I'm surprised Larry Clark isn't one of the most sought-after directors in the industry. If you've seen 'Kids' you know that he captures a certain thing in actors that makes his movies unique. He really takes method acting to another level and tells the actors to just do whatever comes naturally. The characters in all his movies seem very free to do or say what they feel, like people you know in real life. Whether of not that fits into the "Hollywood" style of formulaic, script-seems-like-it-was-written-by-a-computer-program moviemaking, is dependent on the actors' performances. The end result is that his movies are very much like documentaries. His films can be compared to 'Crumb', 'Waiting for Guffman', or even films by Robert Altman, where the camera is an 'observer' from afar capturing the scene without being intrusive. Clark doesn't try to control every frame of the movie, unlike so many blockbuster Hollywood films (The Matrix, Fight Club, Gladiator etc.) Sure, this movie is just another low-budget sci-fi knockoff in its script and its story, but Larry Clark took that worthless made-for-cable script and breathed life into it by giving the actors a quality that no other movie of this type ever had. The only other director I know of who does this successfully is John Carpenter. I'm glad Larry has made this, a science fiction movie that defies the genre.
