I’ve been going through some of my older reviews and I thought I should post some for your enjoyment.

First up is a great movie from a few years back called Mysterious Skin. Directed by Greg Araki and staring the great Joseph Gordon levitt.

If I had to pick a favorite film from 2005’s commercial releases, and it’s no use trying to stop me, it’d probably be Gregg Araki’s Mysterious Skin. From the stunning revelation of the opening shot (cereal from the sky) to the catharsis / horror of the final; It’s a strange, gross, brutal and very beautiful story about troubled teenagers in an impoverished town.

This is a genre of movie I always seem to be drawn to, the landscape is stark, the wages are low, the labor is manual. Many of the characters have buried secrets and they all seem possessed of the same brand of forlorn wanderlust. They want to believe in something better than the life they live now. This movie belongs on the same shelf where you keep your copies of Gummo and Tarnation (no, not the trash can). You just know some sort of unholy fucked-up-ness is lurking around the corner.

Araki, who adapted the screenplay from a book of the same name by Scott Heimm, is not a director I’m especially familiar with. I’ve seen only one other of his movies and it didn’t manage to convince me that I needed to see the rest. I want to say he discovered Rose McGowan but I don’t think Doom Generation counts as a discovery (although he probably did discover James “fucked up rabbit costume” Duval but that’s not much of a discovery).

From what I know, this is Araki’s most mainstream work to date; and I don’t mean “mainstream” as a euphemism for “conventional”. Hell, this is certainty less conventional than Doom Generation. The production values are clearly a cut above what he’s done before. A Great score by Harold Budd (assisted by a great track from Sigor Ros), the photography by Steve Gainer (who shot a couple of movies with Larry Clarke) is elegant without ritz-ing up the dank.

As Neil McCormick, Joseph Gordon Levitt is pretty much perfect; the other characters hover around him in awe trying to hide their infatuation. His platonic girlfriend, as he calls her his “partner in crime”; her voice ripe with melodrama; tells us that “Where other people have a heart Neil has only a pit of darkness”.

I recognize the actress Michelle Trachtenberg from TV’s Buffy the Vampire Slayer on which she was kind of annoying. Here, she’s come in to her own. She’s too attractive for this town though and she sticks out like a sore thumb.

As the sidekick Jeffry Lincoln brings a lot to an underwritten role. I’ve never seen this kid before but he made a good impression. He’s got interesting features and delivers his lines like he’s being too sincere but he can’t help it. I also like how he’s utilized here, a lesser film would’ve brushed him off to the side to make room for the more glamorous roles. But Araki keeps him around, and he’s a pivotal agent in the story, bridging the gap between two important characters.

Brady Corbet is the other lead. He’s the awkward asexual counterpoint to Neil, the kind of guy who’d have an unfortunate name like Brian Lackey. Corbet is a relative new-comer and although I didn’t recognize him immediately I’ve actually seen him in a couple of roles (13, 24… I love all the number movies). Brian is in his own way as powerful a force as Neil and I like how his character is off in some parallel story arc uncovering a mystery that we already know the answer to. His actions propel the plot along and the mystery unravels as naturally as it would in real life.

In the beginning of the movie our two leads don’t know each other, but their meeting is imminent. The movie takes it’s time, lets it happen naturally, no need to rush the inevitable. And when it comes secrets are shared, minds are blown, and the future is ambiguous.

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