New Guy

I had no idea what to expect when I put this movie into the DVD player. A friend of mine had recommended it to me because I really love Scorsese's "After Hours" and she said this had a similar weird one night in hell vibe to it. Boy was she right.

The movie starts off very simple yet strange with the new guy arriving in the bathroom and stepping into the stall that everybody who works there knows not to step into. Then it just gets harder and harder for him to fit in. His co-workers are strange, one minute they're like trying to be best friends with him, the next minute it's like he never existed. It's kind of like high school, come to think of it.

The director must have spent a lot of time in an office because all of the details of office life are right, from the guy who's always faxing, to the creepy stains on the walls that you're always wondering where they came from, to the boss who lets his son run wild around the office. I think this movie was made before "The Office" TV series and all those TV commercials that satirize office life.

And then, the movie goes from weird hilarious to weird creepy and finally weird weird. A lot of people have said they don't "get" the ending, but I think that is part of the point. I think it was meant to be ambiguous and uncertain. I like the fact that there were no easy resolutions or explanations. I look forward to seeing what this director does next.

Watched this a while back just after release and highly enjoyed it. It has a subtle build up that something's amiss and then piles it on. I've watched a heck of a lot of movies and this is one them that every so often I go back too. Got the dvd and hope maybe one day it will get a hd airing. You gotta dream. Anyhow sweet movie.

An overall disappointment although made on a small budget and has good points, it draws blanks at any good twist and has a poor storyline. As the the story folds it tends to get bleak and draws on in a fantasy office. Gregg the new guy never really shows any emotion and the story lacks development in characters. Before the first unexpected twist of a setup the story is really dull and almost turned off. After the twist it could have unravelled out more into maybe a great storyline as gregg turned an offering of sacrifice. But this all came to an end and it was all some kind of long dream for gregg. All in all poor film, not enough detail in characters and surroundings. Twist were good but came to sudden ends and the story comes to a complete standstill with loose ends untied.

When I first saw this movie last year, I was generally impressed with the very unique atmosphere the film makers set up even though they clearly had a very low budget to work with. I also liked the main performances, even though there were some small performances that were not so hot. All in all, it was pretty good, nothing big, but just solid, if you know what I mean.

Now, I have been thinking more and more about it since then. I can't get this movie out of my head. From the weird and sad music that plays over the middle part of the movie, to the main character's nearly silent performance, to the strange kind-of-happy kind-of-sad ending where you can't even tell the expression on the character's face. I constantly keep thinking about it and I really want to see it again to see if I am just crazy, or if there are some very interesting things in there. When I first saw it, I would have given it a 6. A couple of months later I was thinking it would be a 7. Then I decided on 8. And now it's all the way up to 10! I hope I can see it again one of these days, to see if my opinions are justified.

I have had a chance to view this dark comedy (I'm not sure the horror classification is entirely accurate, but...) several times now. Bilge Ebiri, a fellow Turkish-American, shows an appreciation for films of many genres. One can see the influences of Kubrick, Capra (yes, I said Capra), Hitchcock, Wilder, DePalma, and the Coen Bros., yet the film is strikingly original. The title character is caught up in a nightmare of office politics, where an annoying toy car and Post-It notes become deeper symbols of his social oppression which indeed follows him home from work. This is illustrated quite well in a scene where the title character is caught between two attractive women as they talk about the difficulties of having sex in New York. The scene is made funny by the fact that both of them are completely oblivious to him despite his physical promixity. Thus, he is a man who is ignored by women and ostrechized by men. He seemingly can not win, but like most tragic heroes, he is determined not to lose. The film's digital shoot gives it an intimate quality and the tight spaces makes us feel for the title's character's inherent suffocation. As a former newspaper reporter, I could certainly relate to this film and it reminds me of the lyrics to that old Nick Lowe song "Cruel to be Kind." "New Guy" is an intriguing, subversive look at the 9-to-5 hell that is the modern workplace.