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Such an unfetteredly unhinged little feature film, probably made more so by my having zero knowledge of the TV series upon which it is based. But more than any TV-to-film adaptation I've seen, this preserves the rubbery, anything-goes absurdity of children's animated television of the era without ever losing the energy of an 11-minute short over its 74-minute runtime. It's kind of marvelous, something like John K. crossbred with Bill Plympton, and outside of the early Silly Symphony shorts, I can't think of a single Disney animated theatrical project that feels even remotely like this. But also, it turns out there's a reason that you usually only see this kind of animated freneticism in 11-minute shorts, because by the end of 74 minutes, this has so thoroughly burned through its own sensibilities that you can practically smell the engine overheating, and the credits are a merciful reprieve. I felt legitimately tired after watching this. Grade: B
The only Ti West feature I hadn't seen at this point, and a major stylistic departure from his later films. If people complained about House of the Devil being a slow burn, I can't imagine what they'd do with this. Literally just people walking around the woods until eventually an unseen sniper starts picking them off. On the "is this Slow Cinema or just empty cinema?" rubric, I think unfortunately West landed on the latter, but on paper, you've gotta admire the purity of concept here. Grade: C-
The cinematographer for Koyaanisqatsi decided to make a movie, and surprise! It's a beautifully shot, musically minded, non-narrative collage documentary about the dichotomy between humanity's capacity for achievement and destruction. Only this time, it's less about humanity's relationship with nature and more about human communities and the destruction wrought to those communities by capitalism, which should theoretically be more up my alley except that: 1) the New-Age-isms of Michael Stearns's ambient score are no substitute for Philip Glass's towering Koyaanisqatsi score, and 2) this movie leans a little into exoticizing the many indigenous, non-European cultures it depicts here, which is not awesome. Still, the film is frequently stunning, and I'm glad I watched it. Grade: B
This is a lot angrier than the other Gregg Araki movies I've seen, which I wasn't expecting but makes total sense given the subject matter. The way the film flirts with but ultimately eschews the nihilism of the HIV-positive "dead men walking" protagonists is both stunning and also crushingly sad as it becomes apparent that these guys can't die on their own terms even if they set their minds to it—pretty effective at rendering the tragedy of the AIDS pandemic: no amount of cool anger and cavalier self-destruction can nullify the cavernous reality that faced the gay community, as far as I understand it. Brutal, vivacious, beautifully human cinema. Grade: A-
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