An excerpt from my script review for Under the Silver Lake which will be available 04/22/19:
2.) Plot Stability
This one was wacky!
There were many instances where I was left scratching my head in a “WTF” fashion.
However, to say I didn’t enjoy it would be a lie.
Even at 174 pages, this was a surprisingly quick read, and although I might not have understood everything that was going on, I certainly wanted to see what had actually happened to Sarah.
My argument against the pacing would be the initial 30 pages or so, because all we really see is Sam being kind of a creepy dude. This took time to get through and if I didn’t need to read it completely for a review, I’d probably have stopped.
Not much happens except him watching the various women around him, and that part went the extra mile in establishing him as a weird dude, something we fully comprehend as he ogles the ladies in the coffee shop.
The issue after that intro is, and having read the script completely, this project doesn’t really have any lasting watchability.
Perhaps that’s one of the downfalls of a noir style feature, but this project’s social commentary was reminiscent of American Psycho, a film I have watched multiple times.
With Under the Silver Lake now that I’ve finished reading, and discovered the less than thrilling ending of where Sarah ended up, I’m good.
So in this reader’s opinion, curiosity alone is not enough to warrant putting this project on any sort of historical list.
And that’s okay. I think the writer/director wanted to say something about the Hollywood scene, so hopefully it turned out as he intended.
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