Tonight's film was 'You Were Never Really Here' starring The Phoenix Brother you can't spell the name of without Googling it first (Joaquin), and no one else you've heard of most likely.
It's only 90 minutes long but it's a pretty devastating, difficult watch.
(It's directed by the lady who also directed 'We Need To Talk About Kevin')
TBH it's a hard film to like, Joaquin mumbles most of the time and there are all sorts of flashbacks and semi-dream sequences occurring on a regular basis, along with jump cuts to things that don't appear contextually relevant.
Even the basic story synpopsis is pretty grim (here's my version):
Joaquin plays a traumatized veteran who tracks down young missing girls traded and sold for sex. When he catches the baddies he kills them ruthlessly with a hammer. Then he takes a job that gets him close to the great and the good, and what little world he has is threatened, whilst devastating memories from his own past repeatedly cause him nightmares, be he awake or asleep.I'll let the Wikipedia review summary do the job here. I watched the film twice, as once I'd worked it all out I wanted to see it again with everything contextualised.
This isn't a particularly easy watch, but I'd say it's worth it.
860/1000
Quote:
Joseph Walsh for The Skinny gave the film a rating of five stars out of five and states "You Were Never Really Here is a brutal, punishing watch, but every minute is a masterclass in filmmaking. It's like a one-inch-punch to the gut, winding you from the start and giving you no respite. This exquisite examination of suffering will leave you staggering from the cinema".[18] Matt Bobkin for Exclaim! gave the film a 9 out of 10 score, describing it as "dizzying, horrifying and utterly compelling."[19]
Sheila O'Malley of RogerEbert.com gave the film 4 stars, saying that the film "is a taut and almost unbearably intense 90-minutes, without an ounce of fat on it. Ramsay doesn't give you a second to breathe."[16] Guy Lodge for Variety said Ramsay may be the world's "greatest working filmmaker", and called it "astonishing... a stark, sinewy, slashed-to-the-bone hitman thriller far more concerned with the man than the hit."[17]