Searching (2018)

★★★
Searching (2018) is a thriller that takes place entirely on a computer monitor. It is not the first of its kind—Unfriended came out in 2014, and that wasn't even the first—but it is a superior example of a genre on the rise. The potential for storytelling in the so-called screenlife format has yet to be fully tapped, but these early examples prove that the sky's the limit, or in this case, the internet's the limit. Here is a film that ingeniously uses websites, software, applications and cameras to tell the tale. Not only that, but the movie even conveys emotion through mouse clicks and keyboard entry actions. When a character hesitates, this act manifests not through facial gestures but through a cursor and the backspace key. Watching this movie was a thrill.

Irreversible (2003)

★★★
Director Gaspar Noé did not endear himself to me with his earlier effort I Stand Alone, which featured a character so hateful that he surpassed analysis. He was simply a man who hated the world and expressed it with a never-ending narration filled with obscenities and insults. His follow-up Irréversible is more focused. It has something to say about the characters in the story. It has a unique narrative structure that reveals how rage can overcome even the most peaceful of men. The movie opens with the end credits scrolling in reverse (downward). The credits then tilt as if reacting to what the next hour will bring. They eventually spiral out of control. Noé's name appears last, and there is a pause. He really wants you to know who made this. After a brief visit with I Stand Alone's butcher (very likely), played once again by Philippe Nahon, we get plunged into a chaotic scene in which a desperate and infuriated Marcus (Vincent Cassel) goes on a rampage in a homosexual B.D.S.M. club looking for La Tenia for reasons to be made clear later.