Article by Gabe Zia
Okay so if you follow this blog you may have noticed that the number of full reviews I put out has slowed down in a really big way. Essentially I just saw a few too many movies over the past month and keeping track of them became a chore in a really big way. So, to make up for it, I've gathered 6 movies I watched in the last month that I feel are worth recommending, and instead of 6 individual full reviews, I'm gonna run off a few mini reviews summarizing my feelings on them and why they're worth watching, or not worth watching.
You Were Never Really Here - 5/5
You Were Never Really Here is bar none one of the most psychologically fascinating movies of 2018. The film follows Joe, a career vigilante who makes a living rescuing young girls from human trafficking rings. In between his time being a vigilante he also suffers from violent, often jarring and unsettlingly vivid PTSD flashbacks and suicidal thoughts, which leads me to what I really liked about this movie, while the actual story revolving around him and human trafficking conspiracy, the real meat of the movie comes with Joaquin Phoenix's stunning delivery of this characters brutal and devastating mental state. Not to mention the actual flashbacks themselves are incredibly vague, nothing about Joes past is ever truly delved into and no specific details are ever given, we only get glimpses of specific moments out of context, which for the movie really works. At the very most we only get to see as much as 10 seconds for each flashback, it's enough to give the audience an idea of the scenario and the extent of his involvement but keeps enough information hidden that the audience has to think for themselves and reach their own conclusions. And the violence - both shown in flashbacks and hallucinations as well as stuff actually happening in the real world - is very well done. It's not flashy or action movie feeling, and it's not so overstated that it feels like its gore for the sake of gore. The use of violence in this movie serves a purpose and always feels real, to the point where the brutality of it is more unnerving than anything else. You Were Never Really Here isn't a movie for the light hearted or those with short attention spans but for the right audience it's absolutely perfect.
Revenge - 5/5
This ones been making the rounds for movie fans, it's shown up a lot in discussion of both violent thrillers and feminist filmmaking, and both for very good reason. Serving as both a sharp, bloody revenge flick and a brilliant subversion of the genre Revenge is that amazingly beautiful yet so damn rare combination of a movie that is as entertaining to watch as it is thoughtfully made and made with passion. This isn't just a mindless action movie, much like John Wick this is an action movie with genuine artistic vision. Essentially the film follows a girl named Jennifer, who's on vacation with her boyfriend and two of his hunter friends - all three of whom are married men - when as you can expect from the title, things go horribly wrong and it leads to the three men attempting to kill her. When she miraculously survives it's up to her, her wits, and whatever she can find to survive and kill them before they kill her. It doesn't get any more complex than that narratively, but watching the movie offers a whole lot more than just the plot. I won't delve any deeper as I intend to write a full thing about this once I've watched it a second time, just go watch it.
In Darkness - 2/5
So yeah, not every movie in my monthly highlights is gonna be a winner. Good or bad, as long as it's interesting to talk about I'm game. In Darkness sets off with a really fun premise - A blind pianist hears a murder in the apartment above hers. I was pretty sold by this idea, a simple hook for an entertaining murder mystery thriller with an almost Hitchcockian premise. There's so many directions it could go with that idea, both in terms of new angles to tackle a murder mystery with a main character who can't see, but also from a directorial standpoint this idea offers a lot of options for creative uses of visual and audio editing. At this point, you're probably thinking "This sounds awesome! Why did he give it a 2/5?", and I say that because that's pretty much exactly what I thought when I saw the 5/10 reviews, the 56% on RT. And then I watched the movie, and at first things went exactly how I hoped, the movie was intriguing, it kept information away from the audience, the main character was just a normal person caught in a bad situation, the way the movie used binaural sound was genius. And then, just as the first act ends, the entire movie goes spiralling down so far it basically becomes a completely different movie. Suddenly, exposition about these characters and their political ties is thrown left and right, what could have been an intriguing murder mystery quickly becomes a melodramatic political revenge thriller, the main character is suddenly revealed to have a backstory tying into the murder mystery. And although I won't spoil it specifically incase you want to see this movie for yourself, the ending is so stupid and so out of left field that it kind of ruins everything the first 30 minutes got so right. It's a shame that it barrels down into mediocrity so quickly because the opening 30 minutes are really genuinely something special and really had me thinking I was in for a treat. Personally, I can't recommend this one.
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