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Reviews
The Sore Losers (1997)
Uneven, but a lot of fun.
A very low budget film, i'm guessing not even breaking into the five-digit range. The sound is sloppy, as is the editing, with the format bouncing back and forth from S-VHS to 16mm to 8mm and back again.
But for all it's technical flaws, The Sore Losers is really a fun movie with a greaser-punk feel to it. Awesome soundtrack, featuring the Drags and Bantam Rooster, among others, and hey! Mike Maker can act! I'm surprised I haven't seen him in more films.
I really wish there were more films like The Sore Losers. We need more quirky low-budget films that are actually good. Guys, make some more movies!
Gummo (1997)
Two types of people...
There are two types of people. People who get Gummo, and people who don't. Harmony Korine isn't desperately grasping for shock value, that's Gregg Araki's job. There is a method to Harmony's madness.
This film does have a point: to show you how screwed up some people really are. Sure, this film is filled with unsavory characters, but that's why they're in the film. If we wanted to see cute people doing cute things, well, there's always Drew Barrymore movies. The characters in Gummo are ugly. The situations are ugly. The things they do are ugly. Make no mistake, Gummo is an ugly movie, but by the same token, aren't Resivoir Dogs, Dead Alive, Kids, or Night Of The Living Dead ugly movies? Gummo is all about what extremely depraved people do for entertainment. It's like a Big Black album set to celluloid. To say that this movie has no point is to deny that these people exist. White trash are out there, kids. They're killing your cats and wrestling your chairs. To say this film is crap is to take it at face value, in which case you shouldn't really be critiquing films anyway, now should you? Dig a little and find the meaning in Gummo. It's not The Wedding Singer, it actually requires thought.
Besides, tell me the "I f**kin' hate bunny wabbits!" scene isn't laugh out loud hilarious.
The Doom Generation (1995)
Complete toilet.
No wonder people think teenagers are mindless. They must think we're actually like the people in films like these. Cameos by Perry Farrell and Heidi Fliess don't make a movie "hip." and countless references to the number 666 don't make the people resposible for the film seem subversive or evil, it just makes them look like a bunch of pseudo Gen-Xers who spend too much time listening to Ministry and not enough time writing a script for this film.
What we have here is a hodgepodge of non-erotic sex and violence that doesn't even work on a Dead Alive-type level. Add to that some cliched slacker acting and some bad dialogue. The ending is stomach churning. Not because we feel bad for the characters, mind you, but because Gregg Araki thinks he can make a meaningful ending out of the most senseless violence you could possibly imagine.
If you're as mindless as the characters in this movie, then I'm sure you'll love it. It seems to be catered to the Hot Topic set anyway.
Yes, Gregg Araki, I'm disgusted. Now go take up stamp collecting.