2018 poetry
Rating: 16/20
Plot: Joaquin Phoenix runs around with a hammer.
The difference between me and somebody who knows how to write a review of a movie is that one of us knows how to analyze a movie and the other just wants to make a bunch of M.C. Hammer jokes.
Plot difficulties aside, this is something else. With the type of quietly intense performance that probably nobody but Joaquin Phoenix can deliver, the abstract poetry montage stylings of director Lynne Ramsay, and Jonny Greenwood's propulsive score, this is a movie that needs to be seen just because it's so different.
One scene I can't shake features the use of Charlene's "I've Never Been to Me," a moment that might be my favorite musical moment of the year. I also loved Judith Roberts' (the lady across the hall in Eraserhead!) performance as Phoenix's character's mother, a scene involving a river; one of those scenes where there's what some might call graphic violence while a cutesy incongruous song plays, a technique that should be a cliche by now; a puzzling mix of what might be reality (if there truly is any reality in the entire narrative), fantasy, and flashback; and a perplexing ending or two.
I think I have a pretty good grasp on what I think might be what I think is going on in this movie, but it's the type of movie that a second or third viewing can help unwrap.
There were times where I was worried about the safety of Joaquin Phoenix during this movie.
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