Stay

It took me a while to try and come up what to say about this movie; not because I didn't like it, but more because I don't want to give too much away. So let me start out by saying this movie is awesome. If you saw the previews or have read a little about this you'll know that the movie centers around a college student, Henry (Ryan Gosling), who wants to kill himself and a shrink, Sam (Ewan McGregor), who is trying to prevent that from happening. Sam's girlfriend, Lila, is played by Naomi Watts. This seems pretty straightforward until you start getting farther and farther into the movie. Is Henry confused? Is Sam confused? Are we just dumb movie watchers and confused? At one point Henry meets an old blind man who is a frind of Sam's. Henry freaks out because the man looks exactly like his father, who has been dead for some time. I think you could compare Stay to films like Memento, A Beautiful Mind and Fight Club. I know there's more out there, but I think three examples are enough here. The basic thing going on here is that you're a bit confused, things aren't making much sense, but then you get to the end and everything is explained. I think that's about all I'm going to say about the plot. Otherwise I'd get carried away and ruin it for you. The cinematography is great in here. I'd also like to go out on a limb and say I witnessed the best transitions ever while watching this film. The one example I've told people is Sam takes a cab to a house. Now you could show Sam walking all the way up to the house or just cut from inside the taxi to the doorstep. In the movie you have Sam stepping out of the cab and then all of a sudden you see somebody standing at the door and then it cuts to Sam at the door. Sam actually saw himself standing up there. The kicker is everything is done seamlessly and you don't even realize what happened until afterwards. To top it all off, that was a simple transition. Others had complete scenery changes that were all seamless! It's awesome. I'd like to end this up by saying while this movie isn't full of objectionable material, this isn't something you would want to take a small child to. This is rated R and they don't do that for no reason at all. I think this movie could fall into the entertaining AND thinking categories, but it mind depend on what you find entertaining. It's one of those movies that after you watch it you start realizing more and more about it. I would call this one a must-see for the year. It'll be making its way to my top 10 list.