Stay Review

Stay Review

    Marc Forster’s Stay is an embarrassing mess. Now when is say this, I don’t mean that this movie is a 1/10 or anything like that (although the score is low) but the movie oozes with the foul stench of incompetence that makes the 1 and a half hour run time feel like one and a half weeks of watching grass grow with poorly executed jump cuts. Before I get into the various reasons this movie left me with a taste in my mouth resembling bleach, I have to say three things that might affect how this review is read, but must be made honest. Firstly, the film follows a psychiatrist who tries to rescue a suicidal patient while grappling with his own insanity, an idea which I thought I had come up with in 2016 when I was first started writing shorts, so when I heard about this films existence I got very excited, not disappointed that my plot line is no longer usable, but anxious to see what it looks like on the silver screen. Suffice to say it was unsatisfactory. Secondly, which plays into the firstly, my expectations for this film were extremely high, some might say unusually high, and I blame this on the concept being so fascinating to me. I find ironic stories very interesting, so I had high hopes for this one. And finally, the movie follows a bit of a mystery thriller type plot line, and the film I had seen before this one was Roman Polanski’s Chinatown, which is perhaps one of the best mystery films and a movie I have no reason not to deem a masterpiece, so I still had the final words of Chinatown echoing in my brain when I sat to watch this green tinted disaster on my tv. Now that that’s out of the way, allow me to explain why this film is so bad

    The film was made by a group of industry professionals that frequently work together. This includes the director, cinematographer, editor, costume designer, and musicians. I can only say that one of these people did an acceptable job. They’ve worked on a few movies in the past, including Finding Neverland, Quantum of Solace, Kite Runner and plenty of other inconsistent films. One of their films even led to my nickname for the group, all of which I refer to as the Monster’s Balls. The only main crew role that wasn’t part of the Monster’s Balls before Stay was the writer, David Benioff, who most would know as the co-creator of game of thrones, which is lucky for him because that means he’ll fit in snuggly into the Monster’s Balls seeing how his once respected television show has been reduced to little more than a pair of testicles dangling on your screen for an hour and a half. The first problem in the script we can point right at Jon Snow which is his pathetic excuse for a script. To understand everything wrong with his seizure on paper one must understand the story. As said above, a psychiatrist deals with his own sanity while trying to save his suicidal patient. The movie stars Ryan Gosling as patient zero, Ewan McGregor as a less charming Patch Adams, and Naomi Watts plays a once respectable actress and in her free time attempts to play McGregor’s once suicidal girlfriend. The movie progresses at its ridiculously inconsistent pace which leads to a revelation that it was all a dream. Holy shit, we really haven’t played that one to death, have we? Another dumb trope that gets repeated over and over is that annoying habit these early 2000’s clusterfucks have that they have to say the title every 30 seconds. If one more person had said “stay with me” I would’ve passed out. I understand it’s difficult to avoid in a movie with such a simplistic title (accompanied by an equally simplistic script) but films like No, Awake, and Up don’t do that nearly as frequently and if it’s done at all its done tastefully. Sometimes a title drop is amazing, a great example is “forget it Jake, its Chinatown” how iconic, how well done, how deserving of the academy award for best original screenplay the same year as the Godfather part 2, The Conversation, and Day for Night, some of the most acclaimed movies in history. The dialogue in the film is the most pretentious garbage that’s ever been slapped into a keyboard, the plot is simplistic and predictable, the characters are lacking and extremely under written. The problems are just piling on Mr. HBO and to be honest it’s not looking good for the film, now let’s look at the technical aspects

    The music in this film is well written. That’s about it. it’s almost not even worth mentioning because million-dollar Marc decided to include the music at some of the worst possible parts. The cinematography is passable at some parts, I remember some interesting use of color and movement, but most of the time it was too close, too fluid, too everything. There were points in the film that I thought the image was broken because of the excessive Dutch angles. I thought the tripod had a busted leg or something and Forster didn’t notice thanks to his IQ being half his age (happy 50th!). I had to physically crane my neck to see what the hell was happening because at any point it looked like Ewan was gonna slide right off the frame into another Star Wars prequel and the camera was so shaky sometimes (for no reason!) that it looked like Ryan Gosling’s agent shaking some sense into him. There was one scene that I think hit all the right beats. It is towards the end, Ryan Gosling looks through a plate glass window to see a group of dancers practicing, and among them is his girlfriend. The scene works thanks to some good cinematography, captivating performances, and none of Benioff’s corny ass lines to make it feel like a suicide hotline commercial. Some might take this as a nitpick but my only problem with that scene was the dancing, which was on par with Black Swan if Natalie Portman had 2 peg legs instead of feet. It was honestly some of the weakest choreography I’ve ever seen, it barely matched the music, and sadly, that scene probably had the best track of the whole film, so that's a shame, but again that’s it. Otherwise the scene is pretty solid, and it’s an emotional moment, and the literal only thing that kept this film from being a 2/10. This scene is almost the most frustrating scene in the film because its surrounded by Benioff and Forster acting like Beavis and Butthead. Picture a shit sandwich, 99% shit, 1% fine Italian Parma ham. When eating a shit sandwich, getting a taste of Parma makes you think “Why isn’t this whole fucking sandwich Parma?” and that’s what this movie is. It’s a waste of Parma. I’ve discussed a lot of the technical elements except a few which I'll quickly before I get to the main delicacy. The costume design was fine, although Gosling worse so much black in some scenes it would make Marilyn Manson turn over in his grave (not to say that he’s dead, but its Marilyn Manson, he probably sleeps in a grave), the sets were fine, the color correction was so green I thought I was watching The Machinist, another movie that follows a lot of the same problems this film does. It looks like the submerged the camera in old Ghostbusters slime before they filmed every day. most other technical aspects, the sound, the effects, were below average. Overall the movie is just like that. Its substandard and does nothing as well as it should, except the aforementioned music and some of the acting. For all the shit I give her, Naomi Watts does a fine job, as does McGregor and plenty of the supporting cast, but a shit script and a somehow shittier director leads to some pretty shit performances, except for Gosling, who somehow stays a professional through this, showing off why he’s one of my favorite actors working today. Now onto the main course, the piece the resistance, what makes this movie different than any movie I’ve ever seen, which is a brilliant man by the name of Matt Chesse.

    Matt Chesse is a baboon in a suit that a toddler taught to edit films. The man is the most incompetent editor on the face of the earth and this is coming from me, the second worst. The editing in this film is fucking bananas to say the least. He uses every bad trick in the book, from freeze frames and unnecessary zooms to scenes that feel out of order and breaking the 180-degree rule like it was a toothpick. There are shots that last literally half a second, there are scenes that awkwardly cut at each line of dialogue like a shitty Wes Anderson film. I swear, it feels like this guy took the film reel each day, tossed it up the air, grabbed a chainsaw and went to town. I feel very confident saying that this is the worst editing I’ve ever seen in my life. Part of this isn’t Chesses’ fault, I blame it on the era. Watch any movie from the early 2000’s they’re almost all stinkers, except a few brilliant exceptions of course. Movies like Catwoman, Gigli, The Hulk, I Know Who Killed Me (another film that uses its title in the worst way imaginable) have notoriously bad editing, and I suspect something happened in the early 2000’s that made editors do a line of coke for every half foot of film they edited. I think every editor on earth saw Fight Club and said to themselves “oh I’m going to do that, but bad to the point where you wonder whether or not I was sleeping on my keyboard” so yeah I blame Fight Club, which makes a lot of sense, all that crazy camera movement and fast paced editing, wide angle close ups that feel like a Terry Gilliam film if the guy ever invested in a tripod (I’m kidding Terry, you’re one of my favorites) is seen in this film but its seen through a fun house mirror that makes you look short, fat, and dumb. I could write a bible on why this man should never be allowed within a hundred meter of any film reel for the rest of his life, but then I find out the guy was nominated for best editing at the Oscars. Not for this disaster of course, but for Finding Neverland. I concluded that the academy had officially lost its mind and seeing how Bohemian Rhapsody won best editing last year, I suspect the academy doesn't really know what editors do. Thankfully, Mr. Cheese lost to Thelma Schoonmaker, a brilliant editor and Matt retreated to the Monster’s Balls, right where he belongs.

    The most frustrating thing about this film is that it could’ve been a masterpiece. It’s that simple. This movie had the potential to be brilliant, and you see glimpses of it before Benioff and Forster’s fatasses smother out any hope for a good movie. I’m giving it three stars, one for Ryan Goslings performance, one for the sprinkles of greatness, and one for the Broken Swan scene. It’s sad, really. I joke about the film and rip it up but mostly I’m just disappointed. I wanted to love this film so badly, but unfortunately that will never happen. One final thing I would like to clear up is that dream twist. I don’t like the dream twist because its lazy. Benioff wrote himself into a corner, which he seems to find himself in a lot of these days, and he goes “oh it never happened”. What does that mean? Any criticism I have about the film is irrelevant because dreams don’t make sense. I’ll point at a bland scene and say, “this conversation is forced and unnatural” and Benioff will go “yeah well people in dreams don’t speak normally” and he’ll think he’s slick, hiding that he’s basically illiterate. This isn’t always the case. I’m going to make a quick point about twists in general then dream twists. A twist only works if it makes the story better, and it’s a satisfying payoff in which things are explained in a pleasing way, or in horror movies and the like, an intentionally unpleasing way. The Sixth Sense is so remarkable because the twist elevated the story. Watching the Sixth Sense a second time makes the film better because the ending works and it makes the story better. The same goes for any twist you can think of, from a villain twist to a dream twist. For this I’ll use Mullholland Drive, one of my favorite movies, and ironically, Naomi Watts’ best movie. The entire theme of Mullholland drive is shattering illusions, from the illusion that a nightclub singer is actually singing a song, to illusions of Betsy’s acting, to the illusion of Hollywood, so how fitting is it that the whole film is an illusion? The film is a masterpiece because the twist elevated the story and makes it all the more brilliant. Mulholland Drive is everything Stay could’ve been, and now I’m going to go to bed angry because Benioff let me down for the second time in the last 3 months. What a guy.

    Stay gets a 3/10