A week ago, The Wife and I watched Uncut Gems (2019), directed by the Safdie Brothers.
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I'm thinking that this is Punch-Drunk Love (2002) on steroids and cocaine. And not a likable character in sight.
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Perhaps it's the anti-Punch-Drunk Love, a corruption of sorts of Paul Thomas Anderson's film.
Adam Sandler is obviously the connection point, if this indeed the case. Barry Egan morphed into Howard Ratner. Business owners who end up in the midst of shady business because of their own sins. Extended families that are chaotic and overbearing and manipulative. A love interest who is lost for a time.
But all of the goodness and grounding of Punch-Drunk Love is perverted and degraded and amplified in Uncut Gems.
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It's another minor echo, but the various color-filled molecular-level trips we take into the structure of the black opal—at the opening and closing of the film, as well as in the middle—remind me of the twelve "Scopitones" by artist visual Jeremy Blake that serve as "chapter headings" for sections of the story.
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The best thing about Uncut Gems is that it's inspired me to watch Punch-Drunk Love once again, one of my favorite films.
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