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Postography Double Down part 1 (scroll down, fool) Double Down part 2 I Am Here....Now part 1 I Am Here....Now part 2 Pass Thru part 1 Pass Thru part 2 Pass Thru part 3 Fateful Findings part 1 Fateful Findings part 2 Fateful Findings part 3 Neil Breen. Neil... Breen.  Horrible sandblasted photo courtesy of neilbreen.com I've been aware of filmmaker Neil Breen for a while, through Youtube clips of bizarre acting from his movies, and breathtaking trailers, but until recently I hadn't actually sat down to watch one of his movies in full. This would change when I got a hold of his entire current library of movies. Five evocative titles: Double Down, I Am Here.... Now, Fateful Findings, Pass Thru, and his most recent release, Twisted Pair. I'm no bad movie afficionado, but I very much enjoy watching movies where the filmmaker was clearly sincere in their attempt to make it, but maybe too stubbornly convinced of their own natural expertise to ever improve their work. There's a very careful tipping point between unintentionally hilarious and unwatchably tedious, though. I can throw on a Samurai Cop or a Shotgun Jones for the tenth time and still enjoy myself, but The Room took me several attempts to watch, and I struggled through Troll 2. I don't know much about Breen, the man, himself. I understand that he's a former real estate agent from the Las Vegas area, and his movies tend to deal with worldwide conspiracies, environmental issues, terrorism, corruption, and they usually feature either a man with godlike powers or a super-competent rogue agent hacker, always played by Breen himself. As far as I know, you can only get his films by buying them directly from the websites he makes for each film. I wonder if I'll enjoy Breen in longform as I did in compilations, so I thought I'd record my thoughts as I sit down to watch his work. A warning in advance: part of this is going to be  , with some partial, horrendous nudity.Double Down (2005)  We open on... stock footage of clouds. Double Down was released in 2005, but the opening titles look very 80s, which isn't helped by the soundtrack. Slowly we drift down to a rocky desert. I understand Breen's movies always make generous use of the Las Vegas landscape.  Here we find the man himself, chilling between the rocks. Neil has a very distinctive face, perhaps not really meant for film. With his tiny, perpetually slitted eyes, hawk's beak of a nose, and untamable windswept mullet, he does seem like a realtor more than a compelling hero. But perhaps he's more expressive than he seems to be at first. As the tiny slats of his eyes snap open, he introduces himself in voice-over as Aaron Brand. As he explains, top of his computer science class in college, a fighter pilot, and as mentioned in a curious turn of phrase, he “won” many medals for distinctive service. Ominous signs of some serious Mary Sue-ing. “I've always lived between this world and the other. I'm now a covert agent, a mercenary, for any nation that wants to control another.”  Aaron Breen proceeds to stalk across the red rocks of Nevada, mentioning: “I met the love of my life when I was 7, and stayed with her forever. We loved each other, and were getting married!” As abruptly as it was introduced, he drops this tangent. His delivery at first makes it sound like he says "We're getting married!" in a happy announcement.  Neil Brand reaches his stash of paraphernalia: two laptops, two handguns, three flip-phones, and a bunch of syringes. "I joined my country secret strategic support branch of the defense intelligence agency, to fight terrorism around the world. And became the best agent they ever had." Modesty, Neil. He explains that he developed a way to control any computer or satellite the government has. "The fact that I became so individually, electronically powerful scared my government, as well as others. It was that power that caused them assassinate my fiancee. And break my heart forever."  As he talks about how he's the best agent and terrorism fighter, we see him typing while wearing latex gloves. I like to think this is so his enemies can't detect his hacking. No fingerprints. Crafty. Breenius further demonstrates his powers by typing on two laptops and flip-phones at once. We see more stock footage, of satellites.  In an incredible monologue while he's driving, Aaron explains that he is now a “freelance agent.” It's at this point I start noticing that Neil is fond of using the vague words “many” and “all over the world” a lot in his writing. In a lengthy and insipid bit, he mentions how his secretive work “in many countries” earns him “millions of dollars on various covert assignments,” but donates all of it to charities, orphanages and hospitals, and to support victims of natural disasters (all over the world). “Like hurricanes... like Katrina. I can do better for them than most mismanaged and dishonest governments can.” I'm sensing a lot of wish fulfillment here. Breen has fascinatingly slow and halting diction, as if he's reading text he himself did not write.  Brand's latest mission is to shut down the Las Vegas strip for two months. Quite vague.  We see some stock footage of a medical procedure on someone's eye while he mentions receiving “bio-electric-medical implants” for his work.   Neil further mentions that he also takes out white collar criminals “who've escaped the legal system.” I guess as a hobby on the side? We see a fantastically dramatic death scene acted out by a few half-buried fingers. Sorry, I'm just going to refer to the character as Neil from here. It's more fun to pretend he's just playing himself.   “I don't need much to live on anymore, I just eat tuna out of a can and live in a car.” I definitely feel this is autobiographical, I bet Breen has a weakness for canned tuna. He keeps droning on about how he can tap into any system while more stock footage of satellites plays. At this point I'm starting to nervously look at the time counter.  Another stop, another chance to bring out all the laptops and flip-phones. Neil mentions that governments don't dare to kill him because he's “planted biological bombs in seven major cities around the world.” I'm unclear if I should root for this guy or not. While I experience this existential doubt, Neil appears to drip some corn syrup blood on his latex gloves from a syringe, after which he shakes off the drops and puts the cap back on the syringe. I don't think that's sound medical research.   Neil is rapidly becoming the kid on the playground who yells that you can't shoot him because he's got bulletproof everything and also his bullets can shoot you around the corner and if you don't like that his dad's a policeman and will put you in jail. He explains that he's invented an “invisible shield device” using satellite lasers that lets him “hide objects in a small area.” To demonstrate, we see a sinister gun-toting man approach his car like a sidescrolling videogame enemy, grab his head, scream, and fall over. “The force shield will cause death if an intruder comes too close.” The camera cuts to a featureless piece of rock several times. I – think – it's meant to imply an invisible Neil is standing there. It's unclear.  In the car, Neil uses a record-breaking four laptops simultaneously. The typing sound effect doesn't even slightly align with his tapping. Neil mentions supporting the troops, but “there's no way for them to win a modern war.” It's clear that he reserves his ire for the men in high places.  There's an occasional mystifying shot where it's not clear whether it's connected to anything else going on. A pair of legs in dress pants and black shoes, walking away. This little kid, standing on some dirt path. “Where are you? Where am I? You're me...” says Neil, while the camera pulls out and we hear choral singing.  A pair of hands exchange these test tubes, in one of the longest and most awkward handing-over scenes I've witnessed in my life. Neil says “proceed” in voice-over, but it's unclear to me if it's meant to be live in the scene. Neil studies a book of pictures of the Hoover Dam, and we see stock footage of a flyover of it that goes on for what feels like a lifetime. I really hope he tries to imply he's going to blow it up, having seen the level of effects so far.  “I specialize in bio-terror missions, throughout the world.” Neil stops by a river to test a tube full of flour in a river. I derive some slight amusement from seeing him get his latex glove caught in the tube when he tries to twist it shut again. I don't exactly feel him donating the proceeds of his bio-terror missions to the victims of natural disasters evens things out.  Well, I guess the powder works.   Neil awkwardly crawls down some crumbling rocks to reach a crag where he stuffed another laptop. Bits of rock actually break off and roll down the hill, so I think this might've been the most dangerous stunt in the movie.  This sleeping bag(?) moves around for a bit, and for a moment I'm afraid Breen's doing a love scene, possibly by himself. Then he says, in voice-over: “Come back to me... come back to me.” Another of Neil's hallmarks, I'm finding, is him repeating a phrase in immediate succession.   A pair of kids run around a playground, and Neil starts narrating “we met when were seven, and it was love at first sight.” Schmaltzy romantic music plays as we see our skinny-armed Adonis frolic with his love through the verdant fields of Nevada's deserts. Whatever camera or lens he used also has a super prominent blue flare on the right half of the screen, that seems to stay where it is no matter how they move the camera. Maybe there's a filter on the lens that's screwed on crooked? I'm fascinated by it, even though it's the least of the movie's problems, but it is present in most shots.  The shot of Breen and Girlbreen alternates with their child selves in the same location. The kids kind of try to emulate the whole “dancing around in circles” bit by way of the girl dragging the boy around, which is adorable in its ineptitude.  Don't look at the camera though, kid.  A car slowly rolls up alongside Breen's, and taps his weirdly abandoned cowboy boots. Just before the shot cuts the car slightly rolls back again, seemingly accidental. The fancy black shoes emerge from the car. Black Shoes kicks over one of the boots ominously, then walks off and stops near that weird and now empty sleeping bag. Mysterious.  “There is an error in the calculation. Sector A-O-7. Here is the correction.” Neil voice-overs, but again it's unclear whether this is meant to be him speaking to one of the people in the stock footage or him narrating after the fact? Neil kind of expects the audience to figure this kind of thing out for themselves. “I can't leave you. I love you.” Brand's late fiancee is seen on the dirt road from before. Breen is doing some kind of dream imagery with this that I suspect is really going to wear out its welcome before this is over, because I'm like 15 minutes into the movie right now. “I can't wait for the night to come again, so I can be with you again.”  Ohhh no. Breen cuts from a crane shot of a hotel swimming pool to a different pool where he and his fiancee are preparing for the world's most unnecessary skinnydip. The girl playing the fiancee is topless, but gets in the pool in fantastically awkward sideways manner so the camera's won't catch her breasts. The flesh-toned thong is, I assume, to sell the dream notion that she's fully nude. Breen himself, while thankfully immersed in water from the waist down, looks like he might be entirely naked, save for the tanlines from his constant tank top wearage.  “I love you. I love being with you. Will you marry me?” Breen delivers his lines with the romantic intensity of a parent telling a child to never, ever scare daddy like that again.  I'm trying my absolute hardest to not discern what's happening under the waterline there. A laser pointer aims at Breen's forehead while he and his ladylove exchange sweet nothings. “I need to know that something extraordinary is possible.” she says. “Anything is possible.” says Neil. “Anything is possible.” And: “Anything is possible.” Then the laser pointer switches to her back, and she's shot. “Oh! Jeez!” breathes Breen as he catches her.  Breen delivers his Oscar moment as he extorts a cry, more a groan really, and finishes with a kind of relieved sigh, as if he passed some troublesome gas.   This shot of his fiancee floating facedown in the pool might be meant figuratively, but it does make it look like Breen's so busy clutching a flower with his overly bloody fingers that he just let the dead body of his almost-wife drift away.  Aah, how horrid. Okay, he does seem to have some kind of concealing pouch strapped to his apparatus. Again, this shot seems to be more poetic license.  Neil goes on for a while  We go back to Neil and girl sitting on an arid hillside in better times, as he narrates that they'll always be together, even in death. Even in death.  Neil wakes up by the side of his car, and bloody fingers have written “help me” on the side. Startled, he crawls away. The shock doesn't seem to last, unless he thinks a ghost is tailing him, because next we see, he drops a stack of license plates on the ground, and makes us sit through the complete, uninterrupted business of unscrewing the license plate from the car and screwing on a new one.  Neil is quite economic with his props. Those guns, flip-phones and test tubes see a lot of mileage. Also, it's quite coincidental that that's the exact same kind of rifle we saw kill his fiancee in the dream.  Neil stops at a public bathroom to change from his usual cowboy boots, jeans and black tank top into a more businesslike outfit. Next we see some shots of Las Vegas, suggesting Neil's gone into town. “Las Vegas... where anything goes. Enjoy it while you can... I'm about to end it all.” Ominous.  Neil meets a man outside the famous Luxor Hotel. “I just arrived in town. An hour ago.” Neil addresses the man jovially, sounding like a man trying to set up a gay tryst. The man he meets starts looking around a little, probably meant to give the impression that he's scanning for snoops. Instead, it makes it look like the actor's already bored of this conversation. “It's nice to be here, working with the agency on another assignment. Although I can't be too careful. I'm not going in your office buildings, I know they're all bugged.” I guess Neil works with what he's got, but he might've picked a different building than the world famous giant glass pyramid with sphinxes outside to be his shadowy agency's headquarters. “...not to mention the skeletons that are in there.” The gripping dialogue is slightly hampered by cars honking quite loudly in the background.  “We haven't located him yet, but he's very near. Very close.” the man tells him. “He will kill anyone, anywhere, to advance their terrorist goals.” Mr. Bureau is being very vague. I think the idea is that Neil's Aaron Brand is a double agent – he's the terrible terror-danger being described, but at the same time he pretends to be of help to the Agency, who don't know he's one and the same. Maybe. “He's planning something very big. Bigger than 9/11, or any of the other large catastrophes we caught in time – after 9/11. The public wasn't even aware of.” I'm trying to capture the stilted dialogue delivery with punctuation. Bigger than 9/11!? Like... 10/12?  Neil sets a moment aside to muse on how governments (all over the world) are so concerned with nuclear weaponry, even though chemical and biological weapons are far more destructive to societies and economies, and far more easy to use. He posits that the whole reason governments put so much focus on nuclear weapons is to distract the public away from the truth that chemical and biological WMDs are the real danger. I have a strong feeling that if Neil Breen cornered you at a party back in 2005, you'd be having this exact same one-sided conversation. Unprompted, Neil continues to lecture. “The other basic reality of modern warfare, is that no war can be won by airpower alone.” “As advanced and stealthy as our modern weaponry may be, it can never defeat a nation's resolve to fight their war... on the ground... hand-to-hand... by guerilla warfare.” I imagine the Agency man, who is given no more close-ups, is nodding politely and hoping for a gap in the monologue where he can announce he's gonna freshen up his drink and bow the gently caress out of this bizarre man's thesis. A plane flies overhead, and Neil leaves, smarming about how intelligence agencies fail because they never learn to share information. I'm trying to get a bit of an idea what kind of person Neil Breen is from his movies, and Double Down suggests he's a small-time conspiracy nut, but kind of a benign one. He'll bore you into apprehension with his secret theories of how the world works and should work, but he's not questioning Sandy Hook or yelling Pizzagate. Double Down will have been a product of 9/11, and you could see the writing of a philantropist super-genius hacker agent as a desire to take control of a world that has been turned upside down. Of course, despite his claims of saccharine do-goodery, like giving away his many many millions of many dollars to orphanages all over the world, he's also versed in biological terrorism himself and implies he uses these skills when governments pay him to do so, which seems at odds with each other. I would chalk this up to Neil's musings to be kind of on the level of how I thought I had the world figured out when I was 15.  Threatening music plays as we see stock footage of nightly Vegas. We see stock footage of partying people, drinking, dancing. Drugs being cut. Someone loading a clip with hollow-tip bullets.  I don't know if it's meant to imply Neil's been partying, but he wakes up sprawled in the dirt next to his car. He scrabbles to his feet, takes a laptop out of his car, taps one key a bunch of times, and grabs a flip-phone. “I've received your directions,” says Neil, “The GPS directions.”  “I've gotta prepare for the attack diversions. I've begun the actions in the other cities. In preparation.” Stock footage attempts to clarify these vague promises. 30 minutes in and it's still quite unclear to me what is going on, but I'm not giving up. I'm not giving up.   Back to a windy stretch of Nevada. Neil has one of his silver handguns out. He comes upon an old bearded man, sitting in a crag in the rocks. Pious choral music starts. “Old man. You don't look like a terrorist to me.” Neil says in voice-over.  Neil starts climbing the rocks to get closer to the man, even though the previous shot's line of sight establishes that the man is already below him, so that doesn't make much sense. The old man feebly gets up, immediately slips on a rock and falls, leading to this.   Neil hurries down to help the man. “I was drawn to him. I felt I knew his spirit.” In a surprising lapse of continuity, the blood on the man's head is gone. The old man groans “you're the one, you're the one” and hands Neil a nugget of what might be fool's gold. “I'm the one?” Neil muses. “I am the one.”   Neil carries the old man's body for a very brief shot and buries him. ”Come back again.” Neil pleads in voice-over. “Come back... again.” I assume he's talking to his fiancee here, not the mysterious old man. “I am your spirit.”  Eagle (America) While Neil's poetic waxing is anything but subtle, I'm intrigued. Who's the old man? What is the nugget supposed to be?  Neil scales a hill, holds out his hand, and again voice-overs “I am your spirit.” as we repeatedly see a bald eagle. And then, confusingly, a stock footage shot of a different old bearded man feeding pigeons outside of a church. I'm guessing Neil just put this in expecting the audience to think this was the old man in slightly better days? Still doesn't tell me what he represents.  Neil again wakes on the ground next to his car, which some ghost has again defaced with blood and the words “help me.” “I'm so alone.” Neil narrates, “But never lonely.” Disturbed by the blood, he stands up again.   The camera dramatically pans up Neil's kneeling form as he roars “where are you?” three times in succession, each facial expression more out of control than the last. If acting is being in control of your face and body, this is the opposite of that. We then see him kneeling at a grave. “Where are you?” Neil says again, superfluously. “I miss you. Have you learned the meaning of life?”   Neil's not done having visions. Kneeling in water, he sees his parents in white smocks. “Mom. Is there life after death? Dad? Is there a heaven?” he asks as the ocean soaks his jeans. His dad assures him “we are filled with love, and we're at peace.” They reach out for each other's hands in a shot as endless as the handing over of test tubes from earlier. Mom beckons Neil. “No.” says Neil as his parents walk away. I'm amused to see that the actors clearly stop walking just before the shot ends. “I need to know. I need... to know.” Neil says gravely, as we return to the graveyard.   In a whiplash change, we suddenly join Neil and some family of strangers as they sit down to a meal of empty plates and a fruit bowl. “It was good to see you at the lake today.” the blond guy says (he might be saying “the other day”, it sounds like his line was clipped). A weird line if you think about it for more than a second. Did Neil just run into these people while lake-kneeling and they said “Join us for lunch, we're having fruit. I'd tell you it's good to see you, but I think I'll wait until then.” “Yeah, yeah.” Neil says distractedly. “Did you see them? My parents...? No no, never mind, never mind, never mind.” The only reaction we see is the blond guy, who looks like Mr. Burns told him to trim those sideburns, smiling and nodding. I presume he's not listening, or overcompensating for his regret at inviting Neil.  “You know, the public perception of what we do for a living really constantly amazes me,” Neil starts, unprompted. “They think that all we do is get caught up in spectacular car chases, and huge buildings blowing up, and wild gunfire...” Oh, I realize after a moment, he's talking about his nebulous special agent job. “That only happens in the movies on TV.” he assures them. That only happens in movies with a budget, I think, though from trailers for his later movies, I know that a combination of stock footage and the cheapest possible digital effects will get him a long way. He continues, telling them what people like him do is done silently and electronically.  A random shot of the older woman, staring listlessly ahead of her like a barely-alive prop, is thrown in to break up the constant focus on Neil. I wonder if the family's lines that might have set up some of his monologues were cut out, or simply never written.  By far my favorite part of the scene and perhaps the whole movie is when Neil politely asks the little girl “Can I have some water please?” and hands her a glass that's at least still half full of water. The little girl asks “Grandma? Can I get it?” as if Neil offered to take her on a pony ride, allowing Grandma her one line of the movie: “Yes.”  “Speaking of secrets,” says Luuke Skywalker, as the girl is away, “Here's one we wanna share with you. Our daughter Megan was just diagnosed with brain cancer.” Jesus, what a cheery lead-in. “Ohh no, I'm so sorry.” Neil replies, as he fingers an apple. The girl, I presume Megan, returns with the glass and Neil throws out an awkward “Thank youuu.” They stare at each other silently, and Neil has the old man's nugget in his open hand again. Is it a magical healing rock?   Oh gently caress, I think it is. Choral music rises up again as Neil clenches his fingers around the nugget and puts a hand on the girl's head. After holding it there for slightly longer than comfortable, and then some, he says “No – thank you.” Even though no one else has said anything.  https://twitter.com/davidspackage/status/1145261188902793216 Neil returns to the wilderness. He makes a fantastic spectacle of scrabbling up a slight incline, while the soundtrack swells as if he's pulling himself over the lip of a steep mountain. My absolute favorite is when he reaches for a loose stone as if for purchase, it rolls away from his hand, then he grasps it again and basically mimes as if it's a handhold that allows him the needed traction to get over the top of the little hillside. Then he drags his hands through the dirt to imply he's slipping back, before finally making it over. Mere words don't do it justice.   Facing his fiancee's ghost once again, he says “I've been given this incredible power. Tonight, I believe I cured Megan of cancer. I did help her! Now I wanna help you. I want to use that power... to bring you back.” To drive it home, we see him cradling the old man who gave him the nugget again, and the awkward moment of Neil laying a hand on the girl (No – thank you.). “No, no.” Neil's fiancee tells him. “I'll always be here with you. Always. Save it.” Clear enough. Neil shelves his plan to resurrect his girlfriend, for now. (end of part one) davidspackage fucked around with this message at 20:33 on Dec 26, 2021 |
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Jun 30, 2019 11:36
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I must be doing something wrong trying to embed the video of Neil climbing up the hill. It's only showing up as a URL link. Maybe because I have too many images? https://twitter.com/davidspackage/status/1145261188902793216
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Jun 30, 2019 11:57
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Eagerly awaiting more of this dive into the Silver Breen Screen.
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Jul 1, 2019 02:26
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I don't understand I don't understand
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Jul 1, 2019 03:23
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I really need to see this.
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Jul 1, 2019 04:18
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DOUBLE DOWN will always be amazing for having the line "I BECAME SO INDIVIDUALLY, ELECTRONICALLY POWERFUL, THAT I SCARED MY GOVERNMENT, AND OTHERS." I think a poster here even has it as their avatar/user text. I loving love these movies so much. Fateful Findings is probably my favorite of them. On Amazon Prime, there's a...full length Neil Breen parody film titled FATAL FUTURE. I checked it out right away, and was expecting to find it hilarious for about five minutes and then do something else. Instead, it held my attention for the entire thing and is great fun, I was stunned. The person who wrote/directed/starred in it managed to totally capture Neil Breen's "voice" while also clearly being a huge fan of like Syndicate, Deus Ex, Neuromancer, crappy 90s made for TV sci-fi like TekWar, etc. It ended up being completely enjoyable from start to finish and, impressively, even had a pretty decent plot twist towards the end. Highly recommended if you get a kick of Neil Breen's bizarre mix of stoic narcissism and total cluelessness about how anything works or even if you just enjoy extremely low budget sci-fi schlock. Like, I was genuinely stunned because I'm always very skeptical of stuff that is campy intentionally but they pulled it off here. Comparatively, Albert Pyun's cyberpunk action series Nemesis got a fifth installment recently and, despite it only having a runtime of like 70 minutes I could't make it through, just straight up tragically awful. Neo Rasa fucked around with this message at 04:47 on Jul 1, 2019 |
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Jul 1, 2019 04:40
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Neo Rasa posted:DOUBLE DOWN will always be amazing for having the line "I BECAME SO INDIVIDUALLY, ELECTRONICALLY POWERFUL, THAT I SCARED MY GOVERNMENT, AND OTHERS." I think a poster here even has it as their avatar/user text. I can't believe I failed to include that quote. I edited it in just now. I looked on Prime, but apparently there's no Fatal Future for my region.  Sounded fun.
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Jul 1, 2019 07:27
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Double Down: Part two Pretending to tighten some bolts on the two satellite dishes attached to his car, Neil again taps on one of his myriad laptops. He puts it away, grabs a different laptop and types again. I like how he repeatedly looks at the dishes after he taps away, as if he should be seeing something happening there. The wind cruelly parts his mullet several times. We see what looks like a radio tower at an airport, and stock footage of a satellite in space. “The filters are active, proceed.” Neil says on his flip-phone.   Neil sleeps in his car, and we see what may be a dream image of him approaching the recurring green sleeping bag again, this time with his fiancee's brown hair coming out of it. He strategically covers her face with his hand, for reasons. Neil dreams himself standing on a rock with his fiancee next to him, musing on how he wanted to do so many things with her, but that's all gone now.  After another shot of Neil sleeping in his car, now night time, we get presented with stock footage of the White House. “It's me.” Neil says in voice-over. He once again does that annoying thing where what appears to be meant as in-the-scene dialogue, over the phone, is presented in the same calm voice-over tone that he uses to narrate his thoughts. “Give me the president. Contact has been made.” A weird shot follows, possibly stock footage again, of a guy in sunglasses and bodyguard-esque ear radio leaning in close to the camera.  A plane flies overhead and lands. A man in camo pants meets another, both wearing latex gloves. He exchanges a taped-up parcel for more of those ever-present test tubes with red in them. But oops, the parcel falls and spills out a burst of white powder. Cocaine? Another plane lands, prompting me to rewind the movie a bit, because it looks like the exact same footage as ten seconds earlier. It's a different plane, just filmed from the exact same angle and with the exact same camera movement as before.  But oh! The plane's landing blows the white powder away. “Airborne anthrax is lethal once inhaled. Be careful.” Neil warns narratingly. I've given up on understanding whether he's meant to be in the scene or these are just his thoughts, somewhere else.   Back to shots of Vegas, and this tediously slow moving car. Shots of roulette, blackjack, slot machines, and the stock exchange. Neil meets some men in a parking lot.  A woman holds what I, at first, take for a tiny needle with maybe poison or some knock-out drug. She sticks it to some white gum.   “Let's move away from the cars. They may be wired.” says Neil. They proceed to walk away as the woman with the needle approaches with a shopping cart. She rolls it straight into Neil's car.   “Oh – sorry!” she says. “That's okay – no damage.” Neil answers, offering her his most charming smile.   In what must have been full view of Neil and the two men, who have turned around since she loudly drew their attention, she's taped the little needle to the car. With a wad of bright, white, conspicuous gum. In a normal film, some accomplice would've done the shopping cart-smash as a way of distracting them while she planted whatever it is she did, or maybe not crashed it into the same car they wanted to stick something on to, and maybe stuck it to the underside instead of where you're going to see it immediately. It's an interesting choice. Let's see how it pays off.  A red-haired woman sits in a car, presumably filming Neil and his two associates.  Oh, it's blondie. I guess his role's bigger than I thought. “How are ya?” he asks. “Busy?” He leaves a space open there for a reply, but the camera doesn't cut away. “You haven't changed.” he says.  “Keep walking. I don't like this.” Neil says, while remaining absolutely stationary. “Very busy, as a matter of fact. With all the world wide action?”   “Are you still on that quest?” Blondie inquires. What? Quest? I ask my TV. “What're you looking for anyway?” His partner, a man with the face of a child, gets shown, but doesn't get to speak. “Tell me about that quest.” Blondie Noburns presses.  “What do you have for me this time?” Neil asks, not acknowledging the question about his quest at all. “Cryptography? Hacking into a banking system? Shutting down a power grid for a major city? Cutting off the water system for half the country?” Okay, I get the picture. Stock footage plays over this of cities, public transportation, the stock exchange.  He continues, cocksure and agonizingly slow. “Hacking into the stock market? Closing down a bank? Fixing an election? It's all easy. Network... centric... warfare.”  Miss redhead and her JVC camcorder continue to provide footage for the making of Double Down.   Agent Boyman turns his head to face Neil. “You stay back.” Neil warns, as if he pulled a knife. “You're a genius. The best. But you know that.” blondie tells him, fellating his ego. “No. This time, it's personal. An assassination. We wanna kill someone. By killing their loved ones, we'll destroy their... spirit. Their heart. And hopefully? Their organisation.” Neil gives no reply. They walk back to the cars, which they were standing maybe ten steps away from.  The red woman becomes a little redder as someone off screen shoots her in the head, which is represented by someone squirting a little film blood on her temple. Neil clearly has no one capable of sculpting wounds for special effects, because every instance of someone getting hurt so far has just involved basting someone in corn syrup blood. The woman collapses, dead, without any clarity as to who she is, why she was filming them, and who shot her.  Neil drives away, down the strip, and pulls in at a parking lot. “I couldn't let them notice.” he narrates. “That I saw that diode being planted on my car.” Ohh, it's a tracking device. With unnecessary delicacy, he pries the diode out of the gum with a knife.   A Rolls Royce pulls up to a hotel entrance, and a man and woman step out and walk into the hotel. “Here's two hundred dollars,” Neil says in voice-over, as he walks into shot, “I wanna borrow the car. I'll have it back in about an hour. Before they finish dinner.” He pays the valet and drives off.  Now dressed in a suit, Neil sits parked outside a drive-thru wedding chapel. After playing with his phone for a bit, he takes out a strawberry and injects it with a syringe of more red stuff, presumably just more movie blood inside.  He pulls up outside another wedding chapel, where two couples are just coming out. He warmly congratulates all of them, and leads the first pair to his car.  In a jarring comedic turn, the previously smiling couple now look distraught and disgusted with each other. “I can't believe we did this.” the woman says. “I've only known you for two days!” “That's all it takes in Vegas.” narrates Neil, smugly. “Why did you wait so long? Only Las Vegas...” “I can't believe this.” the bespectacled young man murmurs woodenly. “I need a drink...” “Would you like some champagne?” offers Neil. He drops a whole strawberry in a glass.  With drinks in hand, the couple seems to have rekindled their newlywed bliss, or at least the fleeting smiles of people on their first ever acting job. “Congratulations again!” Neil says perkily. “We'll be at the hotel in... ten minutes.” The car is standing still.   “I don't feel well.” the young man says, and keels over on his disgruntled-looking wife. Next, we see Neil loading him into the trunk of his car.   The young wife, who admittedly so far is the best actor I've seen in the movie, wakes from a daze, asking “Where am I? And who are you?” “We're in Las Vegas!” says Neil cheerfully. “Hey, last night we went to the club, danced a lot, drank a lot, laughed a lot, had sex out by the fountains, then we went down to the strip and got married!” “Hey, this is Las Vegas, babyyy!”   The lady is unconvinced. Neil drops pretense as he opens his flip-phone. “I've got the package. Where do you want it delivered?”  “No no no – I wanna be married to you!” says his package. “But... I can't move.” I guess she got the strawberry that only paralyzes you.  “What do you mean I picked up the wrong couple?” Neil phones in through voice-over. Uh-ohhh! “Ssshit! The other couple, my target, went to the lake? I'll go find them.”  “But I've changed my mind.” Neil says in the car, implying there's a line before that that got cut. “Get out! Get out! The marriage is over! Get out!” I cannot stop cracking up over Neil's habit of repeating an emphatic line two or three times in a row. And Neil -- she can't get out. You paralyzed her, remember?   Neil lays the two of them by the side of the road. Presumably both are still alive, just knocked out. “Here's your husband.” Neil says in parting.  (There's a “is the shot done?” look if I ever saw one)  A sweeping shot of a lake. The couple Neil was supposed to pick up sits on some rocks, slumped.  Breen. Neil Breen. Neil looks good in the combination of suit and gun, but mainly as a non-speaking European henchman who gets dusted by the hero in a bad action movie.   He approaches with gun drawn, but finds the two of them with movie blood already dribbling down from non-existent wounds in their foreheads. “They committed suicide. A suicide pact... they knew what was coming.”  That's that subplot tied up, I guess. Neil returns to his tank top, jeans, and four laptops for more Actions. He takes out two flip-phones. Over stock footage of a cockpit, we hear him say “Track sector 45. Now...” Nightly footage of the Vegas strip plays.   Neil sleeps in his car again, and dreams he finds a lab skeleton in the sleeping bag. He clumsily runs up a hill again, and sees a vision of his fiancee.   “Forgive me.” she says, holding out her hand. “Forgive me.” Clearly, Neil writes those line repetitions into the script. “Make time stand still.” Neil stares at her placidly, and we see the two of them sitting down on the hillside again. “Thank you for loving me.” he narrates.  Neil wakes, collapsed out of his car, offering a gratuitously naked look of his bald spot. “I find myself having dreams and nightmares when I sleep.” Pretty sure that's normal, Neil. “And waking up on the ground in a sweat... I'm so confused and depressed.” Aren't we all? I know I am.  After a few shots of daytime Vegas, Neil walks along the sidewalk. “I can walk the Vegas strip and no-one knows. What I'm about to do.”  “Oh, excuse me.” In a move both graceful and stealthy, Neil is suddenly wearing a latex glove he wasn't wearing in the shot before and pelts a passing man's arm with a handful of what I assume is meant to be anthrax. “Contact...” Holy poo poo. “Once it gets into the air... it kills immediately on contact. He'll be dead in five minutes.” I... hope he deserved it?  Back in his car, Neil makes a call. “Amber... Hi, this is Aaron. Long time. How's business?” I'm startled by a woman speaking clearly in voice-over, as the camera pans along Vegas hotels. “VERY hot. There's a different convention in town every few days. And those out of state conventioneers... know how to party. They keep us girls very busy.”  “I've got a job I want you to help me with. I'll pay you one hundred dollars.” “Only a hundred bucks? Come on, baby...” “It's a setup. No sex.” Breen's pronuncation of “sex” makes my skin crawl. “Sure. But I wanna see you afterwards. Thank you.” Amber replies. “Absolutely. I'll see you afterwards.” Neil echoes unnecessarily. “Now here's what I want you to do...”  “drat tourist! Liar! Bastard!” we hear Amber's voice say over more footage of the strip. It's entirely unclear where she is meant to be in the scene, let alone why she's swearing at someone, and it never gets any context.  Neil wanders around a car rental's lot. Sinister music plays as he decides on a slick red Ferrari with the license plate “FARRARI.” “I can steal any car, any time. With these electronic locks and ignitions, it's so easy.” Neil boasts as he dials on his 1996 flip-phone. He gets in and drives off.  From the car, he phones someone up and says “I want a private meeting with you – now. It's urgent. Don't ask how I found you! I know everything. That's more than the government knows.” Neil pulls up next to a man in a red beanie. I've never realized how stupid it looks when someone gets into a sports car. Looks like a drat child toy.  Neil pulls the biggest rear end in a top hat parking job all over the world by occupying six parking spaces at once, which admittedly someone driving a car like this would do.  The man in the beanie – and the most dollar store fake beard and mustache I've seen in my life – nervously looks around. “Isn't Vegas wonderful?” Neil asks casually, as if he didn't just insist this guy meet him for some urgent business.  A sexy woman in red dress and obvious blond wig – presumably Amber - walks across the parking lot. While she distracts Beanie Badbeard, Neil preps another syringe of red and pokes him in the neck, knocking him out. Neil just blew $100 just to get this guy to look the other way for a second. I would think a trained secret agent could stick a guy with a needle without such an elaborate plan.  Neil leaves Amber behind and drives over to a street corner where Blondie and the older agent Neil previously met outside the Luxor hotel are waiting. “Great Ferrari!” say the old guy. “Who's your friend?”   Neil yanks off the guy's mustache and beard, leading to a fantastically shocked reaction from the two agents, who pull guns on him, shouting “holy poo poo, it's him! It's him!”  “Put your guns away! I've tranquilized him!” Neil chides. “He's not going anywhere. Friends of his knows that he's with me,” and yes that is verbatim, “I'm a marked man now. Let's go.”  “They got her. They finally got to her. She's gone.” Way to loving go, baby. Be sure to tell Amber's family that she died because you didn't feel like going “hey, look over there (points)” “The CIA has just lost a good agent.” Wait, if she was CIA, why did she talk to you like a prostitute on the phone? Or... did she not know that you knew she was CIA? Wheels within wheels.  “It's so easy for this terrorist chemical sale activity to happen in any town like this,” Blondie Noburns tells his partner. “The people around here are all transient tourists, they don't pay attention to what goes on around them.” Some footage of tourists on the strip plays, for emphasis. Presuming this brief scene isn't totally unrelated to anything, I think Breen is communicating that a chemical weapon's sale is taking place?  “This looks like a target of mine overseas, and it's only five miles outside of Vegas.” Neil narrates over footage of a bunch of car wrecks and a half-collapsed stone hut, setting the stage. “This is an anthrax dealer. We're going in for the buy.” he continues, as two cars drive up. “It's good for your resumé. I'll help.” I don't want to keep harping on this, but I've finally figured out what Neil's weird habit of switching between narration and actual talking to characters mid-sentence reminds me of – the yellow caption boxes in the corners of comic book panels. Like when a character is telling a story in one panel, and the next panel is a new location or takes places hours later, and you have the last line of his dialogue in quotations in the box.  Two guys with rifles lie in wait. “I need to keep up my cover.” Neil says. “And make it appear that I'm helping these agents.” Well well. They approach the scene with guns drawn, and take cover behind car wrecks as if they're planning for a shootout instead of a deal.  One of the guys in the stone hut gets out of his familiar looking flip-phone and says, very emphatically: “They are approaching.” He hangs up, then says “confirmed,” presumably to his buddy.  “I've got friends tracking us.” says Breen, over footage of a plane or possibly a drone in the sky. “Just in case.” Neil and the agents approach the hut with their guns aimed, which seems like a poor way to establish trust. The guy with the rifle, sunglasses and majestic hair again mutters “confirmed” into the empty air. “Confirmed.” his buddy contributes.  The wind seems to turn Neil's face into majestic bird. The two guys leave the hut, one carrying the before-seen taped up parcel with anthrax.  This seems like a nervous situation, and history's most close range Mexican standoff. Neil offers the long-haired man some more of those ever-present test tubes. The long-haired man slowly offers him the package. Since both of them have a gun in their other hand, there's no way to actually exchange these items.   Neil deliberately drops a tube and says “It broke open! Run!” Everyone shoots away, the long-haired man drops the parcel. Quick-thinking Neil grabs both parcel and test tube, as the wind parts his hair hard enough to make him look like he's had recent brain surgery.  “Kill them.” he calmly says, in voice-over. Some gun noises sound, and immediately, we see Neil flip his phone open. “It went down. Your men did just fine. You should be very proud.”  “Well done.” Neil tells them. “Here's everything.” He hands them the parcel. “I want you two to take credit for this bust. I don't want any part of it.”  Neil leaves them. “Where does he go?” Blondie asks. “He's on a quest.” the old guy responds. Hey, no need to tell Blondie, he knows. The older agent goes on: “Don't ask, he's protected. From the very top, extremely top secret.” He explains that last month, they tried to use a drone to track him, but Neil took control of it with his laptop and crashed it, and he's done that many times before, so the orders from the top are not to track him anymore. “He's too smart for us. A magician.”   More dream imagery. Neil, approaching the sleeping bag with hair coming out of it. Neil, scaling rocks. Neil, facing his fiancee. “I'm so confused and depressed about my double life.” Jesus, subtext, Neil. “How did it get to this point? Where do I go from here? I've got so many questions. I need you, I need you, I miss you, I'm so glad you're here! I've got so many questions, I'm so confused!” His fiancee maintains a stone face throughout this.  After a shot of his fiancee as a little girl standing on a rock, Neil and his fiancee share a deeply unconvincing kiss. In a tone of “I need this to be over,” she states: “I need to believe. Something, extraordinary. Is possible.” Neil dashes another unpleasant kiss against her face. Sitting on the hillside, he narrates that their love will never die, even in death it will go on, and I'm thinking God, this is insipid.  After a few Vegas nightshots to indicate that a night has passed, Neil is doing some hacking down by the train tracks. “I've set up attack diversions and various targets around the world. In preparation for the Las Vegas attack.” Yes, the attack. Is that happening anytime soon? “Fires, subways, trains, planes. I need to begin the diversionary attacks. To distract the police and the military from the main attack.”  Neil preps his guns and runs across the Nevada landscape some more. I'm slightly amused by this panning shot of the four rifles, because it's clearly the totality of rifle props that Breen has. Every person, from the assassin that shot his fiancee to the anthrax dealers to the agents uses them.   “Didn't mean to disturb your lunch.” Neil says in voice-over. Apparently, he's spotted some off-screen assassins. He tracks someone and fires his gun. There's no actual flare effects, only sound. You then see Neil in tight close-up as he jerks from firing an off-screen gun, apparently shooting someone hard enough for blood to spray up into his face (this shot was already used at the start of the movie when he mentions going after white collar criminals).   A shirtless Breen opens his trunk and takes out a denim vest with torn-off sleeves. “I've been awarded every medal.” he boasts. And then he lists them all. This scene somehow feels longer than the entire movie, longer than time itself, even though there's only eight medals.  As said, I don't know anything about Breen's pre-film career other than that he worked in real estate. I don't know if he was in the army, but it would not surprise me if he wasn't, and simply is one of those people who overly fetishizes military service because the idea of literally getting to wear your merits on your sleeve to command respect is such an appeal. He buttons up his vest full of medals for what I can only hope is the glorious finale. “I've never been so proud of our troops, but I have no love to live for anymore.”  Once again uncharitably shirtless, he tightens more bolts on his dishes, and then of course taps on an unpowered laptop some more. ...and again takes out a different laptop to type on that one. “I can create an EMP electro-magnetic blast 200 miles above the earth. And knock out all electric power over a specific area. Silently. And no one will know. It was me.”  More nighttime shots of Vegas, a plane landing. Daytime, and Breen in his car, tapping away. A phonecall. “Yes. NO. That's impossible. How can that be? That's impossible... It can't be...”  With the phone still at his ear, he dips into the trunk of his car. “No... It can't be...” As he rummages through the trunk, the old man's nugget is balanced precariously on the edge of one of his millions of laptops, and without realizing, he knocks it into one of the empty cans of tuna. I mention my suspicion that Neil has a genuine fondness for tuna straight from the can – I further posit that he emptied all those cans himself.  “I cured her. I cured her.” Ah. So Megan died, and Neil didn't actually have healing powers thanks to the nugget? First of all, lol, second, what the gently caress is going on in this movie? I'm so confused and depressed.  “I've gotta take this other call.” Neil says without much gravitas, suggesting he's already over his astonishment at not having gained healing powers from a lump of fool's gold given to him by a clumsy old dead man. In lieu of the other person on the line, we see slowed-down footage of a shadow on a carpet floor. From the outline, it's clear this person is just standing with their hands hanging at their sides, not holding a phone. “How do you know?” Neil asks. “Where is he? Who is it?”  The nugget still lies in the tuna can like Chekov's gun, but since Megan's death implies the subplot about that was a big nothingburger, I just don't know anymore. Was that what Neil was looking for in his trunk? I don't know. I don't... know.  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NGHzwI-gZps Again, Neil sees the sleeping bag with hair coming out of it. In a scene that will be legendary if you've seen compilations on Youtube, Neil lets himself drop into the dirt and laments “I can't go on with this! I can't go on with this! I'm an American, I'm an American, I love this country! My country!” He grabs a handful of dirt for emphasis. What brings on this meltdown is unclear, but assumably the person on the phone either told Neil he wants him to do something un-American or revealed some betrayal. In a sharp contender for favorite scenes, after Neil gets back on his feet, he runs down a hillside, screaming. He keeps running. He keeps running, and screaming, and flailing his arms. The incredibly lengthy shot cuts several times to show him slightly further in the distance, but it does nothing to lend it more brevity. Holy poo poo, he is still running, until finally the soundtrack gives out.  “It's time to begin the attack.” Oh, thank gently caress.  In another moment of surpassing subtlety, Breen sees his young self next to him in the car. “What happened to me? To us? To me?” he asks.  For what must surely be the millionth time in the movie, we see his fiancee staring at him, Neil running up a hillside, then letting himself drop to the ground. His fiancee holds her arms out to him. “Forgive me.” she says. “Forgive me. Make time stand still. Right now.” “Forgive me.” answers Neil.   Crawling in my skin, these wounds? They will not heal. Neil unfolds his pocket knife and pokes it into his arm, producing much spillage of corn syrup. It looks like he's cutting another diode out that was implanted in his arm. “I won't need this anymore.” he says, so apparently it's something else. Maybe the bio-electric medical implant he mentioned at the start of the movie, though it was never mentioned what it was for.  For the third time, Neil wakes up to see his car graffiti'd by a ghost. It takes him a while to notice, and then he is startled by it again. You'd think by now he's gotten used to it. “I need help.” he says. “I need help!”  “What're you looking at?” he asks his reflection. “Someone I used to know.” he answers in voice-over. Vegas at night. This movie has at least 15 more minutes to go. I need help. I need help.  Hey, it's Agent Eric Trump's Secret Brother. “We know who the Las Vegas connection is. I've arranged for you to meet him. Do your job.” We see three sets of dress shoes step off the pavement, then one stops to lift up a foot. Neil's.   Gum, but not just gum? Another diode attached to it. These people are loving terrible at hiding bugs. How would you not immediately feel it under your shoe, let alone the likelihood of plain losing it while walking. “They planted this,” thinks Neil. “They know it's me.”  Someone in dress shoes and pants walks onto a grass field and stops. We've seen these shoes a number of times, is this supposed to be Neil's archnemesis? Another dream image shows up of Neil finding the lab skeleton in the sleeping bag. Neil re-uses the scene of him screaming “where are you?” three times, but I won't complain because it's really funny.    Aaand he runs up a loving hillside again. He does an amazingly unconvincing mime of falling over forward and cutting his arm on the horn of a ram skull. His fiancee appears and waves her hand across his arm. Naturally, the wound is gone. Neil rubs his arm incredulously.  That done, he walks down the hillside and retrieves two laptops poorly hidden underneath a few rocks. After getting out all his gear around his car, he calls someone up and says “The filters are active. Proceed. There's a meeting at 10 am tomorrow regarding... an imminent strike.”   We then see this. The scene alternates between a few old men against a conspicuously empty backdrop. “I wanted to welcome all of you to Las Vegas again. ” Canned applause sounds. This I immediately recognize as a thing I've seen in compilations for other Breen movies. These guys are obviously the faces of evil – corporate, political, industrial heads, politicians and big businessmen.   “You have nothing to worry about.” Old white man #1 says. Applause. “More precautions than ever have been taken to keep Las Vegas a safe place to visit, and have a great time.” Every time there's a pause between his lines, the applause plays.  “The diversions have begun.” Neil says. We'll have to take his word for it. “We're on the move.” he continues, over stock footage of a rocket, a stadium, consoles. “To commit. It's starting.” Stock footage plays of ambulance workers, drug hounds, an airport check-in counter, flight plans and radar. Neil lets your mind fill in the blanks, and there are plenty.  And of course, as Neil lays sleeping in his car, he dreams of his fiancee again, sitting on the hillside. He muses about how he's with her when he sleeps, but when he's awake, he's so alone. Luckily, it doesn't last long. “Las Vegas. Here I come. Now you'll be... just as alone as I am.”  For this one, Neil dons his medal-laden vest from a few scenes earlier again, looking like a drat valor-stealing Boomtown Rat. “The small diversions have started and I can't stop them.” he thinks, as he repeatedly writhes in, and punches, the dirt in frustration. “But I can try to stop my main attack plan on Las Vegas... If it's not too late.” Okay. So he regrets his fabulous planned terrorist assault (or, wasn't it just to shut the strip down for two months? I forget), and wants to call it off.  As Neil gets out his gear at the roadside, sadly having put his vest of honor away again, we see stock footage of a helicopter putting out the remains of a forest fire. Which presumably is one of Neil's “small diversions.” What a dick. He throws out his box full of empty tuna cans, his laptops, and finally finds the one he needs. He tap-tap-taps away while repeatedly looking at his satellite dish again, where perhaps his tiny eyes see something normal mortals can't behold. “I know I can stop this attack.” he says.  Elsewhere, near a train, three guys with guns skulk about. “What is he saying?” the one in front yells. “Is he changing the code? Has the plan changed?” I guess these three are part of his planned strike on Vegas.  Donning a record-breaking three flip-phones, Neil says: “Be quiet and listen. I'm calling all of you, simultaneously, by way of conference call.” Nice of him to explain the specifics. “The FBI director, the CIA director, director of Homeland Security and the senator.” (We see the four old guys in suits from earlier.) “I'm recording this call for the public record. You need to do what I'm gonna tell you immediately. To prevent a national catastrophe.”  “Should we stop?” asks one of the goons. “No, we must go ahead!” says another. Gunfire sounds! It's Blondie Noburns and Agent Bureau. Hilariously, there's the barking of police dogs that are not seen.   These two guys made a break for it, but the guy on the right has been shot in the leg. I'm fairly certain I heard “action” at the start of this shot, btw. All of a sudden, the one guy pulls a pistol on the other, and shoots him. Again, there's no flare or blood effects, only a sound effect.  “How could this happen?” says Mr. Homeland, as we see stock footage of a fire in a storefront. “This event will force us to totally restructure our intelligence system.” the FBI director haltingly reads off a cue card. “These are just small distractions. Compared to what's going to happen to Las Vegas. And others.” Neil chimes in. “This. Is more than we can prepare for.” notes Mr. CIA. A weird montage follows that I think Neil means to be frantic. We keep seeing stock footage of disasters or response units, and the four old men say variations of the same line in sequence. Mr. Homeland: “Go to Code Orange.” Mr. FBI: “Go to Code Orange.” We see men sliding down a rope from a helicopter onto a ship's deck, a forest fire. Senator: “Go to Code Red.” Mr. CIA: “Go to Code Red.” Mr. Homeland: “Prepare to evacuate the hotels on the strip.” Mr. FBI: “Prepare to evacuate the hotels on the Las Vegas strip.” Senator: “Prepare to evacuate the hotels on the strip.” Mr. CIA: “Prepare to evacuate the hotels.” I'm clinically curious why there's only the slight variance in their lines. Did the actors simply keep loving up the two or three lines they had? Did Neil realize having all four of them say the exact same thing was too robotic, but then didn't make the logical leap to just give them all entirely different lines, as if they're all responding to different crises that Neil's character had created?  “I've done all I can do to stop the attack.” says Neil, to... someone. The flip-phones are gone. “I hope this proves whose side I'm on, and that my loyalty is to my country.”  Neil finds the green sleeping bag in his trunk and acts startled from seeing it, about three times in a row. He looks again, and it's gone. He then sees his fiancee stand at the top of... sigh... a hill again, and asks: “Who are you? Come with me.” He proceeds to throw the empty cans out of his trunk, looking for the nugget. After throwing a few dozen out, he finds it.   Holding it between his fingers, he says out loud: “I know they're coming for me. I gotta get out of here. I need your help now. More than ever.” Running up the loving hillside one more time, he joins his fiancee at the top. On the way up, we see the old man sitting back in the crag, smiling. Neil's fiancee beckons him. He runs past their childhood selves, who blink out of existence. “Don't leave me.” he pleads.”Don't leave! Come back. Please come back.” He grabs his head in frustration, and falls to the ground.   Then, suddenly, he's with her at the top of the hill. He starts carefully down the hillside again with her in his arms, grinning, as the soundtrack soars.  But oops! She's gone again.  No, wait. She... isn't?  But she is! Neil is alone with a lab skeleton in a sleeping bag. “Remember when?” Neil asks, as his fiancee's child version squats in the dirt, and we see the dress shoes with the black pants again, and they walk away. “It was you.”  Neil repeatedly crushes his two laptops with a rock. Death to technology! Cradling his head, he collapses over forward.  And is... walking... down the road... with his fiancee in his arms again?   Neil watches his child self walk away. Bye bye Breenchild. Bye bye. The child does a creepy child's approximation of beckoning him. “I'm sorry,” Neil narrates, “But it had to be this way.”  Next, Neil sits in the car and sees his child self sitting next to him again. Then the kid stands outside, in front of his car. Make up your loving mind, ghosts! Neil peels out.   In the car, Neil's fiancee's hand clasps his, and he sees her in the rearview mirror. “Thank you.” he narrates. “For loving me.” We see her in the backseat, and she looks puzzled as they drive by the shattered remains of Neil's laptops.   A flyover shot of mountains must surely be the movie's end. “Forgive me.” Neil narrates, “It had to be this way.” And then, finally, it ends. An incredibly languid, incoherent and repetitive series of images, a tale of vague and frayed plot told poorly by a former realtor, signifying vanity. The only thing really making it bearable was Breen's absurdly self-glorifying character. So many questions left unanswered. The mystery of the old man's nugget, and the old man himself for that matter, the opaqueness of everything Breen's character was doing and planning, all the dream imagery of the green sleeping bag/bodybag. Who was the person in the black pants and dress shoes? Why did he repeatedly put on that vest full of medals, only to be back in his regular clothes for the next shot? So many things without follow-up, like Neil pelting a random person on the street with anthrax, and the woman in the parking lot filming him and getting shot. I do have to admit, I would honestly love to hear what Breen intended with all of it, assuming it all made sense to him. But let's not forget the credits, because I'm curious about certain things:  I'm not the least surprised the Neil went the way of “crediting all of my roles separately” instead of the more classy “produced, written, and directed by”. To my huge surprise, he had an editor, though he co-credits himself as editor, too. I assume Haydon Lane got tired of arguing pretty quickly and just cut where told to cut.  Crediting “none” for lighting, make-up and hair sounds like major snark if he had a falling out with whoever did these tasks, but I guess it's more likely he just felt those are supposed to belong on the credit roll even if he didn't have anyone specifically do them. Obviously, no familiar names appear on the cast list. I'll be curious to see if there's repeat offenders in Breen's other works, though. Would I recommend anyone to watch this themselves? Fresh out of the confusing, directionless ending, I would've said no – it felt like I was being battered to death with those constantly repeated dream shots of him and his fiancee, spouting bad poetry at each other across a desert hillscape, which left me frustrated and annoyed. And confused and depressed, of course. The movie has more problems than can probably be fixed. Foremost, Neil has a ton to learn about communicating with his audience. He does a lot of telling instead of showing, only the telling is so vague that you still don't get much from it. An aggressive editor might shave 15-30 minutes off the movie and actually make it more coherent and understandable by throwing a lot of it out. Neil's heavy reliance on stock footage invites an obvious comparison to Ed Wood, but he's practically just throwing in whatever, overlaying voice-overs afterwards to tie it into the story. But a day later, I looked back with more fondness. Breen's first work has an endearing charm, and very specifically makes me think back to film classes, and having to evaluate each others' work. It certainly has many of the qualities of a young film student's first work. Of course, Neil's not exactly young, but still I'm curious to see how he grows and, while I won't say 'improves,' at least to see how he evolves. Thank you. Thank you. For reading this. Thank you. Next time: I Am Here.... Now davidspackage fucked around with this message at 12:51 on Jul 1, 2019 |
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Jul 1, 2019 11:23
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Breen always seemed like he was trying to be David Lynch, which makes it hilarious that Twin Peaks S3 has a big section taking place in Las Vegas
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Jul 1, 2019 14:29
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The Vosgian Beast posted:Breen always seemed like he was trying to be David Lynch, which makes it hilarious that Twin Peaks S3 has a big section taking place in Las Vegas It's interesting that his movies, like, unlike Tommy Wiseau he gets ever ever so slightly better as they go on. But you get this thing where with Pass Thru as an example, it's just, like it's just "good" enough that it's at the level of an extremely bad movie instead of an extremely enjoyable bad movie. His latest one though, Twisted Pair, is a return to form though. His ever increasing vanity is amazing in these though, Double Down is outright humble compared to Pass Thru. And of course Twisted Pair, I mean, a movie starring Neil Breen TWICE?!?! 
Neo Rasa fucked around with this message at 16:06 on Jul 1, 2019 |
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Jul 1, 2019 15:20
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I love this thread. Please, continue.
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Jul 2, 2019 05:32
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I've never watched anything by him and this is unlikely to change. Please keep writing this amazing thread.
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Jul 4, 2019 08:43
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Neo Rasa posted:It's interesting that his movies, like, unlike Tommy Wiseau he gets ever ever so slightly better as they go on. Though to be fair, I don't think Tommy has actually done another movie after The Room. Though he is working on one now, although he's not the sole screenwriter, so we're not getting pure unfiltered Wiseau. That being said, The Neighbors was absolutely terrible, beyond the "so bad it's good" way.
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Jul 7, 2019 03:35
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I Am Here.... Now (2009) Time for a new one! When I went to look up Neil Breen on Wikipedia to see if he'd made any movies I hadn't heard of yet, I found out two things. One, someone made his headshot a photo where he's got his eyes closed, which is just *mwah* (kisses fingers)  Second, that I Am Here.... Now is where Neil actually plays God, or a god, at least. That got me excited. Best not spoil myself any further. Let's Breen! As before, while nothing too graphic, be aware that some of the screens may be    We open on a soothing 90s sci-fi symphony as psychedelic cosmic imagery plays. We see a sky with two moons, then a cracking sound as we change to an idyllic cloudy sky with a sun shining behind the clouds. Violins raise our spirits high as the title appears. Neil puts four periods in his ellipses.    A comet or starship streaks down the sky and impacts with the earth. We see, what I assume is stock footage, of sand or salt flats that I think a plane is flying over and landing on. Neil credits himself, then drops 9 other actor names at once.   Looks like we're at the impact zone of that falling star from earlier. Obviously it's some kind of alien meteor, but I'm trying to figure out what this prop is actually: a glass ball with air bubbles that look like mushrooms, and possibly a white... brain shape at the bottom? To sell the sci-fi aspect, two or three laser pen lights flicker around the base. Also, it looks like someone spread a bunch of glitter around the comet's trail.   Boom, bring on that religious imagery. A pair of feet lower from the top of the screen and land gently. In the next shot, they're painted with stigmata. The camera pans up this Jesus's body, which is unnerving to say the least, because he's wearing a kind of white coat that hangs open in the front, and it looks like that might be the only thing he's wearing.   As the camera pans up to his stigmata-ridden hands (though only on the backs, not on the insides), he turns his arms, and there are electronics boards on the insides of his wrists. There's a motherboard strapped to his chest. Clearly a techno-Jesus.  We fly through a CG techno-tunnel.  Heyyy, there's the man himself. Neil's microscopic eyes blink, and he looks back and forth. A sci-fi soundscape overlays a flashing back and forth between Neil's familiar mug and a Halloween mask that strongly reminds me of the Nameless One from Planescape: Torment. I assume, at this point, that Neil is not simply the Christian god, but a godlike alien lifeform who poses as human, while the gray creature is his true form.   Neil beholds his environment for a while, then bends over the glass fungal colony and raises it to the sky. The camera pans along the dry landscape to show a bunch of what I think are supposed to be crosses, but look more like T's. All the same, I have to give a little credit – so far the, the imagery of I Am Here.... Now (or IAH....N) seems more interesting and mature. Pompous, sure, but interesting.   Neil speaks: “I'm disappointed in your species. The human species.” drat. Was hoping he was pissed at something else, zebras maybe. We see a skull flanked by a terribly fake looking spider.  Neil strides along the landscape, while I try very hard not to look up his open coat. He passes by a wilted rose, which is a curious thing in the middle of what looks to be a dried-out lakebed or something.  In the next shot, the camera pans up the rose's length, looking all chipper again. I guess Neil caused that? The camera keeps on panning up the horizon. The serenity of the landscape is slightly ruined by the obvious tire tracks everywhere.   “Other planets that I've created in the solar system are doing very well.” Our Lord Neil preaches to the empty land. “They respect their species, and the natural environment.” Some stock footage of dolphins plays for emphasis.  “Why are the humans failing?” Neil asks, as he lifts the skull. “I've given them everything.” The camera cuts to a closer shot. “I've given them everything.” Neil repeats. He closely examines the skull, and emphatically adds: “Everything.” The soundtrack soars as Neil slowly approaches the camera in the distance. It's early to judge, but IAH....N feels far more coherent than its predecessor. I actually understand what's going on, I think.   Okay, never mind. Neil walks barefoot along some doll heads placed on the ground. The one placed away from the others has its eyes closed. That definitely feels like it should mean something.  Ah, there's our first truly mystifying cut. What might be a motel bedroom, with a naked woman with wings tattooed on her back lying on the bed. Oh, and Mr. Breen's letting the twins out for some air. Oof. Any sensuality from the naked woman is savagely murdered by the sight of Neil's middle-aged man body draped in bad jeans. He backs away slowly as she raises her head. Interesting. If Neil is returning to Earth to judge his creation, this doesn't make sense as a flashback, so I'm thinking maybe this is a flash-forward instead. Maybe Neil spares humanity his wrath for the love of a woman? We'll see.  Neil wanders along the sand flats more, and looks back and forth as his face flashes into the Halloween mask again. Threatening music plays as the camera slowly pans over to a parked truck. We see a couple from the back.  Heyyy, I know that taped-up parcel! It's the anthrax package from Double Down. I think this time it's actually meant to be drugs, though.  This dilapidated couple sits in the back of their car, downing beers.  They nuzzle each other lovingly, then the guy picks up a, again familiar looking, silver gun. He fires it in the air twice, in the most emotionless way a human being could fire a gun. And hey, there's not only sound effects, but muzzle flashes and smoke! This modern world, man.   “You're cuh-razy!” his ladylove says, amused. “You're crazy!” “You think I'm crazy?” Hodor replies, and puts the gun to his temple. The gun clicks. The girl gives a belated, startled response.  “I'm sooo fuckin' high!” he announces. “I want you sooo bad.” “I really want you too.” she responds, though her face and voice seem to disagree. The guy undoes another button on her top, running a serious risk of a Janet Jackson incident in the windy landscape. Luckily, they immediately get distracted before things can get too hot.   The guy grabs a syringe lying on the floor of the car's booth. The girl looks on with apprehension as he puts the needle against his skin.  Ah, the corn syrup's back.   Woop, it's Neil. The couple spot him, and the guy immediately points the gun and shoots. As he does so, the girl kind of looks just anywhere, clearly not having discussed any sort of fixed point she should be looking at. “Hoooly poo poo.” the guy says. “We've died and gone to heaven.”  “Your weapons cannot harm me.” Saint Breen declares. To demonstrate, he passes a glowing hand down his bullet wounds, instantly healing them.   “No this is not heaven.” says Neil robotically. “This is not the way I intended my experiment. In creating this planet. And this human species to go.” The pair look around, confused. “I'm disappointed in your species.” Neil continues. “That's why I am here.” Sadly, he does not add “....now.”   “Let's get the hell outta here!” the guy tells his girl. “Run!” she agrees. Neil passes a glowing hand before himself. They mime freezing in place.  Neil reaches in and starts pulling up the guy's ratty brown shirt. I'm slightly worried. Is he going to rip out the guy's heart Mola Ram-style?   Nothing so extreme. The guy's shirt and jeans get tossed on the ground, and finally, Neil's white coat is added. He walks over, undoubtedly naked for real, and slips into the jeans.   The guy and girl now lie together, collapsed. “I've had to freeze you.” Neil narrates, as he passes another glowing hand before them. “And make you disappear. But it's only temporary.” A shot of dry cracked earth presumably indicates they are, indeed, disappeared. I get that he froze them in order to steal the guy's clothes, but the need for disappearance is unclear to me. They're in the middle of nowhere. Though it seems suspiciously familiar to the strange, disconnected scene in Double Down where Neil mentions using satellite lasers to disappear and murders a would-be assassin with a force field.   Looking downright disheveled in his stolen clothes, Neil picks up his coat. It's worth noting that the t-shirt's holes were obviously created with a pair of scissors. Neil gets in the car. I'm unsure if the frozen pair of junkies are supposed to be made invisible or actually disappeared into some dimensional pocket. Whichever, he leaves them behind and drives off.   After what I assume to be a drive across the barren landscape, Neil stands outside a field of solar panels. “The humans have taken far too long to understand solar energy.” I don't know why, but I appreciate that he's now saying these things live in the scene rather than adding them through voice-over. “But they're beginning to make progress now.” We see a nice aerial shot of solar panel farms. It looks like it could've been filmed with the same camera Neil's using. Could it be that this isn't stock footage, but Neil sprung for a helicopter ride?   We see fields of electric windmills. There's clearly a strong environmental slant to this one. Neil drives his enormous, emissions-heavy car.  We see a Las Vegas roadsign on the ground, and hilariously, the fake spider from earlier being manipulated to slowly walk away from it. We're back in familiar territories.  Endless shots of Neil looking haggard in the car, and he's driving through what look like Vegas's suburbs.  We see two women lying topless on a pair of inflatable beds. One is clearly familiar, with her wing tattoos. The cameraman walks around them and then stops and holds them for a while, as if Neil wanted to use every last second of footage he had here.  Awww poo poo. Three swaggering dudes in suits appear on the sidewalk.  “They think they may have an opportunity to use it now... (chuckles) but are they in for a surprise.” O... okay? We'll pick that up later, I guess.  Neil is still driving, still looking around. Las Vegas's opulent and garish scenery passes by.  A trio of ladies stands outside a building that might be a hotel, having an animated conversation.  “The country is finally seriously addressing sustainability. And, respecting the planet's natural resources.” Yeah, that's how people talk.  “I'm so excited to be working here.” the pale blonde replies, chipper. “We're finally producing results, generating solar power. As well as wind turbine power generation.” Stilted dialogue aside, she's about a billion times more convincing than the drugged-up pair in the intro.  “The younger generation will have a sustainable energy system to look forward to.” their friend adds.   Outside this building, the three suits approach, while sinister music plays.   We see fat stacks of ca$h. “Corrupt corporations.” Neil narrates. “Criminals on Wall Street. Greedy politicians. Lying lawyers and insurance companies. Are destroying what I had planned for this planet.” I mentioned this when the men in suits came up in Double Down, but Neil seems to like personifying the world's problems in a few dudes in charge. Which, you know, is technically true, but still a touch naive when presented like this. The wads of $$$ are pushed towards the viewer. “I will eliminate them all. But the humans cannot. Or will not, on their own.” Yas Neil, gently caress em up.  “Now that we've paid off our fellow elected representatives in the legislature,” one of the sinister suit-dudes tells the other in the car with a refreshing lack of subtlety, “that environmental solar panel development bill will fail next week.” I hope for their sake the car isn't bugged. “Not to mention the cash it'll put in our pockets.” I kinda wish he'd said “in our secret Swiss bank accounts.” “The country has done without solar and wind power until now,” which I don't think is true, “they can wait a few more years. It's more profitable to be without those sustainable energy systems at this time. You know, the country has known for years that the corporations, and certainly the politicians, don't have the insight or the vision to create sustainable energy systems.” I feel like Neil cornered me at a party again.  “They think there might be an opportunity for that to happen,” Mustache picks it up, “But. They're in, for a surprise.”  “Yeah, our network of connections to technology, payoffs, and greed, will never let it happen.” He's talking like a rookie undercover journalist trying to coax his mark into saying something incriminating. Greetings, fellow plutocrat! Mind if I lick the blood off your fingers? “It'll take a power greater than ours, to get rid of us. And clean up the systems. And manage the environmental resources of this planet the way they were intended.” That's some astonishing insight for a pair of crooks with nebulously defined political positions. But, a power greater than ours? What could such a power be....?   Back to the ladies. Briefly distracted from discussions of responsible, sustainable energy systems, the girls take a moment to discuss how much they like each other's clothes. The third woman approaches and fantastically delivers some bad news. “I'm so sorry. But, due to the poor economy, we're going to have to let you off.” It's entirely unclear to me what this company actually does. “Along with some other staff members. We all had the best of intentions of improving the nation's sustainable energy systems and environment, but – the corruption and greed in big business and government just won't let it happen. We're all very disappointed.” Well, as long as we know where the root of the problem lies. Disheartened, the girls leave.   But wait! Neil approaches Miss Middle Manager, and hands her the wilted rose from the desert. “Don't give up. Don't give up!” he assures her. “You can make a difference.” His hand glows on the rose. To the woman's amazement, the rose's stem becomes straight again. Neil might be getting lucky tonight. No, the lady walks off with the rose in hand. “Don't give up.” he says in voice-over. “Don't give up!”    In a scene of what must surely be some subtle symbolism, blood drips down onto the cracked earth. We see drive-by scenes of a dreary suburb. A pair of guys check the clips on a pair of handguns I'd swear I've seen before. A butcher knife drips with corny syrupy blood. All the while, a quite homely, upbeat piece of music plays.  Pale blonde girl from before walks a baby stroller next to a slightly less translucent girl. While I feel comforted by the fact that Neil didn't handle a live baby for his film, he might've taken slightly more care to hide the fact that it's just a doll in the stroller.  “I don't know what I'm gonna do. I can't believe I was laid off.” Casper Lady laments. “I mean, we were doing some of the most important ecological work for that company. The research we were doing was going to solve everybody's energy problems. And we couldn't get government support!” I feel the need to reiterate what a natural performance this woman gives. Sure, maybe I'm being overly generous. From what I've seen, most of Neil's actors, and often he himself, act out their role as if someone just stopped them on the street, pointed a camera at them and told them to read something off a cue card. “And I have this baby.” she says, indicating the doll. “How'm I gonna support her if I'm all alone?”  “You'll find something.” the other girl assures her. “You're my twin sister!” Good to know. “You're pretty, and smart? You're hot! We're hot!” Yeah, speaking of which... I don't want to sound like a prude or anything, I mean, I'm Dutch, we pretty much invented putting boobs in films, but the amount of open-shirt cleavage so far is... kind of notable? Double Down had that incredibly unnecessary skinnydipping scene. I wonder... is Neil a bit of a lech?   “You know, there's just no way though, that I'm gonna find anything half as interesting. Especially in this economy?” Preach. “Become a stripper!” her twin enthusiastically suggests. “An escort! You'd be great at that! You'd just have to give up your--” Whatever she has to give up is literally clipped from her dialogue.  Her sister is appalled. “Shut the gently caress up!” she laughs. “There is no way I'm going to become a stripper! I'm a mother! I have a baby!”  “You may not have a choice!” The sister fiercely retorts. If I were in a film class with Neil, and God, I wish I was, one of the things I'd tell him is to move the camera around a little during dialogue scenes. These side profile shots look unengaging as hell. “Look. I have someone I can hook ya up with. Just to get you started. And you can lie to everyone, like all the other girls do. They tell their friends that they're... in various forms of business, but they really are not. They're strippers or escorts! It's their big secret in Sin City.” I'm going to tell everyone I'm in “various forms of business” from now on.  “I'm getting kind of desperate.” our pale, young single mother admits, heartbreakingly.    The sisters continue to stroll down the road. A nerd on a bike approaches. “Wow!” he says as he draws near, and then very unconvincingly falls off his bike. The girls take a moment to laugh at this classic pratfall.  The poor dude looks kind of special. “Wowww.” he says one more time, as he watches them leave.  Meanwhile, elsewhere, Neil walks by what I assume to be a courthouse, narrating: “The humans still have not developed a justice system that punishes the guilty, and protects the innocent.” I'm a half hour in. In Double Down, I was still quite confused at this point. In contrast, IAH....N feels relatively straightforward. Could this movie be so that more restrained? Nah, hold on to your fuckin' butts.   Outside a series of half-collapsed huts behind half-collapsed chainlink fences, a very colorful group of thuggish dudes stands waiting. Three of them are the corrupt politicians from earlier. The others brandish guns and rifles.  The twin sisters perkily march up, getting the gang's attention. “Hey,” says one guy, with crooked sunglasses, a really fake sounding sort-of-Eastern-European-accent, and the world's worst ever haircut. “I got the new girl to work for us.”  The guys scrutinize the ladies with approval. I think my favorite and most bizarre gang member is the one in khaki pants and glasses with a glorious mane of hair.  “VERY hot.” says dirty blonde sister, unprompted. “I'd like to do any two of these guys at the same time.” Her sister exasperatedly cries out “what!? Eugh...”  This fantastic nerd is pleased. “Hellll yee-aah! I'll do her! Dayumn! Twins!” Everyone nods in quiet and creepy agreement.  The bald guy grabs the shoulder of the guy in the white hat, who, as the eagle-eyed viewers might note, is the same actor that Neil stole his clothes from at the start of the movie. “I get her first!” says the bald dude, though poor Whitehat never said anything. To show how serious he is, Baldy shoots Whitehat in the wrist at point blank range. “YEEEAAARGH” Whitehat says in protest, dropping his rifle, which bounces on the ground in a way that suggests it's probably made of plastic. “YEEEAAAARGH” Whitehat says again. Neil knows a good scream when he hears it, so he just uses the same sound clip twice in a row.   The girls are startled. Gorgeous Hair looks on with mild concern.   “This is for you.” the bald guy says, handing Pale Sister money. She takes it reluctantly. “Come with me.” the guy continues, and she follows him off screen. Recovering like a pro from the exchange of gunfire, Other Sister blows a kiss to the remaining guys.  Next, we see two of the corrupt politicians coming down a stairway. Why were they hanging out in a slum so they could attend an actual gang's gangbang? Surely they can afford a classier encounter with a hooker. Anyway, they meet their third member.  “As an elected government official, and as lawyer, we proudly make this donation.” I love how Neil always seems to overtly introduce who his “evil suit guys” are. The twin sisters' names? Who cares. But aS aN eLeCtEd GoVeRnMeNt OfIcCiAl.  He continues. “As long as you do what I say, and vote on the issues that help me.” The third guy smugly replies “I'll do everything I can. Just keep the goodies comin' my way.” And yes, he does say “goodies.” It's not established what political position any of these guys hold, but I feel like it's unusual for politicians to be bribing each other. Don't they have special interest groups for that?  “We're gonna have your elected colleague, Mr. Smith, and his lawyer, removed from our business affairs. Permanently.” the first guy says with overtones of sinisterism. Mustache cranes his neck like he's Igor and haltingly adds: “They're going to have. An unfortunate. Accident.”   Blood splatters on the dry earth again as a man moans “No, don't cut off my ear!” A bloody ear falls on the ground, and we again hear that YEEEAAARGH that I now feel I have to dub the Breenscream. A hand brandishes a knife dripping absurdly with corn syrup.   More blood drips on the ground. “No, no!” moans another voice. “Don't cut off my hand!” *snip* YEEEAAAARGH. The one thing that could've made this scene better if, instead, a nose had dropped on the floor, but can't have everything. YEEEAAARGH plays again over a shot of the bloody knife. And a third time, YEEEAAARGH, as we see the hand's owner's bloody remains go through their death spasms.  “We want you to act surprised, and shocked. And when the federal investigation begins, you don't know anything about how it may have happened.” Suit Dude #1 instructs.   “Anything you say.” replies Mr. Gray. “Anything you say.” Their business concluded, they get moving again. “Oh, and by the way,” Suitie 1 says, like Columbo about to deliver the twist, “I'd like to arrange for a thank-you gift... to be given to you later today.”   The camera pans along the fence of a villa, and changes to a private swimming pool. Gray Jacket Man walks in with the twin sisters in bikinis and high heels. Apparently, they are the only prostitutes in Las Vegas. “Welcome to our world!” the tan sister says. They giggle as their corrupt patron takes a seat. The girls step into the swimming pool, looking like the water is freezing cold.   “Double my pleasure.” Mr. Goodies mutters, as he takes in the sights. As the girls get deeper in the pool, a pair of transparent inflatable water beds drift towards them. What follows is an extremely graceless display of the girls wrestling with the beds in an attempt to climb onto them.  “Thank you,” Goodies tells the air, tugging at his tie. “Thank you for the gifts. It will be -well- worth it.”   Oh hey, tan sister is the girl with the wing tattoos. It's all connected. The girls are, apparently, already done frolicking in the pool. They stand in front of their appreciative client and undo their tops. With a smug look, he catches the tops as they're thrown at him.   Since Neil either has a reason to not show frontal nudity or simply doesn't pay enough, the girls stand and hold their boobs and giggle for a prolonged shot that is nonsensically interrupted with a cutaway to the ceramic sun hanging off the wall in the back. Then it's back to the girls for more boob-holding and sniggering.   To avoid accidentally flashing the camera, the girls hazardously walk backwards, back into the pool. We then see a repeat of the shot from earlier, of the girls lounging on the inflatable beds. ...and back to the ceramic sun. We hear a repeat of the line spoken by the conspiring elected lawyers: “Now that we've paid off our fellow elected representatives in the legislature, that environmental solar panel development bill will fail next week.” Get it - because it's a sun!   Goodies continues to look on the two girls sunning, nodding and smacking his lips. I think he's not actually interested in sex, he just likes watching them relax. He does make them get out of the pool again, to hold their boobs and giggle for a while.   With a sound that disturbingly resembles peeing, Goodies fills three glasses halfway with champagne. Then, when the foam settles, he fills them up the rest of the way. We get shown all of it. Standing awkwardly to hide their nipples, the girls and Mr. Goodies share a drink. end of part one! davidspackage fucked around with this message at 17:31 on Jul 7, 2019 |
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Jul 7, 2019 14:59
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I want to know what other planets in the solar system are respecting their living things better than Earth.
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Jul 7, 2019 16:32
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Part two  We return to the broken down houses, which I think is meant to indicate gang territory. As the camera pans along trashed and sometimes burnt-looking remains of housing, we come upon a wheelchair and a man with bloody knuckles and dark smudges under his eyes. He wakes and lifts himself into his wheelchair. He rolls out of his squallourous circumstances, and starts heading towards town.   Neil appears from the ruined houses. The man in the wheelchair approaches a crowd, and accidentally rolls over a man's foot. In a brutal move that would make him a Twitter superstar in under 6 hours, he pushes the man and wheelchair over.    But Neil is not far behind, and he grabs the man. “That's just not right.” His hand glows, and suddenly the man is bleeding from his eyes! He screams, and runs off. The people around don't react in the slightest, presumably because they're not actors, just tourists present in the scene.   “Let me help you.” Neil uprights the wheelchair and puts the man back in. A group of people rather rehearsedly walk forward. Neil waves a glowy hand, and they badly pretend to be frozen in time, while cars still zip by in the background. The camera hilariously veers left to capture Neil pushing the man in the wheelchair. “I don't feel so good.” says the wheelchair-man. “Cancer chemo... kicked my rear end! I always wanted to see this... before I die. I only have... a month to live.”   Dramatic stuff. What did Cancer Chemo Kickass man want to see so bad? The friggin Welcome To Las Vegas sign? Are you kidding me? Either Neil had a more enrapturing vista in mind that he couldn't film, or his imagination failed him this shooting day.   Oh well. The old man grins at getting to see the world's tackiest sign, and that's all that matters. Neil turns the man around again, now that he can die happily. The frozen people abandon their awkward poses and robotically walk on to go pose for a picture at the Vegas sign.   We return to gangland. Sinister music plays. It's another meeting of the Mostly Old Men gang. One of the gang members hands one of Neil's signature plastic rifles to one of the old politicians. Another hands one some blank pieces of paper. Everyone seems real unsure about whether or not their guns are loaded, because they keep popping out the clips and putting them back in.   Two of the guys are having what looks to be a friendly sparring match, but when one punches the other, all the others abandon their best Extra Pretending To Have A Conversation performance and gather round, cheering and jeering. The guy choking the dude in the green shirt gets a butcher knife out of his back pocket (bad place to keep it) and brandishes it dangerously, while the other guys yell “cut 'im, cut 'im!” A voice out of nowhere, which sounds like Neil disguising his own voice, says “Stop loving around. Leave him alone. We have business to do.”  And just like that, the fun's over. “This is Eric,” the bald guy says, introducing the movie's first named character at the 45-minute mark. Nice to have a name to put on that beautiful pianist's mop of hair. “Our European distributor. For anything. Outside of the country.”  “I can get you anysing. Your customers want. Anysing. Wurldwide.” Eric says Europeanly. “I have arranged for payoff protection. Like you have. No government vill catch me.”   “We'll be glad to help you, Eric.” Old Suit One says directly into the camera. “Any way we can.” adds Mustache. “We're in it for ourselves. For the payoffs.”  “We're very well connected,” Goodies picks it up, “Just keep the gifts, drugs, and girls, comin' our way.”  “We're worldwide now.” says the bald dude, though I doubt the prestige of an 8-man gang operating out of an abandoned housing lot. “We'll kill anybody. Who gets in our way.”  Looks like that speech got him excited, because next he's with Pale Twin again. She flinches unhappily as he starts peeling off one of her spaghetti straps. Hell Yeah Dude interrupts the fun. “We gotta go! Now!” They rush into the house, leaving Pale Twin to breathe a relieved sigh.  “Where are my drugs!?” Green Shirt asks Whitehat, in a confusing cutaway that has no followup.   “I can't do this.” the pale blonde tells herself. “My baby. I love my baby.” “Once you're high, you won't remember a thing.” her tan counterpart slurs. “Just the money you're making.” What a devil's bargain.   Neil sits in his car somewhere, and notices the Cancer Man in the wheelchair crossing the road. A car narrowly manages to avoid hitting him, and the driver starts gesturing for the man to do anything but keep sitting in the middle of the road, which seems reasonable. Neil pulls up in his stolen car.  “What's up?” says the driver, in a familiar-looking red beanie. “You got a problem, punk?” says his friend, the extremely white trash gang member in the black cap. “You wanna die?” Red Beanie says, as they both train guns on Neil.  “This isn't the way I planned your species.” Neil calmly explains. “You two are worthless.” Now hang on Neil, they might have very meaningful pursuits outside of gang time. He passes a glowing hand.  Wheelchair Man appears to have all the time in the world.  With a little blood slathered on their faces, the two gang members sit frozen in their car. Neil leaves them behind, as Wheelchair Man finally rolls on.   Another shot of the windmill park, and an office building. Outside stand three people, one of which is the Tan Twin. “I'm sorry,” says the lady on the left, in what is already giving me deja vu. “We have to lay you off. We're all so sorry.”  “I don't understand how they could let this happen!” says tan girl. “Sustainable energy systems are our future!” Back up a second. This is confusing, but I think that Pale Twin was working for a company that made solar panels, whereas her twin sister works for a company that makes electric windmills. You know, next to her side gig as a drug-addicted prostitute? Anyway, the corrupt politicians' efforts to disenfranchise Sustainable Energy Systems is now finally hitting Tan Twin's company as well.  “It's all about money.” Boss Lady laments. “Corporately. I'm sure this is only a temporary delay.”  “This is not a temporary delay. It's more politics and corpowate gweed.” their egghead colleague chimes in, almost lapsing into an Elmer Fudd imitation. “They've been trying to develop sustainable, and solar systems for thirty years now. Nothing has happened.” I'm pretty sure he missed a word in his line there after “sustainable,” but he delivers his lines like he's only had a chance to read them once, so I won't be too harsh.  “They're lying to us.” Tattoo Wings protests. “Just like they're lying about trying to find cures for cancer and other diseases.” “They could find a cure if they wanted to.” Egghead adds. “It's more profitable not to find any cures.” We're... kind of getting off topic here, people. One conspiracy at a time, please.  “We're all so sorry.” the lady says again, or maybe it's a repeat of the shot from earlier, or maybe space and time are convoluted in this place, or maybe I'm slowly going insane. “You sure are!” Eggy sneers. My God, the film is reading my mind.  The lady heads back for the entrance, and I'm fairly sure this is the exact same building that Pale Twin worked in. I'm honestly curious. Breen has his two sister characters both working in different branches of “sustainable energy systems.” Both get laid off because of corruption leading to funding getting cut. Clearly a case of twins' lives being reflections of one another. But why put one's layoff at the 50-minute mark? Were they originally both at the start of the movie, but Neil realized it looked too repetitive, and it got too obvious that both scenes took place outside the same building? It's really jarring to find out Tan Twin has a fairly nice and positive job doing something with wind energy while first seeing her drag her sister into prostituting themselves for drug money.   Switch to a nice and idyllic looking park. Tattoo Wings girl is next to a goateed guy. “Now I've lost my job.” she complains. “And I'm not gonna be able to find another one. I'm an environmental activist! And it's getting me nowhere.” (talking out of the side of my mouth) I coulda told you that... “The politicians and society still have no interest. Nor money to help improve the environment. They should be capitalizing, on the development of solar power, wind and energy fuel efficient systems. They could care less about living with nature and not damaging the planet. They're all so greedy and money-oriented! And I'm so passionate about this!” I kind of love how Neil just seems totally unaware of the concept of subtext.   “You're unemployed too?” she asks the guy. “What're you gonna do?” “I don't know,” says the guy. “This loving sucks. But we'll think of something.” In voice-over, we hear her thoughts: “I'll become a full-time hooker, or stripper. And not tell him the truth. I'll tell him I got a part-time job at the mall.” “Don't worry, babe.” he reassures her. “We'll be okay.” “I'm scared.” she replies. Next, we hear his thoughts: “I'll become a car thief. And not tell her the truth. I'll tell her I got a part-time job at the factory.” Ah yes, the factory. You're in Las Vegas, buddy, not some tiny rural town where the old steel mill slowly grinds men down to dust.  Our apparent lovers saunter across the park. When they pass by Neil, sitting on a bench in his eternally ratty t-shirt, the girl stops and looks at him. They resume walking, and the girl stops again to look at Neil. “I think I know him.” she tells her boyfriend. “That face...” I know the feeling.   Back to strange imagery – the doll's head with the closed eyes. I'm haunted by a desire to know if Neil attaches any hidden or symbolic meaning to it, or if he's superficial enough that he just put it in because it's weird. We catch him sleeping in the back of his borrowed truck.  Neil does his back-and-forth look and flash to his Halloween mask again. We see a very lewd shot of Tattoo Wings lying on the bed. That's right, we saw her earlier with a horribly topless Neil. What could it mean?   Oh no. For what feels like minutes, we see Neil hovering over the girl, not so much gazing lovingly into each other's eyes but staring intently. We then see Halloween Mask Neil kind of giving eskimo kisses to the girl, and go back to Neil straddling her unpleasantly. I may have to nominate her for best actress in a Neil Breen movie instead, because she manages to look relaxed in what must be one of the most distressing scenes of her lifetime. I'm also fairly grossed out with Neil at this point, because this seems kind of Tommy Wiseau-style abuse of position to rub yourself against one of your actresses. Even if it does get hilarious when the mask comes back and seems to be trying to tickle her with its hair.   Anyway, focus. Is Neil's alien god figure now seducing this girl? Is she the key to convince him of the value of humankind? We see Neil again backing away from the bed, his horrible moobs on display. The girl watches him, confused. Neil grabs his shirt, briefly turns back into alien Frankenstein, and leaves. We return to Neil lying in the back of the truck, suggesting either he had a dream about the girl, or he astrally projected himself in order to sleep with her.  Well, enough of that. Let's join Pale Blond Twin as she walks her baby down the street, and Wheelchair Man rolls by. A toy falls from the stroller, and Wheels helpfully hands it to her.  He nods at her wistfully. In voice-over, we again hear: “Cancer chemo, kicked my rear end.” which hits the otherwise genial scene like a wet fart. “I only have – a month to live.”   Neil is nearby, and waves his glowy hand. The camera pans up Cancer Man's body, and he's young again! And the same actor we saw in the gang before, with the monumentally unfortunate antithesis of a hairdo. Neil puts a hand on his shoulder. “Go with her,” he says. “Have a full, long, and healthy, happy life. Be a family.”   Wipsy Flowerpot Hair gets out of his chair, to Pale Twin's delight. Without a word, they continue down the street together. Neil, never liking to leave a mess, waves his luminous paw and makes the wheelchair vanish.   But elsewhere, Tan Twin's goateed boyfriend trawls a parking lot. He breaks into a car using a screwdriver and steals some packages. He continues breaking into cars and stealing valuables. We then see him walk down the collapse of houses and chainlink fences where the gangs holds their territory.  “What's up?” he greets them. “We've heard a lot about you.” says Greenshirt. “I wanna join your gang.” Goatee tells them. The guy with the cap joins them. “Sounds good. Let's talk!” “The only problem?” Cappy tells him, “You're doin' it on our turf!” “No respect for us!” Whitehat adds. “Bringin' unwanted attention to us!” says Greenshirt. “That's no good, man!”  “gently caress you!” Goatee tells them. “gently caress respect! It's about business!” Greenshirt disagrees: “No! It's family!”   Goatee tries to leave, but Cappy grabs him and pulls a knife, deftly cutting his throat. It's curtains for him. Cappy is satisfied. “We eliminated. Our problem.”   They cover Goatee with a red mattress protector. Uh oh, Goatee's girlfriend walks up to the scene. Cappy lifts up the cover again to show his bald compatriot, and Tan Twin screams. She can't keep herself from smiling when she stops, but you can hardly blame her for that. She's in a Neil Breen movie.  “What?” the bald guy inquires. “This drat piece of garbage?” I kind of think Neil cut a line where she screams that he's her boyfriend. Regardless, Baldy grabs his gun, and fires a superfluous bullet into the corpse. Tan Twin screams again, still barely able to hold back a smile. We see the body again, and she screams a third time. This time, she follows up with “Oh God! He was so young! What's his family gonna – “   Baldy turns around and makes a kind of ridiculous face. She spews! We cut back to the bald guy, and then she spews a second time, because Neil does not waste a take.   “Those, who don't play by our rules?” Baldy tells his friends, “Lose.” Neil watches from inside the busted up houses. Baldy takes the time to shoot the corpse a second time. “There's more.” he tells the girl. “Just wait till later today.” In what might be symbolism, we see wads of cash being stacked once more.   Looks like there's a house meeting of the gang. Criminals and politicians all attend. “You politicians and lawyers!” Baldy starts his speech. “You'll appreciate this! Being the greedy liars! The thieves! That you are! We have a rat! Amongst us! A undercover cop!” He grabs the shoulder of Greenshirt, and the other guys drop their guns and rush in to grab him. Baldy sets down a chair. “Get him over here, get him over here!” he yells. “Get that rope, get that rope! Wrap it around him!” What follows is too beautiful to capture with words. I could say “they start beating him,” and it would be as meaningless and vulgar as saying “Michelangelo painted a ceiling” or “Beethoven wrote some tunes.” You can't be told. You have to see it with your own eyes.  https://youtu.be/h1veO6wTQ-8  “We trusted you like a brother!” Baldy yells. “Kill him!”    Suit Dude #1 seems disturbed when a bit of blood hits his cheek. “This wasn't part of our deal!” Unlucky Mustache gets some blood too. “No payoff is worth this!” Even Goodies has had his fill. “I don't want any part of this!” Gorgeous Hair Eric gives it his usual forlorn stare and flatly says “I like what I see.” Neil watches from inside, and says nothing.    The beating seems about over. But! “Cut it off!” someone says, as they put some battered cutters on Greenshirt's finger. Can you guess what comes next? YEEEAAARGH it's time for the Breenscream again. And a second time!  Neil has seen enough. He waves his hand, freezing everyone in position. Curious positions, on some. Is Goodies about to beat the other guy with the butt of his rifle? Cappy has started spontaneously bleeding from the eyes again. Baldy is about to launch a Mortal Kombat special move from his palms. Also, Greenshirt's face is suddenly clean again in the wide shot.  Neil passes a healing hand over Greenshirt and says “You're free. Go.” He takes off the ropes and Greenshirt makes a run for it.   Neil then approaches Tan Twin, frozen like the others. He starts walking her backwards. Next, we see him walking near the bad-looking crosses in the desert.  Suddenly, in a different location, the corrupt politicians are crucified! We see the crosses in the desert again, and then one by one shots of the politicians on the crosses. I'm amused that 1) Neil didn't even bother maybe tying their hands to the cross and 2) what effect is left after that is kind of spoiled by the construction stamps on the wood.  A montage of the crucifixion victims follows. The guy we've not seen before is the stock exchange, I guess. Goodies is industry, apparently. Mustache is perhaps a banker, though I think it was already established he and his buddy were both lawyers and politicians. Hey, Baldy never wore a suit! It fits badly too. He is... bloody knife crime, I guess.   For the umpteenth time, Neil passes his incandescent extremity across the screen. To a crescendo in the soundtrack, he raises a cross with bloody hands.   Neil narrates as he walks before the crucified badmen. “I have eliminated the corrupt politicians and lawyers.” “I have eliminated the greedy corporate leaders.” “I have eliminated those who believe in violence towards mankind.” “I have eliminated those who pollute the planet's natural resources.” “I will eliminate them all. If the humans cannot. Or will not, on their own.”  “The humans are failing to respect this planet.” Neil narrates, walking near the now-bloody crosses in the desert. “Its natural resources, energy efficiency, sustainability. Even their own human kind.”  Back to Neil standing before Tattoo Wings. “You're free. Go. Learn to love yourself. Other humans. And humanity. You have so much to offer. Nature. And this planet.”   “I know you from somewhere.” she says. Did Neil roofie her? I'm not ruling it out. “Help me!” She throws herself into his arms. “Help me! Save me!” “You can save yourself!” Neil yells in a high voice. “I've made you strong enough to save yourself!” He lifts her up, then pushes her away.  We return to the plain of cracked earth and tire tracks. Neil sleeps in his truck. He gets out, and collapses onto the ground as if he's back in Double Down. “Why doesn't the species understand?” he announces in a quavering voice. “I've given them so much. Respect yourselves! Love nature. Live in peace.” He closes his eyes. “Have I failed them?"   Things are coming full circle. Neil tosses his stolen clothes back on the ground, and nakedly grabs the white coat again. He dumps the shirt and jeans back with the couple from the beginning of the movie, who I assume have been lying here for days.   With a glowing hand's pass, they begin to wake up. They notice Neil. “Go now.” he tells them. “Contribute. Provide for your fellow man and the planet. Make the best of what I've created for you. Don't waste your lives. Tell everyone.” The couple run for the car, though the dude grabs the gun in passing. Sorry Neil, I don't think there's hope for that one. They drive off with the back door open, spilling a few empty beer bottles.  I think Neil's going home. He walks off onto the plain. We see him pass by the rose again, which hangs its head until he's passed, and then it's standing up straight again. We see some shots of the crucified politicians with blood coming from one eye again. This shot above might be the one genuinely cool shot from the movie.  There is no loving end to the shots of Neil walking, from afar and near, past dollheads, and again, until he finally returns to the spot where the glass whatever struck the earth.  But! We see a small figure in the distance running across the desert, and we hear Tattoo Wings. “Wait!” she yells, panting. “Wait for me!”  “My experiment on this planet is failing,” Neil narrates. “The humans are failing me. The humans must live in harmony with nature. They must learn to live peacefully among other humans. And non-humans.”   Neil pulls his flashy face again as he seems to look towards his approaching admirer. She collapses as she comes near. “Wait for me!” she gasps. “Wait for me!”  Ahh, it's one of those tediously slow hands-reaching-for-each-other shots again. One day Neil will get the timing right.   I didn't need a reminder of that scene. But clearly Neil intends a love story between his omnipotent alien god and the hot girl. The alien eskimo-make-out still cracks me up.  lol. The girl strokes Neil's alien-face as we cut back to Neil lying on top of her in the bed about a million times.   “The humans' dreams,” Neil muses. “They can come true.” The aerial shot of the solar panels again, and the windmills. And some dolphins thrown in again, why not. “I will give them one more chance.” So, getting a girlfriend convinced God not to give up on man? Cool. Thanks for taking one for the team, sis. “If they fail? I will destroy this planet. And this experiment.”  Neil picks up the glass ball again. “Man has the responsibility. Not the power.” he narrates. “I will come back.” he says. “Soon. And decide whether to end it all or not. I hope humanity has learned its lesson. From all its mistakes. Otherwise I will turn this planet into dust.” Okay gently caress you Neil, we get it. You don't have to be a dick about it. “And begin again.”   The hands reach for each other again, but this time Neil's glows. Probably because he's taking Tan Twin with him. He gets out his motherboards again. And, in the most impressive stunt of the movie, his feet levitate off the ground. The comet streaks back across the sky. The end?  The cosmic effects from the start of the movie are played in reverse. And that's it! Credits time!  Neil has learned to be more conservative with his credits, which I instantly appreciate. Neil's editor this time is John Mastrogiacomo, who is also his cameraman. Apart from the opening and closing scenes where Neil is alone, which feel endless, the middle of the movie does feel more brisk than it did in Double Down. Neil credited one of his three camera operators in Double Down as “John Mastriocomo” which I assume is the same guy, just with his name spelled right this time.   We also get actor credits. Since the character names almost never get used in the movie, it's a little hard to pin names on people, but a google image search tells me Elizabeth Sekora, who plays Cindy, is the pale blond half of the twins, which should make Joy Senn (Amber) the twin with the wing tattoos who has to pretend to be intrigued by Neil. Sidenote, Maraud Ford is a pretty badass name.  Though, Thanos Panagiotaros is nothing to sneeze at.   So, what do I think of this one? Compared to Double Down, it feels remarkably restrained, especially considering Neil literally plays God in this one. He's not even in it that much apart from the opening and end of the movie, and he doesn't get really self-indulgent until the end. Barring of course the scenes where he wrote himself lying on top of one of his actresses. The real fun in IAH....N is in seeing other actors bringing Neil's bizarre scripted dialogue to life. Especially when some of them have clearly never been actors. Neil's effects work has gotten a little more convincing, and the plot is almost entirely coherent and understandable. Big marks there. It's also a lot of fun to see Neil re-apply props and costumes from his previous movie. I really hope that persists through the rest of his work. Sadly, the movie's ending is as agonizing as Double Down's, with Neil re-using all of his shots from earlier, without shortening them, while saying the same thing across a dozen sequential lines, often using the same words. If I have to hear "sustainable energy systems" one more time, I will destroy this planet. And the humans. Now, to give this movie's heavy lifters their dues, I hereby announce the winners of this first edition of... the Breenies!  In a film almost entirely filled with people Neil appears to have recruited off the street, Elizabeth Sekora stands out. She stands out as the one person in a Neil Breen movie who seems like a normal person. I therefore crown her Actress in a Neil Breen movie!  Best Suppressed Fight-or-Flight instinct: Joy Senn (Amber) Joy Senn doesn't quite deliver the performance of her pale twin sister, but she manages to lie underneath a shirtless Neil Breen for a prolonged period of time and not frown, scream or gag. Such incredible control over one's bodily functions in the face of overwhelming circumstances earns her a Breenie!  Best Hair: Gunter Nezhoda (Eric) I don't think I need to explain this one. Straight off God's curtain rod. A gentle waterfall, hidden in a secret tropical lagoon. A soft fall of rain on a warm summer day. A cloak of truth and beauty, a lion's mane. The king of the jungle.  Worst Hair: Eduard Osipov (Gang Member, Young Man in Wheelchair) This hair hits you like a spider crawling across your face in the night. Like a disintegrated doily. A wet bird's nest. Like a teenager's mustache. Like a dream in which you relive the deaths of all your loved ones, and are powerless to do anything. I hate it. I spit on it. I fire it into the sun and never speak of it again.  Best Recurring Sound Effect: YEEEAAAARGH (the Breenscream) When Neil heard this scream on the soundtrack, he knew he'd struck gold. “I don't need to hear any more screams.” he said, to no one in particular. “I don't need to hear any more screams. I have heard the best scream.” Used approximately eight times for three different characters, YEEEAAAARGH hits the bullseye every single time. That concludes I Am Here.... Now.
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Jul 8, 2019 11:45
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davidspackage posted:What follows is too beautiful to capture with words. I could say “they start beating him,” and it would be as meaningless and vulgar as saying “Michelangelo painted a ceiling” or “Beethoven wrote some tunes.” You can't be told. You have to see it with your own eyes. Please, no one sleep on this.
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Jul 8, 2019 19:19
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so three more of these eh
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Jul 8, 2019 20:59
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fateful findings is def his best, bizarrely. it's both the most unintentionally funny and the most competently made of his movies, and he turns down the condescension big time. seeing what he's capable of in a more narrative driven, grounded movie had me really excited about his forth movie but it's his most judgemental one by far, to the point of being spiteful towards humanity.
I got the tude now fucked around with this message at 22:52 on Jul 8, 2019 |
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Jul 8, 2019 22:49
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This one feels like an adaptation of Stardust the Super Wizard
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Jul 10, 2019 18:09
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I'm glad you included a clip, because even your descriptions don't capture how bizarre it all is.
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Jul 11, 2019 02:42
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If I can trim them down to a few minutes st most, I want to do a supercut of each movie with my favorite bits in it.
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Jul 11, 2019 06:10
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Hi! About a year and a half ago, I made these play-by-play screenshot posts about the first two of Neil Breen's movies. Then I remembered how much I hated formatting these posts (I always end up loving up a bunch of links and find out I screwed up about a dozen times before I'm done). However, since praying for a BB Code WYSIWYG editor for a year hasn't yielded results, I'm back to review Neil Breen's third movie: Pass Thru. Pass Thru (2016)   Reminiscent of the opening of I Am Here....Now, Pass Thru opens with a static spacey wallpaper image. It's followed by the familiar red rocks of Nevada (or possibly Grand Canyon stock footage film) with the title. There's a distinct red dot floating in the screen that's part of the title, and may end up meaning something, or not?   Gentle piano music accompanies more shots of the rocky desert and deserty rocks. Neil's playing with a fisheye lens. The camera pans left along some more rocks, and then in what I can only describe as a jerk-cut, abruptly cuts to a static shot a few frames earlier, in the same shot. Up on the rock, a poorly color graded stock footage greenscreened tiger fades in, accompanied by growling. My heart flutters. I Am Here....Now already had a few mild effects shots in the form or gun flares having been added. Neil's trick bag may have entered the next millennium.  Closer in, the camera pans up some rocks that have primitive art painted on them. A hand that looks like it's been dipped in glue and then dragged along a barber's floor slides in from the right and uses a bone as a pestle to grind flowers, to make more white paint, and add to the artwork. I really want to see Neil's primitive ape-man in full.  But no. Not yet, at least. We get another shot of the tiger plopped onto the rocks, and then... some wall clocks, while indistinct radio chatter sounds. Blurry dark shapes drift along the screen, which might be intended as shadows of passing people, or evil miasma.  Oh hey, people, and quite a few of them. Neil's influence grows. Chattering among each other, they hike along the landscape, a number of them carrying distinct white plastic bags.  Accompanied by in-camera sounds of the camera operator crawling to his feet and rattling the microphone, we see a shot of a kid's bedroom, with toys and books about space on the bed. The camera pans over to a boy, sitting boxed in between multiple telescopes and screens, to hammer home the idea that he's into space.  We return to the people hiking through the arid landscape. We get some bits of conversation: “We've been walking for hours.” “I'm gonna kill someone. I swear!” “I'm not gonna die here.” “Where are we?” In what might be symbolism, they pass by three distinct looking cans lying on the ground.  Another kid's bedroom, this time with a girl, whose room is equally plastered with space stuff. She leafs through different space books.   A man with a grey beard has some magazines with landscape photos spread out over a car hood. “Where is it? When is it? And will I be able to make it?” we hear, presumably him, say, as the camera sweeps to the rocks in the distance.   Heyyy, it's the man himself, looking a little haggard, but busily cleaning up a mess of old cans and empty plastic containers. The camera cuts to the distant landscape, and the red dot from the title drop appears over the hills. At the same time there's a clearly home-made sound effect playing that's probably meant to sound weird and alien, but sounds more like, I don't know, washing line being pulled through a plastic tube. The red dot blinks out of existence just before the shot ends, which may be intentional, or an editing gently caress-up.  Two girls sitting in the sci-fi nerd bedroom badly feign enthusiasm. This kid's got game. “What's the source?” “How strong is the signal? Let me see, let me see!” Spaceboy replies “I'm following it!” as he simultaneously looks through his book about space and his laptop screen. “I lost it.” he declares, crestfallen.   We see a broken down, rusted old car with an equally crappy looking trailer. Inside, amidst trash and soiled sheets, Neil lies in blue-collar repose.  Our mysterious, fed-up hikers pass through (heh?) some crags.  Neil, filthy-faced, wakes in alert. He has a flashback to lying on the ground while someone brandishes a rifle at him – which appears to be identical to the rifles used in his previous two movies, by the way. “Clean this smuggler arrival(?) area, so the Border Patrol doesn't know where we're at. Here's your pay!” the gunman tells him, tossing him something. Neil dazedly starts grabbing for the junk surrounding him, while the wind does its best to blow it, and his unkempt hair, in every direction. Meanwhile, the hikers are still traversing the crags.  The gunman badly mimes striking Neil with the butt of his rifle, and a stock punch sound effect sells the illusion that he's hit. Neil collapses.  After a shot of the interior of the decaying car, Neil studies the little white packet the gunman threw him. Money? Drugs?   Ahh, it's drugs. At the risk of getting too IMDb, that's the pocketknife Neil used to cut a diode out of his arm in Double Down. Having evidently filled the syringe with... powder?... Neil brings it up to his trackmark-ridden arm. He surrenders to the rush. The mysterious dark clouds that we saw pass over the wall clocks pass over him now, and the red dot from the sky appears on his chest, again blinking out before the shot ends, leading me to believe the editor may have accidentally scooted the effects layer with the red dot a little to the left, making it out of sync with the footage.   Heyyy, not bad. A second Neil rises from the first's position, in what is a decent effects shot. I'm unsure if it's meant as one of those “spirit leaving the body” shots, or if the red dot is evidence of some alien entity copying Neil's body. Neil2 staggers to the trailer.  Spaceboy sits on his book-ridden bed. “Hey, it's me.” I wonder if Neil has learned that it can help the audience empathize with your characters by actually using their names in the movie, once in a blue moon. “Have you written any new songs lately?”  Spacegirl replies “I've been working on a couple of new songs! And I'm really proud of them!” with supreme smugness. “Yeah, I've written like two or three.” Spaceboy says cockily. “Yeah, I feel good about them!” It's comforting to hear that the dialogue's bizarre as ever. A reaction shot of Spacegirl gets inserted without her saying anything, which is a weird thing to do in a phone conversation on film, and might be to disguise a cut. “Yeah, you should come over and listen to them!” says boy. Considering that Neil only seems to use stock and/or royalty free music, I really want to hear one of these awesome songs.  Moving on from that riveting scene, we're shown chainlink fences and barbed wire. A hand that's already streaked with corn syrup blood grabs at it ineffectually. Is Neil doing something with the topic of immigration?   We return to the hikers, who are being directed into what looks like an ornamental piece of pipeline, by a guy barking orders. The hikers complain “Why are you talking at us like that? Quit yelling.” Earlier I thought they were carrying plastic bags, but they might've actually been plastic containers with water. Despite their complaints, the man keeps yelling at them and they continue entering the pipe.  Elsewhere, someone pretends to light a small blowtorch near a chainlink fence, and the kind of fire effect you either pay very little or nothing at all for is pasted over.  The hikers continue their trek. Emergency services radio chatter sounds in the back. It seems they've reached their destination – the chainlink, barbed wire fence. If these people are intended to be immigrants being smuggled across the border, I think I can be forgiven for not getting that immediately for several reasons. One, at best only half of them are Hispanic. Two, I don't think immigrants generally whine and complain at their human smugglers like they're going to leave them a bad Yelp review. Three, most illegal immigrants don't start shaking the border fence and yelling “Free us now! Get us out now!”  After a little shaking, the fence falls over forward, possibly having been sabotaged by the person with the blowtorch earlier. The hikers/immigrants run over the fence, which is accompanied by a repeat of the soundtrack from the previous scene, meaning you hear them yell and then hear the fence fall down again.   The camera pans along a generous selection of cowboy boots. They may all be Neil's. An old man, possibly the greybeard who briefly appeared early in the movie, lies in a hospital bed, with medical apparatuses, gas tanks and a huge saddle present. Neil's indoor sets are extremely cluttered, possibly with the intent to quickly tell you something about the person in them, but I'm too distracted by the question how you're supposed to move in such a sty. This man, too, is surrounded with space paraphernalia, possibly just moved over from Spaceboy and Spacegirl's bedrooms. Like most people in Neil's world, he has a laptop on his lap. He wakes, and takes a snoot from a breath mask.   Spaceboy makes a call on his phone. Nobody thinks to add a ringtone to the soundtrack, but Spacegrampa luckily notices he's being called anyway. “Hello, who is this?” “Hey.” says Spaceboy, still denying us a name. “I've realized I called you a lot lately, with a lot of false alarms. Well – I just wanna thank you for being patient with me. Since I know you like space travel, just like me.”   Okay then. Meanwhile, our little tourist group is being herded further by two fat guys wielding two of Neil's rifle props. “Come on, move your rear end, get going!” “You! Stop!” says the guy who was ordering them all into the pipe earlier, to a lady with pigtails. He seems gone in the next shot. A woman holds a knife to her belly and inquires “How many months pregnant are you?” “Seven.” Pigtails answers. “Oh really?” Knifegal says, and proceeds to awkwardly try and put a hole in her t-shirt. Pigtails can't quite suppress a smile as the woman tears her shirt apart.   Oh no! Drugs fall out. Mr. Redshirt smacks Purpleshirt with his rifle, prompting another punch sound effect and more drug packets to fall out of his shirt.  The camera pans along the drug packets, laid out along some wooden beams. We see a bunch of guys from the neck down, all carrying guns. One, in a yellow shirt, tosses another a packet and says the words “This – is for the politicians.” A line that is quintessentially Neil Breen. “This - “ he continues, “is for the stockbrokers.” The guy in the plaid shirt grabs a packet and tosses it, simply saying “Pimps!” The guy in the black shirt grabs one and hands it to Plaid Shirt, saying “Bankers!” Guys guys, maybe we should have only one person handing these out, this is going to get confusing. Did you have stockbrokers or pimps? Who's on lawyers? Yellow shirt grabs another and throws it. “The CEO.” ...of what? Another. “The lawyers.” Knew that one was coming. Black shirt grabs the biggest packet. “International bankers!” Yellow shirt throws the guy who's on CEO duty another: “The Resistance!”   Knifegal has been promoted to Gungal, emphatically saying “You two. Are of no. Value. To me. On. The streets!” Who is she threatening? A lady filmed in unusual and somewhat inadvisable One Quarter perspective cradles a boy. “I'm all he's got in the world!”   Gungal gives no gently caress. She fires her gun, and in the next shot is lined up in such a way that she appears to have shot clear past the lady. “Grandma! Why'd you shoot her?” the boy pleads. “Because I have absolutely no value for you two on the STREETS!” Gungal reiterates. Yeah son, weren't you paying attention? Speaking of repetition, Neil re-uses the shot of Gungal firing her weapon, which has the slight issue of her shooting someone at chest level and the boy is kneeling on the ground. Nevertheless, he dutifully dies.  All these executions are causing some friction in the group. Two girls tell each other “Get ready, we need to get the hell outta here!” Suddenly, a guy who sounds like he only speaks English phonetically leans in with a handgun, slurring “I want youuu – you tooo!” (In the immediately previous shot, this guy appears to have been one of the immigrants, wearing a different shirt and standing in the same place.) The girls run, and the guy repeatedly pulls the trigger while not miming any kind of recoil from the gun. The other people in the scene act completely unfazed that a gun is being fired at two of their number.  Next, the group gets herded into a truck by their escort. One guy ceaselessly barks “Get in there! Get the gently caress in there” while his buddy, a more courteous sort, chimes in with “Watch your head!” The people protest as Redshirt closes one of the container's doors, but their protests and slapping of the door comes across as a little limp since it takes a few long seconds before another actor pushes the second door closed and finally allows them to be locked in.  Two guys sit in a truck cabin in what is clearly a stationary car (one guy even does the exaggerated steering left and right thing, like a child pretending he's driving), while excited radio chatter sounds. “It's the Border Patrol!” “Turn here, let's go the other way!” The mysterious red dot appears in the middle of their windshield. “No no, it's moving too fast!” “Go go go!”  The two girls who opted to escape collapse on the ground. “Why are we running?” one asks angrily. I guess she plum forgot the execution and the fact that a guy was just shooting at them. “We have to keep running!” her friend answers. “Your mother's my sister! She was murdered! I swore to God I'd take care of you! You're my niece! WE HAVE TO KEEP RUNNING!” I'm not surprised that these lines were written, but I am impressed someone convinced someone else to say them on film.   Other actors get herded into the same truck as before – first it was men, now women. They shriek and complain, but go in all the same. The two girls who we just saw running away are among them as well. Oops, whoever was on continuity that day dropped the ball! Again, the screaming and panic don't really gel with how patiently they wait for the actor to finally manage to close both doors. The actor leafs through some license plates to put a new one on the truck.  Amazingly, we then see a shot of the truck cabin with the driver turning the wheel back and forth, in a perspective that literally can't fool you into thinking they're moving.  Finally, some peace and quiet. Neil – or the alien clone of his, not sure where we're going with this yet – walks across the arid landscape. For some reason, I can hear distant talking in this shot – I don't know if it was added, or if Neil couldn't avoid having a nearby tour group show up on the soundtrack, maybe. Anyway, it fades into pious choral music as he feels up a very mundane looking divot in the rock. He looks around, then.... disappears.  We're shown the red rocks with the primitive art again. Neil approaches, looking at the greenscreened tiger. The red dot appears on the palm of the hand painted on the wall, and Neil places his hand over it.  Suddenly, the tiger – or at least, some stock footage that he overlaid himself on – appears behind him. It doesn't work that well, mainly because the tiger is clearly surrounded by snow, as Siberian tigers are wont to do. Amusingly, Neil reacts with slight flinches to the tiger's growls.  Yet Neil's technocratic growth continues, with this apparent crane shot with fisheye lens, as he scales the rocks. And here we loving go. “I am artifical intelligence,” Neil narrates, “from far into the future. I have come here to cleanse the human species of their failings and decline. For they are far too weak of spirit and intelligence, to do it themselves.” That's my Breen. It's awfully close to the plot of I Am Here....Now, though. The landscape looks a lot more gray and drab than it did in Double Down. I wonder if this is because Neil did that one on film and this one was filmed digitally, and not color graded afterwards?  Elsewhere, Spacegramps takes another huff of oxygen and regretfully says “I can't go. Go without me.” and then spends many precious seconds, that should probably have been edited out, staring off into the distance.  A car barrels down a road. “I wish the professor was here.” Spaceboy narrates rather loudly. “He lives like a hermit at home now.” Spacegirl chimes in at equally high volume: “Being surrounded by his collection of saddles and boots, he is sooo eccentric. He was so sure this was the area!” Spaceboy looks around with binoculars. “He was so sure!” he narrates. “That this was the area!” “He never gets out of his hospital bed.” Spacegirl adds. The three kids come upon Neil, lying on the ground. “Hey! Have you found anything?” Spaceboy inquires. “Or seen something?” The questions imply they expect him to know what they're talking about, but after Neil gives no reaction, Spaceboy dismissively says “Eh, some homeless bum.” and they press on.  “Nothing yet.” Neil says when the kids are gone, possibly acting from a different timezone.  We come upon a bus parked in the middle of nowhere, and our gun-toting human smugglers are again haranguing their crop of multi-ethnic illegal immigrants into yet another vehicle. I never realized sneaking into the country involved so many traffic stops.  “You're not going anywhere!” their abusive tour guide screams in the bus, “You're mine!”. The camera swoops past the dudes spread out through the bus as they complain. “Shut up!” “Son of a bitch.” “Where we going?” “Something.” One man mentions to another that it's been three days, and much coughing is done.  Elsewhere, the two ladies are still on the escape. With much excessive panting, one of them yells “We can't stop!” “I don't think I can go any further!” “I can help you!” They don't really look at each other, and it's unclear why they're yelling at each other in their pleasantly quiet surroundings.   We return to what I think at first is Neil's squalorous home, strewn with empty cans and bits of paper, but it turns out to be a new location. Numbers on doors imply this is an apartment building. The ladies' side of the immigrants shuffle in. The armed guys shove them inside, eliciting much indignant complaining and one lady who probably has no acting experience can't suppress a big grin.  The girls comfort each other in their apparent new home. Gungal from earlier delivers another emphatic speech – I think she might be head honcho of these guys. “You – belong – to ME!” she bellows at them. “You ran away and tried to escape! And now! You are! Mine! Don't even think about trying to SNEEZE! Without asking permission! I! Own! You!”   Simulmeanwhile, the escaped ladies (they're nieces) sit by some rusted nonsense. “I'm afraid to sleep out in the open.” one declares. “Where are we gonna sleep? Under shelter.” A creepy shadow passes along a cave wall, somewhere. No context for that.   The girls appear to have found Neil's busted-up trailer home. They peer inside at the ruined and soiled bedding. Neil skips introductions apparently, because in the next shot, one girl is sitting in the door opening and Neil is offering her a jug of water. The girl declines, despite his insistence.  Suddenly, they're both standing upright. “I'll let you and your niece stay in my place. I'll stay in the car up front.” The girl, whose only acting mode seems to be 'in distress' starts freaking out and yelling “No, no, we can't stay here!” “It'll be fine, I'll clean it up!” Neil tries. “There's no way in hell we can stay here! No!” the girl replies without looking at him, her volume climbing. “You have to trust me.” Neil insists.  Next, Neil is sitting on the disintegrated mattress. “I'll clean it for you.” he repeats, and as demonstration, begins tossing cans and jugs out of the trailer.  “My Goddd! What're you doinggg!” the girl yells as cans and jugs fly past her. He's told you twice, lady. Neil, stone-faced, continues cleaning up. “How'd I get here! My goodness!” the girl yelps. A roll of toilet paper bounces off her. “What is thisss what are you doinggg!” I think this is one of the rare cases where Neil just lets the actress improvise her own dialogue.  “It's clean! It's all clean!” Neil declares with a winning smile. It appears he's won the girls over, because in the next shot they're huddling in the corner.  We return to the apartment where the rest of the ladies are holed up. They're having confession time. “I'm an addict.” says one. “I have nothing. I'm empty inside. I have no life.” Another tells her story: “I was weak. But I've learned that we can all, all of us, can be strong! And get through these hard times!” It's jarring because despite the dialogue being rear end, she gives a decent performance, which is one of those rare things that occasionally happens in a Neil Breen film.  “I hate the politicians in my country!” says a black lady with short blonde hair. And you know it's going to get good when Neil gets someone started on politicians. “They are so corrupt! They persecute my family, they killed my husband!”  A fourth lady seems bent on outdoing the rest, blowing out the mic when she yells “I'm pregnant! And I just wanted a better life for my child. I have no husband... and I just want my baby to be safe... and happy. It's more than what I ever had.”   We switch locations to the bus with the male immigrants. They're getting unruly. “Now wait! We paid a lot of money to get into this country!” “I left my country! To make a better life for my family!” “I hate the politicians in my country! They're so corrupt! They killed my wife!” “I was weak! But I'm gonna be strong! We all could be strong!” You might notice that this is practically a repeat of the scene with the women. I don't know whether Neil thinks this repetition is a clever or artful storytelling device, or if he simply doesn't get that it's entirely superfluous bloat. I'm fairly certain this is exactly what his original cut for I Am Here....Now did, with the twin sisters both getting fired from their renewable energy jobs in direct succession – except I suspect his editor convinced him to spread that out through the movie more so the audience would be less likely to notice.  Back to the ladies for more tragic backstory. “I was being abused by my boyfriend. And I thought that he was gonna -sob- kill me! So I had to run away! And I escaped...” “All I wanted to do was leave my country.” this from the lady who had drugs hidden under her shirt. “To find... a better life. For myself. They killed my friend... in the desert. Because she wouldn't...” “What's it gonna take to make the change happen?” this tattooed lady grandiosely asks. “When's the change gonna happen?” She points at each girl as she asks “When? When? When?”  Among the gents, this fellow bellows “I realize what I'm doing is illegal! But I gotta do it!” I think I've found my favorite line of the movie. I kind of want it on a t-shirt. “They're ALL criminals!” a young guy roars. “They lied to every single one of us.”   One guy makes an inadvisable choice. “I'm getting out of here – now.” He might not have noticed the rifle pointed directly at his chest, but one stock sound effect of a gun firing in an outdoor location and a muzzle flash effect later, his part in this movie is mercifully over. Two other guys, not fazed by this adjacent murder, have a very brief and ineffectual shoving match over a jug of water. to be continued...
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Sep 25, 2020 21:56
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drat this one looks good
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Sep 25, 2020 23:15
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Pass Thru part two  Neil repeats the shot of himself standing at a rock wall and disappearing. We then see him walk through more of the same landscape, which has really worn out its welcome in my eyes. He New-Agely narrates: “I salute the light within your eyes. Where the whole universe dwells. For when You are at that center within You, am I, that place within Me? We shall be one.” Original words, don't steal. Considering Neil's alter hobo is still chilling with the girls, I assume there's two Neils walking around in this movie now? In the same place where he disappeared, Neil fades in from the rocks again.  We rejoin the nieces at Real Neil's trailer. From off screen, he offers them some water again. Unfortunately, the girl is rather antagonistic and tells him “We'll get it ourselves! Leave us alone!”  Next, it's sleepy time on Neil's gross mattress. The other niece decides to explore outside a little.  Neil's editing in Pass Thru is quite scattershot. We check back in with the immigrant ladies' apartment. Their angry overseer hammers the bathroom door, despite it being ajar. “You've been in the shower long enough! Get out of the shower!” she barks. “Aw, DAYUM!” she exclaims when she leans inside. One of the ladies has punched her own ticket. “I need some help in here!” A guard shoves her aside to lift the lady off the unconvincing noose.  In the living room where all the women lie huddled, a minor slapfight breaks out between two because they kick each other in their sleep. I have a suspicion this scene won't serve any purpose, but mirrors the earlier push fight between the men.  Neil films some more landscape with his fisheye lens and crane. It slowly pans over to him sitting on the rocks. “We can judge our progress by the courage of our questions.” He's back on his bullshit. “And the depth of our answers. Our willingness to embrace what is true, rather than what makes us feel good. The one who walks alone is likely to find themself in places no one has ever walked before.”  I'm pretty sure I've seen Neil walk the same piece of sun-bleached rocks with dry scrub brush a dozen times already, so I'm doubting his words. But lo! The other niece comes up behind him. Then I guess my earlier conclusion was wrong, and this philosophically waxing space-Neil is still also hobo-Neil. Whichever Neil is Neil right now, he returns to the same spot where he's already disappeared twice. Other niece follows in his wake, sneaking carefully, despite her boots scraping loudly on the sandy rocks.  To her amazement, Neil does his fading trick a third time. She sits and scratches her head in bewilderment, then slowly collapses to the ground. And shadow spots pass over her as well. Hopefully I'll figure out what Neil's intention with those is some time soon.  We see the inside of a cave again, where the shadow spots pass as well. And we see Neil on, well, more familiar rocks, filmed through fisheye lens. Actually, it occurs to me that this movie is young enough (2016) that it's probably drone footage, not a crane shot. I recognize the inlet in the rocks where he's made his little cave of primitive art, so maybe the idea is that when Neil disappears in the spot he keeps returning to, he travels to the past? Unfortunately, he's not done talking. “Man's law changes with his understanding of man. Only the laws of the spirit realm always remain the same.” Is that what this place is supposed to be? The camera pulls out hard, into the sky. Okay, yeah, that's definitely drone footage. The image quality of my copy is so bad that I tend to forget the movie's only four years old.  Neil steps on a branch, prompting Other Niece to wake up. Neil again fades into existence in the same spot, so I'm not sure how she just heard him, but that's the least of our problems so far. Other Niece gives Neil a suspicious side-eye as he approaches. “Where did you go, a little while ago?” she asks. “I went for a walk.” Neil says, defiantly. She shakes her head. “I saw you. You're a weird dude.” Neil leans in grinning, then walks past. She's not wrong.   We next find Neil at the border fence. Other Other Niece seems to be spying on him from behind the rocks. She comes out in the open, and when Neil steps into the shot she raises a rock and tells him “Don't come near me, I'll kill you, you fucker!” Neil, confident, steps closer. “I won't hurt you, ohh--”  She nails him right on the head with the rock. Neil rolls to the ground. Niece appears a little shocked at her own actions. Neil's all right though, barely even breaks out the corn syrup for this one. He slowly gets back up.  “How are you?” Niece asks in a soft voice. “You know, I'm very sorry for hitting you in the eye.” She reaches out with a tissue, and Neil grabs her wrist. “No, I'm sorry. I'm not gonna hurt you.” Niece says, her personality having changed entirely from crazily antagonistic to Woman Approaching Wounded Animal. “It's okay, it's okay. I'm sorry.” Neil flinches a couple of times like a wary chimp, but allows her to dab his wounded eye. “I'm not gonna hurt you. I'm not gonna hurt you. I'm sorry.”  Well, it looks like we're friends now. “The only monsters here are the pimps, dealers and smugglers.” Niece tells Neil. “Killing and abusing people!” she says, her voice climbing. “Trying to get a better life for themselves! Sneaking into this country!” Lots of people dialing their acting up to 11 in this one. “Illegally!” Neil undergoes it passively, perhaps entranced by her acting prowess.  Next, Niece is inspecting some towel or blanket with a massive hole in it. Neil steps out of his sleeping car and imitates her. “Hey, how you doing?” she asks him. “I'm fine.” Neil replies. “I'm fine!” I'm nervously starting to anticipate a romance here. Niece uselessly folds the torn up rag, and Neil mimics the action with a doofy grin on his face. Sitting in his car, Neil looks over his shoulder, then faces forward and tells himself one last time “I'm fine.” though his face looks troubled. “Who is this guy?” Niece wonders.  Next, the three of them have a sit down around Neil's General Purpose Pile of Cans, Jugs and Bags. “So what's your name?” Niece asks. My ears prick up. Names are a rare commodity in Neil's movies.   We switch to a close-up of Neil's face so tight, you can almost make out his eyes. Like Keyser Soze, he glances down at a carton of yogurt. Slowly, he delivers: “My name is Til. It's spelled T-H-G-I-L.” Really Neil. Light backwards? “But it's pronounced 'Til.'” Niece chuckles. “What kind of name is that?” “It's a foreign name.” Neil reassures. “Like, from another planet?” Other Niece jokes. “Far, far away.” “Well, my name is Amanda.” Other Other Niece says, dispensing my need for nicknames, “And this is my niece Kim.”  “Would you like some water?” Thgil asks for the third loving time, but Amanda again turns him down. “No, no, we have water, thank you, we're fine.” Considering they ran away from their human smuggler tour group with nothing visibly on them, I'm not sure where they're getting all this water from.  Neil, overly happy with his drone, films himself on more rocks. “In taking on this human form, I am feeling a vulnerability to its human traits.” He again returns to the spot in the rocks he keeps disappearing into, and runs his hands across the red rocks with primitive art. “Everything the power does, it does in a circle."   He spreads his arms and turns in a circle, for emphasis. A wide shot shows him standing at the center of a man-made landmark of concentric rock circles. The soundtrack swells as the camera pans along the landscape, catches a huge flare of sunlight, then drifts off to the empty landscape on the right and lets the music slowly die out. Then, because everything the power does, it does in a circle, the camera pans left again, and the soundtrack suddenly comes back for a repeat as we return to Neil, still slowly spinning in circles.  Ah, thank gently caress, something different. The professor sits on the phone, remarkably wide-eyed. “Hello! Do you see anything? What do you see?” he says, overacting. “Hello! Hello! Dead connection.” We join the Spacekids in the field. “Oh my God, the power's out on my phone!” says the blonde girl. “My power's out too!” says Spaceboy. “Oh my gosh, me too! No power!” Spacegirl adds superfluously.  The kids pass by Neil's collapsed form. “Hey look, there's that guy again.” says Spaceboy, apparently not drawing any conclusions that they're walking in circles or anything. With a look of disgust, they leave him behind.  Neil, or Thgil, slowly wakes up. It's tough to tell where in continuity were are here. Especially because next, it's Amanda and Thgil sitting in the trailer again. “What's on your face?” she asks. Thgil touches his cheek, where I think he's had a smear of dirt for the entire movie so far, but acts as if he's guiltily making up an excuse. “Oh, I uh, uh, I guess it's dirt, I think I... slept on the ground last night. In the dirt.”  “Hey look, there's an old broken down piano in the field.” Kim says, and sits down at it. Okay, whatever, guess we're doing this now. “I always wanted to learn piano.” She starts hitting keys, but is somehow surprised when this broken down piano turns out to be broken. “It doesn't even work.” “Wait!” says Thgil, putting a hand on her shoulder. “Let's try again.” He sits down next to her. “It's never too late.” he tell her. “Music's magical. Universal.” Amanda joins them. “It's timeless.” Thgil says. We hear a piano concerto as Kim and Thgil hammer randomly at the keys. The brief bit of frantic piano music slips into the dull stock-like piano music track that the movie repeatedly uses to underline Neil's sagely ramblings. Which means...  “You can not travel the path, until you, have become the path itself.”  Back in the trailer, Amanda seems to have a revelation. “Your name, Thgil-- That isn't your name! That's light!” In a dropping-the-cup moment, we see the yogurt cup again. “L-I-G-H-T. Spelled backwards!” For the slow members of the audience. “Isn't it?” Neil looks at her uncomfortably. “Have you seen the future?” she asks him. Whoa, lady, that's a bit of a leap. “I AM the future.” Thgil tells her. “Are you one of us?” Amanda asks. “Or from out there?” “Yes.” answers Thgil. “From out there.” He continues: “I can move. From one time plane to another.” Well, that confirms the time travel idea.  “This is my reality.” he says in a different shot, outside. “Not a false, human illusion.” In demonstration, Thgil makes some cans levitate, which is actually a slow motion shot of him dropping them, played backwards. Amanda laughs in amazement.   We return to some Neil on the rocks, as he goes back to the inlet with the painted rocks to place his hand over the handprint again, where the red dot appears. Is the wall paint supposed to be a time machine? A familiar growling sounds, and it appears Neil has summoned the tiger yet again. Really getting his money's worth from that. “Something incredible is about to happen.” Neil narrates. “Humankind has not woven the web of light. We are but one thread within it.” What's this “we,” Thgil? I thought you were a sentient AI from the future. “Whatever we do to that web, we do to ourselves. All things are bound together. All things connect.” More drone footage of Neil hiking over the rocks.  We rejoin Thgil and Amanda in the trailer. “The humans are delusional in the self-importance they think they have.” he tells her. “They're a mere primitive speck in the multitude of universes. They have nothing to offer us, there is no reason to visit them.” “After all you humans have been through, for hundreds of years, for thousands of years, you're still classifying each other into groups and races, and cultures... you just don't get it. You're all human.” Oh Neil. “There are no groups, classes, races, and cultures. You're all one. But you don't understand that.” Amanda continues to silently undergo Neil's lecture. “Just think if there was truth, and real honesty everywhere. All humans. But no. The humans have evolved into a lesser species, where those values are not their priority.” The camera cuts back to Amanda to remind us she's there, but this is Neil's movie, so we return to him. “I can manipulate the planes of space and time. Lemme show you.”  Neil picks up a length of tubing and taps one end. “Here we are now.” He taps the other end. “Here's where I'm from.” He runs his finger along the tube. “They're a thousand lightyears apart. I can manipulate space, time, and energy. I can compress time. Dark matter. Dark energy. Quantum physics. The String Theory.” Neil, you're just spitting out science words now. “I can bend time, so that I can travel from where we are now to a thousand years in the future. Where I'm from. By bending time. I can. Compress. The travel distance. In time. From here. To here. To no time at all.” Great, can you do that with this loving scene? No, he's not done. “There are black holes in every galaxy, there are billions of galaxies. There are billions of universes out there. The universe is expanding, not contracting. There are more than three dimensions. I can teach you.”  We get a cutaway to the scene of Neil sitting against stock footage of the tiger again, before returning to the trailer. “Many things are going to change now.” he tells Amanda emphatically and threateningly. “I'm going to eliminate hundreds of millions of the human species.” Amanda looks worried, but says nothing still. “I am going to kill them immediately. But you have nothing to fear. I believe you're truthful. And honest. I'm only going to eliminate humans --” here he pauses, either for dramatic effect, or to recall his script, “-- that have been harmful to other humans.”  Oh poo poo. We cut to something wholly new, an amazingly widely shot news desk with dozens of screens in the background. A director counts down from five and announces “go to commercial.” The female anchor breaths a sigh of relief: “What an rear end in a top hat that politician was!” Neil's writing retains all the subtlety of a right wing political cartoon. The male anchor echoes her feelings: “I can't believe he just said that.” She follows up with: “He is so – drat – extreme! And bias!” And no, she doesn't say “biased.” The director counts down from five again and announces they're live. “Thank you, senator, for that thoughtful and sensitive interpretation.” the female anchor says. “Very thoughtful and insightful.” the male anchor helpfully adds. Despite apparently still being live, the male anchor turns to the female one and says: “We're constantly putting out our own corporate slam-it news, half-truths, putting our own spin on it.” The female anchor still looks into the camera as she says “We're just as bias and prejudice, in how we present the news, as the public is.”I think that script could've used a second going over.  I guess they remember they're on camera, because next she says “We've just received breaking news that the president has disappeared, as well as some of his staff. This has been confirmed.” Oh, okay. As long as it's been confirmed. “Listen to this, the prime minister is now missing, and cannot be found.” What prime minister? What country is this supposed to be? Their report isn't done yet, though. She adds: “The board of directors and management of major banks and insurance companies have vanished. Overnight.” As usual, Neil starts his cleansing massacre at the top of the foodchain. “Stock markets senior management has been reported missing.” Male anchor concludes.  Over to, let's call her Cheryl, with Opinion: “It's as if all the harmful people are disappearing.”   We return to the still stationary bus where the male immigrants are being held. Can't help but notice that the guy in the green shirt in the back appears to be alive again. Oh, but wait! As their brutal overseer looks back and forth menacingly, he fades out of existence. I'm a little worried what Neil's going to fill the remaining 40 minutes of the film with.  Suddenly, Thgil is here. “He's gone!” he announces. “Now get out of here!” From the front of the bus, he barks at them: “I am setting you free! Go back to where you came from!” At first I think: uh Neil, that's sending them back to the places where their husbands and wives got murdered and their government is So Corrupt, but then I remember he just killed all the bad people. “You can be a leader, not a follower! You can make a difference! Now go back!”  The guys get off the bus and run. One guy slips and falls; actually, it's the same guy who slurred I want youuu at Amanda and Kim and fired a gun at them, but I don't think we're supposed to notice.  Next, we see the apartment where the women are being kept. “Don't shoot.” Neil says from off screen. “You can't hurt me.”  The leading lady seems ready to cause trouble. “Who – the hell – are you!?” she demands. “What the hell are you doing in MY house!?” To my immense delight, Tghil and Old Yeller start having a screaming match. “This is MY universe!” Neil exclaims. “I will KILL you!” she retorts. “I will eliminate all of the people like you!!” Neil bellows. “That have ruined this planet!!” The immigrant ladies look on in distress.  “You are DONE!” the lady roars. “No!!” Neil cleverly reasons, in loud tones. “YOU are done!!” “I'M DONE!?” she inquires. “DONE!!!” Neil explains. I like to think Neil's script didn't really call for him to start shouting here – that he's just reacting to this lady's powerful energy.  While we hear a lot of murmury “rhubarb rhubarb” from the female immigrants, Neil slowly backs off. Predictably, the lady vanishes into thin air. The girls leap up, startled.  Neil has a sitdown with them, and raps: “Go back to the countries that you came from, make a difference there!” “Take power! Organize your citizens! Lead a revolt against the politicians, the corruption!” Neil, didn't you just disappear all those people? “And the injustices that we all know! Now go!”  The ladies jump up from the floor and make a break for it, one quickly snagging the flower she put in the can when they came here. For some reason, the two fat guys haven't been disappeared, they're just lying on the floor, sleeping or dead.  At the border fence, which nobody has bothered picking up yet, the men and the women meet up and hug, saying “We're free!"  One of the girls turns around with a dramatic swish. “Should I stay?” she asks no one. Well, her mind's quickly made up, and the follows the others.  Next, we see Neil/Thgil and two security guards greenscreened onto a photo of some mansion. The security guards shortly disappear. That seems harsh, those guys just do their job, but perhaps Thgil knows their secret corruptions. Then, he transforms his denim clothes into a black suit, and approaches.  Neil's greenscreen powers are getting out of control, as next we see him with a few other fancily dressed people in the mansion's hallway, not being reflected on the shiny floor. The lady in the blue cocktail dress brags: “I know senior, national, elected government officials. Who I can force my political, bias, and influence, on fellow politicians. To vote, my way.” Neil and his two other partygoers nod politely at this. “For a payoff, of course.”  Suddenly, Neil jumps in with: “Isn't that corrupt?”  In another stock photo, Neil and the lovely lady are joined by two other figureheads representing Neil's powerful bogeymen. They spend a few seconds just kind of looking around, as if wondering how they ended up in here, then:  “I know companies that can hack into any government, national agency, or corporate facility.” Hey, I know one man who can do all that, and his name is Aaron Brand. “For the right price, you can get any information that you want. And: they don't need to know why, or your reason. These places are so vulnerable and unprotected. And there is no way they can keep up with the technology.” But uh-oh, looks like partypooper Neil's about to ruin their day. “Isn't that corrupt?” he asks again.  A few stock photos over, Neil joins the bald man and lady in the blue dress from earlier, with two new people. Blue Cocktail Dress, having learned nothing, starts in with “The voting public is so naive, and unaware of how politics really work.” Instead of Neil chiming in with a chiding remark, we get a silent close-up of the lady in the red dress giving a sort-of nod.  Back in the hallway, the lady in black has more to add: “As... CEO of a major bank, we manipulate interest rates to serve our best interest, heh. Oh – with no concern for the customers, of course.” She chuckles smugly. “They have no control over us. This also helps our stockbroker friends who manipulate their markets to the brokers' advantage. It's all a game.” She's having a lot of fun.  The bald guy puts in his thoughts: “We make a fortune at our insurance companies, overcharging customers, and hospitals. And there's nothing the customer can do about it. We have the backing of the politicians.” Well, it's true, but trite. Suddenly, he looks introspective, as he goes on: “Medical research could've cured cancer and other diseases... 75 years ago? We won't let that happen. We'd lose too much money.” Neil has something to say: “Isn't that cheating the public?” Yes, Neil. They literally say they are cheating the public. They know. The partygoers give him a polite smile. Who invited this rear end in a top hat?  Back to the living room stock photo, the lady in the blue dress is clearly talking by the way her jaw is moving, but we don't hear anything yet until we go into close-up. “We put our own spin on the stories to suit our corporate bias, and other private interests. We can create programming, that have half-truths, and misleading stories. And the public doesn't even know.” Is this what rich people talk about at their parties? This is boring. “Isn't that betraying the public's trust?” Neil, just disappear them already, you sanctimonious omnipotent prick.  We cut to the lady in the red dress, but the background's still the same, making it look like her and Neil switched places. “My friends and I have many, personal, and intimate relations, with government, and corporate officials. I'm sure I can get them to vote a certain way. For the right price. I'm sure they don't want the public to know their dirty little secrets. It's so easy to trap them.”  The party moves to a photo looking out into the yard. Nobody speaks. And then, just for fun, the living room photo gets flipped over for another go.  “Our law firm influences many courts, judges, lawyers, agencies, and politicians.” This old guy wheezes. “Our justice system is broken, it's ineffective. And that's just the way we wanna keep it.” Again Neil pops up over the exact same background. “Isn't that immoral?”   Finally, the partygoers start taking notice of Neil. “Who is that guy?” Red Dress asks. “I have no idea.” Bald guy replies. “Never seen him before!” “Who was that guy? Black dress wonders. “I have no idea!” The next guy in glasses says. “He must not be from here!” the old guy adds.  Neil shambles back into the hallway. He walks back out through the gate, and inner monologues: “If it can be destroyed by the truth, it deserves to be destroyed by the truth.” Through fade-over magic, he dons his denim once again, and walks ou-  Holy poo poo  Back with Amanda, Neil reinforces, or probably just re-uses the shot from earlier: “You have nothing to fear."  Back on the news, male anchor announces: “International prisons report that their most serious criminals have mysteriously disappeared.” Luckily, the ones who are just loving around stayed put. Female anchor: “International lawyers, accountants and CEOs are missing. Many accused of corruption.” Male anchor editorializes: “It's as if all the harmful people on Earth are disappearing.” Losing her cool, female anchor exclaims: “What's happening? It's worldwide!”  Cheryl contributes: “The board of directors and management of key international banks and insurance companies have vanished. Overnight.” Male anchor appears to be losing it as he sucks in a breath to declare: “Even ignorant reality shows about families, housewives, groups, individuals: those casts are all gone.” I'm unsure if this is Neil making a joke about how terrible those are, or if he's really just fantasizing about doing away with anyone he doesn't like. “The wars have stopped,” male anchor continues, “And those causing the wars have vanished.” Female anchor has more news for us: “Members of various courts and judicial systems cannot be found.” This is an interesting take on the news, where nobody bothers to specify countries or company names.  To the sound of talking and laughing the background, which was also present the last time Neil used this same shot, Thgil returns to his vanishing wall to vanish. Perhaps feeling he hasn't quite squeezed all the blood from this stone, he returns to the greenscreened tiger.  Neil films himself with drone again as he struts the rocks, which of course means: “It had become obvious thousands of years ago. That our technology had exceeded that of the human species.”  A sinister shot: the door to Neil's ratty trailer opens, and Amanda stands there with her back towards the viewer. For a moment, I thought she'd hanged herself, but no, she just pulls her hair loose and... starts pulling up her shirt? steamy. I mean - to be continued.
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Sep 26, 2020 19:46
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Pass Thru part thru My my. The tattoo looks real; I wonder if her having it was something Neil specifically recruited her for, or if it was something he saw as a happy coincidence. She lets us admire it for a while, then slowly walks further inside.   We see the spiral painted on the rock, and Neil spinning majestically among the spiral of stones, filmed by drone. He stops spinning, and the drone pulls out for a dramatic shot. Nevertheless, I'm still worried what he's going to fill the remaining half hour of the movie with. Tghil and Amanda meet hands through the broken window of the trailer.  In the news studio, Cheryl goes off script: “I can't believe what I'm hearing.” In the next shot, Cheryl has joined her colleagues in staring robotically into the camera, while Neil silently stalks behind them. When Cheryl notices him, she calls out: “Security, security, help!” Male anchor does the same.  But Neil has prophecy to speak. “You won't need security. You're gone.” And with that, they too fade out of existence. Neil's power must suck if he has to be physically present all the hundreds of millions of disappearances he's planning.  Next, he sits down at the news desk. “I am not of this Earth.” he explains, as the music becomes dramatic. “I am artificial intelligence from far into the future. I have taken on this human body in order to communicate with the humans. I've taken control of this international media center. What you are seeing now is being broadcast throughout the world.” “Human evolution has ended. And there can be no further advancement. The turning point is now. There are genetic and psychological limits, to the primitive human species. And you have reached those limits.” Might've at least run a cloth over your face if you were going on TV, Neil. “You have demonstrated your inability to live in a truthful, honest, trustworthy, and accountable way. With your fellow man. Illegal wars, the abuse of the media systems. Films, TV, radio, the internet. As vehicles for a positive change! It's insulting. The glorification of violence, and corruption. As well as political correctness, and the fear of the truth.” Want me to pull up that beatdown scene from I Am Here....Now, Neil? “Has ruined, the human species. No more excuses. No more second chances. No more third chances! No more warnings! No more sympathy! The humans have tried that for hundreds of years! And it hasn't worked. And it never will.” “I have eliminated three hundred million humans from the planet today!” And boy, are my arms tired. “In human terms! I have killed them all! These were humans that were harmful to other humans! They were cheats! Thieves! Criminals! Liars! Abusers! Corrupters! Dishonest humans! Those who abused other humans! The planet! The environment! As well as, children and animals. They do not deserve to live. They are all gone now! I have turned them all to dust.” “The human glorification of violence.” I'm getting slightly worried that this is just the rest of the movie. “Corruption. Corporate corruption. Failed political systems. Failed judicial systems. Failed educational systems. Failed environmental systems. And on, and on!” Neil is definitely, in human terms, back on his bullshit. “Just think what it would be like if all humans, were completely honest. Completely trustworthy. Without question. But that's impossible now.” “Remove corrupt and harmful politicians and leaders.” he goes on. Neil, if those 300 million people you destroyed did not include corrupt leaders, who exactly did you just kill? “From all over the world! Don't wait for a failed, bureaucratic system to help you! Do it yourself! Take action now! Remove harmful and corrupt corporations! BOYcot them! Close them down! It's the only thing they're gonna respond to! Take the lead!” “Violate laws and regulations! They're not in the people's interests! Overturn them now! Don't be naive! Weak, and ignorant! Of what is right and good! This is what's led to the decline of your species! Ask the hard, true questions! And give the hard, true answers! Be leaders! Not followers!” “The current state of decline of the human species, is an insult to our intelligence! The revolution has begun. Your revolt, it must start now! The cleanse has begun!”  After what has just been literally five full minutes of Neil yelling at us, we see the red dot hang in the sky once more, accompanied by radio chatter. Oh, it's Spaceboy! Guess there is still one plotline left to wrap up, sort of. He looks excited at his discovery.  First though, we must endure more of Neil walking the desert landscape. How loving long did he spend filming these shots? Days? Weeks? “It does not require many words. To speak the truth. Man has responsibility. Not power.”  Spaceboy makes another phonecall. “It's here!” he exclaims. “For sure it's here!” Spacegirl, on the other side of the phone, makes a curious rotating pointing gesture at her laptop. “I can see it clearly! Spaceboy plops down on the bed. “We have to call the professor now. I'm on my way to your house.” He leaps off the bed. “I'll call right now.” Spacegirl says, with a pageant queen's fake grin plastered on, “And I'll meet you here!” Third Wheel girl comes along.  Who ya gonna call? The professor, of course. Taking another suck of oxygen to steady himself, he says: “No, no, this must be another... mistaken... space traveler identification.” He kind of slurs the line, as if he's forgotten how it's supposed to go exactly. Then he goes wide-eyed and -jawed as he looks down at his laptop.  Again, the red dot fades into the sky over radio chatter. Prof needs another hit. “I'd waited my whole life for this!” he blusters. “Hurry! Hurry! Or you'll be too late! You'll miss them!” He sinks a little, saying: “No, no, I can't. I'm too weak.”  Kim emerges from Thgil's trailer, sneaking out in a shot that I think is re-used from earlier, when she followed him.  Spaceboy stands behind a wheelchair in the professor's room as the camera slowly pans up. Receiving his cue, he excitedly yells: “Professor, you're coming with us! We're not gonna let you miss this!” He pulls the oxygen mask away from the prof. The girls appear and they start manhandling the old man into the wheelchair. “The signal's getting stronger!” Spaceboy exclaims, as a car speeds down the road. The professor starts in: “You three are the real geniuses.” “If we can see it here, on the laptop,” Spacegirl says, “I'm sure the government, the military and the border police can, also. And that they're on their way!”  The car stops, and the door slides open. “Dad, come with us!” Spaceboy says. “No, no, I'm gonna stay here, it's just another one of your false alarms.” Dad replies, unfatherly. “I'm just gonna stay here and get some sleep.” While my son wanders out into the desert with an invalid.  The professors's gotten a burst of energy though, and gets out of the car himself to sit down in the wheelchair. The kids speed off.  Next, they face a grinning Neil. “It was you!” Spaceboy shouts. “All this time! It was you!” And then, disturbingly: “Take me!” “Take us with you!” Blonde girl clarifies, thankfully. “Hurry, get out of here.” Spacegirl interjects. “The police and the military will be here soon.” “Hurry!” Blonde girl adds. “No, I can't take you.” Thgil explains. “You need to stay here, so you can tell the truth.” The red dot fades in again. “Don't worry.” Thgil narrates. “No military, or officials are following. I can control who sees the signal. I have blocked everyone. And allowed only you to see it.”   “These are from where I come from.” Neil tells Spaceboy. He pours what looks like little unprinted coins into Spaceboy's hand. “Now they'll believe you.” Spaceboy gasps excessively. “Wow!” Neil grins to the sky. Meanwhile, the kids look at their phones. Typical. “Wow! The power's back on!” Spacegirl yelps. “Me too me too!” Blonde girl contributes. “So is mine!” Spaceboy says. “This is amazing!” “What's happening?”  Oh right, the professor's here too. Strange how he wasn't involved in the scene just now. With difficulty, they push the wheelchair across the rocky landscape.  Neil approaches his hovel. Amanda immediately starts yelling through the window: “You have to help me find her! You have to help me find her!” Evidently, Kim has gone missing. “I've been looking for you! I'm so glad you're back, help me! I need to find her, she's missing! We have to find her! Please! We have to find her!” Ah, I've missed Amanda's freakouts. She hugs Thgil. He hoverhands her for way too long, then finally hugs her back while she whimpers. As the cameraman walks around their embrace, we hear their shoes scrape across the ground loudly.  A man in a white tanktop, holding a gun, approaches the collapsed border wall and walks across it. Thgil and Amanda follow Kim's trail.  Kim is, for some reason, checking out what looks like the detritus of some Civil War re-enactment. She comes upon a half-collapsed shack and goes in. It looks like an old mineshaft. Inside is more garbage that we've seen before, in disconnected shots.  Haha, oh poo poo. Just noticed that Aaron Brand's medal-studded vest is hanging from a coathanger on the wall. Is this an easter egg?  Amanda and Thgil come by the same area and Amanda points at the ground. “Look!” she exclaims. “There's her footprint! Let's go!” They follow into the mineshaft.  As they walk down the tunnel, we hear screams that were clearly recorded outdoors. Our two heroes don't increase their pace or react at all. A few more screams sound. There's some more tunnel shots, and then one with a sinister shadow passing over the wall, with more screams.  Thgil descends down a ladder. More tunnel shots and sinister shadows. The camera pans along tunnel bits as Thgil appears to be just playing tourist, possibly because Neil's not allowed to do any running or stunts in this area.  A guy sitting in a chair is moving some length of hose with rags hanging off it back and forth in a way that demonstrates he's been told to look busy. His line sounds kind of fragmentary: “...fix anything, the way I want it to?”  More creepy shadow passing along the wall. To quote Crispin Boyer from Broken Pixels, “I really care about whatever the gently caress I'm looking at.”  The camera pans down to reveal some guy and Kim fiddling awkwardly with the length of hose, as he says “I am the creator of the shadows.” and Kim laughs. I just have no idea. Like, we've seen these tunnels with shadows creeping along the wall a lot, but we've also seen lots of outdoor locations with shadows creeping over them. What's this eleventh hour bullshit?  “I'm a good person,” Tunnel Hermit explains. “I've never hurt anyone, I just wanna be left alone.” “I only created the ghost legend so I could keep people away from here, and me. So that I can live alone, and in peace.” What ghost legend. Neil. You can't just introduce this poo poo in the movie's last fifteen minutes. I seriously think he just found he lacked enough material for a full 90 minutes, even with that endless tirade behind the news desk.  Thgil and Amanda find them. “Where've you been!” Amanda starts in. “We've been looking for you!” She turns on Tunnel Hermit. “And who are you? I'm gonna kill you!” Same old Amanda. “What've you been doing with her? What's going on?” “No, no!” soothes Kim. “Nothing! We were just playing!”  “He's not a ghost at all,” Kim explains, “His name is Jim. He showed me how to make ghost shadows. What? I'm not hurt! We were just playing. I'm fine.”  Tunnel Jim looks back and forth in the next shot, suggesting it was supposed to be placed over Amanda and Kim's brief shoutfest. “We are leaving here now.” Thgil says narratingly.  “Where are you going?” asks Amanda. “I've seen the past.” Thgil explains. “And I've seen the future.” Amanda scoffs and turns away, probably sick of having to suffer another of his lectures, but he snatches her by the arm. “We're going to a better place.”  “Wh-who are you?” Tunnel Jim stammers. “Wh-where are you going?”  “A better place.” Thgil says in narration, in a shot that starts out out-of-focus, holding the medal vest and wearing... a black tank top... is he seriously tying this movie into Double Down? Neil Breen Cinematic Universe Go?  Ahhh balls, no. It's just Tunnel Jim. “You are now free...” Thgil tells him in narration, while looking at him in total dishevelment. “...of Pee Tee Es Dee.” Oh God. “Thank you for freeing me.” Tunnel Jim says, nodding. There's that good old respect for Are Troops from Neil again.   In the next shot, also starting out of focus, Neil whips around to face... Grandma and Immigrant kid, who got shot at the start of the movie. At least, Grandma. I'm not 100% sure that's the same kid. They smile at each other and Neil. “They are not dead,” Thgil narrates, “Who live in the hearts they left behind. Welcome back.”   But uh-oh, that unrelated white tank top guy who ran across the border earlier? Is sneaking up on Amanda and Kim! Amanda notices him. “You bastard!” She turns towards Thgil and holds up a finger. “Don't get involved!”  “drat it!” she tells White Tank Top. “You abusive bastard! You followed me!” She taps Kim on the shoulder. “It's my ex-husband.” “I've been looking for you!” Ex-husband explains. “You rear end in a top hat!” Amanda yells, taking a swing at him. He knocks her back, and raises his gun. Suddenly, both girls are on the ground. “You both are coming with me.” Ex-husband declares. Jesus Neil, again I ask, you disappeared 300 million people, couldn't have thrown this guy in with them? Amanda leaps to her feet and thrusts herself against his gun. “You're the one I'm running from. Leave us alone!”  Predictably, he shoots her, and then Kim, making her scream loudly after she drops dead. Next, he raises his gun towards Thgil. “Who the hell are you?” he asks. And then again, in close-up.  “Don't shoot.” says Thgil. “You can't hurt me.” He gives a slight nod.  As Thgil looks on sternly, Ex-husband slowly and mechanically turns his gun on himself, and shoots himself in the head.  Thgil kneels by the two dead nieces. “Come back.” he narrates, taking Amanda's hand. He pulls her into a sitting position. “Let the light be in your eyes.” She groggily opens her eyes. Kim gets the same treatment. “What just happened?” Kim asks. Thgil helps them both up and leads them away.  They shamble behind Thgil like they've been doing so for hours. Amanda turns to Kim and says: “Hurry up, let's go.” “I can't.” Kim replies. “What!?” Amanda retorts. Kim drops on her knees. “What're you talking about?” asks Amanda. “I can't.” insists Kim.  “You can't stay!” Amanda yells. “You can't stay here! What do you mean you're not going?” She falls on her knees dramatically. “What're you telling me this for? Please, please! After everything we've been through! Everything! You can't stop now! Don't be afraid! Don't – be – afraid!” You know, Kim, it's pretty fuckin' rude to give up on life just moments after you were magically brought back to it by a sentient AI from the far future. If that is what you're doing.  “I can't.” Kim insists. “You can!” Amanda argues. “I'm tired!” Kim parries. “You're strong!” Amanda. “You're so much stronger than me.” “No.” “I can't go on, I don't wanna go!” “After everything we've been through.” “I'm not going.” “We need to go now!” “No! I'm not – going!” After this riveting exchange, Kim starts walking back. Where were they going? Where will they be going now? Who knows.  Kim turns back with tears running down her face, one running sideways, in fact, which suggests they had to resort to dripping water on her face rather than managing a tear at this nonsense.  The border fence... magically raises itself up from the ground and stands upright again. Even if I accept it within the context of the movie, I can't think of a reason why. Is Neil restoring the state of things, suggesting he thinks everyone should just stay in their own country?  The Spacekids continue driving the Professor through the rocky landscape. Where are they going? They'd found Thgil. This is literally just Neil writing extra pages of script to pad out the time.  The clocks from the beginning, now three instead of two. They make slightly more sense knowing time travel is involved in the plot.  The camera rises up between Thgil and Amanda. They spend a few seconds playing footsie with their fingers. Then the camera pans up further, as the soundtrack swells.  The kids and professor look excitedly up into the sky. Have they found... whatever the hell? “I lived... to see it!” the professors proclaims. As he takes another suck of the oxygen mask, he repeats his earlier line: “I've waited my whole life for this...”   “What the... what did you just do right now?” Amanda asks Thgil. “Oh... poo poo. What the hell is this?” And then... they're suddenly surrounded by bodies. I recognize three actors as the male immigrants, but who knows if that's who they're meant to be now. I'm thinking they're supposed to be some of Thgil's many victims. The soundtrack sounds really triumphant. “The cleanse... has begun.” Thgil boomingly declares in narration.  Okay. Looking more relieved, the two walk away...  ...and JESUS CHRIST Even though you can easily tell it's a bunch of duplicated bodies, that's still an impressive effect, and profoundly disturbing, in combination with the soaring soundtrack. Thgil and Amanda walk down the aisle of dead loving bodies, placidly smiling.  Amanda laughs happily. “I'm really going!” “You are really going.” Thgil echoes. “Will I see you again?” she asks Thgil. If she's not going with him, where is she going? Who knows. “Yes.” Thgil says. “You can teach me about sensitivity. And having a conscience.” Yeah, the latter one might help. Chuckling, she walks away. We see Amanda from the back, and the shadows from earlier pass over her. I still don't get what those are supposed to represent.  Meanwhile, Thgil walks up a hill, has another exchange with stock footage tiger, then continues his victory lap. “The primitive humans must continue the cleanse.” As stock footage of Aurora Borealis (at this time of year, at this time of day, in this part of the country, localized entirely within a Neil Breen film) appears in the sky, and the bodies gradually fade from view, he continues: “In order to survive as a species."  The shot goes on long enough for the soundtrack to run out, and then it fades back in to pad out the final minutes of the movie. The northern lights appear over Neil as well. The soundtrack runs out a second time, sways back in. Another close-up of Neil brings in more northern lights and another digital distortion effect.   Then we move to a drone shot, and close the movie, as in I Am Here....Now, with the same piece of sci-fi art that it started with.  Phewww. Time for credits.   I like that Neil still doesn't trust us to get that Thgil is Light backwards. I didn't recognize any faces from earlier Breen productions, so none of the actors will be familiar to me, but I'm curious about the crew.  Neil still has his earlier editor and cameraman, John Mastrogiacomo. Obviously, a separate cameraman for the drone shots.   Casting, lighting, set design, wardrobe, props, make-up and hair, locations, accounting, and craft services are all by Neil, except he made up fake company names for the credits, then explained in the credits that the company names are fake. I. Okay, yeah.  I... don't really understand the section “Quotes.” I'm guessing Neil borrowed all the New Age babble he speaks during the drone shots from books he's read and gives them kind of a blanket credit here? And that's Pass Thru. My first thoughts? Rather disappointed, actually. I think this is the weakest of his movies so far. Double Down was incoherent and certainly the most self-aggrandizing, but while the constant recurring dream scenes with Aaron Brand's dead fiancée got really old, overall there was frequently something inadvertently hilarious happening. I Am Here....Now was far more restrained, with Neil actually playing a fairly limited role at the start and end of the movie, and while the plot was still random garbage, the actors did get something to do. Pass Thru seems above all to suffer from lack of ideas. It starts out almost promising, with the kids and professor tracking some cosmic thing, Neil playing a disheveled druggie, and what seems to be a fresh topic of illegal immigration and human smuggling practices. But then Neil exchanges his poor junkie character for another transcendent entity, the kids' plot gets abandoned until it's an afterthought at the end of the movie, and worst of all, the immigrants don't get to do anything but sit around in singular rooms until Neil comes to save them. The characters in I am Here....Now at least got to scheme, or do their ridiculous gang stuff, the sisters got to agonize about their situation. Nothing here. Part of the issue is Neil's need for the issues in his movies to be all-encompassing. It can't be Mexican immigrants trying to enter the US, it has to be multi-ethnic immigrants from vague, non-specified countries migrating to Whateverland. Just as he and his characters all rage either for or against international corruption, and capitalist oppression. It's hard to empathize with the immigrants when they're such obvious stand-ins for general, faceless issues. But again, really, it's a lack of ideas. The previous movies have shown that Neil is not above taking more than a few seconds to let a scene breathe, nor is he necessarily beholden to a traditional story structure, but I definitely feel like he got to a point here where he counted the pages of his script and realized he wasn't going to fill an hour and a half with it. All the stuff with the immigrants being corralled around is boring, and once they're all stuck in places and yelling out their “I'm pregnant and my government is SO corrupt” character moments, the female and male counterparts practically say the same things, which admittedly feels like a deliberate device Neil mistakenly thinks is clever. Neil pulls a lot of moments when he goes on spirit/time walks or whatever and waxes philosophically, but that I can almost forgive – for one, he's obviously having fun filming with the drone, and for another, he obviously likes hearing himself talk. But when the first hour runs out and Neil's cutting loose with his powers (though he can't seem to entirely decide whether he's eliminating people all at once or one at a time, or whether he's erasing them, turning them to dust or physically killing them), the movie is clearly done. Then he suddenly brings the kids and the professor back in, and extends the story with Amanda and Kim by having Kim run off and discover the secret behind a never-before-mentioned shadow ghost. Then there's the nonsense of Amanda's ex-husband showing up and shooting the two of them, and Kim suddenly refusing to walk to wherever Neil is leading them, and finally that long and incredibly hosed up conclusion where Neil introduces Amanda to a field of what appears to be all the dead bodies of the people he killed. I will say that his experimenting with greenscreening and drone filming are promising, and I'm curious to see how he will further develop these in his next movies. Despite the rampant insanity, non-sequitors and self-glorification of Neil's movies, he tends to have kind of positive messages in them, like anti-corruption, anti-oppression, anti-pollution. They're naive messages, but seem sincere. In Pass Thru, his message on illegal immigration seems actually kind of ugly: instead of trying to find a better life for yourself in another country if your own oppresses or threatens you, you should stay there, and fight and work to make your own country better. Which totally ignores economical injustices and the western world's complicitness in inhumane regimes, abusing cheap labor and lack of labor laws, etc. But then, Neil's take on global issues seems kind of superficial at best. His perpetual solution to solving issues of inequality and corruption, eliminating the people in positions of authority, while fun, doesn't really fix the systems that put those people in power.
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Sep 27, 2020 17:28
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Now, even if I was disappointed, Pass Thru was not without its iconic scenes, characters, and actors. Therefore, welcome to this second edition of the Breenies! Best Original Song  One of the songs the Spacekids wrote There's no such thing as calling any one scene in a Neil Breen production "the most jarring and befuddling scene of the movie," but the one where the kids call each other up to talk about the many songs they've written lately and how good they feel about them certainly exists somewhere on that rich and varied spectrum. I assume the scene came about because Neil noticed the guitars in the bedroom they used, and decided he had to incorporate them into the movie as a little character moment. The fact that the kids sound like a pair of aliens trying to convince each other they're humans and it doesn't have anything to do with anything is unfortunate. But drat it, I want to hear one of those songs! The girl was really proud of some of them! Biggest Collection of Cowboy Boots and Saddles  The Professor's In a similar move to the guitars in the background creating a moment in the movie, I assume Neil saw the rows of cowboy boots in the house of whoever he convinced to let him shoot there, and thought: "I can use this." Instead of maybe moving things around a bit so the scene doesn't look like you'd trip over your own feet walking around in it. I am also open to the possibility that the boots and saddles are Neil's, and he's just bragging about owning so many of them. Best Breakout/Freakout Performance  Kathy Corpus (Amanda, Immigrant) Nearly every time we see Amanda, she's freaking out about something. Whether it's Neil tossing rolls of toilet paper, PTSD tunnel hermits making shadow ghosts, or affirming that Kim is her niece, she always gives 110%. It is my honor to give her the Breenie for Best Breakout/Freakout Performance. Amanda's Greatest Fits: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XpeAlVE8dBo Best Villain  Donna T. Rogers (Dana, Smuggler) Donna/Dana starts her every sentence with a big intake of breath and unhinges her jaw to deliver every word like a karate chop. Words and sentence fragments fly off the screen and strike you like ninja stars. If Neil wasn't an omnipotent being from a thousand years in the future, she would've obliterated him in that confrontation. She's my pick for the Best Villain Breenie. Dana's Loudest Hits: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rhLKOZxTd4o I've made a supercut of Pass Thru's finest moments:  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FlBvIa70IpY davidspackage fucked around with this message at 17:57 on Sep 27, 2020 |
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Sep 27, 2020 17:34
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davidspackage posted:
This may be the greatest thing I've ever seen in film
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Sep 27, 2020 23:32
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I cant believe youre doing this to yourself but I am happy for it because this is great. Your IAH...N recap had me howling in bed at 2am last night.
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Sep 28, 2020 00:04
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I only realized yesterday that Pass Thru was actually Neil's 4th movie, not his 3rd. So I did screw up the viewing order, but I've heard that Fateful Findings and Twisted Pair are better, so I do have something to look forward to.
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Sep 28, 2020 06:14
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Of course this guy found a way to use “actually” in the loving credits of his movie.
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Sep 28, 2020 14:43
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davidspackage posted:I only realized yesterday that Pass Thru was actually Neil's 4th movie, not his 3rd. So I did screw up the viewing order, but I've heard that Fateful Findings and Twisted Pair are better, so I do have something to look forward to. Fateful Findings is his masterpiece but Twisted Pair is no slouch either.
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Sep 29, 2020 02:37
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I'm currently checking myself into an urgent care to get heartrate stabilizers for how much this thread owns. e: 
FireWhizzle fucked around with this message at 03:41 on Dec 15, 2021 |
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Dec 15, 2021 03:16
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I was aware of Neil Breen's unique talents via RLM and Best of the Worst, but your deep dive and detailed recaps are simply phenomenal. Hope the OP is able to return to the thread someday!
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Dec 15, 2021 19:58
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I kinda forgot about this thread! It's a lovely busy time at work (especially because my boss hosed up his leg falling off a ladder) but one of these days I'll sit down with the next Breeny installment.
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Dec 15, 2021 20:40
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davidspackage posted:I kinda forgot about this thread! I cannot loving wait. Seriously, this thread has been great.
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Dec 16, 2021 07:48
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davidspackage posted:I kinda forgot about this thread! 
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Dec 17, 2021 07:26
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I'm finishing up the formatting for Fateful Findings and will put it up soon. No, I'm not trying to nudge in a reply or two more so the thread moves to page 2 and doesn't collapse under a new batch of images. *waves glowing hand*
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Dec 22, 2021 09:07
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Recently rewatched Fateful Findings with a bunch of friends and at least one person is deeply traumatized
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Dec 22, 2021 13:14
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davidspackage posted:I'm finishing up the formatting for Fateful Findings and will put it up soon. It's a Breenmass miracle 
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Dec 22, 2021 13:26
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