Sunday, July 1, 9 pm: Point Break (2015)

[sebastian at rolux.org]

This one didn't get its 10% Rotten Tomatoes rating by accident. We won't go as 
far as to call it a misunderstood masterpiece (it probably isn't), but it's a 
refreshingly faithless and sometimes openly blasphemous rework of a somewhat 
sacred original (1), as it transposes Point Break's laid-back, sexy and darkly 
nostalgic beach scenario, along with the simple but effective street-level 
kinetics of its famous chase scenes, into a rather brutal and vertigo-inducing 
21st century setting, in which the surfer gang reappears as a team of extreme 
sports athletes, and the string of bank heists is reimagined as a globe-
spanning series of Inception-style action levels. Not dreams within dreams, 
however, but "challenges": increasingly ambitious attempts to sabotage the 
global economy of fossile capitalism, with only a false memory of Robin Hood  
and the fake prophecies of a legendary "eco-warrior" and "poly-athlete" named 
Ono Ozaki as guidance. For those old enough to remember Marlboro commercials: 
this film looks like the one to end them all, from start to finish, without 
wasting much time or effort on narrative glue that would hold the action pieces 
together. The absence of a plot, along with the relatively modest runtime, once 
14 minutes of closing titles (wtf!) have been removed, is definitely one of the 
film's strongest assets. Dialogue occurs (think beer commercials), but not to 
develop characters or story, but to set a tone, create a mood, outline the 
deeply dystopian vision of a world that could well be our own: one in which 
western eco-consciousness is married with pseudo-eastern esoteric wisdom, 
appetite for destruction with thirst for isotonic beverages, and the downforce 
of traumatic experience with the uplifiting power of positive thinking. It's a 
world in which the rejection of capitalism and its affirmation have become 
"one": an idea of "oneness" that is being referenced throughout the film, seems 
to emanate from deep within the planet on which extractive capitalism is taking 
place, is supposed to increase one's appreciation for the rather nauseating 
"aura" of some of its most extreme topographic features, and appears to fuel 
the protagonists' recurring desire to "let go of oneself" by throwing oneself 
towards its surface from great heights, out of airplanes or off mountain tops, 
usually after mumbling last words to their sponsors, or loved ones, or both.  
The film looks highly professional throughout, yet it makes quite a mess out of 
Katrhyn Bigelow's Point Break, and we wish that more remakes would operate like 
this: care less about maintaining the supposed integrity of the original (which,
to our knowledge, hasn't been withdrawn from circulation, and can be rewatched 
at any time, in the exact same form it took when it was released in 1991), but 
instead, to paraphrase the remake, "surgically identify the perfect line that 
would intersect them extactly where they wanted" with a completely different 
type of cinema, "and in doing so become the first and only to make an earth-sky 
transition" from L.A. heist flick to airborne action drama. It's kind of odd, 
and also a bit of a shame, that director Ericson Core hasn't been offered 
anything of substance since he completed this challenge, but one can still hope 
that one day, someone is going to buy him the rights to something really big. 
North by Northwest would be fantastic, but secretly, we're rooting for Vertigo.

(1) https://piratecinema.org/screenings/20150809

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                                                                          Sunday
                                                                          July 1
                                                                       from 9 pm

                                                     9:30 pm: Point Break (2015)
                                                                    Ericson Core
                                                                          99 min

                                                    Takeaway: Point Break (1991)
                                                                 Kathryn Bigelow
                                                                          4.3 GB

                                            Trailer 1: https://pad.ma/JSV/player
                            Trailer 2: https://pad.ma/edits/pcb:S07E10_Trailer_2
                                            Trailer 3: https://pad.ma/JSY/player

                                                            Pirate Cinema Berlin
                                                                U Kottbusser Tor
                                                           E-mail for directions

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"The first 'Point Break' rode the big kahuna; this one's a wipeout."
                                                                  - Detroit News

"Ericson Core's remake of Kathryn Bigelow's brilliant 1991 thriller [...] is 
mostly an excuse for showcasing impressive stunts."
                                                                - New York Times

"A little more character development, for example, wouldn't hurt."
                                                               - Washington Post

"The story's tragic prologue and Utah's subsequent, regretful mumbling about 
needing structure don't really cut it."
                                                                  - Boston Globe

"A humorless, if photogenic, spin on extreme crime."
                                                            - Hollywood Reporter

"This 'Point Break' removes almost everything that was special about the 1991 
original, and replaces it with a Mountain Dew commercial."
                                                       - San Francisco Chronicle

"A remake that ought not to have been made."
                                                                 - Seattle Times

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