# combined review of spike and jarmusch on a new desperate trend in what might be called "take the money and limp" film making: spike lee's squalid "oldboy" rehash and the tragically pathetic "only lovers left alive" by jim jarmusch consider flicks as the ongoing (bloodless) death of the inexorable processes of amerika - no change there then in which the hard wired simultaneity of a global turbo-bandit financial system flattens out all scenes all emotion; the result being its internal images are family friendly parodies of furniture-chewing talkies from 60's france except less visually appealing - with an unfortunate innate ability to be displayed as a projected backdrop in some dingy alt.muzak nite club with the sound off (not that any of the listless dancing zombies notice) spike lee's oldboy ripoff is straight wack "yo" - in the same way that jarmusch's lovers seem as artificially lively as a pair of the taxidermist stuffed hip hooked up to a tesla coil tilda has never looked so wan fleeting and undernourished and thor's adopted brother never more emaciated as a badly written character in need of a burger and a haircut as though posing around like jim morrison high on designer anorexigenics* while aimlessly flopping about a dusty room hung with name dropping portraits of the cultural dead is enough - when in fact it's merely the next new default extreme **+** warning: this flick produces side effects including: addiction tachycardia and hypertension in characters / viewers constantly half-expecting 'action!' where there is none despite claims to the contrary both slide shows employ zero cinematography; there's little to see of genuine interest and none of it means anything too significant - at least from the ultra-constricting viewpoints of the hollow egotists which haunt them as though shots people and objects appear on screen without introduction and with only the flimsiest of potted histories to explain away the idle parasitic chatter and microscopic psychological motivations while john brolin often has some idea of what ey thinks ir's doing - despite repeatedly hammering in every dull dramatic nail with the useless spent force of someone who the plot has lost - the overall lack of positive spirited direction by either lee or jarmusch is astounding; each film is apathetically authored to the point of being entirely arbitrary as though made by borderline suicidal prozac fuelled robots stuck on automatic these two films are so laughably disappointing one could consider them newly emergent psychological forms of 'naturally unnaturally' occurring viewer antidote to big budget 'epic' filmmaking; not only cinematic spaces in which nothing much happens - but which passively-aggressively seek to prevent all movement from occurring in jarmusch's far more potentially engaging "the limits of control" (2009) swinton's 'blonde' character-caricature states 'the best movies are those in which nothing happens'; something only true however if the movie your in isn't a conceptual corpse from the outset and only proceeds to stink more during the lazy duration of its embarrassing public display of course the first flick to proudly display its total half-assed commitment to complete existential inactivity was "tequila sunrise" starring mel 'excuse me' gibson; no lie the single damp explosion at the end is the only thing that happens for 115 turgid minutes // video here // republic of bob