Jeremy_Urquhart

In 1963, inside a Japanese arthouse cinema, the directors of An Eater were like, "Isn't it crazy how food sometimes looks like people?" And then the crowd of people assembled there responded, "What?" And the directors said, "Hear us out," and they showed this 23-minute-long short film, but it's 10 minutes of people eating for the first half. And the people kept saying, "What?" But then the directors got to the food humans part. And things got weird. And the people kept saying, "What?" but deep down, they almost knew what the directors were going for. A couple of people even dug how the whole thing successfully conveyed a surreal/dreamlike/nightmarish feeling after it stopped messing around with all those scenes of people eating in absolute silence, but they didn't admit it to anyone. None of the people knew what to make of the final five minutes, though. Neither did the directors, but they didn't admit it to anyone.

I have it on good authority that this really happened.

I like to try and write reviews as if there's a person reading who doesn't know anything about the movie (this does assume there is a person reading in the first place, but what can you do?). I'm going to break rules for Cade: The Tortured Crossing and Neil Breen in general. This is his sixth movie, and though I've seen the five others (roughly between 2016 and 2019), I never really reviewed any of them. They're all hard to review and comprehend, but usually in fun ways.

He's become a bit self-aware here, though. There was this singular vision found in at least his first four movies that resulted in movies that felt entirely imcompetent, but they were also absorbing and packed with unintentional comedy. Or maybe it was intentional. His better - or worse - films rode the line. Cade: The Tortured Crossing might technically be better, because he has to be self-aware at this point, and he plays into at least a couple of meme-worthy moments from his past movies here, trying to be part of the joke. And Breen was wonderful because he didn't seem willing to be part of the joke before, or he raised a lot of doubt about how self-aware he could've been. His willingness to keep being Neil Breen was what had me coming back, again and again.

Cade: The Tortured Crossing is fun for about 15 to 20 minutes, even with the feeling that Breen was trying to make something funny, instead of making an utterly bizarre but heartfelt drama. But maybe that awareness was what made the rest of the movie really quite dull. That, or this being the first Neil Breen movie I watched on my own was what tanked the experience. If you can watch this with one or more like-minded individuals, I'm sure it helps, as being more social and enduring the messiness with one or more people seemed to help me at least a little with his other five movies.

Anyway, for the first time, I'm not really excited for whatever Neil Breen's next movie is. It sucks to admit, but this was only funny for a little while, and then it started to just feel like the joke was on me for watching almost 100 minutes of this.

I like some Metallica, but not enough to ever really want to see them live. But listening to a concert film of theirs, especially one done with a symphony? It sounded interesting, and I needed almost three hours of music to listen to.

And it was pretty interesting. Some of it was a bit overblown or maybe gimmicky, but it was energizing for someone who had to type a lot of words, so maybe metal (mild/old-school or otherwise) will be something I try having on in the background a little more while working. Can't hurt, and it probably beats lyric-heavy folk for work music (sorry, Joni Mitchell, Bob Dylan, and Neil Young).