seinsucht

I saw this movie last weekend and thought it was the most boring film I'd seen in quite some time. The characters are such self-indulgent whiners with no basis for their angst besides 9/11, an angle that's poorly realized in the script. "I'm so beautiful and have such a great life but I'm so sad. Waaaaah!" It seemed like John Cameron Mitchell sat around a café in New York and thought up a bunch of vignettes without providing his characters any personality whatsoever. If these characters spent more time going to dinner and a movie or reading a book they'd have a lot less to time to torture themselves over their sexual problems. I loved "Hedwig", but "Short Bus" was a huge disappointment. If you really have to see actors having actual sex, rent porn where it's at least erotic.

This is one of the worst "art" films I've ever seen. The story, about a man who contacts his dead lover in a haunted mall, is inconsequential since 40 minutes of its 78 minute running time is a monologue by the lead actor filmed as a straight-on head shot. Any actor, from Olivier to Richard Burton, couldn't sustain an audience's interest over that length of time. This monologue eventually ends with a sex scene between the man and his dead love, but this sequence is filmed so far out of focus that they appear to be two protoplasm trying to divide under a microscope. Other than serving as a replacement for over-the-counter sleep aids, eXXXorcismos has no reason to exist. Seventy-eight minutes never seemed so long!