BUFFALO ’66 – vincent gallo – 4.9 / 10

Vincent Gallo is one charismatic dude. At least, I think he is. I’m not really sure. Everyone seems to treat him as if he is (in his own films anyway) so maybe it’s true. Myself, I don’t see it. I just think he’s a dick. He’s more compelling than your average dick but a dick nonetheless.

Let me briefly recap the film for you: Gallo’s character gets out of prison, kidnaps a girl, forces her to come with him to his parents’ house and pretend she’s his fiancé then abandons her at a hotel while he goes off to kill the place kicker for the Buffalo Bills that cost him a bunch of money ten years ago. Even though he doesn’t end up killing the guy, is there anything in that synopsis that would make you think this was a good and decent person?

And that’s not even taking into account his behavior during all this. He is at best recalcitrant and at worst outright belligerent to his parents and to the girl he kidnapped who, for some reason unbeknownst to me, likes this guy. She likes him even though he kidnapped her and treats her like dirt. To me that doesn’t say something about her character, it says something about how Gallo sees himself. Namely that everyone loves him no matter how he behaves towards them.

This film, while it has some interesting camera angles and compelling asides (not to mention a downright thrilling climax), ends up being little more than one man’s extended love letter to himself. It takes a bold, brave artist to put himself in his own film. It takes a fearless artist to make the character he plays in the film unsympathetic and unlikable. And it takes a borderline delusional one to have everyone therein love him. And that, my friends, is Vincent Gallo of Bufflao '66, brave, fearless and delusional.

THE BROWN BUNNY - vincent gallo - 1.7 / 10

I think it might have been Hitchcock who first dispensed with showing characters going into and out of houses and rooms, assuming that if they just appeared in the room, the audience could fill in the blanks as to how they got there. The last fifty years of film history have proven him correct. But for The Brown Bunny, Vincent Gallo has apparently decided to see if those little in-between moments could become the central focus of a film.

I don't know if that's really what his intention was but that's sure as hell what most of this film is about. There are plenty of long wistful shots of the road or of Gallo's skull-like visage punctuated by a few random dialogue scenes in which people say nothing of any consequence while looking as ugly as Gallo can make them. What exactly the point of this is, I cannot say. But the better question is why do you need a whole film of the same three things (those mentioned above) when just a few minutes would make the same point? I mean, does it say something different to see one road for five minutes or five roads for five minutes each? I don't think it does and, further, I think the latter is just exceptionally boring.

So Gallo (maybe his character has a name but I doubt it, he's just that sort of asshole) travels across the country having various levels of sexual contact with women named after flowers. And, of course, these sexual encounters are unprovoked and come out of nowhere and are shot with a "realism" that is completely incongruent with the unrealistic nature of what is transpiring. No guy who looks like Skeletor and talks with a nasally whine (and repeats what you say right back at you all the time) would get random women to just start kissing on him everywhere he goes.

And that's all without mentioning the infamous blowjob that ends the film. Throughout the road trip, Gallo has flashbacks to times he's spent with his girlfriend Daisy (they're all sexual of course). Finally he reaches California (where Daisy is waiting) and she gives him head. So basically the whole film is this horny dude traveling across the country thinking about the awesome blowjob he's going to get when he comes home. To help blow off some of his sexual tension along the way, he picks up some other women named after flowers and fools around with them. But they're just appetizers for his lovely Daisy. And then he gets the long awaited blowjob and the film ends. Awesome.