“‘Monos’ Is An Action Movie With An Unsettling Take On Civilization”

And thank you very much, IFFBoston!

Alejandro Landes’ Monos is the first film I saw in a theater at this year’s shindig, and months later I feel comfortable saying it’s the best one. (Better, even, than The Farewell, and The Farewell is super duper good.) This is, I think, the key to a good festival experience: Checking out movies other than the ones with marquee names, or, in the case of IFFBoston, the movies that have the most hype coming off the Sundance circuit. I didn’t know a thing about Monos other than what the festival program told me, and I’m glad for that.

Upfront, Monos is intense and messy. Not the filmmaking, of course; the filmmaking is tight. But it’s messy in that immensely satisfying way where everything is complicated and getting a bead on the characters is nearly impossible due to said complications. Most of all, it kicks off its climax with a bizarre and hilarious joke about Beethoven and gummy bears, which I can’t help appreciating. 

So I dug into that over at Polygon!

 

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