Geo Magneto

In deciding how to tackle the issue of “Karening”, the writers of “Karen” decided to mix the stalker-thriller elements with racial justice commentary. This is not a task for the ill-hearted since “Get Out” and other films in the same genre (House of Sand and Fog, The Neighbor, etc) have already tackled the premise very well. “Karen” fails to invoke the seriousness of those films while somehow taking itself very seriously. Almost to the point of being a parody of itself. As if, the filmmakers were aware how unready for primetime the script was, so they relied on pacing (making it watchable) and predictability rather than say, “Misery” did to profound effect by digging deep into the stalker psychology.

To Karen, as a verb, is a recent term that evolved out of the compounding hysterics of primarily white women screaming like the Joker on an off-day at people of color, usually making entitled demands to be treated like Gods (or else they will “speak to the manager.”) These videos are best seen in the Cooper vs Cooper drama prior to the George Floyd murder that sparked BLM protests around the United States. Or on any number of Karen compilations now on youtube. The entire phenomenon lends itself to deep psychological analysis, this film attempts but gets wrong. Karens are no longer just white women. The word now is applied to anyone, of any race, who is freaking out with entitlement and mania. Yes, even black people can be Karens in 2021.

The writers seem late to the cultural show here. I think they decided to remake “House of Sand and Fog” with C-list actors and toss in a pinch of BLM. Does it succeed?

You decide. It’s remarkably watchable. The actress playing Karen invokes Christina Ricci from “Black Snake Moan” in an alternate suburban timeline. Their are moments that are super-cringe but also moments that seem like they should be interesting, so you watch them, even though it turns out they weren’t. For instance, none of the characters develop over the storyline. They all remain exactly the same as they were when the movie begins. So, be ready for a rather average script with above average ambitions.

What a labor to watch. It’s clear the writers thought they tapped into something -but apocalyptic scenarios are not hard to find on tv, so they really didn’t. The idea seemed to be “lets show these characters humanity instead of the impending doom of other apocalypse themed shows.”

Unfortunately, its moments of doing that is exactly where it falters. You can’t expect an audience to give a wholesome reception to characters they don’t care for. I didn’t see evidence of why an audience should care for anyone here :from Carol to her nudist parents and their lover/nurse on some cruise, her workplace friends and a random dude named Jeff. Entire episodes are committed to subplots of these characters. I’m reminded of the “never do” writers rule, “Don’t put a hat on hat.” This show layers little boring hats on its premise - the actual hat, they are all facing imminent doom. Without spoiling the arcs of these cartoon people in their final months the show seems like some overqualified writers needed a gig during the pandemic and wrote a season off a 3 line treatment. If you want to just lean back and follow their little hats, fine, but don’t expect big laughs or memories.

Take it or leave it, On the Road is a quintessential American novel. There were members of my generation that swore by it as a kind of bible to living, writing and being free. As a matter of fact, I was lucky enough to be in the school Allen Ginsburg was teaching at. I was also lucky enough to get hit on by him in the hallways of said school.

Be that as it may, he croaked teaching Whitmans Leaves of Grass before I graduated. It was the “challenger explosion” for my peer group of wannabe beatnicks. Not for me. I wasn’t very much into the beatnick era, alive or dead. Even though I shared space with one and even though I should due to a similar writing, nomadic life.

Now with all that bs out of the way I hope you realize I’m qualified to make an assessment on authenticity of people, product, and position — why? I don’t just idolize sh:t for no reason. Why am I writing what I think about idolizing sh:t? Because this film is an idolizers version of an objectively unreadable book. With that being said the performances are better than expected. Kristen Stewart is a cameo considering she get main stage on the poster art.

And the dude playing Kerouac pulls it off. Its polished grit made me want it to be grittier. But alas, we cant get gritty anymore with these GenZ flex mongers trying to gloss up everything with claymorphic dilly dallying. Not your fault GenX. Im sure these GenZ Euphoria idolizers wont get three seconds into the film without get lost browsing TikTok. Hey, at least the streaming numbers show the movie is playing. Amirite?

I’m at a point with these shows where I feel the writers, director and perhaps the sound man need to be brought to an international court for crimes against our attention span with a high crime of wasting everyone time.

It seemed like a demo tape for a new camera with long droning cello’s — all enclosed locations, terrible dialogue, a character not established enough for the audience to commit any empathy towards (nor any other character.) Really melodramatic for no reason. Like the shot is a girl putting that thing on and you think its going to cut to the alternative world, but the tension continues instead to a lab guy pulling a smoky probe out a hole. The music continues to build obnoxiously, like a Key & Peele level absurdity -until two characters ( I’ve clocked 6 hours watching but still unsure of who they are and why I should care) step out and watch a rocket launch. Long music cue, shots of close-ups of people i dont care about, music is blaring 15 minutes later - nothing burger.

The episode has four of these moments of blue balls inducing suspense. The first is at the UN, long monologue extremely poor writing, tension building, shmuck refuses to stand - tension drops to full orchestra. Nothing burger- literally what is the point of this shows score? To fill the void of how poorly written it is? Perhaps :thinking: or maybe its an illusion of a show; a corporate sprint that attempts to dot the tee’s and cross the eyes to just suck the soul out of your already jilted soul.

Disappearance on Clifton Hill is more like a disappearance of your valuable time on an absurdly cliche masterwork in hot garbage.

Canadian so-called “mystery” that feels like a overwrought cut-scene for a bad video game. Spare yourself this blithering tax write-off for whoever financed it. One dimensional over-dramatic cast of characters lack a single iota of purpose running around like headless chickens at the whim of a personalitiness cliche female brooder. Yes, I found myself wondering by act 2 why she even cared about what she was doing hunting down a crime she witnessed at 7. From scene to scene I kept wondering how such a purposeless film could get made let alone cameo David Cronenberg, who is as terrible an actor as can be despite his directorial brilliance.

Cronenberg himself, as a cinematic icon of psychological horror, being in this poor excuse for some kind of deeper level of corruption in the movie budget bizness reveals much. Not to diverge on why awful movies like this are drowning streaming services (corruption in the movie biz on all levels) but when I found out David “F*ckin” Cronenberg was physically in this movie, playing a conspiracy theorist boomer, I felt a need to react.

If you don’t figure out the end of this ronk-fest within the first 5 minutes you deserve to be trapped in a cabin and only have this garbage to watch for eternity. If you’re a film geek like me watch it for Cronenbergs cameo and balk at the levels of horrible the rest of the cast, script and so-called “mystery aspects” are — tropes so simple to predict they point to evidence of my assertion this was a “scam film”, seemingly contrived by the Producers tax illiterate fourteen year old step-daughter to skimp on script costs while still receiving a hefty payday on this bonafied loss unopportunity.

Fascinating documentary on what was a negligible late 90s festival. The director makes the case Woodstock 99 was an expression of “white rage” and examines the musical performances as a bunch of shallow musicians egging on the primarily “frat bot” crowd to misbehave — which they did.

I remember in 99, thinking how awful music had become and witnessing every event being horrible, so I would make the case it wasn’t just Woodstock 99, but everything that year was filled with chaos. Whether its the the fault of MTV sinking backwards to pop acts, the rage of nu-metal acts or a statement on “white behaviour”, its up to you in the end. What you get out of this documentary will entirely depend on where you fall in relation to those aspects. Gen-Z respectively might not care at all and see Woodstock 99 as a primordial pig stew of their parents culture war. Gen X however, might be able to squeeze some meaning out by remembering where they stood in relation the the nonsense at the event. I know I was too busy trying to build a career and saw the burning stages on the news as a sign that American alternative music culture had completely failed to escort us into the diverse daydream of a Nirvana based early 90s promise.

Lollapalooza 1 and 2 were better than Woodstock 99 or 94 (the latter is constantly referenced as being this ideal version when in fact, the absolutely never-mentioned Beastie Boy "Tibetan Freedom Concerts" were the real evolution of the Woodstock vibe.)

So, its a good documentary, but it’s based -- because it doesn’t consider the "better festivals" I mentioned above, which require critical examination in our culture on how we do a modern peace event. For example, where's the Uygher Awareness music festival (to match the Tibetan Freedom Concerts of the 90s) or the Anti-Fascist Music Festival (to match the LiveAid Anti-Apartheid festivals of the 80s, which can be argued effectively ended apartheid in South Africa.) Right? Where's the discussion on what worked instead of documentaries on festivals that failed due to privledge and whiteness - we know about Fyre, we know about Woodstock 99. That examination is nowhere to be seen, therefore the documentary is based -- a symptom of an overwhelmingly cultural bankruptcy in American culture right now.

America had a single export in the 90s -- our music culture, an attitude of anger towards racism and white supremacy, a repulsion towards the objectification of women and the privileged materialism of the 80s, all wrapped up in our music scene (conscious hip hop included within Nirvana, RATM and even Janes Addiction/Sublime/Pixies mystiques.) All of those mystiques were systemically dismantled by a war-mongering mindset of corporate commodification of (a) our concerts and (b) the acts that played in them. By the late 90s we were back where the 80s left off, overwhelmed with contrived boy bands (Limp Bizcuit included) through various consolidations of media companies, betrayals of peace-love-unity vibe and "colonization" of a rave scene that was probably the most vital historical outgrowth of it all. The commentary by Moby in the documentary contains gems to this perspective which can be expanded on tenfold for another documentary -- we'll see. The point is that Durst did go on to run Sony Music, so his moronic display in 99 had some kind connection to what the record companies saw him as beholden to. As a kind of white-Kali destroyer to the white-Christ Moby figure.

These aspects of white-rage, the subtleties explored in Woodstock 99 are now active in US politics (down to the unironically adornments of "red hats" repeating echoes of Fred Dursts moronic manipulations of the crowd. Much like the red hats storming the capitol looking to "break stuff." In that sense, Woodstock 99 begins a conversation about the poisons in American culture actively still destroying us, that began in the late 90s. What we do know is that the exported American coolness that went out to the rest of the world — our musical diversity, our punk rock, our skate scene, our real street music, our real trauma inspired grunge scene -- have been gutted by something. The mystery of what that was will not be answered in Woodstock 99 but maybe in a future revolution we will rediscover who we are again. The central question Woodstock 99 brings up therefore is not so much how to get it back, but to ask ourselves why, in 22 years since has not a single "good cause" festival occurred.

People will look back at Southland Tales after Trump and say Richard Kelly predicted the entire decade, and them some. Those who don't get the film just have low IQ's and can't see the brilliance of it. A hitman with amnesia, a reality television president, the bs conspiracies and angry vets while Tech Companies create an elite political class existing off human capital a midst a climate apocalypse (followed by a nuclear one); welcome to 2020.

But this was made in '06. Right it was, and it belongs in the canon of "Idiocracy", almost serves as a prequel. You've got all the elements of the sh-tstorm we're in from Q-Anon to Reality Television presidents to traumatized Iraqi vets on a mission to Facebook dictatorships and mysterious foreign interference's communicated through bizarre corrupt Homeland Security type organizations.

This movie is about the overall dumbing down of America before the apocalypse but after what we thought in 2006 a post-911 world would bring us to -- Dwayne Johnson, The Rock, represent this playing a hitman with amnesia throughout the story. A guy who doesn't remember what he's fighting for. People just use the word "Freedom" to justify their neurotic sadism and greed throughout the film. Justin Timberlake, an Iraqi vet, who predicts Jaoquim Pheonixs' Joker performance, plays an insane militia vet in his self-cutting musical numbers. It's a cinematic masterpeice and Timberlakes greatest paradoxical performance.

Warning : The "conservative media" is a central character in itself this film and if you don't understand how FOX news is hate speech propaganda you will, right off the bat, not understand the premise of the movie from scene 1. Instead of seeing how each character is either being manipulated by the media or is making the media that manipulates others you will just see moving pictures you wont understand. Unfortunatley, this is because your brain doesn't understand that media is created and since Kelly doesn't spell out to the inept audience what each characters motivation is, you would have to think that out. Which for 42% of Americans is very difficult to do. If you actually believe one single solitary ounce of Q-Anon or InfoWars BS you won't see the cutting humor of this film. I feel sad for you because you are stuck in a rabbit-hole by people who watched this movie in 2006 and created their little BS cultspracies. This movie teaches you how to mess with people and how politcal sides are all horseplay. Only culture-makers understand what this film is saying because Richard Kelly, the director, thought his Donnie Darko audience was smarter. Followers of conservative media who actually see the world through FOX news absurdity are numb to the profound absurdity of SouthLand Tales -- because it's talking about you easily reactionary freaks who see the world like Dwayne's character -- paranoid, amnesiac and scare sh*tless of terrorists. Meanwhile, he's the central terrorist. It's a genius judgement of domestic militant Americans today.

The people who don't see this movie as a prophecy, including a great performance by Kathy Griffith as this muscle bound feminist liberal ripping political heads (something she ACTUALLY did in 2016 much to her professional shigrin), are blind to prophetic cinema. Then again, the word Republican/Conservative are now synonymous with Corporate Environmental and Human Right annihilation, Cult Racism, White Supremacy, Sadism and greed -- so anything against that is considered anti-fascist. Don't get me wrong, If there ever was an Antifa Manifesto that American Nazi's couldn't interpret because of their traumatic FOX induced brain injuries, this movie is it. I doubt they even understood that sentence. My only contention is if this was a prequel to Mike Judges' classic comedy"Idiocracy", where the future of American is beyond stupid, I wonder what film could END the trilogy.

Southland Tales is about the fall of America by paranoia, media manipulators and toxic masculinity (even in women), who carry out the apocalypse dictated to them by elite's, literally in a bubble. I won't give away the ending...but hint, hint -- look outside your window.