The Living End

Araki used to make fumbling anti-dramas about the flotsam of Los Angeles: depressed, ambivalent, uncommitted. This is really different. It's a queer 'couple-on-the-lam' movie, crammed with genre memories but closer to a bent Pierrot le Fou than to anything out of Hollywood. Two body-positive guys, a raunchy hustler and a passive movie critic, fall violently in love and flee a caricatured LA together after the hustler carelessly shoots a cop. Their aimless, fuck-the-world rampage through the void of Middle America has the same weight and impact as a good Act-Up slogan or a solid punk thrash. Groovy.