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.

Ghost World (2001)

★★★★
Enid (Thora Birch) sits in the front row at her high school graduation. Decked out in her cap and gown, she watches as a classmate in a wheelchair and back brace gives a speech describing high school as the training wheels for the bicycle of real life. A trio of rappers in full '90s apparel (still in style in 2001) runs out on stage to entertain the class and audience. Enid is not amused. Her friend Rebecca (Scarlett Johansson) is equally unimpressed. After the ceremony, the two run out of the auditorium and stomp on their caps. That's what they think of their high school years. What do characters like this do afterwards? This is the story of Enid and Rebecca and that phase of their life when the future is uncertain. Based on the comic book by Daniel Clowes and directed by Terry Zwigoff, Ghost World is a funny and touching story taking place during that uncertain time when someone is old enough to start thinking about the future but too young to commit to anything.

Lionheart (1991)

★★½
Growing up, I was a big fan of Jean-Claude Van Damme. He came across as a ripped version of Chuck Norris with the added ability to perform gravity-defying moves along with his signature splits. At the risk of running afoul of Norris, whose accomplishments have been documented in a convenient and inexhaustible list of facts, I would go so far as to declare Van Damme's movies as superior in terms of their variety. Norris always had the no-nonsense approach, while fellow European Arnold Schwarzenegger brought his muscular frame to his action movies. Van Damme was the best of both worlds. He was tough, but could soften up when the situation arose. He also had a magnificent physique. His punches and kicks looked like there was plenty of raw power behind them. His drug habit and waning audience interest in martial arts movies sent his career into the direct-to-video market. For a time, though, his movies were a yearly expectation in theaters, and Lionheart was one of his most polished movies.

The Doom Generation (1995)

★★
The Doom Generation is the kind of movie that works best (if it can be argued that it works at all) when watched in the middle of the night. That was when I first saw it. I got off the late shift one night in 1997 and turned on H.B.O., and there it was. I watched it again recently late at night prior to writing these words. The lack of ambient noise heightens the movie's nuances. Most of the scenes take place in the eerie dark landscape of Los Angeles. The city's most recognizable spots are nowhere to be seen. The characters are the worst that Generation X has to offer. They slither out when everyone else has retired for the evening. They barely go out during the day. When they do, director Gregg Araki is eager for the sun to go down again. His trio of losers occupies a society seemingly on the edge of disaster, like the pseudo-civilization seen in Mad Max before Max's journey into the wasteland. Araki, a baby boomer, apparently had little confidence that Gen X could succeed. As the middle entry of his Teen Apocalypse Trilogy, The Doom Generation is the worst-case scenario for a demographic raised on sugar and empty calories and with a reputation for being called slacker and disaffected. His kids are violent, overly sexualized, contemptible and unintelligent.