The Lighthouse

Exile, psychosis, mythology, animal spirits, repression - once again Eggers precipitates beast/man/god intercourse on the stage of untamed nature, this time by trapping two dudes in a divine phallus. Dog becomes god and vice-versa. Career performances from the leads, powerful hard-earned footage. Movies about people going crazy just do it for me - I'm taking five points off for now because they didn't use Ween's "Ocean Man" over the end credits.

Eggers' latest masterpiece is just that thanks to how many layers of meaning it keeps aloft like spinning plates: at once an American fable, a descent into fantasy and madness, a reimagining of Prometheus and the Divine punishment required when the profane breaches the sacred. What really stands out is its wet fever dream of musky, sexual rage - this lighthouse is a locked BDSM dungeon with two mustaches who both want to be used but can never agree on a safe word (I bet it's Lobster).

With the death of the cinema experience right around the corner, Eggers' sophomore (and hopefully not last) film feels in many ways like the culmination of an art form having come full circle; A fully-realized, stylistic throwback to an already-bygone era, fueled by one gloriously madcap vision and two equally insane, memorable performances suggestive of a total devotion to their craft. A rare treat in this day and age and a film to definitely seek out in the theatre if there ever was one.

Really enjoyed this in all its craggy, rugged, weird and claustrophobic glory. It seems to pull its words, visuals and themes from all sorts of lore and mythology, and the two central performances are genuinely impressive. It goes off in quite odd directions, but is never impenetrable, and is beautifully and imaginatively made. Highly recommended.

The script is a messy hodgepodge of ideas that never quite congeals the way it should (having your characters go insane is no excuse for sloppy writing), but the film is helped enormously by two powerhouse performances and some absolutely stunning visuals.

Freudian symbolism, nautical jargon, silent movie aesthetics, atmosphere so thick you could cut it with a knife, lunacy and a pinch of greek mythology for good measure. All of this and more in this Wonderfully unique tale, that feels a bit like The Shining if Jack Torrance had been locked in The Overlook Hotel with an older Jack Torrance.

This is one of those films where you could take any individual frame and hang it in a gallery

A continuation of this filmmaker's preoccupation with mythologies and superstitions, and a relentless devotion to niche period recreation, linguistic authenticity, and hard-earned performances. What a graphically spellbinding film, resembling expressions of silent cinema in the choice of black-and-white, an unusually vertical frame, and dramatic arrangements of shade and focus. Its surreal flourishes and ill omens are dark enchantments, a mesmerizing and merciless descent into the maelstrom.

If you're questioning whether or not you are going to enjoy this, yaar.

A torturous storm to behold. Yet I feel as though Eggers (intentionally or not) positioned the audience in a maddening perspective -- not quite in the eye of the storm nor in the skies above; we spend the entirety of this film in an unreliable purgatory, getting thrown around by the winds. I felt as though I was at the mercy of two untrustworthy men and a deeply repressed GOD SEX mystery, the only thing I really took away from this film was the madness.

A retelling of Marx's theory of alienation and estranged labor. alienation in the workplace not only from the product created but the means of which the product is created this being the light. Dafoe as the ruling class. Pattinson as the proletariat. The madness capitalism creates in the mind. Lotta shots of machinery and working class labor a la soviet film makers of the past (not to mention German expressionist film makers and especially Greed by Stroheim). V funny. A marvel formally. jizz

In my mini-review of 'The Witch', one of the best films of the century, I wrote about Eggers' "picture perfect shots and a wonderful use of old language" and called it "thematically rich and refreshingly different" as well as "masterfully directed". So in order to review the soaky and bedazzling fever dream that is 'The Lighthouse', another incredibly stylish effort, I find little need to repeat myself (which is, of course, exactly what I just did, though), and instead I'll just applaud Dafoe.

I thought this was very, very good. Dafoe and Pattinson are at their very best here and carry the entire thing. I found the storytelling to be throughly intriguing and original from minute one, with some of the coolest imagery I've seen, and some clever sound design. The cinematography is astonishing at times. It's quite simply the most gorgeous movies I've seen all year. A movie like this, dare I say, comes once in a lifetime. If you love film, definitely go see this.

A kaleidoscopic head scrambler that combines so many allusions to literature, myth, theory & film it should be a pretentious mess. Marx, Freud, Thomism, Sjötröm & The Shining are but few things that came to mind in addition to the direct references to Herman Melville & Prometheus. Even though I didn't get anything too coherent from all that it works as a cinematic Rorschach test & engages with its simple premise. Superbly confident in its aesthetics & performances. Intense & frigging hilarious

Two men threaten each other's lives and sanity at the ends of the earth. Their private guilts, lusts, superstitions, etc., are buried under aggressive, boisterous, comically excessive masculinity which occasionally sublimates itself into full-blown homoeroticism (when it's not erupting into violence). It's a beautiful intersection of Eggers' preoccupations with myth, history, low and high art both.

With genre tags like Horror and Fantasy and featuring Defoe and Pattinson, I was hoping the hype would ring true for me this time, but as with "The VVitch" Egger not only produced an arty, critically loved, quasi-sophisticated movie, but everything he commits to film acts like a lense to my undying ire. This is a warning, Egger, if ever you find yourself alone in a room with me, you will find yourself the victim of an atomic weggie, the kind that draws blood.

An excruciating examination of cabin fever. Full of cryptic nonsense and abstract gibberish. It was hard watch to its conclusioun. I wish the payoff for suffering through this was actually worth it. It has a few memorable moments but it was mostly just an exercise in patience.

Gaslight(hous)ing Pysch horror! Dont let stark B&W + tight frame put U off, works brilliantly. No problem of art VS entertainment: Excels @ both | Swept into from ominous, wordless open on | All kinds of TENSIONs boiling under (& over). LHouse? bounty of aural & visual unease (light, wind, waves, horn) & it uses every drop. Hypnotically cinematic. Tried 2 recall shots?? but 2 many! Beautiful, disturbing, hallucinatory. Needs cinema rerelease | MUST WATCH + his 'The Witch'