Navigating the Vulgarities of Contemporary Popular Culture

Right, we're back to Rambo reviewing. By that we mean it's getting as many beers in the cinema as possible like you're bloody John Rambo, John Matrix or Travis Bickle or whoever the fuck with all the weapons they just seem to stick to themselves. Full arsenal. Couple under the sleeves. The jacket pockets inner and outer. You get the idea. One should never see themselves as merely going the cinema. I prefer to see it as though you've embraced the role of the paratrooper. You get dropped in to the cinema from the skies each week armed with instruments as barbaric and primitive as a knife, a baseball bat or maybe even just your damn fists and you're tasked with the simple mission of clearing the way. Strategies are limited and attacks can be brutal. The only objective: get to the other side! Soon as the credits roll you should be like come on then bring it on. Like you're Bear Grylls on some raw Born Survivor shit.

The record still remains 8 beers. This is hard to beat for 3 reasons. Firstly, where to hide them all? Any more and I'm gonna have to go full Leeds Festival and begin "gooching" them. Secondly, how to drink so many in the run time. This is probably the easiest of three. Finally, a little thing called the bladder. Fuck this one up and you're spending half the movie going back and forth to the toilet. That you do not want. As of late, I've been wondering Maybe we need to rethink the whole strategy. On this front I am all ears, anything to aid the cinemagoing experience, add something new to the endless pile of criticism and meet a movie head on.

Bodies in the Bodhi tree. Bodies making chemistry. Bodies on my family. Bodies in the way of me. Bodies in the cemetery. And that's the way it's gonna be! This weeks big new movie: Bodies, Bodies, Bodies. Bodies Bodies Bodies had me all cans out in the first 20 minutes and I didn't dare go the toilet. A strike out. We had us a whodunnit on our hands and I didn't want to miss a single clue. Oddly, I didn't expect to like this at all. Not as much as I did anyway. I'd been wondering whether this would be a Spree or a Spring Breakers. It was clear from the trailer and the reviews that this was intended as a Gen Z satire.

Despite evident self awareness could that make it any less insufferable? The trailer made it seem so overwhelming and intoxicatingly forced. Every line an assault of buzzwords popular only from the last few years. As though it was hiding behind its own self awareness and that didn't make it any better. A mask as such in place of true creativity. I refer to this as "the Deadpool". Rewatched the first of those Ryan Reynolds movies the other day and I actually hated the fact that I did indeed find some of the jokes rather funny. Although, I couldn't call it a great movie because it uses the humour to mask its lack of creativity. Mocks the entire Marvel catalogue whilst offering little in its place. It still follows the same formula as the rest of them and I wouldn't call it a standout because it doesn't really present an alternative.

My response to the trailer of Bodies Bodies Bodies was like that scene in Fight Club when they first meet on the airplane. Tyler seems so sarcastic and withdrawn as he says lines like, "I get it you're very clever", "how's that working out for you" and "keep it up then, keep it right up". He then walks out and leaves debating whether to give the ass or the crotch on his way out. A noble question every man ponders upon a tight exit.

So I'm currently 25 and being born in 1996 is always meant to baffle the nerds I hear. It doesn't quite fit in to the neat little categories they have. By the age of 4 you really have started developing memories and so there's a part of you attached to the 90s but then most of your childhood is spent in the 2000s and you come of age in the 2010s. So you remain at a strange cultural crossroads. Some categorise you as millennials and some even as Gen Z. It's right on the edge being the end of one and the start of another.

Can't say I follow these things too closely. First and foremost, I am Jacob Shitting Kelly. I'm mostly something of an ostrich with its head in the sand. I haven't been on twitter in probably a year and do not plan on ever returning. I'd be more likely to get off Instagram next. I can't stand all the little reels that appear. I watch one out of casual interest and then all it does is give me more of that despite never being that interested. Those bloody algorithms trying to redefine my interests for me. Trying to shape my view of the world. It finds you a little corner and holds you there dictating your whole understanding of culture for you. Annoyingly it doesn't even give me what I want. In the words of Dave Batista, "Give me what I want!".

It's such a waste of time and I always used to defend Instagram as being the best one cause it was just a little place to see lovely pics of the homies. When did it get so bombarded with useless content? Every other lovely photo is Instagrams choice of "because you watched a reel from". I don't know what that's about. Only recently did I hear the format had been trying to copy Tik Tok.

Now that's one I've never been on and if that's the hellscape Instagram has become, I won't be on there any time soon. So anyone wanting to see me do some twerking for the Tok, it's not happening sorry chiefs!

Generally, I try to keep my abode a timeless entity. However certain words do invade the fortress and send my head for a walk across the block. Gaslighting, gatekeeping, girl bossing, vibe checking, bussin. I don't even know if people are using these words ironically any more. Honestly, I didn't even know this "bussin" word til a couple of weeks ago. Mostly, I just have a you do you attitude to it and ignore it but then it's unavoidable when you spend half your time at the cinema. Begins to filter in somewhere or other and that's when it'll irritate me. You get this tiktokisation or memeification of movies. The ruiner of good movies. Take this years Everything Everywhere All At Once. In that film there is an amazing family melodrama and kung fu movie but its destroyed by the onslaught of bad Internet jokes. Then you get the completely inhuman ones that are literally set on the Internet like The Emoji Movie and Space Jam 2. The devil's work. I tend to promote staying out of kids films and not being too harsh on them quality wise but those two just seem dangerous. No kid needs to be seeing shit like that and thinking its normal.

That's not to say there hasn't been good art made because of the Internet and modern culture. The Social Network, Shame, Her, Blade Runner 2049 and Drive are all fantastic movies, which tackle contemporary culture and would only have come from the creation of the internet. Musically, Radiohead and Oneohtrix Point Never have managed to find interesting things to say about it too.

Spring Breakers still remains a mighty critique of people today. Its something of a phenomenon to me in that it fully embraces so much of the vulgarity of modern culture and yet the movie itself is extremely watchable and hard to take your eyes off. It immerses you in unrelenting ugliness and so much of what I personally despise and yet it achieves a strange kind of beauty. Or rather poetry if you can recall the bizarre Britney Spears cover. Everything about going so head first in to a critique like that seems wrong. Normally satire seems to work best with a slight distance from the material but that movie fully rides its own repulsions.

I've always thought of Spring Breakers as a kind movie equivalent of Kanye West's My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy. An album which is undeniably embedded in the culture it's satirising going so far as to have a track like "All of the Lights". Oh God I can't stand that song. That's the point at which Kanye fully sludges about in the filth of the pop music of that time and it's not even a bad choice cause it works in consideration of his albums narrative.

Talking music with Spring Breakers, look at who does the score? Fucking Skrillex. If the enemy of electronic music fans could have a face it would be his. He is the poster boy of all they hate. A man with a shit hair cut who ruined the anonymity and anti capitalist roots of the scene with his grand promotion of what you could call stadium electronic music. He brought the rocknroll to what was originally about a rejection of that sort of glamour and fame. What was originally about turning up to a field somewhere and hearing an endless loop of beats, dancing away the working weeks troubles lost all its meaning and purpose.

You could well argue that Daft Punk pretty much did the same thing but no one could ever bring themselves to hate Daft Punk. They are the darlings of the fun and silly movement and will be protected til the end of time! Anyone who even dares to besmirch their good name will be inevitably met with the fists of thousands.

Might have got side-tracked there with the love of those two French Robot DJs but what I was trying to say is that Skrillex represents everything bad in this world and the destruction of everything that was good and pure! His inclusion in Spring Breakers is insane. This shit keeps me up at night. How on earth did Harmony Korine embrace everything so disgusting and yet make such a great movie about it all. It's a fucking anomaly. Could well be the greatest piece of pop art ever created. How on earth does it even hold itself together and remain artful whilst examining such low, shallow and even obscene cultures such as the early 2010s party scene?

Could Bodies Bodies Bodies really capture that magic of Spring Breakers? It was surely an impossibility and as I've said I can't even work out how Korine did that. What was more likely on the cards, was that Bodies Bodies Bodies would be a Spree. Spree was a movie which came out a couple of years ago and weirdly got some respect. Had people referring to it as an "American psycho for the Internet age". It wishes. More like another "Nerve".

Actually that seems mean to Nerve. Although, I haven't seen Nerve it does look kind of cute doesn't it? Dave Franco and Emma Roberts running about in some neon tinged teenage vision of the future. May change my mind if I ever saw it but I feel like you can't diss something so clearly juvenile and blatantly targeted at such a young age group of girls.

From what I gather on the topic of Nerve, it doesn't want to have a seat at the table with high concept sci fi so probably no point comparing it to such. So let the kids have their fun and try not to 'gatekeep' as they would say. That's not to say I wouldn't fall guilty of abandoning that stance upon viewing and bearing witness to its supposed irritations hahaha but it's good to have some principles in place right?

The problem with Spree is that it follows no rules. I get it's the kind of movie that is perhaps not set in reality but that doesn't mean you can grow lazy. Not at all, in that scenario your job is to create your own reality and set of rules. Establish them and stick to them. Something the movie does not do for a second. Therefore it essentially becomes this sloppy rant about the current obsession with followers and the depraved acts one could do to achieve them. Not necessarily a bad idea for a movie today but ultimately one that isn't effective in Spree. Had they spent more time to establish consequences for the actions I might have got more behind it.

There's no real impact though cause you wonder where are the police in this world? Because there's no limitations, there is no too far and as such then nothing is depraved of perverse. That's the movies one great flaw is that when you take away that barrier of authority stopping you from committing such acts, then nothing is really offensive or shocking. Transgressive art doesn't even exist at that point. In the end its just Joe Keery of Stranger Things fame running around like a bellend committing unshocking acts for the camera.

Going in to Bodies Bodies Bodies, I was wondering whether it would follow the path of Spree or Spring Breakers. Even thought of a couple of films I'd watched again recently like Carpenter and Hoopers debuts Dark Star and Eggshells. These are absolutely incredible at capturing the hippie movement of the 60s but since I find those people so irritating I can't really enjoy those movies. Sometimes even if you do a superb job at dissecting a particular community and do so with great awareness, that doesn't change the fact the subjects are just a nightmare to be around. You think oh great a filmmaker willing to laugh at these people, I can go in this with some objectivity and learn about these people without the parts that put me off being around them. Yet the film still ends up being annoying. This just makes Spring Breakers an even greater achievement to me cause I can get so absorbed in a culture I thoroughly dislike.

I got in to the cinema ready to watch Bodies Bodies Bodies and I'm on edge through all the trailers thinking fuck am I going to love this or hate this. My fears were soon forgotten and they genuinely won me over by frame one (hehehe). Not long after the opening scene they were blaring that Daddy AF tune by Slayyyter. Fucking hell I still remember the first time I heard that tune at some gaff. Ended up on a sofa with next to no clothes on feeling Daddy as fuck. Unfortunately though I did not end up "fuckin models" as the opening line of the song goes. From the opening few scenes I could see this movie wanted to play and I was like ok I'll play and responded by cracking in to can number two.

Not long after this it was followed up with another banger courtesy of Azealia Banks 212 Hip House mega hit. Trust me right I'm not easily won over by a couple of humdingers on the soundtrack but something seemed right about this one. It wasn't Booksmarts obnoxious use of Death Grips combined with really shit Uber jokes. No, this was like when Redbone comes on in Get Out and you just embrace and give in to modern music in film. It's cool and zeitgeist, you're in the bloody moment and "vibing". You get high on the way it catches you. Nothing other than right time, right place.

I thought Bodies Bodies Bodies would be something I'd spend the entire run time wrestling with it. Picking bits apart and being like oh I like that but not that so much. This didn't happen at all. Early on there was just this feeling. As though the film took you by the hand and said, "do you want to have fun?". Well I'm no buzzkill or party pooper. If you want to offer me a good time then I'm all for it. Don't care who you are or what little community you belong to if you're willing to have a good time, I'm down. Hit me up. Bypassing the bullshit and just getting down to having a laugh with the drinks I can stand by this. If you can't embrace that sometimes well you're just a nerd aren't you!

As it went along, I began to think less and less of Spree and Spring Breakers and more so of the numerous Slumber Party Massacre films, April Fools Day and the dreadful Promising Young Woman. Bodies Bodies Bodies was actually great by the way and I was shocked by just how much I enjoyed it. They nailed the campy tone completely. I felt like for once I was seeing a good modern take on a slasher. Most of all I prefer these days if they just make throwbacks and forget the modern stuff because there's too much that's changed and they can't get it right. They can't adapt the characters to the times. So just forget it and go with the old. For no apparent reason, they've switched more to woke and progressives these days. When this game was always about laughing at the filthiest little degenerate assholes and then having them get killed off each week. No-one wants to hang out with a nerd or someone even remotely pleasant do they? We do that enough in the week. Let's go laugh at misogynistic some dumb jocks and then kill them. That's how I like to spend my Friday nights. I'm sorry but if you're not seeing some poor horny teenagers get sliced up every Friday night, you're just not really living are you.

There was no denying though this film really made the new stuff work. This one had that sort of girly charm of the slumber party massacre films. Nothing too serious or forced just a bunch of teen girls slowly being killed off before your eyes. Above all it had the structure and feel of a slasher. It didn't reject its origins at all and it didn't thrust its modern

ideas down your throat. Overall, a really good balance. Rejection of what has come before is the very reason I hated Promising Young Woman. It was so obvious they hadn't seen anything else in that genre and had a completely false and unfair disdain towards that kind of movie. So they were just trying to make a new one up, which is not necessarily a terrible idea if you're under the assumption that all the classics there have been made by men and so you want to create a new form of cinematic identity. However, the one they went with just clearly didn't work and the entire experience is just pathetic. I remain irked that Revenge, which was directed by a woman wasn't as equally praised. That followed the right path and distinguished itself with the camera and the way the woman is shot in it. The cameras eye is one of empowerment in that movie. It respects the old while adding something new.

Exactly the reason, I loved Bodies Bodies Bodies. They got it right. From the pacing to the tone to a bunch of rich fuckers who you want to see die. Not going to lie Pete Davidson (whos stand up I can't stand) is amazing here. 100% the guy you want in this kind of movie. That nob head just being a complete utter prick. Here he looks even more sleep deprived and coke addled than usual. He looks like the only person in the last 20 years who's had less sleep in Hollywood than Vince Vaughan. Offers the film an edge I've not seen in years. It's like watching Bill Landis's terrible pornos knowing he was blacking out through the production and waking up mid sex scene. Its got that pungent smell you'd get from watching a sleazy 70s movie. Far from the kind of more glamorous studio horrors churned out today. Huge fan of his black eye in this film. I was half convinced before they were pointed it out to be the result of a punch to the face that these were just bags under his eyes. As though for the whole shoot he'd just been getting on the gear. That fuckers eyes are weird looking anyway here they're just 'orrible. To top it off at one point he moans about being "sweaty". Put the sweat back in cinema baby! Make it ooze from the frames!

The trailer definitely made this seem like every other line was an attempt to get in the gen z satire. Truthfully, the film isn't cut that way at all. Its a fun slasher first and a satire second. That's when this games at its best. When the foundations are strong. Writing that kind of dialogue is a bit like writing a hip hop song. You have your bars that you have to stick to (unless you're MF Doom and you're another fucking anomaly). When you're making a slasher, there are certain rules you have to follow (ones which Wes Craven clearly knew inside out and why Scream is hilarious). I'm not gonna list the entire rules but let's say a big one is a kill every few pages to keep things interesting. As well as that the opportunity can crop up for a good one liner. So every now and then you throw in a good one liner to personalise your movie when it's fit. You have that perfect space (inside the bar of a hip hop song) where its well-timed. If you go outside your bars you just come off as uncontrolled and are at big risk of destroying the entire thing. That's what the trailer was, a complete and utter mess. On the other hand, the movie does it brilliantly. The body is very strong and it takes its opportunities to modernise aspects at the right times.

Success in the 90 minute horror game is one of precision mastering that kind economy. Hats off to Bodies Bodies Bodies for a really impressive job. It's a strong genre movie that takes its shot well. I was expecting it to be more of aggressively satirical movie. It is not that. It's a true old fashioned slasher, which in the right moments updates itself with its mocking of the teens of today. The scenarios are the same, they run the same length but the reason for the kick offs are modernly motivated. I can handle this and want to say the film is one best films I've seen at trying to bring the slasher in to the present without completely destroying all that we love about it.

Undoubtedly better results than this years Scream film, which has just descended into the Stab series. Tries to pass itself off as clever when it takes cheap shots at really easy new additions to horror. I mean the fact that they're making another one so soon says it all really doesn't it. Making one every 10 years or so would be a great idea you know using it as a tool to analyse and critique shifts in the horror genre. What could have possibly happened in the genre in the space of like a year? For a film which markets itself on its intellectual superiority maybe it needs to accept that it's become just a standard slasher series. Likeable as Scream 5 was it didn't really bring much to the table did it? Credit to Scream 4 for making the entire narrative part of that which it was critiquing. Scream 5 was just all out lazy with nothing other than a few comments on "elevated horror" and "requels". Bodies Bodies Bodies was much better. Whilst it's narrative is not as clever as Scream 4, it did what it did well. Full respect to it, it’s the best Scream movie of the year.

Ah yes, I also mentioned how this was reminding me of the plot of April Fools Day. Whether it goes that way or not you'll have to watch and find out. I spent the whole thing like I've worked out the killer. This is easy. I've seen this game before. Well, take my whodunnit credentials away cause I didn't see that killer coming. I'm handing in my badge, turning out my locker and getting the fuck out of town. I'm no fucking Benoit Blanc it seems. He'd have worked this out sooner no doubt. The final reveal had me in fucking stitches.

They even brought in the Irish mob guy right at the end!

Connor O'Malley is a wellrespected comedian and who's work in Joe Pera Talks With You is amazing but me and the boys have taken to just calling him the Irish mob guy on account of how funny that sketch is. Always glad to see that man show up. Without a doubt

Bodies Bodies Bodies is one of the most fun horrors this year but there's no beating Ti West's X!

Bonus Points:

-Daddy AF and 212 blaring over all the party scenes, which had me crip walking down the aisles of the cinema

-The Slumber Party Massacre vibes

-Pete Davidson looking genuinely coked out his mind, like he hasn't slept in weeks or taken a bath and sweating profusely

-The absolute alpha male of the pack opening a champagne bottle with a sword

-Maria Bakalova for taking someone out with a fucking dumbbell

-Irish mob guy popping up at the end

Overall Score: 4/5