Monday, December 19, 2016

"Madonna. And Slayer."

My attempt to catch up with 2016's film offerings continues apace.  I finally saw Green Room, the progressive-hardcore-band-gets-taken-hostage-by-Neo-nazi-rednecks that America had been desperate for and I liked it a lot.  But I wouldn't recommend it.

The set-up is fantastic -- a gigging hardcore band is down on its luck and agrees to play a bill with "mostly" not racist skinheads.  Things quickly go wrong, and within 15 minutes you're thrown into a tightly paced, hellishly claustrophobic nightmare that basically takes up the rest of the movie.  The performances are mostly quite good, with Captain Picard (!) playing the sadistic Nazi ring-leader.

But -- my god it's violent.  And the violence is shot in a very matter-of-fact, naturalistic way.  It just sort of happens without warning and without much of a justification.  (If I never see a box cutter again I'll be a happy boy.)  There are also dogs trained to eat human flesh.  They are arguably some of the main characters in the film.

Obviously, this was not an easy film to watch.  And while I should have known what I was getting into, I would have loved to have gotten to know the (very likable) main characters a bit more before, well, things go down as you'd expect if you were held hostage by racist skinhead hillbillies.  There's some very dark humor as well, which I'm always in favor of.

I really enjoyed it.  But please don't blame me if you lose sleep after watching it in all of its ultra-grim glory.

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