2 Punk 4 U : Repo Man

Repo Man (1984) directed by Alex Cox is a film about white suburban punks, aliens, the government, and being an asshole. Every character in it only looks out for themself. There’s no conventional antagonist or protagonist, everyone’s kind of just a bad guy in the film. Whether it’s Otto, Bud, Leila, or the Rodriguez brothers, everyone just has one goal— to find that Chevy Malibu car.

It doesn’t matter what it takes to find it, everyone’s just willingly okay with throwing everyone and anyone under the bus. The film is so hedonistic and so perfectly punk– because of how it doesn’t care about what the audience might think. It mixes absurd graphics with strange gags such as all grocery food having labels of what it is and having no brands. Repo Man has a world of its own and every person living in it is just an asshole.

Otto, the main character of the film doesn’t care about anyone, not even his parents, his friends, or his girlfriend. He’s just either angry or horny, there’s no in-between. There’s no sense of morality that surrounds the film. Everyone kind of just lifts their middle finger at everyone as an automatic response to anything. When Otto’s friend was dying in the floor of the supermarket, his friend’s last words were about how he had no choice but be this way because society made him like that. Otto says “That’s bullshit! You’re just a white suburban punk like me.” That made me laugh and think that everyone in the film was pretty much white except maybe the Rodriguez brothers, Lite, and Marlene and yet, everyone chose to have this punk lifestyle of being fraudulent and ratchet. Otto could have lived a nice suburban white life but he chose to be the opposite of everything society upholds as respectable.

This entire film does kind of scream a big “fuck you!” to Hollywood conventions. While I never rooted for anyone, it was entertaining and fun to see everyone get what they deserved. I think the least hateable character was Miller. He was the only one who was able to start the Chevy Malibu to its descent into the sky when it had gone mad and started zapping everyone trying to get close to it. Miller was the only one who had pure intentions of getting to that car and maybe that’s why the aliens trusted him to start it without getting zapped into nothingness.

It’s true, the life of the repo man is always intense and it was really thrilling to watch the lives of these repo men do all sorts of stupid stunts and have no one really win. I’m starting to think that the people we call crazy on earth here are probably the one’s who just know things and the reason why aliens aren’t coming to earth is because everyone’s so stupid like everyone in Repo Man.

I heard a lot of people hated this film and I don’t blame them. We’re all so used to finding characters we want to relate to in films and television shows but for me, it’s also fun seeing everyone get what they deserve. It’s also fun to see green cars fly into space in the lowest possible efforts of trying to make it seem realistic. Repo Man was raunchy and couldn’t care less about what people thought about the film and I think that was one of its main charms that appealed most to me. It’s not for everyone and it didn’t have to be for everyone anyway.

Mepo Ran

As sir explained before watching the film that what we were about to watch had a punk rock theme to it, my tickles were pickled. Having just watched a glam rock themed movie last time, in the form of Velvet Goldmine which I relatively liked, a punk rock film seemed really fascinating to watch and compare the differences in style and execution.

One of the things that comes to mind when I hear punk rock is Blink 182 and coincidentally, the Circle Jerks. I’m not really a fan of the Circle Jerks but what I am a fan of is the Chili Peppers. Flea, the band’s bassist, is a big fan of the Circle Jerks and has talked about them from time to time, which is why I am familiar of the said band. It was then to my excitement to hear them be mentioned in the film and have them play some of their songs, as well as be in the film itself.

The opening scene of the movie was misleading for me, I thought that the movie was going to be about a typical story of a punk rock fan in his punk rock world and his punk rock idols then he’ll have a shot at fame/will meet his idols, and bla bla bla.
I didn’t expect the opening to be a ripoff of an infinity gauntlet in the shape of a car trunk, disintegrating people in a snap.

I was then curious as to what the hell was going on. The punk rock theme was also evident from the start. From Otto and his friends’ style and outfits, the spiked chokers, the mohawks, denim vests with nothing underneath, to how they were rowdy and were breaking and wasting stuff and pushing each other around to loud music, displaying anarchy, was all reminiscent of what I know the punk rock scene to be.

The movie then follows Otto Maddox’s journey as he gets fired/quits from his job and was then ‘tricked’ into repossessing a car for the Helping Hand Acceptance Corporation. This encounter with Bud and his parents’ donation of his supposed school money to the televangelist is what urges him to join Bud and the Helping Hand to become a repo man, thus starting the sequence of events that leads to his ‘shooting stars’ moment at the end of the film.

Repo Man is an odd yet fun film that touches on an interesting story line that includes aliens, some form of the MIB led by a woman with a metal hand, a Latin American group of undercover _____ (whatever they were), and a smug yet dedicated main character. Few of my favorite scenes were when Otto and Leila were outside of the United Fruitcake Outlet and Otto absurdly asks for them to make love… and it worked. Another one is when Otto and Miller were talking about the possibility of aliens traveling through time and getting people to fill that certain era they are in. Miller made it sound so convincing that you almost forget how crazy his claim was. When Miller was explaining this, my reaction was “the hell is he talking about, is he serious?”. I attempted to rationalize what he said but proceeded to then arrogantly dismiss his claims and decided that he was just one of those crazy guys in movies brought in to bring a sense of humor.

Image result for miller repo man car scene

But my God, when he entered the car in the end and flew the car all around the city, it made me laugh more than I was supposed to. That scene where a giant car that looked like it was filled with ‘stains’ and was lit with black light must have been a sight to see in the night sky of Los Angeles.

Overall, the movie didn’t start out to be as what I expected it to be, but ended out becoming more than what I expected it to be. It was a fun film that had humor and touched on different aspects of the world such as consumerism which is seen in the way their food items were all generically labeled in their generic terms. How a lot of people are fooled by false prophets, as seen with the televangelist and Otto’s parents. While also having its share of sci-fi with the aliens and the UFO and of course, the overarching punk rock theme that was present in the city and in Otto. I’d definitely watch this film on a chill night alone or with some friends. All in all, it was a good one and was something I truly liked.

Would v g mine

Velvet Goldmine stars Jonathan Rhys-Meyers as Brian Slade a.k.a Maxwell Demon a.k.a Tommy Stone and Ewan Mcgregor as Curt Wild a.k.a Mark Renton a.k.a Obi-Wan Kenobi, and follows Slade’s rise, fallout, and resurrection to stardom through the eyes and experiences of Arthur Stuart a.k.a Bruce Wayne a.k.a Alfred Borden.

Personally, the movie was very appealing to me at first. Having been a fan of bands like Warrant, Slaughter, Guns n Roses, Aerosmith, and the like, I was excited to watch the movie knowing that it revolved around the lives of the rockstars of the Glam Rock era. However, what I wasn’t a fan of, or rather, wasn’t aware and exposed to, was David Bowie in all his excellence (pls forgive me). The only songs I knew that included Bowie was Space Oddity and Under Pressure, the latter which he sang with Freddie Mercury. Having said so, I believe this affected my experience of the movie as I wasn’t able to relate and piece all of the ways it was parallel to Bowie as someone who was a big fan of him would be able to do so.

Nonetheless, the way Arthur Stuart was assigned the task of finding out what happened to Brian Slade and where he was currently then and how it was slowly shown that the task was more personal and was intertwined with his own life and experiences as he was an extremely huge fan of the rockstar was interesting to see.

There was a theme of homosexuality in the movie as seen in Brian Slade and Curt Wild’s relationship, and later on with Arthur Stuart and Wild’s wild encounter. This aspect of rockstars was surprisingly new to me as I was used to seeing the likes of Axl Rose and Anthony Kiedis with different beautiful women every now and then.
How this aspect then was given importance in how Slade made it okay for people, especially men, to wear make up, nail polish and color their hair, and how it empowered a lot of people, including Stuart, to embrace that side of them in a time where I believe such a thing wasn’t welcomed and accepted (1970s) as much as it is now, makes me see the importance of Bowie (as I believe Slade is a parallel of him), outside of his music, in the lives of multitudes of people.

The costumes used and the setting was also something that I liked. The colorful outfits and tight t-shirts with the pretentious furniture and props as well as the over the top Brian Slade stage costumes, the glitters, the feathers, the hair color, put the Glam in Glam Rock.

Though I found the story to be interesting, there was something lacking. I believe it’s in the execution itself as I think it could have been done better. I also wasn’t a fan of the songs that were made by the characters in the film. For me, a musical biography like this should at least have had a song or two that would stick to the majority of its viewers. If Mr. Schneebly a.k.a Dewey Finn was able to do so with a group of students, I believe rock god Brian Slade should have been able to do so as well.

Overall, the movie was alright, but as I’ve said, could have been done better. I like it though, and might watch it again sometime. Just not in the near future.

a River born to be a giver

If I were to die the next day, one thing in my to do list would be to go to a Red Hot Chili Peppers concert to spend my last few moments watching the band I love the most once again. What I mean to say is, I absolutely love the Peppers. And as such, I know that they, mainly John Frusciante and Flea, were very close friends with River Phoenix.

Image result for flea and river phoenix — Flea and River

Flea would always talk about how River was the sweetest, kindest, most beautiful person he’s ever met. And though I’ve never actually seen any of River’s movies or listened to any of his music, the same sentiment brushed off me.

Fast forward to the day we watched My Own Private Idaho (1991) in class, I was ecstatic to know that I was finally going to be able to see River Phoenix and witness the man I didn’t know but have admired nonetheless.

It’s funny how one of the first scenes I see River do is that of him receiving oral sex from an old guy. But nevertheless, I was hooked with his performance in the film. The first scene in the desert highway where he has his narcoleptic episode was weird yet very well done. I felt a sense of calmness in how you can feel the passion and sadness off of River’s acting, and I expected it to be present throughout the entirety of the movie.

So, the movie kicked off to a great start and I was zoned in into what was going to happen. Then Keanu Reeves (Scott Favor), whom I’m also a fan of because of The Matrix Trilogy, the John Wick movies, and his love for motorcycles, appeared on screen. This made me feel all kinds of giggity. I like how he’s always Keanu Reeves in all of his films, yet somehow he isn’t. Mike and Scott’s job as gigolos/hustlers was also weird for me to see because I’ve revered River Phoenix and have been so used to seeing Keanu Reeves in serious roles, so it was a new experience for me to watch them dabble in the dark arts.

The movie follows Mike and Scott’s journey from hustling to make a living and everything in between, to trying to find Mike’s mom whom he dreams of when he experiences his narcoleptic episodes.

The campfire scene where Mike ‘confesses’ his love for Scott was one of my favorite scenes in the movie. I believe it sums up all the hurt and anguish Mike feels inside of him as seen in the part where he says that if he’d have had a normal family that he’d be a well adjusted person and the part where he confesses to Scott, who said that “I only have sex with a guy for money”, and that “two guys can’t love each other” essentially denying Mike’s love in a way, was also something that made me feel gloomy as I felt that when Mike has found something to be hopeful for and has found someone he can rely on, he feels this immense affection that he wants to put into words and tell and express to Scott, but ultimately doesn’t work out for him. His response of “I love you, and you don’t pay me” and “I really want to kiss you” while he huddles himself up and looks at the flames enforced the angst I believe Mike was feeling at that moment.
Paired with Phoenix’s excellent acting here, I truly felt the wretchedness of Mike as a character, which also made me think that River experienced the same sentiments in his personal life as well.

Image result for my own private idaho campfire

Also, how they were wearing those jackets in the outdoors and were cozied up around the campfire reminds me of a certain movie involving broken backs and mountains.

Another aspect of the film which I found interesting were the sex scenes which were like a weird variation of a trip to Jerusalem game/ stop dance game. Disco disco good good person a.k.a Hans was also something I found hilarious yet very weird especially imagining how long they had to watch him dance like that.

Personally, a noteworthy part of the film was when Bob and Budd showed up. Well, for the reason that Budd IS FLEA. Scott and Mike riding the Canary Yellow Norton Motorcycle also made me happy as I know that Keanu Reeves is a big fan of motorcycles (as am I) and partly owns his own motorcycle company called Arch.
(he also mentions riding this specific motorcycle in a more recent interview).

Though, I also felt conflicted when Scott and Carmela fell in love because one, I love Keanu Reeves and Chiara Caselli (Carmela) was a beautiful woman thus I was rooting for them (that’s my boy Keanu!), but at the same time, it was hard to see Mike get left out.

In the end, Mike doesn’t find his mom, Scott went all mean girls and wouldn’t let them sit with him anymore, and Bob dies. I guess it wasn’t a good ending for Mike but somehow, despite the rejections and failures, I felt dismal yet satisfied.

Overall, I could see, through River’s acting, how everyone loved him and described him as they did. It’s a great movie to watch and is a reminder of how beautiful and talented River Phoenix is.

Thoughts and memories on Trainspotting

Image result for trainspotting club scene — Picking up Diane scene

Watching Trainspotting (1996) again in class evoked a specific memory I have of when I first watched it with my uncle on his portable DVD player as an 11-year-old grade 4 student This memory includes my Grandfather walking into our room right at the particular moment Diane and Renton’s sex scene was taking place. As expected from a conservative and old-fashioned Grandfather, my uncle quickly found himself at the receiving end of a sermon. This went on for a couple of minutes and all came to a halt when my Grandfather asked my uncle

“Why would you let him (me) watch such a thing, he’s only 11.”

To which I responded:

“Lolo… okay lang” with a big smirk on my face.

This was then followed by the sound of my uncle’s laughter as I also tried to stop myself from laughing.

My Grandfather’s argument with my uncle completely stopped at that point…
Because he then shifted his anger towards me by spewing some more verbal lessons as to why there was no good reason a child my age was supposed to be watching something like that. But then again,

“Who needs reasons when you’ve got heroin?”

Trainspotting takes us on the journey of Mark Renton’s hedonistic life and the shit-show (literally) he and his lovely group of friends go upon. The movie has a lot of highs and quite a bit of lows too. It starts off with a monologue about choosing life, or rather, choosing not to choose life, which is what Renton explicitly does throughout a good portion of the movie. A lot of forms of addiction is present in the movie which took on a multiplicity of shapes and forms. Some of them were drugs, sex, violence, television, and oddly enough, James Bond.

Mark Renton’s choice of addiction was that of heroin. He lived for the high life. And he proved it (not that he needed to) by diving deep into the depths of the worst toilet in Scotland. But, as they say, all good things must come to an end. Renton then decided to quit the high life and instead chose to choose life. He got a job, an apartment, and a whole new future ahead of him. But, as he said, there are final hits, and there are final hits. And when he took a final hit, this wasn’t that final hit. His spiraling journey back to the hole he was in begins yet again. But, as the movie ends, we see that he decides to choose life again, and tells us a calming reminder that he’ll become just like us.

This movie was the start of the not so weird movie category (in my opinion), and as it was more inclined to what I’m used to, I thoroughly enjoyed watching it. I like how the story was being told to us by Renton himself, I realized that I find the Scottish accent oddly relaxing. This really immersed me into following his progression as the movie went on as I was hearing his thoughts throughout most of the events that happened. As a result, I liked his character the most.

I found Begbie hilarious yet annoying as f**k. I don’t like violence, but I like the absurdity of his character. Spud was okay, as was Sick Boy and Tommy. Though there were quite a few disturbing scenes in the movie, the only thing that bothered me were the close-ups of them injecting heroin into their bloodstream.

Swimming in shit, cool. Dead baby, flinched a bit. Head bashed by a bottle, meh. Needles, get that sh*t outta here!

I personally was excited about how Renton was trying to get himself together and was definitely pissed that his friends crept right back again to spoil his becoming a normie party. Come to think of it, I actually don’t know why I wanted him to become normal. His life as a junkie was lucrative but rather fun. In a way, I side with how he states “choose life. choose a job. choose a career. choose a family…” with irony- because it sounds extremely boring. But then again, that’s the life I’m living right now, and I seem to be enjoying it.

Because of this, the ending, and basically the entirety of the movie, was very satisfying for me. I internally cheered for Renton as he walked towards me while dictating that he’ll become just like us.

Go get that big television, Mark Renton!

A Hustler’s Heartbreak (My Own Private Idaho)

My Own Private Idaho introduced me to River Phoenix and a young Keanu Reeves. I’m almost certain that if I was there during the time River Phoenix was just starting to become known, he would’ve been a big hit in our generation. In addition to that, seeing Keanu Reeves outside of what I know him for, action movies such as Matrix and John Wick, was a great experience. His role as Scott was even very different from his Bill and Ted role, another younger Keanu Reeves that I’m more familiar with.
Another interesting thing I picked up from the movie is the new perspective I have about the world. The hustler life isn’t something I’m too familiar with and even more so for those part of the LGBT community. While the LGBT aspect of the film is one of its defining characteristics, at least according to other sources and critics, I think it didn’t add much to the plot other than Scott and Mike’s relationship. Their hustling targeted anyone regardless of gender anyway.
Though while we did see Mike and Scott as hustlers, we also saw their human sides. Specifically for Mike, despite his non-ideal characteristics and personality, we see the things he longs for and ultimately misses. His problems and anxieties are even hindrances to his hustler lifestyle. For example, his panic attacks and blackouts happen before certain sexual encounters which, of course, is detrimental to a sex worker’s career. When he passes out, he also gets images of his mother and a house that are also seen by the audience. These seemingly refer to Mike’s longing for a home and a family; he seeks to rid of his loneliness by finding someone who will love him and who he can love similar to how mothers are in real life. This shows the “human side” of Mike as a hustler, and even inspires empathy from the audience; this also makes what Scott does to him more heartbreaking for the audience because Mike seemingly finds a home and a love in him throughout the film.
As such, Mike and Scott’s relationship, supported by the actors’ excellent acting, was the main highlight of the film in my opinion. Though before that, seeing the two characters and their motives in their lives were also highly interesting. Mike was living the hustler life to BE alive while Scott was living to hustler life to FEEL alive; the difference here being that for Mike, it’s a matter of survival while for Scott it’s a matter of rebellion [to his father]. This huge difference in their motives ultimately lead to Scott’s rejection of Mike. Mike’s heartbreak is felt by the audience, with a bit of bitterness against Scott. This was the concluding feeling I had, and apparently my classmates’ too. We are first introduced to Scott with him being alone, physically and emotionally and throughout the film we saw Scott provide Mike feelings of happiness and a seemingly genuine companionship. Though at the end of it all, Mike is still left alone, back to where it all began and worse, Scott turned to the life similar to what his father had originally wanted, the same life he rebelled against througout the film.

My Own Private Idaho: Shakespeare, sad gays, and more sadness

Before I begin, I just want to say that River Phoenix was one of my first crushes ever as a child after watching Stand By Me (1986) that while watching My Own Private Idaho (1991), I felt like tearing up because of how I had to keep remembering that River Phoenix was actually dead and he died having a seizure due to drug overdose and his character, Mikey Waters was a narcoleptic.

My Own Private Idaho might be one of the saddest gay films I have ever seen. It follows the relationship of two prostitutes, Mikey Waters and Scott Favor. I’m not sure what they were, supposed lovers but apparently, it was only one sided. It’s not like Call Me By Your Name (2017) where it feels a bit more bittersweet but sad. This film was just sad. Mikey just wants to be loved and have someone look after him. There are flashbacks of a house and his mother. It’s old scrappy footage and its grainy and it seems even more distant and maybe even his only good memory that Mikey has before his narcoleptic attacks. Being a prostitute, Mikey lives on the streets, has no real friends, and every relationship he has with a person is temporary and for the sake of surviving. When he comes across Scott, that changes and Mikey actually gains attachments and might even be in love with Scott.

The film was a Shakespearean adaptation and sometimes there was switch from modern everyday language to the Shakespearean dialogue. I found this quite confusing and at some points of the film, it made it a bit draggy for me because I’m not a Shakespearean linguist but everything before and after the Shakespearean dialogues were nice to watch. I think it’s just hard to dissect it when you’re like me whose never really read Shakespeare for fun aside from school work.

The editing is quite unconventional and sometimes, it’s out of this world. Everything kind of feels like a mix of reality and fantasy, we’re all caught up in between and at some point, we just give up on trying to figure out what’s real and accept the film as it is. There is one scene where we are in a magazine shop and on the covers are all topless men and each topless man just starts talking about their background of being a prostitute. It’s comical yet sad to hear those things. The world this film builds is strange and also, really depressing and the film does not hold back from making it the most depressing film on earth. Mikey, not only has a medical condition of getting seizures whenever he gets triggered by images of houses and his mother, the person he loves does not love him back and he’s poor.

There is a clear contrast between him and Scott. While Scott also sells his body on the street, he is also the son of a rich mayor and he can turn his back on this life any time and be welcomed back. This life of being a vagabond is a choice Scott can make but not a choice that Mikey can make because it is his life and he has no fallback. The film is a pure tragedy and we don’t really see any happy endings which left me really miserable by the end of it. In the end, it was just the story of how two boys passed each other in life. Mikey will forever be at the bottom of society because he was born that way and no one knowing what will happen next in his narcoleptic episodes while Scott will live a life of pretending to have never been associated with the people of the streets.

I always had a pang of fear every time Mikey had a seizure because I never knew what would happen to him. The nature of his job had to bring him to the scariest places of the city and he had to sell his body in order to live, what possible things could happen to his body while he was asleep. Mikey never had any control of anything even if he tried.

My Own Private Idaho was able to touch on the disparity between the rich and the poor as well as talk about the hardships of gay people. Maybe Scott did love Mikey but chose not to because it would be bad for his image? We will never really know Scott anymore after he chose not to recognize the face of his old friends and by turning his back on Bob towards the end of the film, he turned his back on everyone else from the community of outcasts.

All in all, this entire film just made me sad and realized how people are born to be privileged enough to have choice on what to do with their lives and on the other hand, people are born not to have a choice at all.

I feel like this film is not for everyone because of how it is so different from the usual and conventional ways films are structured. It could be boring or interesting, depending on how the audience sees it. It took me a lot of time to process whether I liked it or not but I honestly have a lot more appreciation for it having to look a bit deeper into the imagery and seeing the relationship dynamic of Mikey and Scott. Or maybe, I just hate Shakespearean language.

On Using Your White Voice: A Sorry to Bother You Review

I always appreciate a good film that talks about the daunting effects of capitalism and pokes at the inequality of the white hegemony of the imperialistic America. What makes it even funner is that it directed by an actual black man so we know this is genuine and not just another white old person directing it to make money off being “woke” as to they say in today’s lingo.

It was my second time viewing this film in class and the second time just made me love it all the more. There are so much things going on in Sorry To Bother You that it does require a second time viewing. There are many symbolisms that you will only be able to notice the second time viewing because the first time viewing, your head just spins around and you’re kind of left in some existential crisis about how horrible capitalism is and that we all live to serve it and there’s really no true escape because it all feels too late. The second time you view it, you can feel a sense of relief and realize that even if it’s hard to completely break the barriers created in society by capitalism in society, there is still hope as seen through Cassius Green also known as “Cash”.

Sorry To Bother You does not just critique capitalism from an economic standpoint but also from the perspective of the workers and what they go through being a part of this capitalistic society. We journey with Cassius Green going from being broke and needing money just to pay his rent and dues, and then to him climb the ladder and not being able to let go of the power and wealth that comes from being successful. It talks about the morality that one has to face when they are finally face to face with this opportunity that only few get offered. But this opportunity comes with a sacrifice which is mostly integrity, morality, values, and your conscience. As Cash advances to the top, he also loses everything else. His girlfriend, Detroit, is the complete opposite of him. She lives her life in protest and being true to herself. She does not care about money or success, she just wants to voice out what she believes in. We see the contrast in their way of thinking when Cash is in the position where he can either choose to join the rallies against Worry-Free and actually help worker unions rather than the the company that sells cheap labor and makes horse people but Cash chooses the latter.

In the film, we see that Cash never really realizes how he started to change after using his white voice. It just became a part of him and we see him try to convince everyone how he’s still the same guy. One of the major turning points in the film was when Cash went to visit the CEO of Worry-Free, Steve Lift’s house. Cash, only knowing he needed to use his white voice all the time, was told to rap based on a stereotype that white people put on black people. While having to put on the white mask all the time, this time he had to exoticize himself which made him have to screaming the N word which humiliated and basically degraded himself in front of white people. The racial dynamic is really seen throughout the film and while it is supposed to be taken as an exaggeration, we still feel the uneasiness that goes on with what Cash has to go through.

I never really found myself hating Cash. Despite him turning to a self-preserving asshole, I always still had a soft spot for him, always wanting to root for him that maybe he’ll do something about this whole mess. He’s not a bad guy, he just has to deal with this oppressive system.

It is a common struggle for man to come face to face with opportunity and losing their identity and integrity but Sorry To Bother You attacks it so well by bringing so much color and humor into it, making it a stressful but fun topic to watch. I did have an existential crisis but it also gave me a glimmer of hope that there is still a way to go back to who you were and maybe even become better.

Apart from all the hard hitting realities that it touches upon, I really enjoyed how this film was made. It made me feel like I was in a strange nightmare that was strangely, pleasant but also uneasy. The bright colors mixed with the dark haze, made it so intriguing to watch. It was dark but it was also, colorful and it looked pretty. It was a wonderful mess. The film wasn’t afraid of being unconventional. When Cash had to use his white voice, the film got literal white people to do the voice overs for the actors in need of white voices. They got David Cross who, undoubtedly is one of the whitest people on the planet.

Sorry To Bother You, with all its absurdity and its dark comedy magic realism, really made it eye opening to discuss the potential direction the world might be going. While it is a reflection of today’s society, it also shows how we might not be far from what might happen and how damaging it is for people to actually participate in this toxic culture but there’s also no clear cut escape. We just have to be aware for now and know that something could be done about it if we all realize it and make a collective effort to change it. Sorry To Bother You was not a bother at all but something that I hope everyone gets to watch one day. On the surface level, it’s so fun to watch but greater messages are rooted behind this narrative. Boots Riley warns us to use our white voice but at our own risk.

Same shop, different everything.

While I normally prefer not to judge films by their titles, Futureless Things seemed to give my mind an image of something dark or dystopian. While the first few chapters of the film seemed to reject my initial impression based on the title, the final portion does add to this darkness that the theme was apparently [and seemingly] trying to portray throughout the film.
For the most part, despite the film being set in Korea and away from a culture that I’m more aware of [like the Philippines and even western, at least based on films and the cultures I’ve encountered through them], the setting of a convenience store seemed to give off a more global culture. Even the scene involving the North Korean woman seemed familiar given how people really discriminate those of different background.
Despite the ease of understanding the general context of the film due to the relatively global culture provided by a convenience store, the lack of background context per story/chapter was a bit frustrating. This was most apparent during the first shift from the beginning to the second chapter; the lack of a context of how and who those characters were and then being immediately forgotten upon the entry of the new character and scenario was bit difficult to overcome in the beginning. Though throughout the film, I found myself more prepared to transition from one story to the other, and open to the idea that these were truly independent stories and needed not one another.
This episodal treatment of the movie was definitely the most interesting aspect of it. While we were made aware that there have been movies made similarly to this, I have personally never encountered one. Additionally, the clock being seemingly a motif provided points of reflection for me; for me, this clock brings me back to thinking about the title being Futureless Things, a title that relates itself to time. Despite my obsession with “time” in the film, I didn’t really find anything to relate all scenes to “time” and instead just ended up concluding that the only things that all the scenes share are the setting and consequently, the owner of the convenience store.
Often, we read, hear, and see stories and are often only exposed to parts that are supplemental to the overall conclusion or climax. In this film though, we encounter a lot of, if not all, chapters that do not really add up to the conclusion. I initially thought that all the characters/employees were incompetent that then resulted into the poor financial performance the store was having, but looking back, some of the employees seemed decent and were only bothered by external forces as opposed to their own faults. These were scenes and moments that did not seem to add up to a central plot, and perhaps a number would argue that there really is no central plot. The closest to something central in the film would be the conclusion and how the owner of the store, and again these seemingly unrelated or barely related chapters being separated from the conclusion made the film a complicated but also interesting watch.
The director challenges the usual storytelling we encounter every day. We see chapters that do not give us background context and true conclusions that make it very different from stories that rely heavily on such background context or conclusions. The movie even strays farther away from conventional films like this by including realistic scenarios but also mixing in supernatural scenarios such as the one with the DJ store clerk and the mysterious woman. The film’s approach of being seemingly lighthearted at first while seemingly address the horrific capitalistic climax was not new, but how the film was shown through the various stories that did not contribute largely to the conclusion but still left the viewers engaged and anticipating for the conclusion was something new.

The Endless: Return to the UFO Death Cult

I was quite pleased to hear that the Endless was going to be a film about cults. Cults have strangely been such a fascination to me ever since middle school and having to watch a lot of those documentaries on the biopic channel made me so invested in learning why people would even decide to join them in the first place. My first thoughts would always be “man, I could never get into a cult, that’s crazy!” but then we have the Endless about these two really stupid brothers who decide to come back to the very cult that psychologically traumatized them for the rest of their lives.

If one escape was not enough, another escape had to convince them that cults were not a good thing. Justin and Aaron are both cult survivors who are trying to live their lives as normally as they can but the catch of the film is what if it was better to go back to the cult? A sign from a being or maybe God came to them when an old VHS tape is sent to their house and it is footage of their dear old cult, UFO Death Cult. Justin gets really worried about his brother’s mental health and gives in to Aaron’s whining about wanting to go back to the cult and guess what? They go back to the cult. The two brothers tended to have a lot of references to how “culty” their former cult was and even joked about it as if they are really self-aware about the dangers of it. They did not realize, the longer they stayed, how much they were actually not aware of how deep they had gotten into the cult again and just like the title, the film revolves around the endless, cycles and cycles of the same mistakes, same trap, and same weird beings trying to take control of them.

What I learned from documentaries about cults is that they always target people who want to have a sense of belonging and have no one else to go back to. Justin and Aaron do not have the best relationship and their mother passed away, while their father’s whereabouts are never talked about that. Due to all this, Aaron is really drawn to the cult. While Justin sees himself as a good brother for making him and his brother escape the first time, Aaron sees it as more of Justin trying to ruin his life. The film focuses a lot on the opposing views of the brothers and while it is dumb for Aaron to like cults, he has never been happier and Justin sees that which makes him think that maybe it’s okay for Aaron to stay a little longer. There is a lot of tension because Justin tries hard to play the father and mother role to Justin but Justin just wants to be an individual and make decisions for himself. Even towards the end of the film, we are lead to believe that Aaron will not leave the cult and Justin will and it is possible that they will live separate lives but in the end, brotherhood prevails and we see the two are able to resolve their differences by being equals. I think that Aaron just wanted equality that’s why he was so drawn to the cult in the first place because of how everyone was an equal there. It did not matter who you were, you were part of this “family” and there was a sense of belongingness.

There was a humanizing aspect to all these cult members being ordinary people, just helping each other out and having a good time but later on in the film, I started to notice how the characters just seemed lifeless and being full of a life. All of their actions felt like it was from some sort of home shopping network channel where they were trying really hard to sell these brothers something. Weed? Karaoke? Free-flowing food? Equal economy? UFO Death Cult seems like the perfect place to live. It is a utopia where everything also strangely feels familiar. I noticed in the cinematography, most of the shots are really wide. We rarely get close-ups and because of this distance, it always made me feel uneasy and as if there was something watching them.

This familiarity is later explained as how the people in the cult constantly relive a certain time frame and it happens over and over again. There are time loops and there is no escape unless you kill yourself but even if you do kill yourself, you just go back to the same time frame as you were. I guess the film never really explained how they were able to escape the first time and how they were so surprised that there were time loops. Unless, they were already in the time loop perhaps? And that’s why in their memories, that’s why they did escape. And also, why does Aaron only know one song ever which is House of the Rising Sun?

Each time loops had different intervals. One man had three seconds where he rammed himself into a tent, Kris and Mike had around a week, the UFO Death Cult had around 10 years, and shitty Carl had about 3 hours. Either way, they all had to die somehow or something else would take them but I didn’t really know that till the latter part of the film. The whole time I was just scared they would get murdered by the people in the cult but there were forces bigger than these crazed humans.

I think what made this film actually scary was how I didn’t know if there was going to be a monster or master mind controller of the cult who had a plan to abduct them. It was the fear of the unknown. It started when there was a rope pulling contest and the cult members were all trying to pull a rope from the sky and the rope was coming from nowhere and there was just this pulling source. There were hints of some greater force around them and it was so hard to explain what it was because the hints were so ambiguous and every cult member just seemed so drawn to it and worshipped it. The film was really able to build a frightening universe with all the people in it and the ambiguous spirits.

The Endless had a lot of horror elements as well as thriller elements. It was also a mix of sci-fi with the out of this world time loops. It was not a jump scare type of horror but it built up its ambiance with the very minimal sounds and emptiness in the location and silence of the woods. I feel like I’m never going to go out to the woods by myself again. The scene where Justin saw strange piled up rocks reminded me a lot of The Blair Witch Project where piles of rocks were always just laid out before something bad had happened and apart from the rocks, characters in the The Endless and The Blair Witch Project just kept going in circles in that forest. It makes me wonder that maybe there were time loops too in The Blair Witch Project.

I think at the end of the day, its safe to say that if Justin and Aaron were just better at communicating their emotions to each other, maybe none of this would have happened. Weird power dynamics always cause tension. Also, I learned that you should never return to the cult that psychologically traumatized you for eternity.