a review of 猜火车

there are two versions of this movie. there's the surface where you don't think about things too hard, and the movie is right stylish and impeccably acted. that's a four and a half star movie. then...there's the writing...and thinking about how they decided what to include from the book, because they didn't include everything, but they definitely *chose* to include a purposefully transphobic scene. they chose to make trannies (don't say that word unless you're a tranny) grotesque. they chose to make drug addicts a specatacle...not sure i love it. too many times with the tired trope that people never break free of addiction, that they are a burden to society, that they will fuck you over any chance they get, that they are bad people. and when you think about these writing choices, the movie deserves like two stars. in other ways though, the writing is impeccable. the way the first half just absolutely rips through you and takes you all the way up...and then when renton gets off the drugs just drops you off a fucking cliff and you can feel viscerally the boredom and the fucking dull endless slog of daily life under colonial capitalism and you are almost rooting for it to fucking stop, please make it stop, you'll do anything to escape that fucking dull endless slog. please. please remember that we know a lot more about addiction today than we did when they made this film. we now know that when you are experiencing drug addiction that your brain literally tells you that if you do not get more of the substance you will literally die. think about it for a second. what would you do to save your own life? maybe we should treat addicts better. i love you. we can treat addicts better.