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Explicit Ills
[Blu-ray]
Blu-ray ALL - America - Peace Arch Home Entertainment Review written by and copyright: Andreas Petersen (10th September 2009). |
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The Film
 There was a time when I was studying film in college. For a year, I took numerous classes on film production, history, and theory. Over time, I got so tired of the pretentious aura behind the film program that I dropped out and switched my major. I did my best to avoid the smarmy side of independent films, latching on to interesting and important ones, films that push the medium forward. With my viewing of "Explicit Ills" however, I felt as though I were thrown into a time machine, and forced to watch a big budget version of a student film. The experience was less nostalgic, and more insufferable. "Explicit Ills", the writing and directorial debut from actor Mark Webber, tells the disjointed stories of a dozen or so citizens of inner city Philadelphia. The stories range from that of a drug dealer (Lou Taylor Pucci) getting involved with one of his customers, to a young boy named Babo (Francisco Burgos) dropping wisdom like it’s nobody’s business, to a couple (Naomi Harris and Tariq Trotter) attempting to open up a smoothie shop, and some other stories that don’t connect as well. The format of the film is as such: A scene of dialogue occurs. Then another scene with two new characters happen. Then another. And another. And so on and so forth. During the beginning of the film, there is no real attempt to tie any of the stories together, and I respected that, even if the dialogue and acting were terrible (more on that later). A while ago, I got tired of the whole idea behind the “we are all connected” movie, and felt separate stories with no narrative connection would prove more interesting than a movie like "Babel" (2006). "Explicit Ills" does this at first, but later on lazily ties things together, such as one character is in the same restaurant as another, or they live on the same street, all of which feel like an incredibly lazy way to tie characters together just in time for a ridiculously cheesy health care message at the end of the movie. When it comes down to the actual content of the movie, I literally found nothing to enjoy. Nothing. In a movie that is primarily dialogue, the characters all felt so forced and flat, as though they spouting off lines they memorized from a script, instead of act as though these are their own words. It’s also hard to say how much the writing factored into the acting, because it must be hard to act to such lackluster dialogue, but at the same time, it must be hard to not emote in the way most of the actors in the film do. The best acting comes from Rosario Dawson and Paul Dano, both actors I admire in other films, seem to phone it in. Everyone else is just terrible. It’s hard to judge kids so harshly, but in a day and age where children actors are getting better and better (see the two main kids in the show "Mad Men" (2007-Present) for example), I’ll chalk it up to terrible directing. This is only parallel to the boring directing and cinematography, something that never gets more creative than having people standing evenly in a shot. In the end, there was literally NOTHING I liked about "Explicit Ills". I hate it when people see a bad movie, and instantly jump the gun saying it is one of the worst movies they have ever seen, but seriously, "Explicit Ills" is one of the worst movies I have ever seen.
Video
"Explicit Ills" is presented in a 2.35:1 high-definition 1080p 24/fps picture with AVC MPEG-4 compression, and the visuals here are a mixed bag. While the colors pop out just as well as any decent Blu-ray should, but the actual film quality was at times distracting. The film was obviously shot for a low budget, and the transfer shows. During most stable shots, especially when in-doors, there is more noise than an upconverted DVD. Overall, I was impressed with the way the colors looked, but put off by the mediocre quality of the film.
Audio
"Explicit Ills" is presented in an English Dolby Digital 5.1 surround sound track with optional English and Spanish subtitles. In this time of Blu-rays, I’m always put off when a movie is released with a non-HD, non-uncompressed audio track. "Explicit Ills" sounds like a regular DVD, at times having dialogue drowned out by loud music. The audio was clear, but nowhere near as clear as pretty much any other Blu-ray I have watched. This sort of movie doesn’t call for a complicated mix, but it would have just been nice to know that the distributors cared a little bit.
Extras
"Explicit Ills" is a fairly bare bones disc, containing only a theatrical trailer which runs for 2 minutes, and a text segment you can scroll through to read about the human rights campaign mentioned in the film. Also included are some start-up bonus trailers for: - "The Mysteries of Pittsburgh" which runs for 2 minutes and 24 seconds. - "JCVD" which runs for 2 minutes and 23 seconds. - "Guns" which runs for 1 minute and 38 seconds. - "The Go-Getter" which runs for 2 minutes and 24 seconds.
Overall
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