Recommended Viewing: GOOD TIME

Since I haven’t had the time or money to see as many newly released movies this year as I’d like, I’m starting a new series called “Recommended Viewing” that I’ll try to make semi-regular where I recommend movies that I like but that most people probably haven’t seen/don’t know about. These will not be structured reviews, they will just give me a space to write a few words about an underexposed movie I enjoyed and briefly give my thoughts on why I believe it deserves to be seen.

Good Time was one of best movies I saw from this year. I was actually able to catch it on the big screen during its limited run back at the end of August, and I saw it again recently when it came out digitally. Both times I’ve watched it, it gave me a kinetic rush of adrenaline that I haven’t felt since seeing Mad Max: Fury Road for the first time. Ostensibly a heist-gone-wrong movie, Good Time is a true live wire of a film if ever there was one. Everyone and everything is so in the moment that it feels like anything could happen at any time, keeping the tension high and the unpredictability even higher, with the film playing out as a series of bad situations that snowball together and escalate in sleaziness as it moves along.

The intentionally vague way I’ve been describing Good Time could give you the impression that it’s exciting and fun in the same way that a lot of other heist movies are, but that’s not entirely accurate. Although it offers up the requisite thrills that other movies of its ilk do, it’s repulsive as well, a genuinely impressive feat to pull off. In my review of Get Out from earlier this year, I wrote that what made that movie so effective was the fact that it is a horror movie but it also has a lot more on its mind; it’s a timely examination of race relations that holds up a mirror of America. Likewise, Good Time is another genre movie that’s incredibly relevant to 2017, very much concerned with (white, male) privilege and the economic desperation of individuals living in Queens. The main character, Connie (played extraordinarily by Robert Pattinson in possibly the best performance of the year) has reasons for everything he does, but he’s also a slithery scumbag who, while not being nearly as smart as he thinks he is, knows how to maneuver the system to his advantage, and the movie doesn’t shy away from making the toxic nature of his actions clear. As a result, the viewer is put in an uncomfortable spot, because we want him to get caught but a small part of us wants to see what he will do next. Good Time lives up to its title in the sense that its hyperstylized sensory overload, with its frenetic close-ups, flashing neon lights, and blaring synth score from Oneohtrix Point Never, produces a special kind of cinematic ecstasy for 100 straight minutes, but on the other hand it’s not really a “good time” at all in making us contemplate our own morals at every turn as we watch an aggressively loathsome character take over every space he inhabits, often at the expense of others. Directors Josh and Benny Safdie, in an NPR interview I listened to, said they wanted to make a “a piece of pulp that actually felt dangerous.” A throwback to the ultra-gritty New York crime films of the 1970’s, Good Time is just that and a whole lot more.

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