Sunday, May 29, 2005

movie review - mysterious skin



sean, brendan, matt and myself all went down to the sunset 5 yesterday for the 4:45 mysterious skin show. it was pretty packed and an audience that skewed surprisingly older. anyway, first the trailers

the beat that my heart skipped - a french film that carried the critic's blurb "if (insert stars name here) was any hotter he would burn the very celluloid the film was printed on". despite that terrible hyperbole and the terrible title, the film actually looks pretty good. B+

my summer of love - supposedly acclaimed british love triangle thriller, but the trailer came off as dullsville to me. i like paddy considine though. C

chrystal - terrible trailer. file it under "forgotten forever the day after it opens". D+

sons of provo - click the link. you gotta see it for yourself. F

funny ha ha - considering that my roommate already has this on dvd and my former roommates have proclaimed it the best movie in years, i was curious to finally see something about it. and after seeing the trailer, i'm mostly unimpressed. although i have a raging crush on kate dollenmayer already. B-

wild side - i kind of already forget what this trailer was like. what i do remember ain't so hot. D+


so, mysterious skin. i've never seen a gregg araki film before but everybody i trust has told me that he is terrible. the main reason i was seeing the film was because two summers ago i visited the set and wound up acting in a little horror short called "blood prom" that was supposed to be used in the movie as a movie the characters go to see. i was curious to see if i wound up on the cutting room floor. i was surprised to find that i kinda liked the movie.

the movie is uncompromising in its portrayal of pedophelia, male prostitution, rape, and kids wearing really nerdy glasses. some scenes were pretty hard to watch, but by the end, i was filled with a feeling i can only imagine was araki's goal to get me to feel. i enjoyed the main performances with the exception of jeff licon, who stunk up the joint with his terrible portrayal of eric, the gothy kid. in particular, chase ellison who plays young neil was exceptional. for being only 9 years old at the time, the performacne is pretty spectacular. how they managed to make these kids do the things they do without having them know what they were actually doing is beyond me, but apparently all efforts were made to keep the kids in the dark.

some of araki's directing choices fall flat and a lot of his editing was choppy (let someone else edit you d-bag), but sometimes he hits. the music in particular was a great success. the score by howard budd and robin guthrie worked wonders in creating the proper mood and i recommend checking out some samples at the itunes store.

i don't want to drag this out. basically, the movie is really not for people that are bothered by the confession scene in "happiness" because it's a whole movie of that. for those that aren't squemish, it may be worth a look just because it has some interesting things in it that make it overall slightly above average.



as for "blood prom" it's there in all it's glory. well, not all it's glory. i didn't make it in, but my costar trieste did with a wonderful closeup. and we all got our name in the credits, which i was really excited about.

overall - C+

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