By
Rating:
Director:
Starring: | | | |

gazer

Year: 2025

Running time: 114

IMDB: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt28633405

Jeff says: “A widow by suicide, Frankie (Ariella Mastroianni) suffers from dyschronometria, a neurodegenerative and eventually fatal disease which alters her perception of time. She can’t hold down a job because of it, her daughter’s caretaker is her former husband’s mother, and she’s just received a 30-day eviction notice. An offer comes along that all parties, including us viewers, must realize is too good to be true. With her back to the wall, Frankie says yes to it anyway, wagering that, if it comes true, she can get her daughter back for the few months she has left. Then, things get bad. GAZER is a throwback to those desperate 70s dramas about doomed people making increasingly bad decisions. MEAN STREETS, TAXI DRIVER, STRAIGHT TIME, BADLANDS, they’re all in there.

“Co-written by Mastroianni and director, Ryan J. Sloan, the script fuses Frankie’s real time, her blackouts, flashbacks, and her increasingly hallucinatory visions into a world she has no choice but to inhabit. It’s clear that Mastroianni has lived with Frankie for a while, and part of the fascination with her portrayal lies in watching how Frankie adapts and adjusts to her reality, the measures she takes so she can still live her life (think Leonard in MEMENTO). Pale and thin, Frankie seems more to haunt the movie than live in it as if, though still nominally alive, she has already succumbed.
“The film is shot beautifully on 16mm, fuzzy and indistinct, with nighttime streetlamp and beacon lights merely diffuse glows in the distance. Locations in Newark provide an appropriately gritty backdrop. Notably, during production, Mastroianni and Sloan had day jobs, and they wrote and shot the film in their spare time. 4.5 cats.“
Gazer

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *