Kaboom – Review

April 18, 2011 1 Comment

Kaboom (2010)

Directed by Gregg Araki. Starring Haley Bennett, Thomas Dekker, James Duva

After the complex, challenging, touching and definitely mature “Mysterious Skin” (2004) I was really looking forwards to Araki’s new film (And let’s just pretend that the 2007 Smiley Face doesn’t even exist).

The trailer makes Kaboom look quirky, subversive and somewhat crazy in a fresh and fun sort of way…. Once again, a misleading trailer! Unfortunately the film itself has really none of that offer, as if Araki, instead of growing up, had been regressing to a film student again, because, that’s what this film feels like: a polished and yet pointless student film! And believe me, I’ve seen many of those in my life!

Thomas Dekker is quite likable and he’s probably the best thing in the film and yet he’s struggling with a story that has no beginning and no end (literally no end!)… And actually, come to think of it, no middle either!

The film tries to be anarchic, dark, sexy, funny, rude, aping films like Donnie Darko and even The Rules of Attraction (which was a pretty faulty film anyway). In the end it is just too chaotic and definitely too silly to be taken seriously or to even recommend.

There are very few original ideas and the little excitement in there is only given by the music and the editing, but certainly not by the story. Even the few good lines of dialogue in the script remain too isolated and detached be noticed, let alone remembered and they get lost in the ludicrous plot.

What is real? Is there a conspiracy? Who are those people dressed like animals? Does any of this really matter? And actually, do we give a toss?

In the end it’s very hard to care about who does what and why, so basically you’ll just end up waiting to see who’s going to have sex with whom,

(Basically everyone seems bed down with just about everyone else in this movie despite their gender differences) and yet, none of the sex has anything to do with the story. It is completely incidental and purely exploitive.

But even if you take it as a sexy film, beyond its average straight/gay/bi soft-core porn clichés, it is all quite unremarkable and gets nowhere close to push any boundary and it thinks it does.

In fact it all gets rather repetitive (I lost the count of how many times some character wakes up all of a sudden from some bad dream).

This film might have been the director’s wet dream, but none of that excitement shows up in the final product. I’ll give Araki one last chance then I’ll begin to think that “Mysterious Skin” was just a lucky mistake in an otherwise disastrous flexography.

5.0

Filed under DVDs& Blu-rays, latest movies, Reviews Tagged with Donnie Darko, gay, Gregg Araki, Haley Bennett, Juno Temple, Kaboom, Mysterious Skin, sex, Smiley Face, Thomas Dekker

Rubber – Review

April 17, 2011 5 Comments

Rubber (2010)

Directed by Quentin Dupieux. Starring Jack Plotnick, Wings Hauser, Roxane Mesquida

This is probably one of the weirdest film I have ever seen in quite a while… Unfortunately, not in a good way.

Rubber is on the surface a sort of a horror/parody that pays homage to those low-budget American horror films from the 1950s and 60s (the Blob just to mention a one), with a hint of Carpenter’s Christine from the 80s and even Eraserhead by David Lynch. It has the feel and look of one of those road movies from the 70s and it even reminded me of Duel by Spielberg (a killer truck in Spielberg’s film, just a tyre in this one) and Wall-E.

Sounds intriguing? Well, sadly all the similarities with the above mentioned films stops pretty soon and the realization that what you’re in fact watching is a rather dull film.

Rubber is the “story” (I use this term very loosely) of tyre (No, I haven’t misspelt the word: it is an actual tyre!) that comes to life and realizes it has psychic powers to make everything that comes in its way explode (bottles, animals, and humans!). Yes, it sounds absurd and it has the potential to be absolutely inspired! In fact, what the film is wants to be really about is more than a horror, but a satire about “absurdity” and “randomness. It’s a film about the complicity and voyeurism of the audience itself.

The film is intercut between the tyre and a group of people watching the actual events taking place. They serve as a sort running commentary to the film , in the best classical tradition of a Greek Chorus. This part is clearly very heavy-handed, as it tries to rely too much on the dull dialogue to bring the message across (or its so-called “no reason” philosophy). It is certainly not very subtle and it the end it just comes out as too gimmicky and quite irritating. What could have been potentially a very good idea just ends up being too stretched and too arty (ironically, but not surprisingly, the director Quentin Dupieux is French! sorry I couldn’t resist mentioning that…): it is extremely smug and too self-congratulatory.

And it’s a shame because there is clearly some talent behind it all. The film has moments of inspired dark humour. It is very well shot and photographed, but it all gets diluted in the repetitiveness of its self-indulgence. (Even the hilarity of the animals and people exploding looses its impact after a while). As it is, it feels more like a student film…

But more importantly, aside from all that, it is just very very boring indeed (despite being only 82 minutes), so even if we get told that there is “no reason” for this film (literally we are told that, in a monologue at the front of the film), there is absolutely nothing that makes it worth a feature-length venture. It should have stayed as a short film and it would probably would have been more effective.

4.5/10

Filed under DVDs& Blu-rays, latest movies, Reviews Tagged with Carpenter, Christine, David Lynch, Duel, Greek Chorus, Horror film, Jack Plotnick, Roxane Mesquida, Rubber, Short film, Steven Spielberg, the blob, Wings Hauser

Source Code – Review

April 3, 2011 6 Comments

Source Code (2011)

Directed by Duncan Jones. Starring Jake Gyllenhaal, Michelle Monaghan, Vera Farmiga

Source Code is a smart, suspenseful Sci-Fi action/thriller which takes the concept behind the hit comedy “Groudhog Day” and mixes it with some Twilight-Zone-Style elements in Hollywood style, for the post “Inception” era (I know it sounds like a weird hybrid…) and somehow makes it the most exciting and original film I’ve seen this year.

As always the least you know about the film the better it is, but having said that, there are so many facets to Source Code, so many twists and turns that unless I sit down and tell you everything about it, you’ll still be surprised. But let me just tell you the rough plot, or at least the first few minutes.

Capt. Colter Stevens (Jake Gyllenhaal) suddenly wakes up on a train in a state of complete confusion: the last thing he remembers is crashing his plane in Afghanistan and yet know he’s inside the body of a man named Sean. Across from him is Christina (Michelle Monaghan) who clearly knows him and yet he has no memory of her or any of the other people on the train heading to Chicago. Eight minutes later a bomb goes off and everyone on the train dies.

Colter wakes up again, this time he’s in a dark pod-like structure looking at a monitor with the face of a superior officer (Vera Farmiga), explaining to him that he’s part of a government experiment used to stop terrorism. Through a process called “Source Code”, Colter gets sent back (again and again and again) eight minutes before the moment before the explosion went off, find out where the bomb is and who set it and prevent a later and far greater attack by the same person in downtown Chicago.

Part of the fun of “Source Code” is watching our hero (Jake Gyllenhaal) re-live the same 8 minutes over and over again, each time in a slightly different way, each time getting closer and closer to the truth!

There are a couple of small clunky moments here and there (the biggest of which, is the scene, full of exposition, where we get told what “source code” is), but the sheer inventiveness, the fast pace and the emotional burden that the film carries are far greater that those little imperfections.

There are some debates about its ending (don’t worry, I’m not going to reveal it here). There is a point where you might think the film has actually ended: I’m referring to the long freeze frame (you’ll know what I mean when you see the film) and in fact it could have easily ended there, which would have made the film much more poignant and arguably better, but then the film carries on… and just when you think “Oh no, another Hollywood ending), the film takes a surprising final turn and gives you a few (slightly) unexpected twists right till the last moment and makes up for what you thought it was one of those “re-filmed-ending” after failed test screening.

There’s nothing better than a good unexpected ending! In the theatre where I watched it, it got everybody talking!

I haven’t had such fun watching a film in a very long time.

It’s a bit unfair to compare this with Inception (but it seems like everybody else is doing it). They are two completely different films and their only similarity is the fact that they both make you think and requires you to do some work while watching the story unfold.

However “Source Code” is an emotionally charged film too (while Inception, as we’ve all noticed, was a tiny bit cold); I was almost moved to tears in couple of scenes and yet, the film still managed to have a lot of humor throughout (courtesy of Mr Gyllenhaal’s perfectly pitched performance).

What else can I say? I loved it! It might not be as stylish and fresh as Moon was (Duncan Jones’s previous film). This is certainly a bigger Hollywood fair, and a much more crowd-pleasing roller-coaster, but if you regard cinema as entertainment, you can’t get better than this!

9/10