Absolutely the worst movie.

Great example of an old-fashioned, pure-at-heart escapist event movie that doesn't pretend to be anything that it's not and has boat loads of fun being its own ludicrous self.

Although I seem to have had higher expectations than I thought, the movie is super entertaining.

There are moments that feel comical, some horrific, and some downright inspiring but the tonal shifts hardly matter as the end results come to a film that's perfect for this time.

I cannot believe how beautiful this movie is. The acting is particularly mesmerizing, it attracts you into the screen right away, and keeps you wanting more every second and that is because very little of character history is told in the movie. You have only little to predict what will happen, what can happen in the silence between each strike in the conversation. If you recall, I said "the acting" as if I am talking about every actor in the movie. You are correct, every single actor in this movie is incredible, but I have to give it to Demet Akbag, she particularly inspired me with her talent. It was so beautiful that I couldn't believe she was acting and thought if she was like that in real life too. It's a shame we only saw very little of her. The symbolism in the movie screams at your face in almost every scene, and you feel like you can't hold up with all these complex characters and metaphor etc. Aydin, Nihal and Necla's personalities sometimes wave into each other, and only after the movie you realize each character was actually transforming each other's personalities. The growth Aydin goes through is only so much (which was more believable) and the way to it was told was very well.I will be watching this movie to see more, to feel more. I am not humble enough to NOT say "I didn't understand this movie" but I am humble enough to say, "I only understood very little about this movie". I always liked movies that makes you say "I have to see this again!" after you watch them, and if you too, then you MUST watch this.

A wisp of smoke pluming from the tussock, this is the opening shot of Nuri Bilge Ceylan's Palme d'or winning tome WINTER SLEEP, and it impeccably recapitulates what Ceylan angles to reify: the cosmically intangible yet intrinsically tangible incapability of communication among us humans. Our protagonist is the salt-and-pepper, middle-aged Aydin (Bilginer), a quondam thespian (a term which he prefers than "actor"), who runs a mountaintop hotel called "Othello" in Cappadocia of the Central Anatolia. For those who are au fait with Ceylan's track record and artistic felicity, it comes as an invigorating surprise to see a concise-to-wordy volte-face here, as this 196-minutes saga is chiefly composed of long-winded conversation segments (with no embellishment of accompaniments to boot), only intermediately larded with its ongoing actions and the sublime, postcard-ready shots of the magnificent topography of the locale, which is able to rouse even the most torpid wanderlust out of hibernation, Ceylan assures us its natural beauty is unadulterated and the film would land on its feet eventually through its dramaturgic toil. With winter looming around, the hotel business is in its troughs, but Aydin's sedate life is slowly descending into a personal quagmire due to both in-house and extraneous forces. The crisis within is the irreconcilable rift between him and his closest kin, namely his divorced sister Necla (Akbag, coalescing a languid easiness with sharp-edged spite) and his wife Nihal (Sözan), who is only half of his age. Their first debate is about Necla's "not resisting evil" supposition, an airy-fairy notion completely throws oneself on the mercy of other's quarter, before soon it exacerbates into many a personal snide, between Necla and Nihal firstly, then a protracted sibling verbal sparring adding insult to injury, from introspectively dialectical to deliberately catty, Ceylan hits home with his onion-peeling relentlessness to censure a detrimental propensity among intelligentsia: constantly attempting to earn one-upmanship by thinly-veiled denigration. Apparently, Aydin wins this round and Necla willfully takes her bow and never returns thenceforth. The meat of Aydin and Nihal's nuptial rub comes to the fore later, starkly chaste, their relationship has already been on the rocks for years, Nihal tries to ease her "trophy wife" shame by plunging into a fund-raising business for schools and children, refusing Aydin's interference of any kind, apart from accepting his anonymous charity from time to time. She cannot bear his non- threatening but chronically encroaching superciliousness, yet has no moxie to put the kibosh on their marriage in gridlock. As for Aydin, he sees all too well of Nihal's fix and cunningly barters his subservience for her entrapment "I love you, and I know you don't love me, but you cannot get your cake and eat it too!", that is the connotation. The cruel manifestation of selfish love from those who are endowed with clout and money. And later in a conversation with a local teacher Levent (Saribacak, exemplifies cogently how to shoot the booze-emboldened sideswipes), which goes argumentative, Aydin seemingly has the final say with a caustic rejoinder but the subsequent spewing betrays that an inward damage is done.Outwardly, it is the gap between castes that writs large and cannot be mediated, the family of Aydin's hard-up tenants, brothers Hamdi (Kiliç) and Ismail (Isler) cannot pay their rent on time and the ensuing dispute becomes rather ugly, and when a broken car window impels Hamdi to humble himself in front of a condescending Aydin, the Janus-faced reality seeps into the scenario in both castes, from smile to curse, from bonhomie to grumbling, all in a trice, even Aydin's chauffeur/assistant Hidayet (Pekcan), who is not above to hector those less fortunate tenants, but meanwhile has to carry all his master's luggage in a snowfall day, with the latter wandering with idle hands, so it is not surprising to see him one minute ago promise to keep a secret at the behest of Aydin and the next minute, casually divulges it to another party on the phone, the well-adjusted equilibrium between obedience and defiance is all too close to home.Indubitably, WINTER SLEEP is first and foremost, an actor's showpiece, leading actor Haluk Bilginer competently hammers out his delivery on the strength of his word-wielding expertise and telegraphs Aydin's inscrutable train of thought when lines are not proffered. Melisa Sözen, on the other hand, brilliantly portrays a more emotionally readable persona and her best scenes are in the cathartic episode, when Nihal tries to use money to buy her conscience in front of a seething Nejat Isler (emotive with a commensurate restraint, upstaging the rest in his two scenes), and the story reaches its apogee, but in post-mortem, it is a missing opportunity that Ceylon doesn't apply his "not resisting evil" theory for a trial run here, which in return points up Ceylon's own guarded and idealized stance of the have-nots: they are willing to die for dignity, the only remnant left for them to weaponize. An illuminating stew of the perennial vagaries (religion, philosophy, morality and class stratification, etc.) obstructing our day-to-day communications, WINTER SLEEP mark's Ceylon's highest achievement so far for his profound perspective in fleshing out a conundrum that is elementally complex and sophisticatedly widespread.

First of all let me tell you my complete disbelief of such a high rating for this movie. I try to understand why people would give it such a high rating but I must be too dumb to get it because honestly this movie is so boring I had to watch in three times and even then I almost fell asleep three times. Don't get me wrong, the actors are all good, the filming is good as well. But it doesn't matter if you have the best actors possible or the worst actors possible, if you make a movie about the extremely boring life of extremely boring people then you get an extremely boring movie. And if you make a movie that last for more then three hours about nothing then you get an extremely long boring movie. Because let me tell you, and here is a spoiler, so if you want to stop reading this review before I spoil it for you then this is the moment. This movie is about nothing and it last more then three hours. Unbelievable people like that kind of nonsense. I simply don't get it.

I admit I have had high hopes for this one. I have like some of the stories of the Ceylan family. And I have appreciated the technical side of all their movies.This one is slow. Much slower than the others. And, pretty much like the other successful European teams, the Ceylans have bigger and bigger budgets. Which have to be explained. This way you get a lot of outdoor scenes that have no value, including the first frames, and quite a few of driving scenes also with no value.About an hour into the movie and I was wondering what am I doing in the room? I thought about asking my money back. But the power of "what if" was stronger. At the two hour mark my butt was hurting. And the story was getting worse.In the end the best part of this movie is getting outside and being able to move.So far, this is the worst Ceylans script. Almost every scene is explained after the action. You could guess some of the explanations, which makes the continuation of those particular scenes redundant. Other scenes remain cryptic, probably some Turkish custom badly explained.All I am left after wasting three hours is a shapeless mash. Is it about religion? Religion pops into the story in a pointless way that might mean meaningful message. But there is no religion in the end. Is it about the Turkish folk? But the folk are badly represented. Is it about Turkish intelligentsia? But they are also badly represented. Is it about education in Turkey? About a brother and a sister? About a wife and her much older husband? At the three hour mark the film or hard drive runs out. You get a regular cast and crew list on screen. But is it really over? This is a movie about everything. It ends up about nothing. But that is enough to seduce some juries.Contact me with Questions, Comments or Suggestions ryitfork @ bitmail.ch