Good Time

Good Time (2017)

88% on Rotten Tomatoes (out of 143 reviews)

Runtime: 101 minutes

Directed by: Benny & Josh Safdie

Starring: Robert Pattison, Benny Safdie, Taliah Webster, Jennifer Jason Leigh, Barkhad Abdi

From: A24

This film is beloved on Letterboxd, and after viewing it yesterday in a unique location, I can see why. I wax poetic about it below: 

It is quite the feat seeing THIS film in the retirement community of The Villages, Florida at a movie theatre called Barnstormer, where the front facade looks like a barn and the ranch/farm theme extends to the lobby and the rest of the building. I never thought of visiting or even looking at the listings to the three different theatres that are in The Villages until early this year, when I realized they sometimes get independent movies that don't come closer to Orlando or in this case, still had regular showings of this so it fit yesterday's schedule better than going somewhere and seeing this somewhere where I wouldn't even start driving home until after midnight... although this is something perfect to see late at night. As I expected, it was a private screening as I was the only one there. The movie is not for everyone (especially when it comes to mainstream audiences) so not a shock that a 5:10 screening on a Tuesday in an area full of retired people would have been empty if not for me.

I have never seen Heaven Knows What so I had no idea what the aesthetic would be; heck, I never saw a trailer for this and I was happy to go into this very cold, and I am glad nothing got spoiled for me beforehand. The only plot points known to me was that Robert Pattison has a mentally handicapped brother and he has a very long night, and Barkhad Abdi of Captain Phillips is involved, which is definitely true. I have now seen the trailer on YouTube so I know that Jennifer Jason Leigh having a small role was brought up. I did not even know that, so it was a surprise seeing her name in the opening credits.

Pattison's character (Connie) has little in the way of redeeming qualities-except for the love of his brother-so not wanting to follow around someone like that... I get it if someone has that opinion. Personally, I thought he was still greatly compelling, and they chose the perfect guy to be Connie. I actually hadn't seen any of his movies in full before; I've only seen clips of that Twilight offal but considering even Robert himself started to crap on the series, and that was before the final film was released. I definitely should check out some of the interesting things he's done, like The Rover. He was awesome in this, oh so magnetic. The rest of the cast does a nice job but the film is all his and he knocks it out of the park.

As others have said, this is Michael Mann-esque, but it can also be compared to the old works of famous NYC directors such as William Lustig or Abel Ferrara. With only a few changes it'd be easy to imagine this taking place in the late 70's or early 80's in the grimy old New York City before it was cleaned up in the 90's. The locations they used in this movie were still pretty sleazy. At times there's a neon aesthetic which will naturally appeal to plenty of people but a big reason why I am glad I got to see this theatrically: the incredible score from the oddly-named Oneohtrix Point Never. It's total retrowave synth goodness and did play a part in me enjoying this so much despite the seedy subject matter.

Factor that all in with how many things are shot up close, the film is usually intense and was quite the ride. I was glad this lived up to the hype, an audacious tale which was like ingesting the contents of the bottle that is the movie's poster.