good for a cinema course, bad if you want to be entertained

Rating: 3/10 (22 February 2015)

This is my first review I have ever written; this movie bothered me so much, I felt compelled to write. This movie was unsatisfying to watch on multiple levels, yet it was so loved by critics. And the user scores were high, even though the reviews I read ( after I saw it ) were very bimodal, hating it or loving it, and most hated it seemed. It was a movie made for critics and to win awards , but your average moviegoer will detest this movie.
I go to be entertained ,or to feel something; anything......empathy/love /hate/fear/excitement....but I left feeling nothing but confused;
I like Indie movies, and mainstream films; but, this was an over the top attempt at being an artsy film it lost track of what being a good film really is able to do....to engage its audience.
I saw it at home, with an open mind, having only seen the golden globes, which made it look intriguing, as well as the trailer. My clue as to whether I would like it or not should have been " black comedy" description. The BIG problem was , I did not ever feel engaged by the characters, so that I did not care what happened at the end. A great movie gets you to care about the characters,so Shawshank Redemption this was not.
The cinematography was interesting...at first... using the feel of a single shot movie, but it was a one trick pony used WAY too long. The soundtrack, of the jazz style drumming although different (hence interesting to critics and film students) was quite distracting from the dialog. That, along with the small hallways and prolonged scenes of walking around with the camera skittering all over the place was claustrophobic and unsettling. deliberately so I am sure... The acting was excellent, hence I gave it a 3 star instead of a one, but good acting only goes so far. One needs good writing, dialog and a good story, which this did NOT have.
A few scenes were memorable...Keaton getting locked out of the theater, his daughters rant about Keaton, his rant at the theater critic, and the totally dysfunctional character played by Edward Norton...but the plot was disjointed, and dialog was not well crafted, so I couldn't enjoy this movie at all; My wife feel asleep at 4 00 in the afternoon, and I wish I did too; I kept waiting for it to get better, and it just didn't...
The ending was particularly bizarre...He shoots himself in the head, with the gun pointed at an angle from his temple to the crown of his head; yet his supposedly shoots his nose off... the angle was impossible to do that, so I suppose that the rest of the ending is therefore possibly in his mind in the last nanosecond of consciousness before death...or is the ending that he can really fly out of the window at the end, as witnessed by his daughter? Or, was his daughter somehow pleased that he went splat on the ground? An ending designed to make students of film writes essay questions of the possible interpretations, but NOT an ending that engaged the person watching the film for entertainment as opposed to a class assignment.
If this wins best picture, I will be sorely disappointed; It will become one of the most forgettable winners of all time...