Nowhere (1997)

I'm 70 years old and think this film is an unrecognized masterpiece. For full disclosure, I am Gay so that may account for part of my admiration. In any event, it's a tantalizing, very sensual film. Not for all tastes of course and it would frighten some immature minds and presents some possibly-dangerous ideas in the wrong "hands." But so did Gone with The Wind for that matter. I had to watch it twice to try and understand some aspects that most will not "get." Perhaps having dropped acid back in the day did help my "getting" at least some of the film's possible meanings." One might be tempted to draw some comparisons to Penelope Spheeris' The Decline of Western Civilization which is "an American documentary film filmed through 1979 and 1980Â…" about the Los Angeles punk rock scene.

Fmovies: Man, I love trash! Serve me up Russ Meyer, Roger Corman, Ed Wood, Psych-Out, Rock'n'Roll High School or Angel, Angel, Down We Go and I'm a happy camper. But it's not so easy to make successful SELF CONSCIOUS trash. Troma try it and rarely succeed. The Chiodo brothers pulled it off with Killer Klowns from Outer Space, but Gregg Araki not only succeeds with Nowhere but takes it to the next level. Nowhere is the 90s Beyond The Valley Of The Dolls and then some. I can't even begin to tell you how cool this movie is! Look at the sensational cast which includes the debut of Mena Suvari, a couple of Bradys and best of all the wonderful find of Sarah Lassez. Add a spot on soundtrack of Sonic Youth, Elastica, JAMC, Portishead and Stacey Q(!) Plus Gibby from the Butthole Surfers, John Ritter playing a televangelist, an alien with a zap gun and Throbbing Gristle jokes! What more can you wish for?

The future is NOW, and Nowhere is THE place to be.

Nowhere is weirdly surrealistic and weirdly cool. I also enjoyed all the young, now-famous, actors in this film. This is all I really wanted to say about the film, however, since I need more lines, I'll just say certain aspects of the movie are alternately funny, sad, strange and still relevant today. It's hard to 'date' this movie. I'm betting twenty or thirty years from now, it will still seem up-to-date and probably still relevant. James Duval is always good and Rachel True is just beautiful. She's also a very powerful actress, turning in an excellent performance here. The whole weird, detached, alienated tone of the film made it entirely enjoyable.

Nowhere fmovies. Like an ancient poem the ideas, meaning and even aspects of the plot are left up to interpretation. This is a movie for anyone who has ever been so bored with his or current situation that he or she can just lay back and dream up a world of love, death,sex, drugs and aliens abductions and the end of the all life as we know it. Each character is kind one sided as we see the world through the eyes of Dark, the aptly named lead; these are not representations of all teens but only the annoying stereotypes as they relate to Dark's life. so taking all that in to account this is a great movie to share with friends (and confuse the heck out of them) or to watch when you're feeling a little bored yourself. With sets painted wild colors and out of place visuals it's clear that for Dark-life is but a dream.

Think of it as "Earth Girls are Easy" meets "Eraserhead."

Don't believe the people who have written that this film is about "typical adolescent experiences." It represents a certain SEGMENT of kids, but they are by no means typical of ALL kids.

And frankly, it's dated already.

Anyhow, there's something hypnotic about watching shallow, self-absorbed, assholic kind of people taking drugs, having sex and having interesting hallucinations, but don't expect a point or a plot. Except maybe that the point is there IS no point, which is boring, because it's been done so many times.

And I would love to know why the hell Dark is the only one who sees the Alien. Or why he sees the Alien at all.

Or maybe that's too much to ask for in this gleefully debauched little flick. Maybe worth watching just for the whole stupidity of it all, but for God's sake, don't rent. Not worth the $4.50

This, along with "The Doom Generation", is one of my many favorite films. I remember showing this to quite a few people at different times, and two things seem to upset people the most: the bisexuality/homoeroticism and the loads of sex scenes that, depending on the scene, serve various purposes. One person I watched it with (she thought she was an intellectual and felt it was beneath her to sit through it) said there was no way this film could be saying anything important and called it a "porno movie". Naturally, since this film shows not one exposed genital organ or even a bare female breast, her argument was ridiculous. As for the homosexual things that go on in the film, I think that that makes people upset because it depicts these characters as human beings with emotions (which homosexuals and bisexuals are) and/or because it turns them on. I love this movie for many reasons. It's very schizophrenic, always going back and forth from harsh realities to gutbusting humor, and sometimes managing to blend them together in a strange and equal mix. It seems that Gregg Araki was trying to defy expectations of him here, and that he was trying not to make a film easily judged as "exploitation". This movie has more sex scenes than "The Doom Generation", but they are not explicit at all. The reasons these scenes are erotic and entertaining is because Araki works with the characters and dialogue to make the sex interesting without showing any nudity other than the occasional male butt. Also, where there would be so many people to call "The Doom Generation" garbage for its constant use of obvious profanities, the dialogue in "Nowhere", if you'll notice, was done without hardly any cusswords, unless you count the myriad of VERY creative slang terms poured all throughout. And as for the gore, there's one big scene and one brief, minor scene. What I find amazing is that even with these differences, "Nowhere" is no less fascinating and brutally effective than "The Doom Generation". I love them both, and, no matter how many disagree, I believe Araki is a very important, skillful, and versatile cinematic artist. I've decided to include no spoilers, but I do want to add one more thing: If you don't see any meaning to this, that still doesn't mean that it is completely meaningless and without a point.