Se7en

Watched at the St. Louis Alamo Drafthouse on the big screen! What a delightful experience. Pretty much the standard of excellence for thriller genre filmmaking. Meticulously crafted. Completely leans into its own near cartoonishly gritty world where it is perpetually raining, a layer of grime covers everything, and characters speak in 70% literary allusion and if you buy into it with them (it’s not hard too) it’s such a great time. So well paced with no time wasted, takes it’s time and care to actually make you have emotional stake in these people, and propels its story along naturally and with ease, multiple traits that I can often find lacking in the crime thriller genre. It just kind of goes above and beyond what (at least speaking for myself) is expected of the genre to cement itself as one of the greats. The dialogue is so sharp, especially in the ladder half, that it kind of pisses me off with jealousy. I find that the “killer with a unique motivation” thing can sometimes come off as hokey to me, but I completely buy into it here. Obviously the creativity and inherent intrigue of the murders themselves help, but I really think it is all sold in the two or so scenes in which we really get to spend time with John. I think it just comes down to the quality of his dialogue and the fact that his whole motivation doesn’t just intrigue us but kind of makes us introspect on ourselves and the world around us. Kind of holds a mirror up to you for being so interested in the morbid details in the first place which can only really be effective if the themes are as sharp and well conveyed as they are here. Just kind of one of those lightning in a bottle movies where the right actors and the right director and the right everything just come together to create something that undeniably has its own unique voice so well that you can’t help but be drawn in. In my opinion, does what it is going for pretty damn perfectly.  Also, I want to rant about the Alamo Drafthouse because I have been dying to go for ages and it’s as if I was transported to heaven for a brief couple hours. Actual dream theatre. When you first walk in there is a mural with a bunch of key art from vintage films and I spotted the Ape from APE (an obscure B-movie King Kong rip off and one of my few half star rated films) and I knew I was in for a treat. The lobby carpet is the pattern from The Shining’s Overlook Hotel, there is a statue of the Black Knight from Monty Python, and there are posters up seemingly perpetually for Dr. Strangelove, Pee Wee’s Big Adventure, and Raising Arizona. So rad. The theatre itself had the most comfortable seats, they played half an hour of cartoons and obscure music videos as a pre-show before the feature with ZERO ADS, and they had strict enforced rules against talking and being disruptive. I’m not kidding when I say that if I lived 10-15 mins away instead of 45-50, I would legitimately be here multiple times a week. Heartbroken that it will probably be a bit before I have time to go again. A torture to be given a glimpse at paradise and then immediately thrust out of it, but it was paradise nonetheless. (Yes, me idea of paradise does require a Pee Wee’s Big Adventure poster up somewhere. Take notes, God!)