Saturday 14 October 2023

Stay (2005 Marc Forster)

Baffling, marvellously inventive thriller in which we don't know what is going on but have fun guessing (are Ewan McGregor and Ryan Gosling in fact the same character? Is Naomi Watts dead?) The film is written by David Benioff, who also wrote the same director's The Kite Runner and subsequently was a showrunner on GOT. The ending is straight out of that rare 2003 TV movie Promoted to Glory (Ken Stott, Lesly Manville, written by Rob Heyland) but is satisfying. So almost not worth the effort, though Matt Chessé's editing, and the concurrent digital effects, are staggering. (When it was on I told Q I wanted our next film to have Humphrey Bogart in it and 'when he hits someone, they fall over'.) Photographed as usual by Roberto Shaffer, music by Asche & Spencer and Massive Attack, production design Kevin Thompson.

With Bob Hoskins, Janeane Garofolo, Kate Burton, Elizabeth Reasor, BD Wong and (in a tiny role Q noticed) Sterling Brown.

Ryan's performance is brilliant.

Certain one word titles can be great (think Hitchcock): this one is crap.




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