Queer

I'm late to the party with this movie, but I just finished watching Queer (2024) and this movie was a very disappointing experience for me especially coming from Luca Guadagnino and A24.

Positives for Queer (2024): The movie is shot and directed expertly by Luca Guadagnino. The performances from Daniel Craig and Drew Starkey are very good. The themes that are being explored in the movie are done very well. And finally, the movie has a unique style to how the filmmaking is being portrayed here.

Negatives for Queer (2024): The movie is too long and the pacing drags it down a lot. The movie was being a little too weird for me. And finally, there are moments where I wasn't paying attention to what was happening on screen.

Overall, Queer (2024) is a great movie on a technical aspect, but it's one that lost my interest a lot and it was very average.

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.

The chemistry in this film is unreal.

What a beautiful film by Guadagnino about desire as something transcendental and, at the same time, a burden.

A film that beautifully captures a story rich in almost supernatural eroticism about bodies and touches.

I'm happy to see this film, but it's not for everyone, especially those who don't want to embrace all the narrative's curveballs.

With a mysterious ending and sex scenes that may seem exaggerated to some prudes, Guadagnino is one of the few greats working who hasn't given up on lust as an instrument in his stories, and that's beautiful.

Queer shows an extraordinary capture through sound design and hallucinatory representation of how sex is such a powerful experience for humans and a fundamental part of being human that it cannot be omitted from stories due to the public's complacency, Queer challenges you.

The art direction and photography are excellent, with beautiful scene composition and excellent acting. Daniel Craig can break your heart by doing very little and Queer seems to be just another stage on this new journey alongside Knives Out of someone who wants to be more than an iconic 007.

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.

Daniel Craig is clearly making an effort to put down some markers with his post Bond choices. I don't blame him, it's such a suffocating role. The polar opposite, here he's William, a gay American in 1950s Mexico. A very William S. Burroughs premise, who wrote the generally autobiographical book this is based on. It's not Naked Lunch, but it does have an unsettling vibe. Not helped by unusual needle drops from Nirvana, Prince and New Order that just don't fit. William is lonely... and horny. So really, William is frustrated. That is until he meets Eugene (Drew Starkey) and they bond over war stories in the dry heat that drips from the screen. William is infatuated, but doesn't know if the younger Eugene is, or if he's even queer. It doesn't help that William has a self-deprecating, unconfident nature, although vast amounts of cheap booze and cigarettes seem to help. It's an awkward love/lust story, with a lob-sided feeling that William is destined to be hurt. Panama hats, linen suits, glass coke bottles and rusting Cadillacs driving down sunburnt dusty streets, past the daytime drinkers. There's a sordid, lazy, quietly hedonistic tone. Where time is largely irrelevant. The perfect place for William to wallow in a heroin stupor as Eugene leads him on, encourages him, pushes him away. Things don't change much as William tries to whisk Eugene away on a trip to Ecuador, but he does at least have him to himself. William's on a mission though, to source a plant that produces the drug Yage (nope me neither), that's said to give the user a telepathic experience. Here the music does get interesting. Scored by Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross, although still oddly modern, it depicts perfectly William's obsessive and destructive nature. One that leads him deep into the jungle to find Dr Cotter (Lesley Manville). Who helps both William and Eugene discover things that they already knew. It's all very striking, but I'm not sure that's enough. Craig is pretty fantastic, but Queer did lose me toward the end, even though I'm a big fan of some Lynchian style surrealism. Ultimately I think Burroughs is just better on the page, but this is still an interesting adaptation.