Double Bill Mini Musings: Pretentious and Exploitative?

Somewhere:
From Sofia Coppola (who gave us the excellent Lost In Translation) comes something a bit familiar, albeit with a script that must have been as thin as a postage stamp, and lots of not much happening within a structure that has little care for the intricacies of the three acts, or inciting incidents, or what have you.

That said, if you are able to get into a sort of semi-drowsy state and just let the lack of much of anything happening wash over you, then you can kind of get into it. A directionless actor bums around at the Chateau Marmont in L.A. watching pole dancers until he falls asleep, and then his daughter turns up ... cue a series of roughly scripted scenes where suddenly this actor who lacks meaning, has a purpose in life ... then it sort of ends (in a way that could easily be seen as pretentious, rather than evocative - evocative like the how far superior Lost In Translation did with that haunting soundtrack and unheard whisper). Nothing amazing by any stretch of the imagination, but fans of sparse atmospheric filmmaking and shoegaze/indie music should be able to find something on offer here. However, many might very well find it all a bit scant and pretentious ... it's all in the eye of the beholder ultimately.


Savage Streets:
Directed by Danny Steinmann (who went on shortly after to call the shots on Friday the 13th Part V: A New Beginning), this lurid exploitationer concerns a girl gang who manage to piss off the wrong group of troublesome young men. Seeking revenge, the male gang rapes (and puts into a coma) the deaf/mute sister of Linda Blair's fiery high school senior (played by genre icon Linnea Quigley) ... big mistake ... that is after the flick goes a little bit off-the-boil, but once Blair straps on the leather and has a crossbow clenched in her mits, it picks up again. Stylish, sleazy (see the extensive, soapy, shower sequence early on that tosses in a soaking wet, semi-clad girl fight for good measure), and decidedly eighties (in a good way), it's actually a pretty solid revenge pic. Worth seeing for fans of such fare, or indeed followers of Linda Blair.