Category Archives: Saturday Matinee

Saturday Matinee: Black Dynamite 

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By Ben Travers

Source: PopMatters

Satire, when done well, can be a scathing critique on any number of issues. It can be as loose and fun as in Airplane, or as sharp and thought provoking as Dr. Strangelove. At its worst, to put it bluntly, are most of the movies by the Wayans brothers and their inspirations. Scary Movie 2, 3, and 4 are lazy imitations of satire. They dumb it down to the point where its bite is toothless.

As is the case with most humor, though, the line between scathing and toothless is thin and hard to pin down. Based on only a few jokes or scenes, it’s easy to be thrown off the right path and led down one of betrayal. So after viewing the theatrical trailer for Black Dynamite, one may not know what they’re in for over the next 90-minutes. Sure, there are some good lines. When Black Dynamite responds to a query with a stone-faced utterance of “I am smiling,” it will have you doubling over.

Then he kicks a man through a wall and Arsenio Hall shows up. Now what? Well, let me settle things for you. Black Dynamite isn’t exactly a scathing critique or a vital social commentary, but more of an homage to the best of the blaxploitation genre. Director Scott Sanders throws everything one could hope for into the picture and more.

Sanders and co-screenwriters Michael Jai White (who also plays Black Dynamite) and Byron Minns wisely gear their story to augment the frivolous tone. Set (of course) in the ’70s ghetto, our tale follows Black Dynamite as he tracks down his brother’s killer and tries to clean up the streets. Perhaps coincidentally (but probably not), he also keeps running into thugs somehow connected to a malt liquer company. Could it be a front for an illegal drug trade or a shady company with a less than legal agenda? You better believe it. The search for the truth leads Black Dynamite to a tropical locale, a group of Kung-fu masters, and even the White House.

There are more important aspects here than just some silly plot, though. My favorite send-ups of the blaxploitation genre are the multiple technical goofs thrown in throughout the film. During an important speech early in the film, Black Dynamite looks up in annoyance at a boom mic poking him in the head. Instead of stopping the take, he just keeps pushing through his speech. After all, any professional conscience of his film’s budget would do the same.

Later in the film, there are some jump cuts where it’s clear they messed up mid-shoot and had to splice together two similar shots. All of these “miscues” blend seamlessly into the boisterous vibe of the film and greatly enhance even the funniest jokes.

Obviously, all of the goofs are intentional, as are the other not so subtle references to honor the genre. Black Dynamite himself is something of a superhero. His skills are countless and unmatched. He’s always one step ahead of the competition, and he seems to know what people are thinking before they do. Plus, when he kicks a man, it knocks him through a wall! Oh, and a tip for viewers out there: if a man isn’t African American, he’s probably up to no good.

Even the performances are on the ball. Any actor who can stay in character while having his Afro tickled by a boom mic is obviously committed to his part, but Michael Jai White shows he truly understands his role by his performance throughout the film. His strong, confident attitude conveys an invincibility necessary for the lead of any blaxploitation picture. It also fits perfectly with his stoic comedic style. Yes, this should probably be expected considering he had a hand in the screenplay, but that doesn’t mean we should take anything away from his acting feat.

Listening to White discuss the role in the DVD’s commentary track is almost as entertaining as watching him. Though the director has some worthwhile insights as well, White was the true attraction throughout the film.

The rest of the special features are pretty solid, too. Deleted scenes are always an intriguing inclusion, even if it’s fairly obvious why they were cut. There are behind-the-scenes videos of the filmmaker’s trip to comic-con and a making-of featurette that incorporates most of the cast. On other films viewers usually just want to see a lot of the star, but fans of Black Dynamite will certainly value the rest of the cast’s input in the bonus material.

That’s because the supporting cast is an impressive bunch. The aforementioned Arsenio Hall manages to stay within the situation and not blow it up with his occasionally outlandish humor. Tommy Davidson, as Cream Corn, is given most of the screen time and fills it well with his quick quips. Each of the supporting players complements White and the film nicely, though. Even when they’re not given much screen time, they all leave their subtle (or not so subtle) mark on the movie.

The lines provided them certainly help, though. Other than a few extraneous details that bog down a few scenes, the screenwriting team really nailed their goal.

Black Dynamite is an extremely entertaining satire whether you understand the genre’s history or not. The deliberate gaffes allow everyone to immediately engage with the film’s ridiculous nature. It’s not quite a classic, but Black Dynamite carves itself a niche in the genre all its own.

Watch Black Dynamite on tubi here: https://tubitv.com/movies/556703/black-dynamite

Saturday Matinee: Sorry To Bother You

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By Brian Tallerico

Source: RogerEbert.com

Boots Riley’s “Sorry to Bother You” is an adrenalin-shot of a comedy and a fearless dissection of identity politics, corporate malevolence, and the American tendency to look the other way when confronted with horror. In this brilliant satire, people gather around their TVs every night to watch a show called “I Got the Sh*t Kicked Out of Me” and embrace a new lifestyle called WorryFree, which is very clearly corporate slavery advertised as something good for you. There is so much to unpack here in a film that recalls Terry Gilliam, Michel Gondry, and Jonathan Swift, but it is basically the story of a man forced to finally see the injustice around him. Riley’s movie is designed to do the same thing to you. Pay attention.

Don’t worry. “Sorry to Bother You” is no message-heavy, standard social commentary flick. It is a hysterical comedy, one of the funniest movies of the year. Just as in the music he created with The Coup, the message never gets in the way of the rhythm. Riley’s film wants, first and foremost, to entertain you, and it almost certainly will do that, especially if you’re willing to go with it on a funky journey, no matter where it takes you.

The great Lakeith Stanfield does his best film work to date as Cassius “Cash” Green, a young man wondering, like so many, what he’s doing in life. Early in the film, we catch him talking with his girlfriend Detroit (Tessa Thompson, who simply makes everything she’s in better) about the common human dilemma when one considers the impact they’re making in the world. So many of us live check to check and struggle to stay alive much less make a difference. Cash wants to do something important. He will.

His life changes when he gets a horrible telemarketing job at a place called RegalView, a company that sells those relatively worthless encyclopedia books that some people have on their shelves but few people ever read. When he’s advised by a colleague (played by Danny Glover) to use his “white voice,” Cash starts to move up the corporate ladder quickly, eventually getting access to the golden elevator taken only by the “power callers.” The men and women who work on the top floor—where only the “white voice” is allowed—don’t sell books. They sell things people really shouldn’t be selling, and Cash is good at that too, drawing the attention of the maniacal Steve Lift (Armie Hammer) and the disgust of Detroit and his fellow co-workers, who have been struggling to unionize for worker’s rights.

There have been stories of men who sold their souls for success since people put pen to paper, but Riley loads his Faustian saga with enough social commentary to fill a dozen comedies. Every scene feels like it works on multiple registers. It’s much harder than it looks to make people laugh and think at the same time, and it’s that ingenious balance that makes Riley’s script for “Sorry to Bother You” so special. It never loses sight of its need to entertain along with the fact that it serves as a wake-up call for viewers to ask more questions about their priorities and those of people in power. It’s also cinematically striking, especially for a debut. From the fantastic costume design to the visual flights of fancy—such as when Cash and Detroit’s garage apartment literally transforms as Cash makes more money and a literal nod to Gondry in a corporate Claymation video—“Sorry to Bother You” has a confident visual language that so much comedy lacks.

Great satires don’t hold back, and Riley turns most of his choices up to 11. For example, he could have had Stanfield mimic a “white voice,” but he dubs Stanfield with another actor. From the beginning, he’s making clear that this is an exaggerated, insane world—a funhouse mirror version of our own that only film could provide. That riskiness leads to a final act of insanity that will lose some people—both times I’ve seen the movie you could sense part of the theater tuning out as the movie takes a turn into sci-fi. For me, I love it when a filmmaker doesn’t pull back from the edge, but goes right over it. So while that part of the film may be weaker than what came before, I still respect the willingness to go there.

You’ll see a lot of movies this summer that feel like the product of focus groups and marketing teams. Every frame and choice in “Sorry to Bother You” feels like the opposite—a pronouncement of a major new talent. I can’t wait to see what he does next.

Watch Sorry To Bother You on Pluto here: https://pluto.tv/us/hub/home?utm_source=google&utm_medium=paidsearch&utm_campaign=12080790684&utm_term=pluto+tv&utm_creative=617765758688&device=c&campaign=Search_Brand_Desktop_E&gad_source=1&gclid=Cj0KCQjw16O_BhDNARIsAC3i2GAIga-xQVO3KmtJs6gYhD6oY6lKyzS5NTNwGocZ_0X20assMp28HhsaAraCEALw_wcB#id=64f8b71cf6f05d0013416c5c&type=movie

Saturday Matinee: Tamala 2010

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By Zac Bertschy

Source: Anime News Network

Synopsis: Tamala 2010 Tamala 2010: A Punk Cat in Space follows the hyperactive, non-sequitur adventures of Tamala, a little kitty with a spaceship. On her way to Orion, her ship is diverted to Planet Q, a place where dogs rule. Chased by a degenerate cop while evading society with the help of love interest Michelangelo, Tamala uncovers not only the secrets behind ‘Catty & Company’, the huge megaconglomerate that rules the Feline Galaxy, but also her own identity. That, and a whole lot of really weird stuff happens.

Review: The product of an artist group called Trees of Life (“t.o.L”), Tamala 2010: A Punk Cat in Space is as strange a thing as you’ll ever see. Doubtlessly produced under the influence of past animated ‘head trips’ like The Beatles’ classic film Yellow Submarine, Tamala 2010 is, without a doubt, something that will only appeal to a very specific audience: art students and college kids strung out on illegal substances.

Tamala 2010 follows something of a storyline. Basically, we follow Tamala, a sort of Hello Kitty-alike who swears like a sailor and flies around in her retro spaceship. Engine trouble pops up, and she’s mistakenly rerouted to Planet Q, a place inhabited almost enitely by dogs. There’s a mild terrorism problem; dogs attack cats at random. Meeting up with a cat named Michelangelo, Tamala evades a perverted canine policeman and uncovers a whole load of mysteries and secrets surrounding Catty & Company, the gigantic corporation that controls nearly everything in the Feline Galaxy. That description, of course, makes the film sound fairly straightforward and simple, which is, unfortunately, not the case. The movie goes off on a series of hallucinogenic tangents that have almost nothing to do with the main storyline and will confuse anyone who isn’t paying strict attention. The irony is that the film seems to have been designed to make the viewer tune out, so paying strict attention might be missing the point.

Deciphering Tamala 2010’s message is fairly difficult. A single viewing of the film won’t reveal much of anything, except a warped sort of anti-capitalist message that doesn’t really assert itself due to the totally detached and apathetic main character. Catty & Company winds up being connected to a bizarre religious cult and supposedly has the ability to make and remake the universe in its own image; this all connects to Tamala, who doesn’t seem to really care about anything that’s happening around her. A visit to the t.o.L website reveals that the purpose of Tamala is to create a worldwide merchandising franchise, something that will basically do what Sanrio’s wretched saccharine creations have already done. Great. So what’s the point?

Well, for most people, the point is that this film is something to watch while stoned, created by artists who were also stoned. This conclusion is a little unfair; these days we have a tendency to attribute anything even slightly surreal or abstract to the abuse of narcotics, which undermines the entire concept of creativity. Tamala 2010, while certainly as tangential and nonsensical as your favorite addict’s acid trip stories, seems to be the concentrated effort of a group of artists to create something more than just entertainment. Whether or not they were successful is another matter entirely; if this really was an attempt at sparking a worldwide phenomenon, then why did they produce a cultish, R-rated animated movie with which to promote their concept? Only t.o.L really knows what the purpose of this film was, and we, as viewers, are asked simply to consume and draw our own conclusions.

Artistically, the film is unique. The characters are animated in a sort of Flash-like fashion, with smooth and simple movements. Vehicles and some backdrops are animated in 3-D; the result is a piece of pop art unlike anything else. The film is mostly in black and white, using color very sparingly. It’s hard to tell if the visual style of this film is intended to put across any sort of message; you just never know with films like this one. The soundtrack is a surprisingly pleasant trance mix, perfectly suited for the visuals. As an art piece, Tamala 2010 does not disappoint.

Basically, if you’re a film student, or an art student, you owe it to yourself to see this film at least once. It’s one of those cult events that any serious underground culture junkie will have seen. The artist group that created it seems strangely cultish, and it’s a wonder there isn’t more information out there regarding them and their project. Whatever conclusion you come to, Tamala 2010 is a unique experience, totally different from anything else available on the market today (aside from, you know, Cat Soup and Yellow Submarine).

Saturday Matinee: Gremlins 2

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By Kevin Lyons

Source: EOFFTV Review

Conventional wisdom has it that Gremlins 2: The Last Batch, Joe Dante’s follow up to his hit 1984 film Gremlins, is an inferior film. In truth, it’s just a very different film – same idea (the first half is pretty much a remake of the original) but with lots of new jokes, some stinging satire, fewer moments of childhood-scarring darkness (you’ll find no analogue for the father-in-the-chimney speech here) and a big city setting. The original will always be the “better” film by virtue of having come first, but that doesn’t mean that this madcap sequel can be so easily dismissed out of hand.

The Christmas setting of the original is largely abandoned, though Gremlins 2 seems to be set in the early half of December. In New York, slimy business tycoon Daniel Clamp (John Glover), a transparent pop at Donald Trump, already a figure of mockery 26 years before he became US president, has plans to redevelop Chinatown into a soulless shopping centre. The only hold out is Mr Wing (Keye Luke) who still lives behind his shop and who has Gizmo the mogwai (voiced by Howie Mandel) with him. When Wing dies, the shop is demolished and Gizmo ends up at Splice of Life, Inc., a genetic engineering lab in Clamp Tower. Elsewhere in the building, Billy Peltzer (Zach Halligan) and his fiancée Kate Beringer (Phoebe Cates), who have located to the Big Apple from Kingston Falls, are working menial jobs for Clamp – he’s an underappreciated and bullied draftsman and designer, she’s a tour guide in the building. When Billy hears someone humming Gizmo’s distinctive song, he rescue the mogwai from the clutches of Dr Catheter (Christopher Lee) and his assistants Martin and Lewis (Don and Dan Stanton).

Inevitably, Gizmo gets wet, spawns dozens of offspring who eat after midnight and transform into a pack of ravening and very aggressive gremlins on the loose (“All they have to do is to eat three or four children and there’d be the most appalling publicity!” frets Catheter.) And so far as plot goes, that’s pretty much it. The rest of the film is one gremlin-based set piece after the other as the curious and ravenous creatures ingest samples from Catheter’s lab (“I could get you diseases – you’d like that, wouldn’t you?” he offers) transforming into a winged creature, a femme fatale who takes a shine to Clamp’s head of security (Robert Picardo) and an urbane and articulate “brain gremlin” (voiced by Tony Randall).

To make up for the lack of a plot, Dante and his writer Charles S. Haas pack the film to the rafters with sight gags, cameos (composer Jerry Goldsmith, actors John Astin, Henry Gibson, Rick Ducommun, Bubba Smith and Hulk Hogan, and even Dante himself all turn up and Dick Miller and Jackie Joseph return as Kingston Falls residents the Futtermans) and in-jokes, most of them film related: Octaman (1971) is being broadcast on Clamp’s cable television network (the film also takes aim at Ted Turner), renamed The Octopus People; Catheter is seen carrying a pod suspiciously similar to that seen in Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1955); any number of Universal classic horrors are quoted; and it goes on and on and on.

Some might find the constant callbacks to the films that informed Dante’s childhood – and even ones he made – all a bit too much, but there’s plenty of other humour to enjoy, much of it of a scabrously satirical bent. Where the earlier film had poked fun at the clichés of small-town American in cinema, principally as imagined by Frank Capra and the film’s producer, Steven Spielberg, the sequel casts a jaundiced eye at big city living – ” this is some crazy city” notes a holidaying Futterman, though the gremlins seem to love it, staging a rousing production number around their rendition of New York, New York. 60s action films, particularly Die Hard (1988) and Rambo: First Blood Part II (1985), genetic engineering, our over-reliance on technology that frequently lets us down, the venality of corporate millionaires and even the film industry itself all come under satirical assault too and the film doesn’t really hold back.

The clever thing about the film is how it manages all this while still somehow being more playful than its predecessor. It feels as though the darker elements of Gremlins had been deliberately toned down to make it more suitable for a family audience, particularly the younger children who had found the first film too scary. It still has its moments – the gremlins covered in pulsating sacs as they prepare to reproduce is a strikingly nasty image – but overall, Dante adopts a lighter touch. Perhaps to reassure anyone still worried by the cartoon-like mayhem (the film begins with a Warner Bros. style cartoon), the film even breaks down at one point, damaged by the gremlins, prompting a moment of weird self-reflexiveness as an angry mother (Dante regular Belinda Balaski, who had also been in the first film) to complain to the cinema manager (Paul Bartel) that “this is worse than the first one!”

The cast tend to play second fiddle to the gremlins created by Rick Baker’s Cinovation Studio but Christopher Lee stands out in a role that requires him to disappear for great lengths, but which gives him plenty of splendid dialogue to savour – “oh splendid, this must be my malaria” he exclaims gleefully when taking delivery of some new samples. He seems to have had a ball on the film, enjoying both the experience of working alongside Baker’s manic creations and the exposure that a big budget – though not entirely successful – blockbuster brought him. It’s often easy to forget that he could do comedy rather well and the chance to deadpan his way through lines like ” I swear to God, young man, I will never hurt anything ever again. There are some things that man is not meant to splice” is one he grasps with real relish.

Gremlins 2: The New Batch is unapologetically unruly, Dante skating perilously close to self-indulgence at times (film critic Leonard Maltin, who had pasted the original film, gets attacked by vengeful gremlins on the set of his new television show, while brandishing a videocassette of Gremlins) but just reins it in in time. You don’t see mainstream Hollywood films as wild and manic as this being made any more.

Sadly, despite toning down the horror, the film didn’t perform anywhere near as well at the box office as the original (it opened on the same day in the States as Dick Tracy and couldn’t compete with all the star power that far lesser film was able to bring to bear). It put a stop to the Gremlins franchise and apart from a few fan films, it remained dormant for many years, despite Dante’s best efforts to get a third film off the ground. And then in mid-2022, a third film, referred to by Dante on social media as Gremlins: Secrets of the Mogwai, seemed to be edging closer to production. Whether it gets made, and whether its as anarchic, silly and as much fun as Gremlins 2 will remain to be seen.

Saturday Matinee: Dreams That Money Can Buy

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Watch Dreams That Money Can Buy, a Surrealist Film by Man Ray, Marcel Duchamp, Alexander Calder, Fernand Léger & Hans Richter

By Colin Marshall

Source: Open Culture

“Everybody dreams. Everybody travels, sometimes into countries where strange beauty, wisdom, adventure, love expects him.” These words, a tad floaty and dreamlike themselves, open 1947’s Dreams That Money Can Buy. “This is a story of dreams mixed with reality,” the narrator intones. He can say that again. Directed by Hans Richter, painter, graphic artist, avant-gardist, “film-experimenter,” and energetic member of the Dada movement, the picture takes a storyline that seems mundanely realistic — impecunious poet finds apartment, then must figure out how to pay the rent — and bends it into all manner of surreal shapes. And I do, literally, mean surreal, since several of the scenes come from the minds of noted avant-garde and surrealist artists, including, besides Richter himself, painter and photographer Man Ray, conceptualist Marcel Duchamp, sculptor Alexander Calder, and painter-sculptor-filmmaker Fernand Léger.

Joe, the film’s protagonist, finds he has a sort of superpower: by looking into the eyes of another, he can see the contents of their mind. He promptly sets up a sort of consultation business where he examines the unconscious thoughts of a client: say, an unambitious banker whose wife lives “like a double-entry column: no virtues, no vices.” He then uses the abstract materials of their thoughts to come up with a self-contained, somewhat less abstract dream for them to dream: in the banker’s case, a dream called “Desire,” which takes the form of a short film by Dadaist painter-sculptor-graphic artist-poet Max Ernst. For Joe’s other, differently neurotic customers, Richter, Man Ray, Duchamp, Calder, and Léger come up with suitable formally and aesthetically distinct dreams. While all these artists imbue Dreams That Money Can Buy with their own inimitable sensibilities (or nonsense abilities, as the case may be), I feel as though certain modern filmmakers would have the time of their lives remaking it. Michel Gondry comes to mind.

Saturday Matinee: Repo! The Genetic Opera

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By Michael Cook

Source: Thoroughly Modern Reviewer

I love a good, bad movie. Especially ones that aren’t trying to be bad. There’s something deeply enjoyable about a movie taking itself utterly seriously and being incredibly genuine with its material – especially when the results are probably not as objectively “good” as its creators might have intended. This is where Repo! The Genetic Opera enters. Repo! The Genetic Opera is a movie musical in the same vein as The Rocky Horror Picture Show – it’s a sci-fi musical made on a low budget that, in the years after its release, has found a cult following. And, like The Rocky Horror Picture Show, Repo! The Genetic Opera is just one of those films that have to be seen to be believed. It is all at once confusing, entertaining, delightful, baffling, and grotesque. It’s an experience to behold and it’s a film that I adore. (4 out of 5 wands.)

(NOTE: There are spoilers ahead.)

Repo! The Genetic Opera (written by Darren Smith and Terrance Zdunich, directed by Darren Lynn Bousman)
In the mid-21st century, an epidemic of organ failures leads to the rise of GeneCo., a company providing transplants at a great price. Those who miss their payments become targets of GeneCo. mercenaries, who repossess the organs. In a world of drug addiction and legalized murder, a sheltered youth (Alexa Vega) seeks a cure for her rare disease as well as information about her family’s mysterious history. Her questions are answered at “The Genetic Opera.”

Directed by Darren Lynn Bousman (of Saw II-IV fame), Repo! The Genetic Opera is the story of Shilo (Alexa Vega), a young girl with a blood disease who finds herself at the center of a feud between Nathan (Anthony Stewart Head), her father and a secret Repo Man for GeneCo, and Rotti Largo (Paul Sorvino), the CEO of GeneCo (a company that specializes in organ replacements). It is a story about a young girl striving for freedom and seeking to find her place in the world. It is a story about corporate greed, feuding families, spoiled children, and drug-and-surgery addicts. And, most of all, it is an opera – but instead of traditional opera music, the score is comprised entirely of mid-2000’s-style rock music. And boy, do all of these elements make for a confused film.

The plot of Repo! is a royal mess. Rumor has it that about an hour of the film was cut from the original script, for one reason or another, and it shows. The plot, itself, is fairly simple but like any soap opera, the twists and turns in the personal relationships come quick and fast and it all becomes a bit hard to follow unless you’re paying extremely close attention. And, for the average moviegoer, Repo! is not the kind of film that will demand their rapt attention. You’re never entirely sure just what the film is trying to focus on – is it a story about Shilo’s quest for independence? Is it a story about Nathan’s failures as a father? Is it a familial drama between the Largo family? Essentially, the film is about all of those things and also none of them. The film’s first act simultaneously rushes through exposition while feeling like an endless pit of background information. There’s absolutely no sense of the passage of time throughout the film. The second act is so short that by the time the third act begins, you have no idea how the film is gonna manage to wrap up all of these plot threads by the end of its titular opera sequence. The film is the very definition of style over substance, prioritizing spectacle and shock value over any semblance of a coherent narrative. And that’s largely a reason why the film was panned upon its release. 

However, Repo! the Genetic Opera is a delightful movie in spite of all of that. It’s a baffling film to sit through, but that’s part of its charm. Plus, nobody who is watching Repo! these days is watching it for its plot. People enjoy this film because of its solid score, its bizarre atmosphere, and its wickedly enjoyable performances. Terrance Zdunich and Darren Smith’s score is this strange blend of rock, opera, traditional musical theatre, and alternative music. It’s something that shouldn’t work – and yet, it does. It feels a bit like Rocky Horror Picture Show in its sheer audaciousness; the film was literally marketed as “not your grandparents’ opera.” Like an opera, the entirety of the film’s narrative is told through its music. Unlike an opera, many of Repo!’s songs stand on their own as memorable, well-written and performed songs. Sure, some of them are a bit too over-the-top and cringey and there’s a definite lack of stylistic cohesion, but many of the songs are absolute earworms that will be stuck in your head for days. “Zydrate Anatomy”, “Chase the Morning”, “Legal Assassin”, “Infected”, and “At the Opera Tonight” are great examples of the variety of musical styles found in the film. None of those songs sound alike, but all of them are great. 

Equally eclectic is the array of talent gathered for Repo!’s cast. I have no idea how Bousman managed to convince some of these actors to do this movie but thank God he did. I mean, how many films can say they have the girl from Spy Kids, Giles from Buffy, Paris Hilton, and Sarah Brightman in their cast? Remarkably, everyone in this film does a great job – including Paris Hilton. Everyone is fully committed to their characters and the film’s silliness and it shows. It’s impressive how well relatively new actors like Terrance Zdunich, Paris Hilton, and Ogre do when sharing the screen with the likes of Sarah Brightman, Anthony Stewart Head, and Paul Sorvino. Everyone in the film is perfectly cast and they are all bringing their A-games. Obvious standouts include Zdunich, Paul Sorvino, Anthony Head, Sarah Brightman, and Alexa Vega, but there is truly not a weak member of this cast. Half of the fun of Repo! is its music, and the way the narrative is told through it, and half of the fun is found in the film’s eclectic cast.

At the end of the day, Repo! The Genetic Opera is simply one of those films you have to experience. The plot makes no sense, but the visuals are seeped in this gothic-yet-futuristic atmosphere that draws you into the world in spite of the baffling plot. It looks and feels cheap, but that never stops any part of the film from reaching for the stars. The songs are catchy, memorable, and serve the narrative as well as you could hope for given the constraints of the film. The performances are strong and, fitting with the film’s overall tone of insanity, absolutely bonkers. The fact that this film manages to work at all is a testament to all who worked on it. So many elements of this movie just shouldn’t work – and, to be fair, many of them don’t. But much of the film does work, and it’s held together by this glue of passion and genuine respect for what’s trying to be accomplished. Repo! The Genetic Opera is a memorable experience not because it’s a terrible film but because it’s a seriously good one if you’re willing to meet it where it is.

Watch Repo! The Genetic Opera on pluto here: https://pluto.tv/us/hub/home?utm_source=google&utm_medium=paidsearch&utm_campaign=12080790684&utm_term=pluto+tv&utm_creative=617765758688&device=c&campaign=Search_Brand_Desktop_E&gad_source=1&gclid=Cj0KCQjw16O_BhDNARIsAC3i2GAIga-xQVO3KmtJs6gYhD6oY6lKyzS5NTNwGocZ_0X20assMp28HhsaAraCEALw_wcB#id=5f0618c4d4495f0013a2a718&type=movie