Uncut Gems (2019)

This is now comfortably my most anticipated of the rest of the year having now seen Parasite. 

But that's not why I'm posting ... I'm posting because I felt the profound need to share this exchange I overheard from the folks a row behind me when this trailer showed before Parasite tonight:

Friend #1: "Holy shit that look so bad."
Friend #2: "I don't even think it's real."
Friend #3: "Nah I hear it's fire." 

Um.......well, it's my favorite Safdie film but it still has their usual troubles - no story arc, a very dubious screenplay and an absolutely exhausting dramatic scenario (THIS movie really needs editing).

But the Safdies know how to make movies that actually move - 2019 only has a few of these at all - and Uncut Gems zips right along with modern brio and modern tension - you sit up in your seat at every new scenario, think what could happen next? It maybe is the 2019 film which feels most like the current world in all its madness and sadness too.

Sandler is great but he's hurt by the character arc - at a certain point you have to shape a film to your characters rather than have 234 character moments - like if Mean Streets was all about Johnny Boy and he never shut up - he's giving 15 manic performances at once. The ending is a well duh-so what/wow knockout, simultaneously.

~8/10

The Safdies are fast becoming the most fascinating young directors on the scene. Very few filmmakers have the capability to approximate sheer adrenaline in cinematic form the way that they've done, first with Good Time and now with Uncut Gems, and their avant-garde sensibilities extend to their oddball casting choices. Robert Pattinson's actorly cred got a massive boost with his outing with them, and now Adam Sandler is reaping the benefits.

Unlike Good Time, which was a sleek stiletto of a movie, Uncut Gems bears the hallmarks of its title: it's much more amorphous, more unfocused. But I think that's to its credit, somewhat, because Howard Ratner's life is a messy blur. The volatile jewelry shopkeeper/black market dealer is always looking for the next big score, the next win. Because unlike Pattinson's Connie Nikas, who was hoping to snag enough cash to see him and his brother to a better life, Ratner doesn't care about the money. He's all about the high that comes from the Big W.

True to form for the Safdies, Ratner is an impulsive and rather repulsive character with very few (any?) positive traits. He's a consummate sleaze whose interactions normally involve him either bellowing at the top of his lungs to his underlings. Everything's cranked up to eleven in this movie -- the men are thunderous blusterers, the women are brassy -- there is no room for subtlety in a Safdie joint. Still, there is room for nuance, and Adam Sandler has always been a deceptively skilled actor in this respect, despite his rep for playing man-children with no self-control for much of his career.

Uncut Gems is an unwieldy and, at times, unpleasant experience. Its anxiety-inducing tempo is jagged and idiosyncratic, amped up by the drowning tones of Daniel Lopatin's score, and it pervades the entire movie with a guillotine-esque threat of imminent doom. Like Good Time, it fixates on a thoroughly unlikable individual, but also like Good Time, by the end of it, you're strangely rooting for him to pull it out... if only to keep yourself from having a heart attack.

Daniel Day Lewis called Adam and praised his performance.

Been dying to see this one.  Can't wait til Christmas (will watch it in theaters on XMas day for sure as a Christmas gift to myself0 and fuck watching a screener. See this shit in theaters and support indie filmmaking folks!

This was a fantastic film. Sandler gives a tour de force performance and yes it is his best yet. Story is simple and straightforward and hinges entirely on Sandler's character trying to juggle multiple bets and money changing hands and finding himself in over his head at every turn, and the Safdies thrive within those boundaries. The film is alive with desperate anxious energy which comes through in the performances, the soundscape, the music, and especially the editing.

I want to highlight the sound mixing, which I just loved. The sound in this movie is so chaotic. Characters are constantly talking over each other to the point that it's hard to make out what everyone's saying. It's a wall of fast-paced disconnected sounds rushing over you all at once. Take for instance the scene where KG's entourage finds themselves stuck behind the automatic door at Howard's store and they're all shouting at him to open it up and pounding on the door and he's yelling at his staff to get it fixed, and the mixing is so brilliant that you can perceive everything that's going in the scene despite so much happening at once. And there are so many scenes like that. It's thrilling.

I mean, he was fine and all, but Keith Williams Richards was the unsung hero of the movie for me.

Friggin' guy looks like if William Forsythe and William Sadler had a kid.

One question that I'm curious of is why the year is 2012. Is it so The Weeknd can play himself? After all, he's certainly no undiscovered talent at this point. Is it something specific to Kevin Garnett? (I don't watch any sport, let alone basketball so I have no idea.)

Or, is it just something the Safdies had in mind when they were writing it? After all, they said in interviews that they wanted to make Uncut Gems before they made Good Time, and that the latter was a stepping stone to get to the former. 

Best Adam Sandler performance, by a couple of miles. Perhaps the first time he actually impressed me. Really, really liked Julia Fox too. I really liked the movie, but it was such an exasperating watch.

Netflix is releasing this internationally but I really hope they let independent cinemas screen it the way they did recently with The Irishman, Marriage Story and The Two Popes.

It seems like a film to be better enjoyed with an audience and in an actual movie theater