OSCARS 2026: Sentimental Value (2025)

This is not a hard and fast rule, for nothing ever is, but: Once a director gets the Academy's attention, they tend to notice you again. The logic is sound as an Oscar nomination tends to make someone a lot more recognized. Norwegian writer/director Joachim Trier made a name for himself in his home country, and the international art house scene, with his earlier features. 2006's “Reprise” and “Thelma” were submitted to the Academy as Norway's official selection for Best Foreign Language Film with no success.  However, 2021's “The Worst Person in the World” finally got voters' attention, not only scoring an International Feature nomination but also one in Best Original Screenplay. His latest, “Sentimental Value,” signals Trier truly arriving at last, at least among the American awards show set. It's grabbed nine nominations, including one for Trier in Best Director, which is impressive for a movie mostly in another language. 

And all it took was Trier making a movie about the film industry's favorite topic: The film industry. Norwegian filmmaker Gustav Borg largely walked away from his wife and two daughters, Nora and Agnes, and the family home in Oslo. After his wife's death, he returns to the house with an idea: His latest script is inspired by his mother, a former prisoner-of-war who committed suicide in the home when he was seven, and he wants Nora to play the part. Though Nora is a successful stage actress, she refuses to do so. A chance encounter leads to an American movie star, Rachel Kemp, being cast in the role. This results in Netflix agreeing to fund the film, in contrast to the previous difficulty Borg has had getting budgets for his work. After spending time with Agnes, Gustav decides to cast his grandson in the film as well, straining his relationship with his other daughter. Rachel feels insecure about playing a role so clearly intended for Nora, pushing Gustav to reconnect with his estranged daughters. Overcoming all that baggage will not be easy.

The opening scene of “Sentimental Value,” overseen by an omniscient narrator, is not devoted to introducing any of the film's principal characters so much. Instead, it presents us with the family's home. Much of “Sentimental Value” takes place in this house, a handsome if plain two-story residence. It is where Gustav grew up, where his mother died, where Agnes resides, and where her son is growing up too. A few times, the film flashes back to a prior decade in this building, showing the little details of the home that have revealed themselves to the family over the years. Such as how the kids would ease drop on their mother's therapy session through a vent that runs from the second floor down to the first. These are like quirks to a human being's personality, distinguishing features that make a person and a place unique. If homes can be said to have personalities, they can also be said to have memories. And those memories are long. In its best moments, “Sentimental Value” shows how places stand as quiet observers of their own history. How arguments and exchanges would echo through these walls or how small incidents, like a dropped glass, can make an impression as much as the big events. Saying “the house is also a main character” is a cliché but “Sentimental Value” happens to use it well. 

To use another much abused literary cliché: If these walls could talk, they would surely have a lot to say about the overlapping generations that have made its rooms their home. Gustav and Nora do not get along. As parent and children often are, this might be because they have a lot in common. Both are stubborn and a bit self-centered but also overcome with doubts. Gustav fears that his industry has passed him by, that all his friends are dying, and that he's lost his insight. He suppresses these concerns with alcohol. Nora, despite her success, still has paralyzing bouts of stage fright and is currently involved in an affair with a married colleague. They are, in a sense, shadows and reflections of each other. Gustav's script is inspired by his late mother but he hopes to cast his daughter in the part, later casting his own grandson to play a role inspired by himself. Much of the central drama of “Sentimental Value” revolves around Gustav deciding to cast a movie star in the lead role instead, a person from outside the family having trouble integrating themselves into this web of relations and connections. A key dream sequence in “Sentimental Value” depicts Gustav's face morphing into his daughters and mother's face, back and forth, as shadows pass over them. Yes, if a house a memory, it would notice the way patterns tend to repeat themselves, how people can assume malleable roles back and forth across their own histories.  

Unfortunately, “Sentimental Value” is not a movie solely about the contrasting, and contradicting, ways parents and children and grandparents tend to mirror each other or how places connect different generations. We do not learn too much about the script Gustav has written that motivates much of the plot, aside from its inspiration in his own past. This is Trier hedging his bet: If a piece of writing is suppose to be moving art, that puts a lot of expectations on it. If the resulting script isn't as good as all the characters say it is, the entire emotional center of the narrative falls apart. This, however, becomes a problem when “Sentimental Value's” entire resolution hinges on someone being so moved by the writing. The meaningful climax of the film is a knowing, understanding nod between two people. Keeping the emotions subtle and understated is fine. However, it does make “Sentimental Value” feel a bit contrived during its most important stage. As if the screenwriter is saying “This script is brilliant, brilliant enough to change someone's mind, but, uh, I can't show it to you.” 

It is evident very early on that this project is Gustav's way to process the grief and guilt he feels over his own mother's suicide and his distant bond with his daughters. How grief can be transformed into art – also the topic of another 2026 Best Picture nominee – is a worthy subject. How a piece of fiction can be about multiple things at once is too. However, Trier's film falls a little short in exploring the complexities of that. The last act of “Sentimental Value” is disappointing, in the flat way it shows how the unspoken pain of a parent can strain any bond their child will develop with their own off-spring. Joachim Trier is twenty years older than me but “The Worst Person in the World” showed a keen understanding of the neurosis of the millennial generation. And if everyone else my age is a little like me too, that means their thirties have also included a lot of learning to understand their own parents. You learn more about yourself and realize Mom and Dad surely dealt with that too, likely with the fewer tools their time and place provided. “Sentimental Value” clearly touches on that but I wish it did so with more depth, instead of pushing the thorny business of forgiveness and reconciliation that comes after that realization in-between scenes. 

As far as a drama about one generation's Mommy Issues leading to Daddy Issues for the next and so on, “Sentimental Value” is keenly acted. You need an actor like Stellan Skarsgård in a role like Gustav Borg. You need someone who has lived more than a bit and can accurately convey the feeling of carrying a lifetime of regrets around behind sad but quiet eyes. He accurately brings to life the dynamic of a man who still hasn't figured out how not to piss people off by being himself but is desperately trying to get better. Renate Reinsve and Inga Ibsdotter Lilleaas are both very good as Nora and Agnes, saying much with an eye roll or nod. “Sentimental Value” is a film of emotions more understated than shouted, a mode both Reinsve and Illeaas excel at. As the outsider in the story, Elle Fanning has an interesting arc as someone floundering to insert themselves into a familial drama that previously existed without them. Fanning is wonderful, resisting making Kemp a spoiled Hollywood brat in favor of someone who chose acting genuinely out of a wish to understand other people. A scene where an interview disparages her latest movie, Skarsgård coming to her aide, shows Fanning can suggest a lot with only her eyes and face too. 

For a handful of moments, “Sentimental Value” becomes a quiet comedy about a clueless grandfather trying to connect with his iPad kid grandson, which ultimately has a rather sweet conclusion. That is a much more charming depiction of how art can bring people together than the resolution. I wish the film mined that element more, playing the weird tension that can only exist between parent and child for uncomfortable but honest laughs. Nevertheless, “Sentimental Value” is an expertly acted film that contains many interesting and fine ideas within. An artier movie told from the house's perspective – think something like Sodenberg's “Presence,” also from last year – probably would've been more my style but take out the film industry angle and I don't know if the Academy would have liked this one as much. [710]

Director Report Card: Danny Boyle (1997)

 

5.  A Life Less Ordinary

 

The director, writer, and producer trio of Danny Boyle, John Hodge, and Andrew MacDonald had considerable success with their first two efforts. "Shallow Grave" and "Trainspotting" were both breakout box office successes, critically praised, and remain beloved cult classics to this day. Surely their third collaboration would be a similar hit, right? I'm sure that was the thought process everyone had when putting together "A Life Less Ordinary," especially the producers at Channel Four Films who put up much of the money for the film. Sadly, lightning would not strike a third time. "A Life Less Ordinary" would sink at the box office, receive middling reviews, and has largely been forgotten in the years since. It seems to me the only time the film comes up at all is when people are looking back on Boyle's career the way I am right now. Which begs the question: What went wrong on this third go-around between this team? 

Celine Naville is the daughter of a mega-rich businessman but she's miserable in her personal life. Her controlling father has set her up on a string of unsuccessful relationships, the latest with a mildly unhinged dentist. Robert Lewis is a janitor working for her dad's company, who dreams of becoming an author of trashy novels. Upon discovering he's been fired and replaced with a robot, Robert kidnaps Celine. Celine seems more bemused than threatened by her kidnapper's actions, seeing this as a chance to get some money from her dad, run off and live her own life. Robert proves to be an incompetent criminal and often takes pointers from his captive. The two hide out together, bicker, and slowly warm up to one another. Incensed, Celine sends two bounty hunters after the pair, giving them free range to murder the man responsible for kidnapping his rebellious daughter and to bring her back.

That sounds like a fairly standard story line, doesn't it? While I don't think the two filmmakers have much in common, Danny Boyle's previous features had attracted some comparisons to the films of Quentin Tarantino and the many imitators that followed in his wake. I suppose the focus on memorable soundtracks, stylized dialogue, and gritty stories suggest some similarities. In the abstract, "A Life Less Ordinary" does sound like one of those "Pulp Fiction" knock-offs, a hyper-verbal love story of two rogues on the run together. There are shoot-outs and car crashes and lots of colorful dialogue. More than anything else, there is an overall kind of tonal smugness from the material that suggests a desperate desire to be observed as cool by the viewer. It was 1997 and such things were still somewhat in fashion, kind of, I guess. "A Life Less Ordinary" is a film about beautiful people with trendy haircuts doing daring and exciting stuff together, with a sense of humor about itself and a level of stylish excess that seeks to impress. 

Perhaps, however, Boyle and Hodge were aware of how ordinary this script might have seen in the indie film landscape of the time. This might explain why "A Life Less Ordinary" instead veers sharply into the realm of magical realism. You see, the bounty hunters after Robert and Celine aren't ordinary enforcers. They are, in fact, angels sent from Heaven to ensure that Robert and Celine fall in love. Because, it would seem, making people fall in ever-lasting love is something angels concern themselves with. It's an insertion of a fantastical element in a film that otherwise doesn't have any fantasy elements.

Such a swerve might have successfully spiced up material that the audience had seen before but you can't start out as the new neo-noir from the director of "Shallow Grave" and "Trainspotting" and instead introduce explicitly divine intervention. You got a ease into that shit. To bring the guy up again and risk making it seem like I only know one nineties director/screenwriter, "From Dusk Till Dawn" deliberately turning from a stylized crime thriller to gory, outlandish creature feature is a tonal shift that worked. "A Life Less Ordinary" doesn't do that. It introduces the angelic conceit within its opening minutes before moving towards its more grounded elements, the otherworldly subplot weaving in and out of the story throughout.

That points towards what is probably the biggest problem with "A Life Less Ordinary." I called the film a neo-noir. It seems like a reasonable description, what with a story about kidnapping and ransom and young lovers on the run and sketchy hired guns. However, "A Life Less Ordinary" is actually a comedy. It is, in fact, an excessively wacky comedy. Characters have wildly specific personality quirks. Robert is always talking about his trashy novel idea, which everyone dismisses with the exact phrases. Celine is introduced playing William Tell with a revolver and an apple on her butler's head. (A butler who, it must be said, has a stereotypically droll British demeanor which is eventually subverted by his violent actions.) Timothy Olyphant shows up as a wide-eyed hitchhiker who does handstands. There's random appearances from an eccentric local played by Maury Chaykin, who speaks in an oddly specific manner, seems gripped by a degree of religious mania, and may or may not hear voices from his dog. There's a robot and a musical number and a game show themed dream sequence and a magic bullet that harmlessly passes through someone's heart.
 

Do you see what I'm saying here? Hodge's screenplay heaps quirks atop quirks. Heaven is depicted not as a divine afterlife full of clouds and harps, angels wearing wings and halos. Instead, it resembles something more akin to an office building under pressure from the superiors above – in this case, Yahweh himself – to make quotas. Gabriel is not a dignified archangel concerning himself with blowing the horn at the end of days. Instead, he's a frustrated, grumpy pencil pusher played by Dan Hedaya at his Dan Hedaya-iest. Oh, what a delightfully silly contrast between the fantastical and the mundane! And, ya know, that could've been funny. I actually love it when stories contrast the supernatural with otherwise normal daily drudgery. However, “A Life Less Ordinary” is trying so hard to be wild and crazy that all the ideas start to blend together. I actually think that musical number is one of the film's better moments. It stands alongside embarrassingly bad ones, like a fist fight with Stanley Tucci as that crazy dentist. I suppose, if the film's problem could be diagnosed in as few words as possible, it would be that it's trying too hard.

An overly ambitious screenplay that slingshots around multiple different zany ideas brings with it an uncertain tone. In addition to everything else, “A Life Less Ordinary” is also a self-aware example of the romantic comedy genre. From the minute Robert and Celine are thrown together by fate, we know they are going to fall in love. The movie knows that we know this too. It is the angels' mission to make sure these two get together. This acts as a self-reflective reasoning for the familiar but improbable cliches of the rom-com genre. The unlikely circumstances that bring these two together are the results of a heavenly conspiracy. The big romantic gesture Robert does to win Celine back after the end-of-the-second-act schism is a poem written by one of those same angels. This is basically the movie saying that it knows these cliches are hoary nonsense, the angels acting a bit like the writers of the screenplay trying to engineer these scenarios. However, doing a crappy old cliché while pointing out that it's a crappy old cliché isn't actually a subversion. It's the same old lazy writing with an extra hat of unearned pretensions atop it.

We all know that romantic comedies follow these silly and unlikely plot points. It comes with the territory, like the teenagers running off to have sex in a really dangerous place in the slasher movies. The best rom-coms overcome this shortcoming based on the strength and charm of their leads. The lack of suspense in knowing that the boy and the girl will end up together is made up for by the audience truly wanting to see them succeed. That might be the biggest area where “A Life Less Ordinary” fails. If we really liked Robert and Celine, it would make a lot of the other problems the film has more forgivable. Unfortunately, this is not the case. Celine remains antagonistic to Robert and everyone around her for most of the film. Robert comes across as a bullied and indecisive idiot. When the two fall into bed together, it does not feel like an natural event of the story but rather a contrivance. That's because it basically is, a manipulation from above, which is why a nudging acknowledgement of tropes is generally less desirable than an unironic embracing of them.

The lack of chemistry between Celine and Robert isn't only the fault of the script. Ewan McGregor stars as Robert and he does fine in the role. Even at this relative early stage of his career, McGregor was already a total professional. His skills are not enough to make a protagonist pushed around by the whims of the plot have more depth than he does. However, he's a reasonably entertaining lead. When paired with Cameron Diaz as Celine, something feels amiss. Diaz, an uneven talent on the best of days, hits mostly false notes here. She comes across as somewhat flat in her delivery throughout much of the movie. Her attempts to add some emotional sincerity or pathos to the material come across as forced or phony. This is most apparent in the morning after the characters sleep together for the first time. Diaz goes for sexy smoldering when a degree of vulnerability would've done a better job at making this pairing seem more natural.

Ultimately, what is a rom-com without a central couple that we can become invested in? Not that romantic and not that funny either. That makes the increasingly crazy decisions the script goes in seem all the sweatier. That same instinct is apparent in the supporting cast. “A Life Less Ordinary” actually has an impressive crop of names in its credits. Holly Hunter and Delroy Lindo are the angels on the couple's trail. Lindo's tough guy appearance is counteracted by a quiet, observational personality and the soul of a poet. Unfortunately, it comes across as yet another one of the movie's cloying bits than something more realized. Hunter, normally a reliable presence in any film, can do nothing but hopelessly ham her way through this material. That's actually the choice most of the secondary players made. Ian Holm as Celine's dad, Hedaya, Tucci and Tony Shaloub – whose role is especially inessential – grimace and flex their faces as cartoonish characters that never come across as anything more than annoying caricatures. 

Maybe it's only because so much of “A Life Less Ordinary” feels overburdened with its own desire to be wacky. However, the techniques Danny Boyle and his team utilized in his previous feature to electrifying effect come off as somehow both blander and more annoying here. Brian Tufano and Masahiro Hirakubo are back on cinematography and editing duties. The soundtrack remains hyper-specific and carefully chosen. However, the formula is off. A car chase sequence comes across as manic and overbearing, rather than energetic and captivating. The brief glimpses we get at that game show dream sequence are another excessive addition to a pot too full with ingredients already. By the end credits, where the story is resolved via stop-motion animated cartoon sequence, I was officially sick of “A Life Less Ordinary's” bullshit. The film represents the strengths of Boyle's previous two movies in a totally undisciplined and unbalanced form.
 

The first time I saw “A Life Less Ordinary,” I fucking hated it. I found its over-the-top sense of trying-too-hard whimsy unbearable. Based on how much I loved “Trainspotting” and “Shallow Grave,” perhaps I went in with overly high expectations. Either way, this was definitely not what I was expecting. Upon rewatch, I've upgraded my opinion from hatred to simply thinking the film is simply not good. Such a wild mismatch of tones and elements can still classify as only a fiasco, a wild miscalculation of all involved about what does and doesn't work together. However, that song and dance number actually isn't too bad. A quickly cut montage of Robert and Celine practicing tough-talking over the phone is pretty good. Buried, somewhere in this wild mishmash of ingredients, might have been a good film. This isn't it, however, and it would be a long time before Danny Boyle tried his hand at a romantic comedy again. [Grade: C-]

Director Report Card: Danny Boyle (1996)

 

4. Trainspotting

 

In at least one interview, Danny Boyle has described himself as a punk when he was a kid, which greatly informed the kind of stories he'd go on to tell. I have no idea how insular or wide-ranging the Scottish punk scene is but it produced another notable luminary. Irvine Welsh played in bands with names like The Pubic Lice and Stairway 13 before some run-ins with the law had him changing his way. He published his first novel in 1993, a non-linear collection of episodic incident in the lives of Scottish heroin addicts called “Trainspotting.” Andrew Macdonald read the book shortly after publication. Coming right off the success of “Shallow Grave,” he quickly lined it up as the next project for Boyle and John Hodge. Welsh and Boyle had complimentary sensibilities, it turned out. “Trainspotting” would become an even bigger critical and commercial success than the director's previous film.

In the Scottish city of Leith resides Mark Renton, a full-time drug addict and part-time petty thief who steals entirely to support his heroin habit. He calls a group of junkies and lunatics his only friends: The strangely suave but didactic Sick Boy, the child-like fool Spud, the violent and unpredictable Begbie, and the straight-laced Tommy. What follows is a series of attempts by Renton to kick his addiction, none of which prove especially successful. Renton's misadventures – which includes accidentally romancing a school girl – are soon interrupted by death, a run-in with the law, a nearly fatal overdoes, and a HIV scare. After finally getting clean, Renton ends up reunited with his old pack of pals to orchestrate a drug deal that could change all their lives.

If you're an obsessive film nerd in your thirties, you probably started getting into movies in the 2000s. That's right about when “Trainspotting” cult following burned its brightest. If you were inside a dorm room between the years 2000 and 2011, you probably saw the “Choose life!” poster on a wall or two. It's not too difficult to dictate why this motion picture was popular among the same crowd that sang the praises of “A Clockwork Orange,” the films of Quentin Tarantino, “Donnie Darko,” “The Boondock Saints,” and the like. Most of the characters in “Trainspotting” are well into their twenties and thirties but, narratively, the film still functions as a coming-of-age story. Renton is a self-obsessed man-child, held in a state of arrested development by his drug dependency. He quite literally lives with his parents for long stretches of the film. The title – left unexplained in the film – refers to the kind of niche hobby mostly practiced by unemployed men with a lot of free time on their hands. He begins the film dismissing the merits of maturity before coming around to embrace it at the end. Through the course of the story, he overcomes his addiction and grows up, which includes leaving behind his band of friends. That's a universal story and one that a lot of movie-watching twenty-somethings would relate to... 

But the so-called “Film Bro” crowd probably more responded to the litany of bad behavior the gang gets into. Upon release, some critics dismissed “Trainspotting” as another indie art house flick that was simply trying to be transgressive as possible. It's a somewhat understandable instinct. Obviously, this is a movie about drug addiction but it does not approach heroin only as a life-destroying disease. Instead of operating as a dour moral lesson on why you shouldn't do drugs, it also acknowledge that, ya know, doing heroin feels nice. That's why addicts start using in the first place, something Renton acknowledges in dialogue. That's far from the only streak of antisocial behavior in a movie spattered with human excrement, random acts of extreme violence, homemade pornography, accidentally becoming a statutory rapist, a dead baby, and shooting a dog in the balls with a B.B. gun. Dismissing “Trainspotting” as only a shock value movie is ridiculously short-sighted but I do think the movie is trying to provoke a reaction a number of times. 

There's no denying that “Trainspotting” is a grimy film. It does feature the nastiest bathroom ever put to celluloid. There are close-ups of needles going into arms and detailed depictions of how heroin is cooked and injected. The squalor of a junkie's den is on-screen multiple times. However, “Trainspotting” never wastes time moralizing about its topic. Addiction informs every minute of the film yet “Trainspotting” is not that concerned with the psychology of drug abuse, about the complicated economic and social factors that push someone to use junk. It's an extremely cruel statement to say that drug addicts use because they are selfish... Mark Renton is selfish though. “Trainspotting” is, in many ways, a movie about the main character repeatedly abusing himself and those around him. He steals a home-made sex tape of Tommy and his girlfriend, directly leading to the relationship falling apart. In his despair, when Tommy asks to try heroin, Renton provides it. He steals, he lets friends take the fall for him, he does pointedly bad things for little to no reason. The main thesis of the character is summed up during a moment where he clarifies that he cooked up some horse for a friend but only after making himself a needle full first. “Trainspotting” pointedly avoids making any grand statements about addiction or drugs. It certainly acknowledges that different people do drugs for many different reasons. The film doesn't say that drug abuse is selfish but it does suggest that drug abuse makes selfish people far more selfish. 

Alright, if Mark Renton is such an asshole, then why do we like him? There's a few reasons why but the primary one is that Irvin Walsh's prose – from which “Trainspotting: The Movie” draws a good deal of its memorable lines – is so invigorating. The “Choose Life” monologue became iconic for a reason. It's a poetic chunk of dialogue that flows almost like music, book-ending the film and reprised like a song's chorus. The thick Scottish brogues all throughout – sometimes they are so thick that it becomes almost impossible to understand what is being said – certainly go a long way towards making the dialogue sounds especially musical. The dialogue is stylized, with winding discussion about Sean Connery era James Bond movies or a drug deal being described as a restaurant order. It all has such a viable spark to it, an energy that propels the entire motion picture and is impossible for the audience to resist. 

That kind of cinematic dynamism is present in almost every aspect of the movie, largely because Danny Boyle and his team make sure of it. Much like his theatrical debut, the director makes sure “Trainspotting” hits the ground running. Rather literally, as the opening scene involves the protagonists running through the streets to the tune of Iggy Pop. An utterly hip soundtrack of classic pre-punk and electronic dance music propels nearly the entire film, giving it that youthful buzz that probably isn't dissimilar to a drug high of some sort. Masahiro Hirakubo's editing is fast-paced and kinetic, often scored to the musical choices. Brian Tufano's cinematography often approaches scenes from uncommon angles, further adding to the punk rock electricity that is evident all throughout. Part of why “Trainspotting” has attracted the cult following it has is exactly because it has such a powerful youthful drive from the opening minutes.

That kind of dynamite sense of movement was present in “Shallow Grave,” where it was often contrasted with distinctive architectural touches and perfectly composed frames. The director doubles down on this approach here. Individual shots in “Trainspotting” are works of art. Renton running below an apartment building painted in multiple bright shades or standing outside the Volcano nightclub with Diane show flashes of colors in the grey, industrial sprawl of the urban setting. This is contrasted, in an important sequence, with the width and flatness of the green Scottish countryside. That kind of vastness is apparent even within the tight interiors of the film, a kitten sitting alone on an apartment floor having the same sense of stillness as the other images in the movie. 

Being a movie about drug addicts that barely function within polite society also gives Boyle and his team permission to go on several elaborate flights of fancy. The first of which occurs early-on in “Trainspotting,” when Renton notoriously dives into the worst toilet in Scotland to retrieve some opium suppositories from an expansive ocean within. Up to that point, “Trainspotting” exists in mostly realistic setting up to that point, making this first imaginative burst totally unexpected. This opens the movie up to feature further unexpected bits of visual playfulness. Such as Renton's overdose being brilliantly portrayed by him actually sinking into the floor, the audience granted his perspective from within the ground multiple times. These are not merely examples of the filmmakers flexing their muscles to show off the quirky and cool visuals they can pull off. They also put us directly into the headspace of the characters, capturing feelings that can easily be expressed on the page on the big screen instead. 

These elaborate fantasy sequences are not only used to capture drug-fueled feelings of weightlessness. “Trainspotting” also features one of the more unnerving sequences I've seen outside of a horror movie before. Scored against a thumping electronic soundtrack, that goes a long way of elevating the sense of nervous unease, the audience suffers through Renton's detox fever dreams alongside him. A single bedroom becomes a prison, Renton screaming and raving against helpless messages from friends that can't reach him. This cuts back to a game show, previously defined as the ultimate example of banality (a comparison Boyle previously made in “Shallow Grave” too) that has become reflective of Renton's fears and anxieties. All the while, a dead infant – looking and moving like an awkward puppet and all the more uncanny because of it – crawls closer and closer. It's a moment that makes me squirm in the worst way, another example of how masterfully assembled “Trainspotting” is.

Sealing “Trainspotting's” status as a modern classic are a collection of unforgettable performances. Ewan McGregor makes this shit look easy as Renton, embodying the physical squalor the character lives in. Yet McGregor is uniquely gifted in making the rambling, musical inner monologue come across as especially engrossing and unforgettable. His charm goes a long way towards making us like a character that is otherwise despicable in a natural and sympathetic manner. Jonny Lee Miller makes meandering diatribes about the James Bond franchise surprisingly engrossing, displaying a kind of easy-going charm that still can't overcome the character's obvious unseemly side. Robert Carlyle is a terrifying, raging force of violence and intimidating that still seems like an actual human being that could exist. Ewen Bremner's unforgettable physicality as Spud defines the squirrely, off-beat character. If there's any flaw in “Trainspotting,” it's that the role of women are downplayed in a disappointing way. Kelly MacDonald as Diane has an immediate magnetism that demands your attention but the character never comes to life. 

But let's go back to that scene of Renton and the gang on the Scottish moors, gasping for breath when they are being prompted to bask in the natural beauty of it all. In this scene, Renton dispels any scene of pride in his own nationality. It proceeds the characters deciding to give up on going clean and getting back on heroin. I'm not Scottish, obviously, and have hopefully made it apparent by now that I'm woefully ignorant of what makes up the Scottish national identity. However, this moment certainly does seem significant. Is “Trainspotting” a contemplation on the Scottish state of being, some sort of commentary on life in the country during the drug-fueled eighties? Perhaps. Or maybe the overwhelming Scottishness of the cast, crew, and authorial voice simply makes it reflection of intrinsically Scottish ideas. Being something like the unloved middle child of the British Isles reflects in a national identity full of self-loathing and self-destruction. Or maybe it's like that everywhere. 
 

All of which is to say that “Trainspotting's” reputation as a film school favorite is largely entirely justified. It is still a powerful piece of filmmaking, propelled by a cinematic energy that is difficult denied. The script is sharp, darkly hilarious, endlessly clever, and a keen observation on human behavior. The performances are an incredible display of talent from all involved. The soundtrack is pretty damn great and the movie chugs along with an infectious drive that is equal parts grimy and intoxicating. I've never done heroin and, from what I've read, it's a high better described as euphoric and dream-like. “Trainspotting” isn't like that at all. It's a jolt, somehow still feeling fresh and exciting nearly thirty years after it was released. [Grade: A]

Director Report Card: Jake Schreier (2012)

Nobody likes to admit it but success in the entertainment industry does, indeed, seem to be about who you know more often than not. Take, for one example, the career of Jake Schreier. Schreier went to high school with Francis Starlite, the founder and namesake of indie electronic band Francis and the Lights. Schreier played keyboards in the band sometimes too, before directing a few music videos for the group. Starlite would end up collaborating with names like Frank Ocean, Chance the Rapper, and Kanye West. Otherwise known as some of the most successful and critically acclaimed musical artists of the last decade. That led to him directing music videos for those high-profile performers, probably leading to him making some extremely buzz-worthy commercials too. Schreier is also a co-founder of Waverly Films, a little filmmaking collective that included Jon Watts, among others. Watts has been extremely lucky himself, making the leap from micro-budget flicks to “Spider-Man” movies. I imagine being tight with Watts was a factor in how Jake got a job directing a big budget Marvel superhero flick, the most high-profile project of his career so far. Since I was going to review that one anyway, I figured I might as well look at Schreier's earlier features and give myself some added context. 

1. Robot and Frank

In 2000, the car company Honda unveiled a four foot tall robot named ASIMO, an obvious backcronym that supposedly stood for Advanced Step in Innovative Mobility. The smoothly designed, humanoid-shaped, bipedal automaton would quickly become well known for its ability to walk without any additional assistance from humans. (Assuming you don't count a digital map of the area being downloaded prior to the walk as “additional.”) ASIMO could walk up stairs, shake hands, turn door knobs, navigate obstacles, turn its head to listen to someone, and awkwardly dance. Humble as those accomplishments may seem, they were major technological advances at the time. Honda heavily promoted ASIMO too, the robot's visage – which brought an astronaut, a LEGO mini-fig, and an iPod to mind – becoming a common sight in commercials and various public spaces. ASIMO was a hit, people even loving the machine when it fell over. Though officially retired since 2022, ASIMO continues to cast a large shadow over the world of robotics and pop culture. 

For example: Around 2002, while both were attending the New York University Tisch School of the Arts, Jake Schreier and Christopher D. Ford would collaborate on a screenplay and short film about a robot that happened to look a lot like ASIMO. It was Ford's thesis project and we don't know what grade he got on it. However, after Schreier became established as an in-demand director of commercials, we do know that the two would revisit the idea. It would evolve into “Robot & Frank,” Schreier's feature debut. Released in 2012, the film would win a decent amount of critical buzz. Through it all, the titular android's design would change little, the resemblance to ASIMO lasting into the final product. It turns out an equally cute and suitably futuristic robot can take a movie way further than simply across a room or up some stairs. 

Many years ago, Frank Weld was a cat burglar of some renown. An expert lock picker and safe cracker, Frank would become notorious for his high-paying jobs. The authorities caught up with him eventually though, Weld spending several years in jail. Now he's an old man, left by his wife and kids in a rural home, his memory and awareness of his surroundings starting to slip. Despite the changes in his life, Frank still feels the desire to pull off another big score. His son James, no longer able to check on him every day, buys Frank a live-in robot assistant to monitor his health and keep him out of trouble. Frank greatly resents Robot's presence at first before realizing the machine's built-in moral standards have nothing to say about stealing. The two snatch a rare book from a local library without getting caught. Revitalized, Frank next plots to rob the rich donners of the library. However, the police are starting to catch wind of his actions... More pressingly, Frank's own mind is starting to betray him, he is feeling more pressure from his kid and – most upsetting of all – he's growing attached to the picky, micro-managing machine that is now his partner in crime. 

There is, perhaps, no cinematic formula more versatile and reliably entertaining than a pair of mismatched misfits starting out antagonistic towards one another before slowly warming up to each other, learning to see the others' good attributes, and being best friends by the end. Whether they are a by-the-book veteran and a wild card renegade cop or an obsessive compulsive neat freak and a slacker, it's a narrative that has been making audiences chuckle roughly since human performances began. “Robot & Frank” does not resist these clichés in anyway. Frank is a crotchety old man, more than a bit of a smart-ass, and extremely set-in-his-ways. Robot is, well, a robot. He always speaks calmly, always moves slowly and considerately, and plans out everything he does with a specific goal in mind. Yet the two are more alike than they initially appear, Robot slowly showing a sly side of his own as Frank learns to appreciate the organization the machine brings into his life. By the end, the movie had successfully gotten me in invested in these two's relationship and had me nodding along or getting weepy eyed at all the right times. Sometimes, clichés aren't a bad thing, especially when they work in service of invoking a particular feeling in the viewer.

“Robot & Frank” tugs extra hard at the heart strings because the human half of its titular duo is an old man starting to lose his mind. Like most people in this situation, Frank doesn't want to acknowledge that there's something wrong. He insists that everything is normal, that his memory is fine, and his perception of reality has never been better. His kids and friends notice the truth, that his sense of time and place slips back and forth without warning, that he lives half-way in the present and half in his scattered memories of the past. For Frank, this is more than merely a loss of his ability to function and remember where he is. It's a loss of identity. He can't do the things he used to, the activities he wants to do. He's desperately holding onto the remains of a life that is slipping away, sometimes more aware than others that there's no going back now. He's long pass the point of no return and his brain is only going to get foggier from here. It's a very human tragedy, that we've seen play out many in reality many times before, and “Robot & Frank” approaches it in a touching, not overly sentimental way. 

For some of us, this hits a lot closer than others. Let me get a little personal here, guys. My mom had COVID in December of 2021. We are still only learning the long-term physiological effects that disease has on the brain but I can tell you that it can seriously effects the cognitive abilities of someone in their sixties. In the years since, I have seen my mom's memory slowly start to slip. She is much more repetitive now than she use to be, much more fixated on past events, and far less likely to remember a conversation we had five minutes earlier. Right now, she can still do ninety-percent of the things she's always done but it's all a grave omen of what is to come. Watching someone you love, the person who has been there your whole life, start to slip ever so slowly into senility is extremely difficult. It's also truly frustrating. Because I love my mom but she's stubborn and refuses to face what is blatantly obvious to everyone else. I want to do what's best for her but, at the same time, find my tolerance for her inability to recognize change difficult to handle at times. 

I bring this up because it's a feeling that “Robot & Frank” captures extremely well. Frank lives on his own and insists everything is fine, despite him constantly talking about going to a restaurant that has been closed for years and sometimes thinking his adult son is still in college. He pushes back on every suggestion they make. How do you help somebody who refuses to take your advice? This is best displayed when Frank's daughter attempt to live with him, struggling with the daily temper tantrums and refusals to get along. Such as grumpy spells about dinner or potato chips. It's all so real that I can only assume that screenwriter Christopher Ford went through some very similar events in real life. There's a delicate balance, of caring for someone you love deeply, respecting their boundaries, not getting frustrated with their mood swings, and not becoming overwhelmed with sadness at what you're seeing.

“Robot & Frank” suggests the best way to handle this transformation is absolute patience. Peter Sarsgaard voices Robot with a suitably zen like cadence, always calm and receptive. At the same time, the machine's nearly monotone vocal patterns can disguise a surprising sarcasm or even a manipulative side. He subtly guilts Frank into going along with his new schedule, making him feel bad about possibly causing the robot's purpose to go to waste. He pushes the old man out of the house and helps him, with a quiet and almost unintentional sense of humor. The natural dryness of the robotic delivery, his perpetually soft tone creating a dryness and almost condescending effect that is great for comedy. This is best displayed when Robot has to make idle chitchat with an even less advanced model of machine or his dead-pan reaction to the obviously illegal things Frank suggests. Sarsgaard is so good in the part that you might honestly be tricked into thinking Robot is played by a text-to-voice program like Siri, while also bringing a surprising amount of humanity to this distinctly inhuman co-lead. 

As much as “Robot & Frank” plays the inhuman half of its duo for soft laughs, the film is also not subtle about what the machine represents to Frank. The droid may use its non-threatening appearance and quietly sardonic voice to endear itself to the man. At the same time, Robot never hides what he actually is. He's a machine, with no soul or purpose beyond what he's been programmed to do. As the criminal subplot of “Robot & Frank” moves to the forefront, it's repeatedly brought up that Robot's digital memory could be used as evidence against Frank. That deleting his database absolutely is what needs to be done to protect the old man. This is clearly an obvious metaphor for Frank's own ailing memory and refusal to admit that he's in the early stages of dementia. The emotional climax of “Robot & Frank” is the man accepting that his life is going to change, that the person he was is slipping away forever, but that he is still worthy of love. The moment comes in the form of an embrace. It's better done than it sounds and I'm not going to lie when I say it got me a little misty-eyed. “Robot & Frank” manages to weave this metaphorical device into its narrative in a way that is natural and touching. 

Despite how heavy its topics can get and how whimsically light-hearted it sense of humor can be, "Robot & Frank" is neither an overly sentimental sap-fest nor a depressing slog. In fact, the movie is surprisingly suspenseful at times. When Frank gets back into the robbery business, and Robot tags along with him, it leads to a nicely tense and drawn out safe cracking sequence. In the second half, a suitably off-putting and patronizing Jeremy Strong emerges as the story's antagonist, the rich donor that lives near Frank's home. The script makes you wonder how aware Strong is of Frank's scheme to rob him. The same can be said of Jeremy Sisto, fantastically utilized in a small role as an enthusiastic police detective on the duo's trail. Because you are invested in Frank and Robot's journey, you care about if they can pull this off. Our hero being both an old man losing his memory and a wily schemer allows the script to pull off a nice balancing act, where Frank can be both a doddering old man people underestimate and also a tricky professional on his latest mission. Robot has a similar back-and-forth, the audience nicely kept in suspense over whether the machine's logical nature will help or hinder the heist.

It's funny that the flesh-and-blood title character would so happen to be played by a veteran star of stage and screen also named Frank. That's not the only thing that makes Frank Langella the ideal pick for this role. He has the age and gravitas necessary to pull off the part of an old man nearing the end of his life, with a world of regrets behind him and an uncertain future ahead. At the same time, Langella has always had a sneaky energy to him, a cocksure smile and mischievous glint in his eye that works great for an aging cat burglar. His chemistry with Robot is the heart and soul of the movie. Sarsgaard's vocals are sure and effecting while diminutive dancer Rachael Ma, inside the convincing suit, is properly stiff and mechanical while also suggesting an odd pathos with a slump of a robotic shoulder or a slight turn of the reflective, helmeted head. 

James Marsden appears as Frank's fed-up but understanding son utilizes the same avuncular sense of security and comedic exasperation that would be perfected in, of all things, the "Sonic the Hedgehog" movies. Liv Tyler appears as his crunchy daughter and I've always find Tyler to be a somewhat flat affected performer. This is true here as well, though that's suited to a slightly clueless but sweetly well intentioned character. Susan Sarandon is also adorable as the librarian Frank quietly romances throughout – a subplot that also suggests the push and pull between the old ways and dehumanizing tech – even if it leads to a last minute reveal that is a bit too obvious and maudlin for my taste. 

"Robot & Frank" is emotionally effective drama, cute comedy, a well organized crime caper but also surprisingly observant science fiction. All we know about the movie's setting is that it is the "near future." We see signs of a world that is changing, of technology a step or two removed from our own. In the decade since the film's release, the idea of long-distance video calls – that are often interrupted by bad weather and weird network hiccups – has already gone from sci-fi tech to everyday inconvenience. We see Frank's daily walks interrupted by weird little electric cars, something else that is becoming more common. The robots are, obviously, the most far out element. That they have such a commercial, smooth design and soothing, slightly patronizing voice already suggests the iPhone aesthetic that has taken over. Robot is more sophisticated than any Roomba that exists now but still feels well within the realm of possibility. The movie smartly creates a future world that seems very close to our own, subtly hinting at how technology has changed our everyday lives without losing sight of its emotional, human heart. Such as in the nodded-at-detail that robot workers are often protested against, for taking work away from flesh and blood people and seeming to diminish our overall humanity. Which also reflects the debate over AI tech that the globe is currently embroiled in. It goes to show that good sci-fi, like always, is usually nothing more than a smart exaggeration of the world that we are already living in.

A during-the-credits montage of real world robot footage, including a lot of the Japanese "soft" robot tech that is most indicative of the film's setting, further connects to this idea. As cute as that is, my favorite element of the ending is how nothing but a look from Langella suggests that the person Frank was will continue to survive, even if his body and mind is starting to fail him. Perhaps that is the central thesis of "Robot & Frank." That the indelible parts of our souls that make us human will always manage to find a way to co-exist alongside growing technology. Perhaps that tech, seemingly inhuman looking at first, can even aid it. The result is a film that made me chuckle, touched my heart, and also hints at bigger themes and ideas. It's a really good first film for Schreier, not ground breaking but an often charming and extremely well made feature. [Grade: A-]

RECENT WATCHES: Saw II (2005)

The Friday before Halloween of 2004, "Saw" was released into 2,315 theaters. Over the next three days, the film made 18 times its production budget. That Monday morning, Lions Gates greenlit "Saw II." Production was to begin immediately. James Wan and Leigh Whannell were hard at work on "Dead Silence" for Universal, meaning a different team had to be assembled for the follow-up to their breakout hit. At the same time, a guy named Darren Lynn Bousman was looking to make his professional directorial debut with his gritty horror script, "The Desperate." Investors kept telling him that it was too violent and too similar to "Saw." When cinematographer David A. Armstrong got a look at the script, however, he realized both of these attributes could be beneficial. Very quickly, Bousman was meeting Lion Gates producers and "The Desperate" became "Saw II."  Whannell rewrote it extensively – to the point that he received the sole writing credit – and filming began by April. Shooting wrapped by May and the finished sequel was delivered on September 9th, less than fifty days before the movie was set to be released. That's an impressive turn-around and it paid off, "Saw II" becoming the highest grossing opening weekend for Lions Gate at the time. 

That's all business though. What of the quality of the film itself? While investigating the aftermath of the Jigsaw Killer's latest trap, Detective Kerry discovers a taunting message to Detective Eric Matthews. They trace the lock from the crime scene to a factory, the headquarters of Jigsaw: Real name John Kramer, a terminal cancer patient seeking to teach people the value of life by brutally killing them. Monitors reveal Kramer's latest experiment. Eight people awaken in a house outfitted with booby traps and vicious challenges. Among them is Amanda, the survivor of Jigsaw's Reverse Bear Trap device, and Daniel, Officer Matthews' son. A neurotoxin is being pumped into the house and everyone within will have to play Jigsaw's twisted game if they hope to survive. Matthews attempts to get answers out of Kramer and find his son, increasingly revealing his own criminality. 

I compared the look of “Saw” to a heavy metal music video. Darren Lynn Bousman has directed videos for some growly bands with impressive spiky hair. Unsurprisingly, “Saw II” resembles a rock video more than the first. The opening trap has the camera spasmodically twirling around the victim as he freaks out about digging a key out of his eye. More or less anytime one of Jigsaw's traps take center stage, there's going to be lots of flashy edits and split second shots of people screaming and panicking. The sequel doubles down on the sickly greens and washed-out lighting present in the first film. As an insufferably pretentious teenager, I found this visual style embarrassingly lame, the worst kind of mad-at-your-stepdad manufactured edginess. I still think that's what it is but, as a slightly less pretentious adult, I can now see the camp value in this approach. “Saw II' is trying so hard to be extreme and in-your-face, you guys. It's kind of cute, honestly. 

“Saw II” seemingly takes itself very seriously, despite how utterly ridiculous a lot of it actually is. That almost charming level of doofiness is also present in the cast of characters. Detective Matthews, played by a lesser Wahlberg, is an obviously corrupt cop. He yells and swears constantly, never finding a situation he can't bluster his way out of. The prisoners in Jigsaw's trap house are similarly one-note. Xavier is a brawny and overbearingly asshole-ish drug dealer, played with all the subtly you would expect of a performer named “Franky G.” The rest of the characters range from a random teenage girl, an ex-con that can operate under stress, a less defined ex-con, and a woman who seems to be a former sex worker. All of these players are easily sorted into either generic “nice” people or obnoxious bullies. Not unlike the slasher films the sequel is clearly emulating, “Saw II” fills its story with paper thin stereotypes that exist to fall victim to elaborate acts of violence. 

During an interview with Fangoria, late producer Greg Hoffman said that they listened to fans of the first “Saw,” who didn't merely want to see the aftermath of Jigsaw's deadly games. They wanted to see the mayhem play out on-camera. Indeed, the sequel packs in the gore the original mostly hinted at. A bullet through a peep hole, a pit full of dirty hypodermic needles, metal shards digging into wrists, and someone slicing the skin off their own neck are some of the grisly highlights. Watching such obviously caricatured characters suffer through these torments truly cuts – excuse the pun – to the heart of the appeal of gory horror. Jigsaw always provides a moral assurance, twisted though they may be, that such “punishments” are somehow justified. That these are already 'bad” people, that they deserve such convoluted executions. They do it to themselves, right? “Saw II” gives us that sicko shit, guilt-free grand guignol. It's a four million dollar geek show. We are here to watch the metaphorical chickens get their heads bitten off in the sickest ways Hollywood's best special effects artists can think of. 

You can debate the value of motion pictures such as these. Maybe the cultural critics are right to some degrees, that horror fans are sadistic freaks without empathy who only want to see people torn apart. That movies like this appease our basest desires for bloodshed. However, that “Saw II” is so invested in its own self-seriousness and populated with such cartoonishly broad assholes does make it hard to be offended. Truthfully, any interior logic to “Saw II” falls apart with a moment's scrutiny. One of the people in the house is a former accomplice of Jigsaw's who helped him assemble his traps. This draws attention to the fact that John Kramer, the inventor behind these mechanically dense implements of torture, is a frail man, eaten up with cancer. How exactly does he pull off any of this shit? Much like its predecessor, “Saw II” misdirects the audience in service of a twist ending. It's a good twist too, that plays with the perspective of the medium in a fun way. Whether it makes any logical sense is a question best not interrogated, which applies to the entire movie. 

Jason Voorhees and Freddy Krueger have always been antiheroes of sorts. They are the star attractions fans go to see, not the interchangeable victims. Altering the “monster” from a cackling lunatic or a brutish physical force to someone who claims to have some philosophy, some moral high ground to those he torments, is probably the end result of this trend. There's no doubt that John Kramer is the most likable character in “Saw II.” Tobin Bell, a working actor with twenty-five years of experience by the time he got this part, has a gravelly gravitas. When he chuckles in evil victory, it's because he's outsmarted those that seek to overturn his masterpiece of twisted justice. Watching him get one over on a figure as utterly loathable as Detective Matthews makes us like him more. We get more insight into Jigsaw's background here, which does little to bring any coherence to his schemes. Watching Bell outclass every other actor in the film is still entertaining though.

In fact, “Saw II” is very entertaining. It rolls along at a quicker pace than the original, less burdened with flashbacks and exposition. Instead, it moves smoothly from violent set-piece to the next, determined to give us what we've paid for. It is very dumb, which is supported by its twitchy editing and cliché visuals. However, there is something to be said to watching dumb, evil people fall victim to their own stupidity. Morally dubious though it may be, “Saw II” is probably a smoother experience than the original, happily scratching the lizard part of the brain with breathless speed. Pretty good for the definition of a quickie sequel thrown together in less than a year. [7/10]

Director Report Card: James Wan (2004)

Of the horror filmmakers to achieve critical praise and mainstream hits during the early 2000s – a group some might call the Splat Pack – James Wan is undoubtedly the most successful. He's launched three separate, long-running horror series, at least one of which defined the genre for a while. He's directed two billion dollar grossing movies, making him the 17th highest grossing director of all time by current calculations. Honestly, if there's any one writer/director who can be said to have shaped the genre in a big way over the last twenty years, it's probably this guy. A question must be asked, however: Are Wan's movies actually any good? I shall attempt to provide my answer as I watch my through all of his features, as well as the many sequels and spin-offs associated with the work he's done. 

1. Saw

The child of Malaysian-Chinese immigrants, James Wan grew up in Perth, Australia. He would attend the Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology, majoring in Arts in Media. As part of a 1998 student project, Wan co-directed a 72-minute long horror movie called “Stygian.” The film has never been commercially released. From what little has been written about it, you get the impression that the filmmakers are embarrassed by their novice effort. However, at least one positive thing came out of “Stygian.” One of the actors in the movie, playing the role of “Clown / Punk Kid,” was Leigh Whannell. The two hit it off and began writing a script for a feature, inspired by their own nightmares. Wan filmed one scene from the script as a ten minute short, entitled “Saw.” It managed to attract enough attention from investors to put together a million dollar budget for a feature length version. Lion Gates Films picked the movie up, originally intending it for a straight-to-video release before deciding to put it in theaters, on the Friday before Halloween of 2004. Wan and Whannell's “Saw” became a pop culture phenomenon. The movie would spawn multiple sequels, launch several spin-offs, and popularize an entire subgenre. “Saw” and all its imitators have prompted much debate and controversy along the way. 22 years after these humble roots, how does the original “Saw” hold up today? 

A man named Adam awakens in a bathtub, a small light on a string emerging from his mouth. He realizes he's in a dingy public bathroom, his ankle chained to the wall. He's not alone. Dr. Lawrence Gordon, a surgeon he does not know, is similarly bound to the opposing wall. A corpse lies on the floor between them, a pistol in its hands. The duo discover two hand saws and a pair of audio cassette. They relay a message, that Gordon must kill Adam if he hopes to see his wife and daughter again. Similarly, Adam can only escape if he murders the other man. They both must saw through their feet for either objective to be fulfilled. Gordon quickly realize they are caught up in the latest “game” of the Jigsaw Killer: A deranged inventor who captures people – deemed guilty of some sin by him, as explained via the puppet he uses as an avatar – and forces them to escape deadly, elaborate contraptions or traps he's created. The police determine that Jigsaw always watches his victims. As Gordon and Adam struggle to escape the fatal scenario, the obsessed Detective Tapp is hot on the killer's trail.

You can't talk about "Saw" without discussing its impact on the horror genre. The film's surprise success popularized what became known by the deeply unfortunate moniker of "torture porn," gory horror films focused on elongated scenes of sadism and bodily mutilation. The fad generated a minor moral panic, marking the last time in my life I can recall horror movies actually being deemed "dangerous" by the press. You can debate the merits and negatives of this trend all you want. You can also argue about whether the first "Saw" truly qualifies as one of these movies. Most of its intense gore happens off-screen and there truly aren't any moments of physical torture. However, a more interesting question is why this hyper-grim style of horror was so popular for a brief time. "Saw" was made by two Australians, so it's hard to say how much of this was intentional. However, "Saw" captured the anxieties of post-9/11 America. The nebulous threat of "terrorism" could strike anywhere, at any time. In "Saw," the victims are always abducted from mundane locations like a parking garage or their own home. They are thrust into a sadistic scenario by a villain with motivations that they can't totally grasp, beyond knowing this is somehow their own fault. Much the same way the average American was told the terrorists – that could strike anywhere, at any time – hated us "for our freedom," despite the hard-to-repress creeping feeling that America's foreign policy gave birth to the monster that was vexing it. Meanwhile, the hyper grim visuals, of people awakening in dilapidated bathrooms or basement torture chambers, reflected the videos of journalists being beheaded distributed over the internet or briefly glimpsed on news programs. 

"Saw" also recalled images of prisoners-of-war – or illegally detained suspects – suffering through "enhanced interrogation techniques" in prisons over seas or near our own coasts. The paranoia of the post-9/11 world wasn't based only in fears of a decentralized enemy striking in public places. It was a fear of our own government, increasingly compromising our rights to personal privacy in the name of our own "protection." These Patriot Act anxieties are present in "Saw" through the villain being a constant voyeur. Jigsaw pointedly watches his victims struggle, as well as observing them for some time before they are abducted. Upon realizing they are being recorded, Adam compares their situation to a "sick reality show." This was before social media and cellphone cameras, when we truly were all being watched at all hours. However, the feeling that the surveillance state had arrived – and that this violation of privacy was already being commodified – was well in the air in 2004. Modern day "Saw" knock-offs has tortured victims being recorded, either broadcast over the Deep Web or sold as snuff films to depraved collectors. Wan and Whannall couldn't have predicted these advances in technology at the time but "Saw" preceded them anyway. It was a new millennium and our most private, vulnerable moments were no longer our own, watched by government spies or techno-perverts. 

Funnily enough, I'm doubtful Wan and Whannall were thinking about these ideas much at all when conceiving "Saw." Instead, they simply hoped to cook up the cheapest, easiest premise for a thriller that their meager budget could afford: Two guys in a room. In a lot of ways, "Saw" is a triumph of practicality and low budget creativity. Probably inspired by "Cube" – an often unspoken but obvious influence on "Saw" – the movie manages to generate some decent suspense and a compelling mystery from this extremely limited premise. The audience, at first, have exactly as much information about what's happening as Adam and Dr. Gordon. Jigsaw leaving clues and messages for his victims makes the film a game to be played and solved. (As well as the predecessor to the late 2010s popularity of "escape rooms.") The film doesn't wait long to cheat, going outside the four walls of its setting via flashbacks and other scene. A version focused solely on the guys chained up in the bathroom probably would've been tighter, smarter, shorter, more intense, and far less commercial. 

The gorier, more brutal sequels and imitators that followed in "Saw's" wake were the work of horror nerds following the intensity of fucked-up Asian movies. Wan and Whannall's influences were much more humble. These guys wanted to be the next David Fincher, drawing from the gritty, grim mood and visuals of "Seven." Much like that film, "Saw" freely exaggerates the clichés of the cop vs. killer thriller popularized by "The Silence of the Lambs." If Hannibal Lecter was the most brilliant and twisted killer the early nineties could concoct, and John Doe was his more elaborate and meticulous disciple, then Jigsaw is the apotheosis of the serial killer as a genius with a convoluted modus operandi. He's clearly gifted as an inventor and engineer but he uses that ability to fashion complex contraptions of death and agony, all in service of making some sort of sick point. Meanwhile, this first film includes a detective element. Danny Glover plays Tapp, the cop so fixated on hunting down the killer that he's gone far beyond the moral and reasonable boundaries in his pursuit. You can tell Tapp is a little obsessed because he's got an apartment with walls pasted with newspaper clippings and clues. He's given a detailed backstory, seeking out Jigsaw to avenge a dead partner. It's all stuff we've seen many times before in past films, added to pad out a script that otherwise would have been composed entirely of two guys in a room. 

"Saw's" obvious status as a regurgitation of past tropes is most evident in how the movie looks. Whenever the film peeks into any of Jigsaw's torture chambers, they are bathed in a sickly green color and grimy browns or blacks. Everything is lit in a manner to invoke a feeling of discomfort and nastiness. Especially during the infamous reverse bear trap sequence – the basis for the short film before this – this seasick coloration is paired with a jittery editing style, invoking lots of frantic montages of people panicking while the camera jerks around wildly. If you remember the nineties and early 2000s, you'll remember this visual style from roughly a hundred industrial and nu-metal music videos. It's an immediately recognizable look, that is meant to signal to the audience that you're watching something “twisted,” “sick,” or edgy. Cinematographer David A. Armstrong and editor Kevin Greutert commit fully to this approach, keeping an aesthetic that probably should've died out in 2000 alive for another decade or so. 

This points towards something else that you inevitably notice about “Saw,” here in the future year of 2025: This movie is kind of goofy, isn't it? Not only because the visual style is trying so hard to be freaky and extreme that it immediately becomes antiquated, though that is a big factor why. Not simply because the movie assigns things like barb wire, ventriloquist dummies, and hooded executioners – clichés even at the time – an unearned degree of seriousness, though this too makes the film play more like camp than it did in 2004. Largely, the performances strike me as rather over-the-top. Leigh Whannall gets all the silliest dialogue, his delivery proving that he was probably better suited to being behind a keyboard than in-front of a camera. Cary Elwes grotesquely overacts as Dr. Lawrence, most prominently in the final act, as things get more desperate. Danny Glover also spends most of his screen time staring wide-eyed and sweaty-skinned, playing the character as obsessed and hammering that one note as hard as he can. 

Once you notice the gulf between the seriousness “Saw” is clearly striving for and the evident camp in its execution, it becomes difficult not to notice a lot of the silly things about this grisly motion picture. Namely, the Jigsaw Killer's attempts to justify his grotesque actions. Supposedly inspired by a moment in Whannell's life when he feared having a brain tumor, the franchise's villain puts people through Hell – almost always killing them in the process – out of some twisted desire to punish those who have “wasted” their lives. Among his victims we see are a drug addict and a man who attempted suicide despite seemingly having no problems in his life. Which, ya know, does not show an especially nuanced understanding of depression or addiction. Since the Jigsaw Killer is a sadistic maniac, I don't think we're meant to take his justifications seriously. At the same time, the film obviously considers some of these ideas novel, if not “deep.” When it is so blatantly a threadbare justification for the elaborate traps the script cooks up. Jigsaw could have merely been a psycho and “Saw's” premise probably would have made more sense if he was. However, a desire to mark him as another great cinematic madman or to grapple with some sort of real world topics saddled the budding franchise with the goofiest of backgrounds. 

Credit where it is due: As dumb-ass stupid as lots of “Saw's” story is, Whannall's script does do many things well. Aside from the catchiness of the “two guys in a room” premise, the story does successfully play a long game of misdirection with the audience. Throughout the film, bug-eyed and fittingly sketchy looking character actor Michael Emerson is seemingly presented as our villain. This is a red herring and the actual culprit is a lot closer to his prisoners than they realize. Watching the film now, when we are all well-aware of the Jigsaw Killer's identity, makes that twist less potent. Back in 2004 though, watching the body rise from the bathroom floor, as Charlie Clouser's immediately iconic theme music kicks in, and all the clues the film laid down throughout slid into place... Yeah, that was pretty cool. It's still a decent moment today.

Scenes like that suggest, despite the many ways in which “Saw” tries too hard or overestimates its own seriousness, there is some genuine cleverness on-display here as well. Wan and Armstrong do engineer some striking visuals once or twice. A shot of Glover and his partner stepping up through a staircase, as smoke billows around their ankles, is cool. The notorious Reverse Trap Mask is a genuinely nightmarish idea. Once you divorce the premise from any real world logic, it is indeed a pretty fucked-up way to kill someone that nobody would want to be stuck in. The huge iron lips and rusty rivets of the device are probably one of the few times the film's ultra-grungy visual approach actually works the way the film's creators clearly intended. 

That elaborate gizmo is one of several images from the first “Saw” that went on to become very famous. Maybe that's another reason why Wan's film comes off as sillier now than it did in 2004. In retrospect, “Saw” seems very aware of its own franchise potential. Calling its villain "The Jigsaw Killer" – justified by his unimportant calling card of taking a jigsaw puzzle piece shaped bit of skin from his victims – is the kind of catchy nickname people will remember. The visual of Billy the Puppet – his little suit and tricycle, the spiral patterns on his cheeks, the contrast between his ridiculously gravelly voice and cartoonish appearance – seems like an obvious attempt to reverse engineer a horror movie image as iconic as Jason's hockey mask or Freddy Krueger's glove. If merchandisers and fans didn't immediately latch onto that, “Saw” also includes a literal mask that could be turned into a Halloween costume. That would be yet another obvious steal from the Nine Inch Nails' “Closer” video, in a pig head with greasy long hair and an executioner's robe. I wouldn't assume that Wan and Whannall had any idea that such a long running, profitable series would emerge from their indie film. At the same time, every horror nerd dreams about creating their own Michael Myers or Chucky, a character that gets carved onto the Mount Rushmore of horror fan favorites. The possibility probably wasn't too far from their minds then.

”Saw's” eventual impact on the direction horror took in the next decade cemented its standing in genre history. Trying to divorce the movie from that, it is equally a very silly, sometimes quite dumb, often trying too hard motion picture that also shows a lot of promise and creativity. Perhaps we would've been better off if this had stayed as the under-the-radar indie hit that Lion Gates originally envisioned. Wan and Whannell's careers probably wouldn't have taken off like they did in that scenario. Do I want to live in a world where Billy the Puppet isn't the bridge between Ghostface and Art the Clown? I guess not. “Saw” may be at its dumbest when attempting to be more than a mere trashy horror flick but that doesn't mean it can't be fun in its own twisted way too. [Grade: B-]