bob_meg "You give off this vibe that you're on the edge, that you're not really here," Hank (Giancarlo Esposito) says to Joyce (Trish Goff) in "Noise", Tony Spiradakis' superb (and apparently last) film from 2004 which I only discovered recently on Amazon Video as a cheap non-HD rental. I promptly ordered the DVD after I'd seen about fifteen minutes, I was so smitten.I love character pieces, especially when the character is enigmatic and troubled, which Joyce definitely is, to put it lightly. You name the dysfunction, Joyce pretty much has it, mostly from a lifetime of being pushed around and abused by everyone from her ex (David Thornton) to complete strangers. Following the break from Thornton, she seems ready to flip a switch and turn a corner, but she keeps falling into the same traps.Namely, she moves into an apartment in a large old building in New York directly under Charlotte (Ally Sheedy, who is so right for this part it's sometimes painful to watch). Charlotte blasts music, stomps around at all hours of the night, has the Loudest Sex Imaginable and seems overall immune to any defense Joyce can peacefully offer. Now this might take its toll on a normal person, but for a woman as close to the edge of the cliff as Joyce is... well... it makes for a very suspenseful, taut, engaging storyline that really is only the tip of the film's iceberg.Trish Goff plays Joyce with a boiling repression that's wonderful to behold. Her performance reminded me a lot of Sandy McCloud's other NYC woman on the edge of sanity in Lizzie Borden's "Variety" and that's a high compliment, though "Noise" is a much better, more realized film because it offers us a compelling plot on the surface and then gives us so much emotional angst and complexity as icing on the cake.I think people have liked this movie for the wrong reasons, kind of how they cheered Travis Bickle on in "Taxi Driver". If you watch closely you'll notice at the end of the film how much Joyce has become like her nemesis... she's "totally put together" now as well. Or not.Lots of good performances here, especially Esposito and also check out John Slattery in the type of part he used to get a lot in New York pre-Mad Men. And Sheedy has never been more convincingly bat-sh*t crazy. But Trish Goff is the real find here --- she makes Joyce so empathic it's hard to not realize she's close to the nut-house herself.If you're looking for something similar, check out "The Upstairs Neighbor" (if you can find it).

sacusanov I have a hard time with movies about annoying people, and a hard time with movies about inept people, but put together -- and this movie does that in spades -- it's just painful to watch. Any person with any idea of how to deal with the world will want to scream. On top of that is the whole the decent into madness thing, which only works in the hands of geniuses and campy hacks. Imagine Planes, Trains and Automobiles crossed with Repulsion, all done on such a limited budget that it seems like every take must have been the last one of a grueling 20 hour day in which the actors weren't able to consume anything more than coffee and jujubes. There, now you don't have to see it.

Jonathan Funke I watched this at home under optimal conditions: with the dimly employed music-industry exec next door blaring his stuff full blast at midnight in my rent-stabilized East Harlem building. (He's a nice guy and doesn't mind me banging away on my piano, so we're cool.) So maybe I'm unduly sympathetic to this piece, which admittedly suffers from insubstantial and generally unsympathetic characters, an insufficiently established final twist, and a host of rude and spoiler-prone commenters here on IMDb.Still, "Noise" is refreshing in elements. Key decisive moments are amply teased ahead, producing more tension than you see in a lot of indy "psycological thrillers." The accrual of stresses on a frustrated NYC studio-dweller ring rough and rudimentary, but true. The protagonist's choices are as much to blame for her decline as her antagonist's boorish provocations, and the subway shots and outdoor scenes lack the stylized glamour (and/or overly glorified dinginess) that mark them as false in mainstream productions. This flick is nothing if not quotidian in its trappings.There are also a handful of lines that really could have dangled like cigarettes from the mouths of European-inflected windbags in the publishing industry 'round these parts. But couldn't they have come up with something better than "Gotham" as a standin for New York Magazine? (If that's a spoiler for you, you probably need a Metrocard more than you need "Noise" on your Netflix list.) There is a smattering of homage to classic apartment thrillers like Single White Female and Rosemary's Baby, but they only serve to highlight Noise's thin budget, cinematography and script. A half-dozen lines, including the detective's final valediction, suggest the playwright longs for something better, and knows it ain't quite happening here. Give it a shot if, like the protagonist, you're stuck at home on a rainy Tuesday with a bottle of hooch and nothing else worth trying on Video On Demand.

lelanisanoi The film Noise was very enjoyable. I have a very low tolerance for noise so I found it fitting to rent a movie with this title. I'm also a fan of Ally Sheedy and when I saw her name on the credits I picked the movie up immediately. This movie really shows you how irritating noises from a neighbor can actually reduce you to "sheer craziness". I've been in the same situation many times, but the noise came from roommate who had no regard or respect for my privacy. I could identify with the character to a certain degree but the ending was not what I expected at all and will shock the first time viewer a great deal. Please go see this movie, invite your noisy neighbor if you have to. LOL