The App. Elisa Fuksas. 2019. ☆☆☆★★★
Hey! It’s Italian! I think this is the first Italian Netflix Original I’ve seen in this blog series?
Perhaps it’ll be wonderful!
Hm… that’s a lot of mobile phone screen caps… In portrait mode…
Well, that’s harsh…
But what does he really mean?
Well, I can see why people hate the movie. It’s (partially) about every filmmaker’s favourite subject: Making movies. People hate watching movies about making movies. But so far (I’m just fifteen minutes in when pausing to type this), it looks pretty good to me. It’s got that empty hotel feeling going, and the actors seem genuinely fantastic, and I’m intrigued by the seemingly-nonsensical “experiment” (which I assume must result in a reveal at some point).
The shots of people typing on laptops is a harsh indictment of Apple screens, though:
Look at how much reflection there is on Apple laptops! It’s a disgrace!
What I’m trying to say is that the movie loses tension and cohesion as it goes on. It’s a bit frustrating: They’ve almost god a pretty good movie here, but it’s just slightly off. I mean, I’m totally there for the mysterious plot and the great sets and pretty perfect cinematography, but it somehow seems clunky. I’m not sure why. Perhaps the nondescript music “bed” under most of the scenes punctuates the tension?
Good use of that er Neil Halsted? Mojave 3? Or whatever the band was called at the time? music, though.
This post is part of the NFLX2019 blog series.