Loren Cass Is A Steaming Pile

Have you seen the movie Loren Cass? Well you don’t have to because I did. Why did I do such a thing? I had heard from my various sources that this was something of a “punk” movie; I was hoping of something of a modern Suburbia. Unfortunately what I got was a meandering, vague, unfocused turd of a film.

From what I was able to gather, this movie is about three “disenfranchised” 20-something Floridians who drift about, fuck and drink at people’s houses and all the other normal shit that we all do. But wait! It’s set against the back drop of racial disharmony! Well, at least I think that’s what’s going on. I really couldn’t tell you too much of what’s happening in this movie because the entire thing is so disjointed that it’s really something of endurance challenge to get through it

You have the skinhead guy, and he’s always walking around all angry. Then you have some other kid who meets this chick because her car breaks down and something and they start fucking. Then the director decides to cut to a TV screen with cops standing around and black people rioting, or maybe a blank screen for 30 seconds while you hear a voice ranting about something that doesn’t make any goddamn sense. Then they’ll cut to some house party or something and everyone looks pissed off or emotionally damaged or some other such shit. Occasionally while this entire mess is going in front of you’re eyes you’ll hear a narrator start to say a bunch of vague shit about “isolation” or “desperation” or some other really deep thing that this movie is trying to say.

And who’s doing this narration you might ask? None other than Keith Morris of Circle Jerks fame and Blag Dhalia of the Dwarves! Leftover Crack’s in the movie too! Punk rock!

Let’s talk about Leftover Crack’s role in the movie for a moment: At some point someone in the movie (I have no idea if it was the skinhead guy or the other guy) goes to see Leftover Crack. The entire sequence looks like someone smuggled a video camera into the show and bootlegged it to impress their other 9th grade friends. Half the shots are of the floor. The director cuts in and out of different songs without any real reason, making it some kind of awful audio collage of parts of different songs. The entire sequence is absolutely awful.

Yet somehow this awful, steaming pile has gotten a bunch of praise. Check out what the New York Times had to say:

“Overtly, ingeniously experimental in form, Loren Cass cuts among these three and an assortment of local wasted youth in an elliptical, intuitive manner, alternating listless scenes of opaque introspection and booze-fueled bumming around with sharp bursts of violence. The movie is a tour de force of mood and milieu, marshaling a hundred vivid details of landscape: parking lots, packing crates, shopping carts, peeling wallpaper, broken bottles, cheap salads, over-lighted diners, oily garages.”

What the fuck?! Did the director suck the dude at the Times dick or something? This movie is an entirely masturbatory mess that was made by some shitty no-talent who thinks he’s some kind of visionary “artist.” “… a tour de force of mood and milieu”? Really? What mood exactly? Utter and complete boredom? That’s the only mood I was in when I watched it! I thought this movie was going to end about ten separate times before it actually did. There is absolutely nothing to care about in this movie — not a single character, event or even moment makes this movie at all enjoyable. If I were to sum it up in one sentence it would have to be this: Loren Cass is the worst goddamn movie I’ve ever seen.

-JON J