Review of Uncut Gems (2019)
Seen in 2020.
The lifestyles of the extroverted.
Good suspense craft. However, I never wanted Howard to succeed. His successful last bet, featuring Garnett praying with the stone before winning the game, makes for a pretty bizarre ending. It’s not the balls-out teleological fallacy of Signs (2002) but it contradicts and undermines the rest of the film. Howard is an unrepentant asshole, and yet the universe bends for his dopamine kick cycle, as if to illustrate how the cycle makes him feel. It feels like the writer-directors were trying to skirt the Hays Code while paying lip service to it, more than 50 years too late.