Rubber
You may have heard of Rubber. It's that movie where a tire comes to life and begins killing animals and people telepathically. Oh, and the tire's name is Robert.
You might ask: why a tire? Luckily, the movie answers this question in an opening monologue by one of its characters. Stephen Spinella, playing Lieutenant Chad, addresses the audience and asks why E.T. in the movie E.T. is brown. Why the characters in Love Story fall in love. Why, in The Pianist, the talented main character has to hide from the Nazis when he's clearly such a talented man. The answer to all three questions: No reason.
"No reason" is the thesis of Rubber. It's a movie where absurdity is valued over reason. There is a meta-story to the story. As the Robert-the-psychopathic-tire plot unfolds, a group of people in the desert sit there and watch it, as if they were watching a movie. At one point the film begs the question--if no one is watching, what happens to the characters in the film? Do they just go home? It's kind of like that old brainteaser: if a tree falls in the woods and no one is around to hear it, does it make a sound?
So it's best to see Rubber with an open mind. It's not a horror movie and it's not a comedy, although it has elements of both genres. It's also not a heavily symbolic story with an actual deeper meaning that can be unlocked by going over the clues, like, say, Mulholland Drive. In order to have clues and a deeper meaning, Rubber would have to have reason, and as stated early on in the film, there is no reason. The only message I can extract from this movie is that the audience makes the film and without an audience, a film is nothing. So maybe that's the answer to all the above questions: why is E.T. brown? Why do the characters fall in love? Why does Robert the tire attain sentience and blow up people's heads? For the audience. Whether they understand it or not.
3.5 out of 5 stars
Mud
Mud should be a better movie than it is. Starring Matthew McConaughey as the titular character, Mud had the potential to be a creepy and taut Southern-fried thriller. But it had far too little momentum for that and instead is a slow semi-retelling of The Adventures of Tom Sawyer. In Mud, two young teen boys, Ellis and Neckbone, live on a river somewhere in the South. They regularly explore a nearby island, and one day they discover a motorboat high in the branches of a tree. It turns out that there is a man, who goes by the name of Mud, hiding out there. Mud is on the run from the law, and in exchange for food, he promises to let the boys have the boat when he's done with it. Mud is waiting on Juniper (Reese Witherspoon in a trashy and thankless role), his "true love", to arrive so they can run away together. Mud is basically a poor, Southern Jay Gatsby--waiting on a women he can never really be with. The boys--romantic Ellis in particular--are intrigued by his story and try to help reunite him with Juniper. However, seeing as Mud is a wanted man, helping him escape is not so easy.
I saw this movie at the Alamo Drafthouse, and I have to say that the best part of the experience was the beer that was served to me in my seat. Although Mud is in not really a "bad" film, it's very slow and underwhelming, with surprisingly little at stake. A better movie would have made the character Mud more menacing (or, alternatively, more charming), and make the audience feel wary of him. Instead, we know from the get-go that Mud is a good guy and he's not going to harm these boys. There's no sense of danger or suspicion. For a film about a fugitive trying to get back together with his sexy-trashy girlfriend, Mud sure doesn't have that many thrills. It's not very sexy, it's not very violent, and it's not very profound.I would recommend skipping Mud and seeing director Jeff Nichols' 2011 film Take Shelter--a truly frightening and thrilling film--instead.
3 out of 5 stars
Kill List
Unlike Mud, Kill List drips with malice and unbearable tension. From the quick cuts in the middle of scenes to the ominous soundtrack that will raise the hair on the back of your neck, you know right away that something is terribly wrong in Kill List.
Jay, a former hitman, has been out of work for 8 months. His wife is growing increasingly angry with him, leading to screaming fights between the two of them and putting the emotional welfare of their son at stake. When Jay's army buddy, Gal, encourages him to take a job putting his killing skills to work for a vast sum of money, Jay reluctantly agrees. As the two men make their way down the hit list, it becomes apparent that Jay is in no way prepared for this job. Suffering some kind of PTSD, Jay's method of killing becomes more and more deranged. There are some truly disgusting scenes of violence in this movie that even got the best of me, and I can generally handle movie violence. It's one of those movies where the violence occurs a little ways off screen and you are praying that the camera won't pan down...and then it pans down. Kill List is not for the faint of heart or stomach.
So, it would seem that this movie is all about a deranged contract killer's descent into madness...except that is isn't. There is something far, far more sinister going on around the periphery and the final 30 minutes is a combination of insanity and fear. And the worst part is there's really no explanation for the events that occur. But it is truly effective as a horror film. It didn't exactly keep me up all night, but I was definitely disturbed by it.
I'm being coy on purpose. If you like horror films--especially ones that use atmosphere, rather than jump scares, to create a sense of dread--see Kill List with as little knowledge about it as possible.
4 out of 5 stars
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