Unwatchable. From the opening frantic sex scene to the discordantly beatific ending, the movie charges ahead with a frenzy and high volume that is unrelieved and wearing. The plot toggles between absurd and ridiculous. The repetitive table tennis scenes are fakey and the music is unusually bad. Timothee Chalamet succeeds in creating the most unpleasant character of the year, but who wants to watch that? I can’t think of a single moment I enjoyed, aside from Pico Iyer’s astonishing performance.

Sort of a Nomadland for loggers, this story of man’s life is simple, maybe too simple, and he’s simple too, but a nice guy who never hurt anyone. The movie goes off the rails, so to speak, toward the end, which makes you realize it’s based on a novella, not a screenplay. Meant to be moving, it moved me not.

Spain’s submission to the Oscars is a trip, in many senses. Like many trips it doesn’t come with a meaning, but it’s an unforgettable experience. The booming sound of a rave in the desert, a wild drive to where across emptiness, the shock of death–this is the setting for getting to know a small group of what some would call “freaks,” who come to embody a community of friendship that seems better than the world they are escaping.

I’m sorry, but I just couldn’t feel sorry for Bruce, which seemed to be the point of this film. Six years after appearing on the cover of Time and Newsweek, after three Top-5 albums, including the anthemic Born to Run and record-setting concert tours, we’re supposed to think of him as a struggling loner, getting little or no respect from his record label, finding a girlfriend on the sidewalk after a gig, walking the streets like you or me, living by himself in a small house in the country. Maybe this was true–the movie is based on a book and met with the Boss’s approval–but when the truth is stranger than fiction it’s hard to accept. Jeremy Allen White and Jeremy Strong are exceptional, the other three leads excellent, and everyone else not so much; it’s the story that is wanting. I mean, we all knew he was going to get Nebraska released just as he wanted, and it wasn’t that great an album anyway.

PS: After seeing director Scott Cooper’s interview I am sorry I wasn’t more sympathetic to Bruce’s apparently very real depression. Still, I don’t think it worked as a movie.