Rye Lane (2023)

Rotten Tomatoes: 98%

Box Office: 1.5 million USD

My Rating: 10/10

Description: It takes place, more or less, over the span of twelve hours. A manic pixie dream girl (or is she?) and a "nice guy" meet in a public bathroom and it gets weirder. Meet Dom (David Jonsson), the aforementioned "nice guy": he cries, and hates spicy food, and listens to slow love songs, and unironically dreamt of being an accountant, and has a lovely smile. Meet Yasmine (Vivian Oparah), but we can call her Yas because we're friends like that: she compliments strangers, and does spins on the sidewalk, and wears leopard print, and occasionally says the wrong thing, and is loud and a little wacky.

My Thoughts: Have you ever found exactly what you needed and simultaneously not known what exactly it was that you needed? Was that sentence circular enough to leave you dizzy? Well so will Rye Lane. It is a film like no other I've seen yet, and slaps you in the face with colour and costumes. It's laugh-out-loud-until-you-choke-on-your-popcorn-funny. It's a loving punch in the gut. I won't even try to describe the plot to you because that would be sacrilege. Part of the charm of Rye Lane is not knowing what comes next. I will tell you, however, that if a low-angst, high-humour, "we're-just-two-British-Brits-walkin'-'round-London-innit" plot sounds like a good time to you, this may just be right up your alley, bruv. The way the characters speak, move, communicate--even just the way they look at each other--tells a story. It has callbacks galore, which I absolutely adored. Moments in the movie, certain split second scenes, feel like inside jokes with the audience. It's brilliant. Speaking of brilliant, I cannot get over how this movie was filmed. The colour I've already mentioned, but the use of angles and slow-motion and even fish eye lenses was unlike anything I've ever seen. The flashbacks, I thought, were particularly genius. This movie has no flaws. If that will convince you to give it a go, then it's a statement I will stand by.

Best Line: "We know more about Neptune than we do about the human anus."