Beyond the Black Rainbow (2010) Reviews

• If you are into weird movies (like me), you will probably dig this

  mrnerdbillion2011-11-13

  OK so for convenience, I'll just break it down to the kind of people who will like this movie, vs. those who won't. You pick your category and then you will know if you should see it. Because 1 out of 20 people will love this, and the rest will think it is the worst movie ever. You will love it if: 1: You felt 2001 could have been even slower paced and still be awesome 2: You love really thinky sci-fi even if it doesn't involve people shooting aliens 3: You are crazy in love with 80's hair styles and weird synth music (this movie takes place in 1983, and takes that responsibility VERY seriously) 4: You loved Agent Smith's delivery of lines in The Matrix, and would have liked it if he talked even more slowly and threateningly 5: You think the only good sci-fi is 70's Russian sci-fi You will hate this movie if: 1: You enjoy having more than one person deliver lines over the course of two hours (basically one speaking part in this movie, though the actor does a good job) 2: You don't like when movies are very, very pretentious 3: You like your movies to generally make an effort to make sense (at one point I swear the main guy gets a phone call from Speak-n-Spell) 4: You don't like when movies spend a considerable amount of their running time trying to injure the viewer's senses 5: You like a really good ending (if you look over the reviews, whether people loved or hated this movie everyone agrees the ending was weak) All things considered, I really liked this movie, and so did the people I saw it with. But that's a bunch of film geeks. If you're a weird film geek too, I recommend it.

• The sort of thing you like if you're into that sort of thing

  crownofsprats2012-07-01

  A young girl is held under heavy sedation at the mysterious Arboria institute - the brainchild of Dr. Mercurio Arboria, a pioneer of spheres like "benign pharmacology" and "energy sculpting". She is under the ward of Dr. Barry Nyle, who has taken a special interest in her case. Who is she? Will she escape? You may have read reviews where the critics mercilessly lambaste it, saying stuff like "I have no idea what they were thinking letting this crap into the festival", "vomit-inducing bore", etc. If you are curious whether or not this is worth your time, let me just point a few things out: 1. Yes, it does have a plot, and most (if not all) of the scenes are in service to that plot - in other words, no random visuals simply for the sake of random visuals. Though conceptually weird, everything you see is more or less explainable in some way or another by the internal logic of the film. Anyone who wrote "plot loosely centers around" or anything similar in their review simply didn't understand what was going on. 2. Sure, it's long and quite slow. So if you are not into the film's aesthetic (see trailer), you will probably get bored. But if you are into drony synth scores, atmospheric horror cinematography a la Dario Argento, viscerally creepy characters, and slow-moving psychedelia (if you have, um, access, you should really heed the director's advice before starting to watch this), then it's pretty freakin' awesome. Were you totally blown away by Enter The Void? Then you might like this. 3. It is definitely not sloppy or unfinished in any way. This is a highly-polished, careful piece of work that stays true to its own vision of what it should be. It should be respected for that, if for nothing else. Personally, I am glad I can support cinema like this with my $10. This is definitely not for everyone, but it rewards its fans. It did have a few minor drawbacks, which I suspect are the result of a rather tight budget (it's a debut, and a risky one at that). The pacing itself was fine, but the Arboria institute could have used slightly more variety - a little bit more setting (though what they did with what little they had is amazing), maybe one or two more supporting/incidental characters. Also, it's kind of hard to hear what the characters are saying at times. Somewhat surprising, because the sound design plays a huge role in the film and the person they had did a great job otherwise. So keep your ears open. Finally, the ending *is* a bit on the weak side, although in my opinion it was kind of appropriate even though I can see how people might take issue with it. All in all, looking forward to seeing what Mr. Cosmatos has in store for us next.

• A deliberately paced trip into the dark recesses of the cold, cold '80s

  pope-furniture2012-04-14

  It's the cold, shiny time of 1983. In what looks like a sci-fi future vision via the Kubrickian '60s a utopia is created to try to grant happiness to the masses via a complex regime of meditation, nature, and pharmacology--and absolute isolation in the sterile confines of building that somewhat resembles a fluorescent spaceship crash-landed within the sparse flora of a desolate earth. This utopia has been tainted by evil, and our savior is a near mute, beguiling beauty that must break through harm's way in order to regain some normalcy to her life, a life born to such a world and never matured entirely, and if this task is not achieved could possibly alter the future for us all. This is the topsy-turvy, slowly moving, marvelously rendered, and absolutely bewildering world of Beyond the Black Rainbow. This film, written and directed by Panos Cosmatos (whose daddy made several he-man action films in the actual '80s), turns lo-fi film grain, stark sets, odd camera angles, and eternal pauses in dialogue and action into a strange mosaic that is more of a compilation of what came to define hard science fiction films from the late 1960s to mid 1980s. The film begins like a post-script to "2001", or an early David Cronenberg film mutates into what resembles the "Rising" shorts of Kenneth Anger, and finally settles into the paranoia of Lucas' "THX 1138" mixed again with the mutations of the body that so intrigued Cronenberg's early efforts. This film for a small subset of film buffs, and in conception and tone most resembles the genre shot comp that was 2009's "Amer". Where that film aped sequences from Italian giallos, this seems to be doing the same for American and Russian science movies. This film feels like an experiment, or more to the point an exercise, but it is a worthwhile, rewarding viewing for their trouble in taking the trippy voyage laid out before them. I recommend it to viewers with patience and acceptance of story lines that are mostly devoid of linear narratives (you know who you are). -CP 8/10

• Great

  eli-just2011-11-09

  I saw this film at the AFI film festival. Before the film started the director said "I hope you're as messed up in the head as I was when I made this film." He was very right. The film is not for everybody, nor should it be. It is long, confusing, and I loved every minute of it. It is a film you have to buy into to enjoy, but once you're in you're in for a trip. A brilliant piece of science fiction, and contains one of the scariest scenes I have seen in a long time. The cinematography was also brilliant and some phenomenal lighting. This movie is not for those with a short attention span, but anybody who can sit through 2001, Enter the Void or Stalker should love this film.

• Throw back horror film either clicks and you go with it or it doesn't and you run screaming from the theater

  dbborroughs2011-05-08

  Beyond the Black Rainbow is a very strange film.Its a supreme WTF film. Its a trippy movie that thirty years ago would have been a regular at midnight screenings. Its a visually stunning film with a wonderfully weird soundscape soundtrack. It's a stylistic throw back to the pretentious but cheap horror and science fiction films of the early 1980's (some of which came from Europe). It's full of riffs and references to at least a dozen or so other films... ...it's also pretentious twaddle, way too long and has one of the biggest "you have got to be joking" endings in years. It's an ending that just wrecks pretty much all the good will it may have created (seriously I could feel the audience at the Tribeca Film Festival, which struggled with this film to the bitter end, suddenly break with it at the end). The plot of the film has something to do with a weird clinic in 1983 where a strange man runs strange tests on young woman. What exactly is going on is never fully explained but it has something to do with an experiment years before, about the time the young lady was born. There are theses weird guys in suits, and straitjackets and psychic powers... ...and other than that you're on you're own. On a certain level I like the film. I liked the throw back nature of it. I loved the look of the film (the color scheme is amazing and some of the images are haunting)and the retro electronic score. I liked the enigma and the references (Phantasm, Soylent Green, The Final Programme, 2001 and others). I also liked that we aren't told anything and that we have to piece most of it together. What I don't like is the glacial pace, which makes this a long 110 minutes, Nor do I like the finale which turns the film from head trip to slasher film to the wrong sort of joke in the course of about five minutes. Seriously the next to last bit just wrecked the film. Then again, if you can forgive the out of left field, "oh crap we're out of time so lets sum this up" ending (which is hard since it's kind of a cop out), I'll recommended for the patient and adventurous film goer. If you want form over substance and can allow yourself to get lost in the trippy sound and image you'll probably think it was worth a go...then again there were several walk outs.