“Meet the Hollowheads” (aka “Life on the Edge”) feels like a studio executive gave the green light to “Harmony Korine’s The Jetsons” and then forgot to hire a screenwriter. This is a film in which plot, character, and theme whimper in the corner as production design rules over them with an iron fist. Part music video, part sitcom, and part fever dream, it’s a movie that’s definitely not afraid to be strange and off-putting. The question is whether or not that enthusiasm is enough to justify the results. Continue reading
“Meet the Hollowheads”
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You know what you’re in for very early on with “
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Shark Week may be over for this year, but there’s enough B-roll footage in “
There’s a notion baked into our national identity, as American as apple pie, that America is here to stay. The thing I personally love most about our national anthem is that it manages to make the very idea of soldiering on in the face of defeat and humiliation a heroic act. Rather than being about a great military victory or the inherent superiority of our democratic republic, “The Star-Spangled Banner’s” triumphant moment comes when Francis Scott Key realizes that the flag simply is “still there.” Although that says a lot about our national ideals of perseverance, self-reliance and determination, there’s a dark inverse of that idea implied by the anthem. It’s the idea that America can be “still there” even after it’s been broken, battered beyond all recognition, and left to limp along in a pathetic, crippled state. It’s an idea that may have had an influence on the national mindset in the post-Vietnam era. And once they made a movie about it where Jay Leno’s mother kicked him in the balls. 
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What’s shocking in “
“The Exorcist” was one of the most shocking movies ever made at the time of its release, but as transgressive as it was, there were lines even it did not dare to cross. For example, you never got to see Satan’s wang. But where Friedkin dared not tread, Frank LaLoggia and “
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The first line of spoken dialogue in “
Cyborg City 3000 