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Reviews
What Remains (2005)
Compelling, arresting, lyrical, and astonishing
This film premiered at Sundance '06 and I was one of a privileged few who chose an 8:00 am screening of something that sounded, on the face of it, macabre and grotesque. A friend who grudgingly accompanied had even lower expectations than I did.
We were blown away.
American culture as a whole has a neurotic, practically phobic relationship with death. The miracle of Cantor's film-making in "What Remains" is that, like his subject, he manages to create art that takes as its subject on of our last remaining taboos, wringing beauty from a subject matter that, taken on the face of it, seems the polar opposite.
I will be purchasing the DVD when it is released, and setting my TIVO to capture this when it premieres on HBO. I will be one of those maddening people who forces friends, family, heck, even total strangers to watch something they have no desire to watch--and I suspect that by the end of a first viewing, they, like the friend who saw the film with me, will have been deeply and permanently moved by the experience.
What the #$*! Do We (K)now!? (2004)
Smarmy, schlocky, pseudo-intellectual %&$#
This is a filmed version of late-night, incoherent, mildly drunken babbling amongst friends. You know, like back in college, that one night, when suddenly at 2:34 AM, after the fourth joint of the evening and well into the sixth bottle of wine, Chuck suddenly believed he'd conclusively proved the existence of God?
This is the singular most awful excuse for a film I've seen in many, many years.
Do not, do not, do NOT allow well meaning friends to tell you it's a "deep, life-altering" movie. It is not. It is a disjointed, ridiculous metaphysical mess. It is an infomercial for the cult of Ramtha, parading as cinema.
It is a tragedy.
Bubble Boy (2001)
Love it or Hate it--I loved it
This film's got what "Joe Vs. The Volcano" has...sweet, lovable characters in completely impossible circumstances. A slapstick black comedy with a touch of good-natured cynicism, wrapped around a fractured fairy tale.
If you're not a fan of the offbeat--if "guilty pleasure" is something you'd never admit to enjoying--then by all means, you should avoid this film.
I went into the viewing experience with no expectations and laughed so hard my abdominal muscles ached for three days. It was absolutely, delightfully offbeat. Not for the mainstream movie fan. DEFINITELY a must-see for folks who can appreciate something that isn't cut from sensitive cloth, though.
It's "There's Something About Mary" for fans of 70s kitsch, with Jake Gyllenhaal, who deserves a level of stardom nobody's achieved since Tom Cruise thundered into the 80's. Yeah. He's that good.