Safe to say the reason why I had a mixed reaction to this on first viewing is that I hadn't come to terms with the casualness and coldness that capitalism propagates. A world that is built to dull your inhibitions, make you voiceless and get you desensitized to horrific acts. Demonlover essentially channels this into early 2000s anxiety, showing how digital media will further blur what constitutes empathy and genuine humanity. Diane starts out as a woman who benefits off…

Whatever I say here in this review can not fully encapsulate what I thought and felt while watching this. I feel like I could write about this film my whole life and still not get to the heart of what makes this film truly special to me. It combines two elements that I treasure in filmmaking, frenetic heightened melodramatic narrative/editing that brings out every conceivable feeling possible and a slow methodical tone poem that emotionally shatters the barriers between the…

The role that Ashton Kutcher was born to play, a slow vacuous vulgar auteurism joint that deconstructs LA bourgeoisie masculinity. Uncompromising and scathing, it makes you bask in its bleakness for as long as possible. It's only when Nikki finds a person who mirrors his ways that he starts to undergo change, finding transcendence through his vulgar deceptive persona. A lot of other films would have him change in a 180 turn but this uses vices to offer understanding, it…

Your enjoyment of this will depend on your ethics regarding hearing loss, implants and gatekeeping of grief (I'm referring to when Joe rejects Ruben later in the film). Personally, I believe in the individuals capacity to make choices for themselves if that makes them fulfilled. It's always important to listen to others but only you can foster the right direction for yourself. With that being said, the film has some confusing moral messaging, I don't know whether it's condoning or…

Well Nolan's kinda lost his mind (again) yet I've never seen him so composed. This has so much happening and tries to tackle so many different subplots but he never stopped to make it emotionally resonant or even engaging. There's just topics like abuse, existentialism, the apocalypse etc. that are just thrown into the film without any care or second glance.

The abuse/misogynist undertones is not something Nolan has any skill in tackling and just feels like emotionless window dressing.…

The strangest type of realism where it tries to be relatable and piercing but comes off cynical, misanthropic and destructive instead of deconstructive. There's no understanding it's just the constant beratement of the main character and the audience. It's heightened and exaggerated in the most unimaginative way possible. Its style is just a loose camera with uneasy classical music in the background that is just trying so hard for you to buy the scene instead of just letting you feel…