We’ll never find the answers to the questions she asked him when he was here.
Tag Archives: 2024
CAPSULE: STREET TRASH (2024)
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DIRECTED BY: Ryan Kruger
FEATURING: Sean Cameron Michael, Donna Cormack-Thomson, Joe Vaz, Warrick Grier, Gary Green
PLOT: The year is 2050, in the city of Cape Town, and it’s up to Ronald and his posse of paupers to thwart the mayor’s evil plan to liquidate the homeless.
COMMENTS: You can’t choose your own dystopian-bum name, but I reckon I’d go by “Cardigan.” I might rub elbows with the likes of Chef, Wors, Pap, or Two-Bit, and meet up with Society whenever I wanted to score some designer drugs. Yessir, a whimsical existence of survival interspersed with skirmishes with police and memorial services for fallen comrades goo-ified by a deadly chemical administered by government drones.
So goes this re-imagining of 1987’s Street Trash, wherein our casually-charismatic heroes do their best amidst poverty and the threat of annihilation, preserving through brotherhood and cunning japes against the well-heeled. In the movie’s world, the middle classes (and, indeed, the working classes) have been eliminated—economically, mind you. You’ve either got more money than you could possibly know what to do with ( I’ve heard good things about “SoyCoin”, the first vegan cryptocurrency), or no money at all. The message sent, again, and again, is that wealth disparity is a grim and growing issue.
Commendably, though, Street Trash doesn’t come across as sermonizing despite its inherent preachiness. The characters are fun—particularly Chef, with his dissections of age-old children’s classics as creepy sex parables. For those hungry for practical effects, they burst from nearly every pore. Some dozen or more characters ooze DayGlo™ liquids, slough skin from hands and head, grow pustulant goiters which pop, and much more. Also to Street Trash ’24’s credit is the presence of Gary Green, unearthly star from Kruger’s feature debut Fried Barry. Green is a fascination in every shot, coming across as half a wavelength removed from his surroundings. Appropriately, Green’s character has an imaginary friend (voiced by Kruger) who is altogether blue and bizarre.
As remakes go, this isn’t quite one. Kruger’s sophomore feature belongs to a genre I’m stumbling across more often these days, in perhaps a sign of the times: a hybrid of post-apocalyptic and cutesy playfulness, taking the edges off the grim reality descending upon humanity like a sack of awful. Or, maybe a sack of offal—considering the vast quantities of sludge to be found in Street Trash.
WHAT THE CRITICS SAY: “
SATURDAY SHORT: THE RAINBOW BRIDGE (2024)
Worried pet owner Tina consults a pair of psychic science cranks in hopes of speaking to her dying pooch MeeMoo. From Dmitri Simakis, half of the team behind Everything is Terrible!, this short was briefly referenced in Pod 366, Ep. 49. CONTENT WARNING: Adult language.
CAPSULE: LOVE LIES BLEEDING (2024)
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DIRECTED BY: Rose Glass
FEATURING: Kristen Stewart, Katy O’Brian, Jena Malone, Anna Baryshnikov, Dave Franco, Ed Harris
PLOT: In a small Southwestern city, Lou (Stewart) manages a gym and generally keeps her head down, keeping an eye on her sister, Beth (Malone) and her abusive husband, JJ (Franco), while keeping distance from her dad, Lou Sr. (Harris), a major player in the local crime scene. When Lou meets Jackie, who’s temporarily working for her dad while saving money for a body building competition in Vegas, sparks fly, setting off a conflagration which threatens to burn everything to the ground.
COMMENTS: It’s reductive to call Love Lies Bleeding just a queer neo-noir, but that is basically what it is. It hits all the right noir notes: shady characters mired in shady dealings for questionable reasons. The setting (New Mexico, 1989) brings the “neo” to the noir, along with the fact that the star-crossed protagonists are a lesbian couple instead of the usual heterosexual pairing. And at first glance, it seems that, interesting and entertaining as it is—performances are good all around, as well as Glass’ direction—there’s nothing truly “weird” about this, at least not in the way we at 366 Weird Movies define the term.
However, as an A24 release, it’s at least atypical: it ain’t no Bound, for sure. For one thing, the setting allows for Glass and co-writer Weronika Tofilska to make some cultural commentary. There’s a solid background of violence always hovering about, and Lou Sr.’s club/shooting range is always packed with people eagerly exercising their Second Amendment rights, evoking specters of the wild west. There’s also the gym rat culture: intimidating motivational slogans and steroid use, which is a major plot point in the story.
The weird elements aren’t exactly subtle, but they are startling and metaphorical: a massive ravine in the landscape that reads as rather vaginal and several instances of ‘roid rage. At the bodybuidling competition, Jackie vomits up a full-grown Lou. The climatic confrontation between Jackie, Lou, and Lou Sr. has been called “the most A24 ending of A24 endings.” It works well, as long as it’s not taken literally, and it doesn’t detract from the denouement, which isn’t afraid to put the worm in the apple, as noir endings go. It may not be “weird” in the full sense, but there’s enough weird to notice in this hot, queer neo-noir.
Currently streaming on several platforms like Max, Hulu, and Sling, the film is also on a Region-free Blu-ray with a commentary by Glass and Tofilska, two featurettes—“In the Land of Guns and Muscles” and “Sex, Steroids and Codependency”—and an image gallery. A 4K UHD will be available in January 2025.
WHAT THE CRITICS SAY:
- Blu-ray Movies, Blu-ray TV Shows
SATURDAY SHORT: SPILLOVER (2024)
Translucent organ bags undulate as a brass band plays backwards.
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