Adam McKay's later filmography – starting from The Big Short - made him to one of my favourite directors working nowadays. Noone combines mainstream comedy with left-wing political analysis as he does. Vice was an absolute masterpiece, a film which lead to the question what McKay would come up with after. As you can imagine, my expectations were high, but Don't Look Up easily exceeded them. There is nothing left to add to this film: it's funny, shocking, suspenseful, different, authentic, simply absolutely amazing. Everything what's happening on screen would happen exactly 100% like that in real life too, and that makes it such a relevant film. It really points out how much is going wrong nowadays. On the other hand, the film feels off quite a lot. There are weird time jumps, the effects often look extremely cheap, some characters (like Chalamet's) don't even make sense in the story arch, and the whole thing looks and feels like a overlong CNN news show. But nothing of that is a flaw – on the contrary, I think that McKay intended his film to be just like it turned out. What he's trying to do is to really adapt his style to how media works today – weird story jumps, memes, quick cuts, etc. This feels like an overlong YouTube video, and this is just how it's intended to be. The result is that it feels extremely real. You believe every single second of it, you constantly forget you're seeing actors acting – not just any random actors, but literally the most famous on earth at the moment. Of course this film is not an overlong YouTube video, everything is just as in McKay's vision; and it's near to being a masterpiece. There is first of all the brilliant cinematography by Linus Sandgren, who stays loyal to his innovative style but adapts as much as possible to the CNN-aesthetics. Then, there is this incredible score by Nicholas Britell, which is, hands down, one of the most fitting scores any film ever had. And then, there are absolutely astonishing performances. I would even go so far to say that this is one of DiCaprio's best performances ever. Seeing him for the first time in a completely different role and genre changes a lot and just shows again how great he is as an actor. Yes, this film is near to being a masterpiece. You simply have to watch it, if you haven't already.
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