Queer

Daniel Craig did a good job in his role and the scenery/asthetic was pretty cool. Beautifully filmed, but you're always going to get that with a Luca film. It was quite off-putting by how slow and languid it was. Well-acted, well written, but just boring.

Synopsis: 1950. William Lee, an American expat in Mexico City, spends his days almost entirely alone, except for a few contacts with other members of the small American community. His encounter with Eugene Allerton, an expat former soldier, new to the city, shows him, for the first time, that it might be finally possible to establish an intimate connection with somebody.

Queer

Based on a short story by William Burroughs this movie explored the dissolute life of middled aged William Lee, who spent his time frequenting the gay bars in downtown Mexico City. It really was a simple romantic movie that looked at an infatuation with innocence and a journey to recovery from drug addiction.

The story, such as it was was tissue thin, very little happened by way of action, and we had inserted numerous dream sequences and fantasy elements that reflected in an emotional turmoil.

Overall I can't recommend this movie. It was at best of 5 out of 10. I enjoyed it whilst I was watching it but it really had very little substance. Despite some very strong acting from the central leads much of the dialogue was banal and tedious.

I hadn't planned on seeing Queer in the movie theatre and was going to wait till it came to streaming but a friend wanted to see it so I went along. I'm actually glad that I did because it's a very interesting and beautiful film visually speaking. Like most Burroughs stories there will be characters involved in heavy drug use and so I was aware of that and kind of expecting much of the story to be told through a characters drug hazed/influenced/induced eyes. That can be tricky as much of the story is expressed via metaphors and odd/quirky/hard to decipher visuals. In Queer that all worked quite well and while I anticipated possibly leaving the theatre confused and wondering, I actually left satisfied. Trent Reznor produced all of the music and I think he did a bang-on job with most of the music really hitting the nail on the head for me emotionally. As for the performances, Craig turned in a very solid performance on a role that was a tricky one to pull off but I think he did indeed pull it off quite well. Jason Schwartzman was great and his character provided some much needed levity to this film. All of the remaining characters were all solid supporters and contributors. Guadagnino's direction was well executed and i will say seeing a few of his that he does have a special way of blending the camera, with the lighting, and the music so perfectly during the lighter and more tender moments of his films to really generate a vibe, yet without being too obvious soas to smother the moment. I do think the third part in the jungle could have benefitted from some prudent editing as I felt like it went on a bit too long, or maybe it didn't really need to take actually take place in a jungle at all? Something to consider. Queer is not an 'easy' film to watch and it will not be for everyone. Either way, I was pleasantly surprised by how effective, interesting, amd moving Queer was and consider it well worth checking out.

The main reason is that the film was too abstract and seemed like a stream of consciousness. The general meaning is to explore the loneliness in the queer heart, the difficulty in establishing connections with others, the pain of not being able to love, and the complex emotions of depression. But the performance technique is very stream-of-consciousness, especially the last 20 minutes, which have almost no lines and are completely used to express the inner world of the male protagonist through various blurs, hallucinations, and abstract art forms. Although I understood what the director wanted to express, the form of expression may not be acceptable to the public, and I wanted to leave the scene at one point.

I'm all for using movies to evoke some type of emotion but this movie took that quite literally by combining random images with random music and hoping we feel what the director felt. There's almost no connection between anything. It's like the writer took a bunch of pills, got high, and wrote the script. Then the director and the whole cast smoked a ton of weed and then made this. Whatever this is.

Trust me, I know very well what the director was going for. I'm gay. I know all about the queer culture, how lonely it is, and how we all long for a lasting connection with someone much younger and hotter than us. This movie makes that very clear. And I love that it explored that. But why was it necessary to get high to do that?? The whole thing feels like a hallucination trip. There is minimal dialog. There are looooooong scenes with no dialog at all. Sometimes for 5-10 minutes. We're just staying on a close up of someone's face or watching them perform an action but ultimately nothing is happening on screen except for some subtle movement which is just not enough to keep you engaged or interested.

Thank god I watched this at home and I could fast forward. Many times I skipped forward 20-30 seconds and it was STILL the same exact shot on screen. That's crazy!! That's not movie making. That's not a masterpiece. You're not being some kind of genius by boring us to death. You can't just play an upbeat tempo song for 5 minutes and show us one shot and think that will do the trick.

As far as the acting goes... I can't believe Daniel Craig did this. I'm talking full nudity, full on gay sex, tons of making out... the whole 9 yards.

The Mexico setting was a complete miss in this one. It did not fit the theme at all. The sets were ridiculous. They were very well made but just completely wrong for this movie.

I was a huge fan of Call me By Your Name but I think this might have been the last Luca movie I'll ever see. At least for a while. My time was completely wasted.