You Were Never Really Here (2017)

Jack and I did not love this acclaimed movie about a veteran with PTSD who tracks down missing girls. Joaquin Phoenix (last blogged for Don't Worry, He Won't Get Far on Foot) is well cast in the lead but the story is disturbing and hard to follow. I said at the time that it’s like a train wreck—I couldn’t look away.

Director/writer Lynne Ramsay (most recently in these pages for We Need to Talk About Kevin, also troubling but not at all hard to follow) adapted the novella by Jonathan Ames (he's best known to me as creator/writer of the Jason Schwartzman HBO comedy series Bored to Death--Ames appeared in two episodes).

Radiohead's Jonny Greenwood (last blogged for scoring Phantom Thread) gives us a mostly terrific soundtrack, exciting and hip, that can be streamed on Apple Music, Spotify, and probably more.

Among the acclaim for this movie: at its Cannes Film Festival premiere a year and a half ago, there was a seven-minute standing ovation, Ramsay won the award for Best Screenplay, and Phoenix won for Best Actor. On my list of nominations, it has four Spirit Award nominations (Best Feature, Best Director, Best Male Lead, and Best Editing) and the National Board of Review dubbed it one of the ten best independent movies of last year. Here's some TimesUp trivia: three out of the five Spirit Award-nominated directors are women, two of the five Best Picture nominees in that race were directed by women, and zero women directors and woman-directed movies are Oscar nominees.

As part of my membership in Film Independent, we were able to stream this movie with a password and I can vote against it before the awards ceremony on February 24. It's also available for hard core Phoenix fans to stream on most of the usual outlets for a fee.

Rotten Tomatoes' critics, averaging 89%, do not agree with us, but its audiences, at 64, do.

Oh yeah, though watching at home is easier, bouncy camera work earns this a spot on my MPMS or Motion Picture Motion Sickness list.