SolidSnakeMGS
Superhero
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- Feb 7, 2006
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And that yardstick is called 'GUMMO'!
This post contains spoilers.
I remember seeing 'Kids' a loooong time ago and being utterly repulsed by it. I wasn't huge into movies like I am now, so my discretion and critique were basically non-existant. I am renting Kids again to give it another shot. So I had heard of an earlier work by the director Harmony Korine, called Gummo. I read the description, and it sounded intriguing.
Boy was I wrong. Gummo is nothing more than a collection of scenes of trashy people doing stupid, idiotic, disgusting, revolting, trashy things. The scenes are supposed to be connected, but damned if I see a connection other than they are all doing stupid trashy things and reinforcing the idea that Ivo Shandlor had about society being too sick to survive.
The movie is shot documentary style. Long takes, few cuts, and many handheld shots. Its like a Cops episode where you see dumb idiots doing dumb idiotic things and being arrested, only without the Cops and the arrests (unfortunately). We get a lot of artistic shots, like extreme close-ups and blurred out footage and what not.
Some highlights:
A shirtless, creepy-looking kid who wears rabbit ears messing around on a walkway over a highway. All he does is mess around, climb on the fence, kick trash around, and urinate on cars passing underneath.
A bunch of trashy idiots getting drunk and tearing up their wal-mart dining room table in their tiny kitchen as the friends whoop and holler. Then they proceed to -- get this -- wrestle the chair before tearing it into a million pieces as well.
A ******ed girl describing her relationship with her plastic baby doll.
A kid messing with paintings in his parents house. He removes one, bugs just spread out from underneath like you wouldn't believe, then we spend time watching him trying to put the painting back up. Loads of fun and entertainment.
A drunk Harmony Korrine trying to hit on a black midget, who says he is gay but won't let Harmony kiss him. Easily the stupidest scene, and the fact that it goes on for such a long time makes me believe that like fellow indy "artist" Vincent Gallo, there is much love for one's self.
Lots of bike riding. These two kids -- the main characters of the movie I suppose you could say -- ride bikes through the neighborhood and kill cats to sell to some guy who then sells it to a chinese restaurant. These kids love to ride their bikes. And ride their bikes. And ride some more.
Oh, they do stop and beat a hanging cat that is already dead.
One of these kids is taking a bath in what has to be the nastiest color of green water I've seen. I don't remember taking baths in what looked like toxic waste when I was a kid. And then his mother brings him spaghetti to eat while he is bathing. She's washing his hair for him while he's trying to eat. WTF, mom?
The premise of the movie sounded interesting. A town has just been struck by a tornado, and these kids do anything to kill their boredom. I figured we'd get a nice slice of life movie where we see these kids making the ruins of the town into a playground, and although they do bad things like kids do, they still are good people just trying to cope. Maybe we see them trying to help other people or whatnot.
But NNNNNnnnnnnnnoooooooo! I failed to mention the millions of bits of narrations from these dumb people about their dumb lives. I know they weren't actors, but for chrissakes, how hard is it to tell them not to look at the camera?
The worst thing is just how boring and uninteresting this movie is. Supposedly, Korrine thinks this movie is life, that its real. Unfortunately for him, he fails to understand that when you stick a camera in the room with a bunch of barely evolved primates, you don't get reality; you get a bunch of morons that want to be and look funny on screen. He becomes his own worst enemy and produces a completely worthless movie that bores instead of intrigues.
I could go on and on about how pretentious, dull, and pointless this movie is, but I already wasted enough precious time watching and then writing too much about this abomination. Not to mention I am trying to force remove any memory of this crapfest out of my mind. Avoid at all costs.
This post contains spoilers.
I remember seeing 'Kids' a loooong time ago and being utterly repulsed by it. I wasn't huge into movies like I am now, so my discretion and critique were basically non-existant. I am renting Kids again to give it another shot. So I had heard of an earlier work by the director Harmony Korine, called Gummo. I read the description, and it sounded intriguing.
Boy was I wrong. Gummo is nothing more than a collection of scenes of trashy people doing stupid, idiotic, disgusting, revolting, trashy things. The scenes are supposed to be connected, but damned if I see a connection other than they are all doing stupid trashy things and reinforcing the idea that Ivo Shandlor had about society being too sick to survive.
The movie is shot documentary style. Long takes, few cuts, and many handheld shots. Its like a Cops episode where you see dumb idiots doing dumb idiotic things and being arrested, only without the Cops and the arrests (unfortunately). We get a lot of artistic shots, like extreme close-ups and blurred out footage and what not.
Some highlights:
A shirtless, creepy-looking kid who wears rabbit ears messing around on a walkway over a highway. All he does is mess around, climb on the fence, kick trash around, and urinate on cars passing underneath.
A bunch of trashy idiots getting drunk and tearing up their wal-mart dining room table in their tiny kitchen as the friends whoop and holler. Then they proceed to -- get this -- wrestle the chair before tearing it into a million pieces as well.
A ******ed girl describing her relationship with her plastic baby doll.
A kid messing with paintings in his parents house. He removes one, bugs just spread out from underneath like you wouldn't believe, then we spend time watching him trying to put the painting back up. Loads of fun and entertainment.
A drunk Harmony Korrine trying to hit on a black midget, who says he is gay but won't let Harmony kiss him. Easily the stupidest scene, and the fact that it goes on for such a long time makes me believe that like fellow indy "artist" Vincent Gallo, there is much love for one's self.
Lots of bike riding. These two kids -- the main characters of the movie I suppose you could say -- ride bikes through the neighborhood and kill cats to sell to some guy who then sells it to a chinese restaurant. These kids love to ride their bikes. And ride their bikes. And ride some more.
Oh, they do stop and beat a hanging cat that is already dead.
One of these kids is taking a bath in what has to be the nastiest color of green water I've seen. I don't remember taking baths in what looked like toxic waste when I was a kid. And then his mother brings him spaghetti to eat while he is bathing. She's washing his hair for him while he's trying to eat. WTF, mom?
The premise of the movie sounded interesting. A town has just been struck by a tornado, and these kids do anything to kill their boredom. I figured we'd get a nice slice of life movie where we see these kids making the ruins of the town into a playground, and although they do bad things like kids do, they still are good people just trying to cope. Maybe we see them trying to help other people or whatnot.
But NNNNNnnnnnnnnoooooooo! I failed to mention the millions of bits of narrations from these dumb people about their dumb lives. I know they weren't actors, but for chrissakes, how hard is it to tell them not to look at the camera?
The worst thing is just how boring and uninteresting this movie is. Supposedly, Korrine thinks this movie is life, that its real. Unfortunately for him, he fails to understand that when you stick a camera in the room with a bunch of barely evolved primates, you don't get reality; you get a bunch of morons that want to be and look funny on screen. He becomes his own worst enemy and produces a completely worthless movie that bores instead of intrigues.
I could go on and on about how pretentious, dull, and pointless this movie is, but I already wasted enough precious time watching and then writing too much about this abomination. Not to mention I am trying to force remove any memory of this crapfest out of my mind. Avoid at all costs.
