Queer (2024) review

Or, Call Me by My Pseudonym.  American writer William Lee (Daniel Craig) is living in Mexico City and spends the majority of his time drinking, picking up lovers and conversing with fellow "queer" Joe Guidry (Jason Schwartzman) - when he spots younger Eugene Allerton (Drew Starkey) he becomes determined to seduce him, they have sex, quickly grow distant and then William offers to take Joe on a road trip through South America so they can locate a drug called ayahuasca (or "yage").  Unlike David Cronenberg's adaptation of William S. Burroughs' Naked Lunch, which blended in elements of the novel with the life of the author, this takes more of a straightforward approach to the source material, with Lee's focus first being on cruising and then on the psychedelic that can supposedly grant the user telepathic powers - some might find it to be too meandering, but Craig, best known for playing (heterosexual) MI6 agent James Bond, is a sympathetic hedonist and his inherent sadness is continuously masked by the Next Great Thrill.   Even though it's set in the early 1950's, Luca anachronistically throws pop songs on the soundtrack (Nirvana, Prince, New Order, etc.) for the modern audience, and the "hallucination sequences" are visually impressive - I wonder if, while on one of his "retreats," NFL quarterback Aaron Rodgers also threw up a testicle with a human heart inside.