A former film critic has chucked it in and now reviews movies before either of you have seen them.
This is a controversial film but the controversy is misplaced. The most offensive thing about Kids is not the fact that it depicts a group of young people having sex and imbibing vast quantities of drugs and alcohol - after all, this is obviously what a lot of young people actually do; no, the most distasteful thing about it is the fact that it is directed by a fiftysomething ex-delinquent skatepunk wannabe who has taken to wearing baggies and turning his baseball cap back to front. A sort of dope Victor Meldrew.
Larry Clark is an asshole. Allegedly. But his film is in all probability quite good. Any film that shows kids doing what they are not supposed to do (but what they do anyway) is a valid exercise in my book - even if my book happens to be some crappy cheapskate novel scraping the bottom of the bargain bucket at Woolworths. At least it makes a change from the usual saccharine and patronising pap that washes up on these shores from time to time.
Sure, Clark probably takes a few liberties here and there and employs artistic licence to a greater or lesser degree but 'film' is not about real life in any case. Real life is about real life. Movies should be regarded as models, calling for suspension of disbelief, making assumptions and extracting certain (in this case, unpleasant) elements for closer scrutiny; ignoring other relevant factors to sharpen the focus, etc. etc.
Of course there will always be those who believe that children should be seen and not heard (let alone be shown fucking and smoking weed) and it is true that somewhere a line has to be drawn between objective examination and voyeuristic exploitation of subjects. But on balance, blanket censorship ignoring the intentions of the film maker and the intrinsic nature of the subject matter is surely to be avoided in civilised society.
Anyway, Kids is produced by Gus Van Sant, the director of Drug Store Cowboy, another film which was criticised on its release for not adopting a moral standpoint on the drugs issue i.e., it is a sympathetic depiction of a group of young people for whom drugs are a way of life (and death), which does not vilify its subjects. Similarly, Trainspotting was condemned for its apparently amoral position on heroin addiction. Unsurprisingly, the controversy only served to make the film appear more sexy to the type of people the pro-censorship lobby would wish to protect.
OK, so Kids is about irresponsible, unprotected teenage sex rather than hard drugs and it does not preach celibacy or abstinence for the young. But like Trainspotting and Drug Store Cowboy before it, the underlying message is ultimately bleak and far from glamorous and only an absolute moron would walk away from any of these movies with the view that promiscuity and drug abuse are attractive options. To say that films which do not adopt a patronising stance are necessarily inciting antisocial or self-destructive behaviour is both unrealistic and facile. Childish even.
0 out of 10
Since I have been on vacation for the past few weeks, I feel I should run through some of the movies I have not been able to avoid recently.
Barb Wire (a.k.a. Boob Wire) is a thoroughly despicable film featuring that brazen slut, Pamela Anderson Lee as a femme fatale who gets out of a series of difficult situations using her minuscule brain and her unfeasibly large breasts (which seem to be constructed entirely out of dollops of chicken wire and UHU). This is possibly the worst film ever made and will almost certainly not be as popular Ms Anderson's 'cum-on-my-face' honeymoon Polaroid's which are currently circulating on the Internet.
Broken Arrow should be re-titled Broken Wind because it is totally lacking in substance and it stinks. I love John Woo's lo-mo splatter movies but this one smacks of Hollywood compromise and studio pandering to big name stars, in this case, John Travolta and Christian Slater. Woo is a better director than the chinny plagiarist, Quentin Tarantino (and is probably a better actor too c.f. From Dusk Till Dawn and Destiny Turns On the Radio) but sadly, his style of film-making seems better suited to the crash bang wallop production methods of the Hong Kong film industry. Must be something to do with cheap labour and expendable stuntmen.
Things to Do in Denver When You're Dead. Speaking of Tarantino, these over-heated sub-Woo zeit-heist quasi reservoir dog day afternoon movies featuring the usual suspects must be killing zoe...God, I'm sick of these failed and bloody buddy-buddy robbery affairs where some mean-spirited and sadistic muthafucka takes it out on some sap scapegoat while another nice guy-type somehow manages to salvage a hopeless situation and get the money/girl etc., blah, blah while wasting a few hundred cops/bystanders/anyone along the way. Call me old fashioned, but if I see another psychopath called Mister Something-or-other, I'll blow a fucking nut.
And finally, a quick mention of the Cannes film festival, the celluloid equivalent of the Eurovision Song Contest - except cheesier. David Cronenberg's probable auto-erotic masterpiece Crash was roundly boo-ed, while the important prizes went to Mike Leigh's Secrets and Lies, yet another of the dour director's vile and condescending caricatures of the working class (as portrayed by a bunch of middle-class luvvies with hammy accents). Nauseating. You know, I once sat opposite Leigh on the Central Line. I wanted to tell him that Naked is a modern masterpiece (er...because it is) but ultimately I was overwhelmed by the circumstances of our encounter and more significantly by the fact that his head resembles a large hairy monkey nut. A bloody miserable one at that.
Nul Points
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