2 Best Releases Starring Dustin Nguyen

“A heterosexual movie by Gregg Araki,” The Doom Generation’s opening credits read. It’s the first of many jokes for Araki’s first film with a crew, shot for $1 million in January of 1994. None of the humor is apathetic, though. It’s like its characters in that way: caustic, yes, even to a fault at points. But the kids at the center of The Doom Generation aren’t apathetic, at least not at the beginning. They’re a conceptual trio of id, ego, and superego filtered through Araki’s lens to serve the narrative, an anti-American mind due to their identities and personal lives. But as they realize their selves individually and as a whole, their heterosexual, monogamous environment relegates them to sameness.  Continue Reading →

Divinity disappoints while The Accidental Getaway Driver surprises in this selection of genre offerings from the fest. No amount of recasting could have possibly saved Eddie Alcazar's Divinity from its state of terminal confusion. That's a shame considering the number of the relatively famous names involved. They include, most mystifying of all, executive producer Steven Soderbergh.  A bewildering stew of sci-fi, social commentary, and general weirdness, the title refers to a drug developed by renowned scientist Sterling Perce (Scott Bakula) to prevent death. Ironically, he died before completing his work. Thankfully (?), his son Jaxxon (Stephen Dorff) solved the formula and sold it to the masses. It appears to do the job of forestalling death but with an unexpected side effect--the inability to reproduce.  Continue Reading →