Movie Appraisal: Stay (2005)

Stay is an excellent film regardless of what critics say about it. I don't even care. I've found that so many of these movies that I find the best of all time are critically panned and vilified as being terrible wrecks of cinema. Well, you know what? There are movies out there called the best ever that suck. Absolutely suck.

I'll give some examples because I feel like ranting about this. I hate The Godfather films. I hate them so much I've never been able to watch any single one of them all the way through. I will never watch any of them all the way through because they are ALL terrible movies in my opinion. They are unengaging, uninteresting, and altogether drivel. I'm sorry if that insults some people's delicate sensibilities, but it's true. The Godfather and it's sequels are not the best movies of all time. They're not fun to watch. They're awful and deserve to be stricken from the public record. Or at least that's my opinion.

Being a critic I find that most critics never say that these are things they think themselves, not universal truths. I know plenty of people who love The Godfather films... but I abhor them. Nobody is wrong there. It's just a matter of opinion and nothing else. I feel that way too many films get credit for being THE BEST EVER, but aren't... and that just gets me angry. This is all based upon opinion, so no movie could ever be the best. And anyway, why would a person want to go with public opinion over which film is the best ever. Most people are common swine and have no interest in thought, so why would I want to agree with them about a particular film? And most critics are douche-bags who deserve to be punched in the gonads for thinking their snooty selves are so much better than the rabble... and their opinions matter so much more than mine even though they suck.

What I'm trying to say is that this blog I write is really just my opinions on things. I know most people don't love the kinds of movies I love, but that's opinion and not fact. I tend to love psychological horror. It's my genre of choice, so that's what I focus on. It's what I gush over. I love Alfred Hitchcock too, and Cronenberg, and Lynch, and Carpenter, and Gilliam. Those are just the filmmakers I adore, but that doesn't make my opinion more correct than your own. I also think older movies are better than modern movies for the most part. That doesn't mean I'm right or wrong, but it's my opinion.

So, when I saw that this movie had such a low critical rating, I needed to rant about it, because, for a long time, this was my favorite movie of all time. It has since been supplanted by 1408, Jacob's Ladder, and Rear Window, but that doesn't make it any worse. In fact, being counted among those movies is quite an honor in my own mind.

I love Stay. I love it because of the imagery and the director (Marc Forster, who also directed Stranger Than Fiction, another excellent psychologically stunning film.), who did such a great job with every shot... sometimes doubling the actors in certain shots... going far and wide to make this film perfect through perceptions. I'm simply in awe of how well he made this movie. The acting is excellent. The imagery is unforgettable. The story is sublime.

Check out this film if you want to be blown away by the psychological horror (although there is less focus on the horror and more on the psychological sadly, which is why a movie like Jacob's Ladder stands up better than it) of this severely under-appreciated film.