , But It Is Overrated By Some

Rio Hayward All of these films share one commonality, that being a kind of emotional center that humanizes a cast of monsters.

Calum Hutton It's a good bad... and worth a popcorn matinée. While it's easy to lament what could have been...

Kamila Bell This is a coming of age storyline that you've seen in one form or another for decades. It takes a truly unique voice to make yet another one worth watching.

framptonhollis If you aren't a fan of Godard, chances are you will leave this film unamused and irritated. If you ARE a fan of Godard, as I am, chances are you will probably enjoy this film quite a bit...that is if you're a big enough fan (people who perhaps have favourable opinions on only some of his films and are likely to dislike others may or may not actually be into 'Made in U.S.A.'), and since I am a pretty big fan of Jean-Luc Godard and the decent number of his films I have seen, this was a largely fun watch. The typical political elements of a Godard film of this nature did go a little overboard for me at times and sometimes even became sorta vaguely annoying, but for the most part the satire is strong and on point, complete with some meta jokes and the scent of genre parody running through this film's 85 minutes. It's a rather funny film, one sequence particularly stands out to me as comic gold in which the lead character visits a bar with one of the most odd and quirky bartenders of all as a couple of other characters seem to be showing off their quirks as well with some hilarious dialogue (another fantastic thing about this scene is its construction, it is all one lengthy shot and the camera remains mostly stationary while occasionally panning to the left, normally just to follow the moving bartender, and yet it isn't visually bland, and the scene itself refuses to ever become at all boring). The plot is a mixture of cliche and cultural commentary and is interrupted with Avant-Godardism and philosophical rambling, much of which is spoken by the actors while directly staring at the camera, and absurdist antics, and for a large portion of the film it is highly entertaining and occasionally genuinely masterful. Perhaps not Godard's best, but certainly a film worthy of his legendary name.

valadas As far as the meaningless images and dialogues let us know it looks like this is the story in the movie: A girl goes to a provincial town to investigate about her lover's murder and take her revenge on that. Once there she involves herself with one and another in obscure dialogues and nonsense sequences, ending up by killing two of them (because she thinks they were the killers or at least belong to the murderer's gang?) The motives of the supposed murder stay obscure and the movie develops itself in intersected images and sequences that explain little. And it finishes with the usual meaningless ending of Godard's movies. Godard is a movie director that most distinguished critics present as one of the greatest of our times who even influenced such directors (these are great indeed) as Altman, Scorsese, Wenders and Tarantino. Since till now I haven't seen a single of Godard's films that I liked I suppose that the fault must be mine. However I am not alone in this appreciation.

edoslan In response to user Planktonrules, if you dismiss 'Made in U.S.A.' as too unconventional then Godard films really aren't for you. I did not find 'Made in U.S.A.' to be very unconventional in terms of its narrative structure any more than any film he made before it.With that said, 'Made in U.S.A.', is essentially Godard's cross pollination of his three main interests: his wife/muse, his political views and his love of films. This was made right before he really went off the deep end into Maoist political tracts and essentially still holds to a solid narrative while utilizing his typical Godardian techniques.Those include deconstructed narratives which remind you you're watching a movie, on screen text, film references galore (particularly to Otto Preminger), copious amounts of closeups of his gorgeous wife Anna Karina in her last film with the director and political rhetoric.And, if you're wondering, the genre he uses this time is film noir. Another thing people fail to note is that it's quite a pro-feminist move to cast Anna Karina as the lead reporter/detective, going quite the opposite than most in the genre.In conclusion, even without a solid knowledge of Godard's personal life reveals an entertaining film, that's surprisingly quick moving for Godard and further examination into his personal life reveals a lot of what this film says.So to all you naysayers who 'don't get it' and to those who love his films based on the fact that you're supposed to, hope that helps!

lefaikone It's probably useless to say anything against Godard, since it's some kind of an unwritten law, that Godard is a cinematic god, and if you don't confess your belief to him, you're a vulgar idiot. - still I have to say that he's one of the most overrated directors in film history.Yeah, sure I admit his historical value, the man made a huge change in to the course of film making, and I respect him for that. I have also read Godard's book about the structure and nature of film, and found it very fascinating. Still, for a man who knows a lot about the structure of cinema, a decision to throw every single characteristic in storytelling away, feels very strange to me. It just doesn't work. He, if anybody should know, that they don't exist for nothing.I can see why he achieved this "film god" status. He was something never seen before, something outrageous. But hey people, let's face it. An hour long political essay disguised as a movie is not "beutifully poetic" or what ever you want to call it. It's just plain boring. No one ever has anything else to say about Godard's movies, than they are "surrealistic" and have such a "strangely poetic mood" in them. Like it's some kind of a magnitude. Poetic or not, The characters are unidimensional and flat.If you want poetic movies with surrealistic mood, I suggest you to watch for example Robert Bresson's, Andrei Tarkovsky's or Krzysztof Kieslowski's films. They have a lot more in them than just the mood.