Trash Humpers (2009)

WHO: Harmony Korine directed this.

WHAT: I'm not exactly sure, I must say. I didn't go out of my way to see this film when it was in theatres a few years back, so I don't really know if it's an "empty provocation" or a "low-caste landscape study of the Deep South, a kind of response to William Eggleston's work refracted through notably different aesthetic and political lenses", as Mike D'Angelo and Michael Sicinski said in the same article in 2010.

WHERE/WHEN: At the Roxie tonight only at 11:45.

WHY: Though I skipped Trash Humpers at the Roxie and elsewhere the first time around, I can't deny that seeing John Waters's #1 movie of 2013 Spring Breakers earlier this year but has made me interested in filling in my Harmony Korine gaps. And though I never would have expected it, it's screening tonight as the official/unofficial capper to a pair of triple-bills made up entirely of 35mm prints of films I've never seen.

Last month's edition of Jesse Hawthorne Ficks's MiDNiTES FOR MANiACS was the first time I partook in the new format for this long-standing movie marathon. After watching The Lone Ranger on glorious 35mm with a couple hundred fans and skeptics (many of whom I think were won over), the Castro began filling with more bodies, come for the 9:30 showing of another Johnny Depp Western, Dead Man, which was a truly awesome experience on that big screen. When that was over, a few dozen of us made the the 15-minute walk from Castro Street to 16th and Valencia, where the Roxie ticket-taker gave any of us presenting our ticket from that night's Castro show a discount on the midnight screening of Alex Cox's Walker. I didn't do a survey, but I suspect there may have been more people there who hadn't taken in the Depp films that evening than those who had.

Tonight's is a kind of replay of that, except with a different set of films of course. In this case Jodie Foster's 1995 Home For the Holidays and the most surprisingly controversial Christmas movie of the season, the 2003 Love Actually screen at 7:15 and 9:15 respectively at the Castro, giving enough time for audiences to make their way (the 33-Stanyan bus line is another option for those who only like walking a few blocks) to the Roxie in time for Trash Humpers. 

I haven't seen any of the three films but Korine seems like the most extreme "odd one out" I've ever been aware of Ficks programming in one of his triple-bills. Though it sound like an "odd one out" on just about any triple-bill imaginable. Here's another you don't have to imagine: the Roxie is showing a completely different pairing at 7:30 and 9:30: Grindhouse Releasing 35mm prints of Gone With the Pope and An American Hippie in Israel. Though Trash Humpers is not actually connected to that double-bill and requires a separate admission ticket, you can look at it as three movies for the price of two.

HOW: All five movies screening at the Castro and the "Big" Roxie tonight will show on 35mm prints.