peteg's blog - noise - movies - 2018 12 07 Bodied

Bodied

Fri, Dec 07, 2018./noise/movies | Link

Battle rap! On the strength of a warm review by Jeannette Catsoulis. It's something of a guilty pleasure: a portrayal of the spaces where that intense reptilian need (some feel) to insult the living bejesus out of the bloke (almost always) opposite can be indulged in relative but possibly fallacious safety. Nothing is sacred any more — feel free to climb over the bodies of your mates! — until, of course, it is. There are some sharp jabs at cultural appropriation, the general irrelevancy of the academic humanities (at least those of liberal Berkeley), intolerance of intolerance, misogyny/chivalry, gangstas, cluelessness, the L.A. scene; and yet it plays a lot safer than Bamboozled. Director Joseph Kahn is Korean and has done a bazillion music videos, so perhaps the parallel is Fincher's Fight Club. His other features are poorly rated at IMDB. The cinematography and effects are pretty good, evoking an unreal AR vibe, like tourists will soon experience everywhere. I missed loads of refs for either generational or trans-Pacific reasons, or maybe I do need the closed captions. Financed by YouTube, Eminem produced; I'm pretty sure I've seen 8 Mile (Kim Bassinger played his mum) but it's not on the log.

Jake Cole. Matt Zoller Seitz. André Hereford.