Movie: Noise

I'm not a very good movie reviewer - you know that. My movie "reviews" are more like a recommendation at best, and long (almost) pointless ramble at worst. I really want to write about the movie I saw the other night: Noise - but I'm unsure how to start or what to say once I get going. There are points I want to cover, of course. They include:
  • Cinematography: Just.plain.beautiful. Every shot was rich in the details of ordinariness (is that a word?) and saturated with everyday colour and light. Characters were often placed in such a way to give me a real sense of the space they occupied.
  • Sound: OMG - this movie is soaked in sound - sound has double-billing with the main character. The sound we hear is what he hears inside his head - the sound built tension and caused us both stress and got on our nerves and I can't even think of an instance where sound has been used so effectively. It was freakin' awesome.
  • Performances: Outstanding, authentic characterisations. Solid, grounded, endearing, subtle *excellent* work, people. In an age where movies are built around big movie stars so they never have to act as anyone but themselves, there does exist layers of hard working, talented, genuine actors making amazing film experiences for us that have the legs to go the distance.
  • Plot: Intriguing, fascinating, mysterious - no spoon-feeding here, so pay attention.
  • Pace: Time moves in an everyday way in this movie - like it does for you and for me on a normal day - not on those terrible bad work days when it drags, or those wonderful sunshine "in love" days when it flies, but those ordinary, everyday days when stuff takes time to happen. This isn't Hollywood-movie time, and I thank the movie gods for that!
If you like seeing movies that are well made, interesting, make you think, and think, and figure, and search the interwebs afterwards, and which stay with you that night and the next day and you make you need to talk to others who've seen it and ask questions about the details and you really think you need to see it more than twice just to make sure or confirm or experience it again, Noise is the movie for you. Man, when Aussies get it right, they really hit the nail on the head.
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