subcultures
I first watched Party Monster a couple of years ago, when once-infamous club promoter Michael Alig was released from prison, where he served 17 years for brutally murdering his drug dealer. The 2003 biopic, based on James St James’ memoir, “Disco Bloodbath”, flew under the radar during its initial release. But the film’s subject, “Club Kids” of ’90s Manhattan, once commanded TV screens across the country.
Aside from sports bloopers, a few Hemingway novels and stock footage I don’t know much about bullfighting. Common sense dictates that provoking a bull to charge you to stab it going to be dangerous, and there’s bound to be a daredevil mentality to being a matador. With that rudimentary knowledge, it felt like Gored would provide some insight into bullfighting, the cultural identity of matadors, and the passion of its subject.
When a writer/director makes a film set in a country foreign to them, it is clear to local audiences that this is an outsider’s view of their nation and their culture. There’s a reason Lost in Translation is derided in Japan and Match Point is met with sheer indifference in the UK. It becomes alienating to see your country through the eyes of somebody who hasn’t spent the majority of their life there, especially when the film is a work of social realism made by somebody with merely a second-hand knowledge of the realities of life there.
The Place Beyond the Pines tries to be an interesting movie, but above all is just very confusing. We start off the story with Luke Glanton (Ryan Gosling), motor stunt rider. He finds out he got a baby with a woman, Romina, in one of the towns he visited during his circus travels.