…is that it’s “great,” or so says one fellow. Another calls it “enormously entertaining and satisfying, with really strong work from Matt Damon and (especially) Chris Tucker.”

My first viewing of Gregg Araki‘s The Doom Generation happened at Sundance ’95 — 28 years ago and change.

Three months later I was working under Andy Olstein and the late Robert Sam Anson at Los Angeles magazine, and we’d all decided to run a big-spread piece about the new neo-noir fashion in movies (The Usual Suspects, Natural Born Killers, Leaving Las Vegas, the year-old Pulp Fiction, Araki’s film). I was the designated talent wrangler, and so I persuaded Araki, Bryan Singer, Benicio del Toro, Elizabeth Shue, Lara Flynn Boyle and Don Murphy to pose for photos at Smashbox.

I mainly remember the sploogey sexual stuff in Araki’s film, which I rather liked or was at least aroused by. It was basically a kind of hit-and-miss, hot-and-heavy, three-way relationship thing between Rose McGowan, James Duval and Jonathon Schaech. (An actual menage a trois happens toward the end with McGowan being love-muscled by both guys simultaneously.) The plot involved felonies and being chased around Los Angeles. If you want the chapter and verse, read the Wiki synopsis. Heidi Fleiss (whom I had done a fair amount of reporting about for Entertainment Weekly) has a cameo.

Tagline: “A Heterosexual Movie by Gregg Araki.”

McGowan was 21 or thereabouts during filming. On 9.5.23 she’ll hit the big five-oh.

A new 4K Bluray of a director’s cut will pop sometime in mid April or thereabouts. The NYC premiere will happen on April 6 at BAM. the following day it will begin shoewing at Manhattan’s IFC theatre; other bookings will follow in other cities.

Jean Pierre and Luc Dardennes‘ Tori and Lokita is a watchable but moderately dull heart-and-compassion film about a typical Dardnennes subject — i.e., young underdog characters who are misunderstood by or at odds with mainstream Belgian society.

It’s a tragic immigration drama set near Liege, Belgium, about a pair of young, unrelated African kids (Pablo Schils as the younger Tori, Mbundu Joely as the teenaged Lokita) who get exploited and kicked around and treated cruelly by drug-dealing wolves.

It ends sadly and shockingly. I didn’t melt down but I felt it. The Cannes snobs did cartwheels in the lobby, but it’s just moderately okay.

The Dardennes have always had this plain, unaffected directing style — just point, shoot and watch. Believable characters, realistic dialogue, no musical score. Straight-up realism, take or leave. I’ve always emerged from their films saying “yup, that was a good, honest film” but I’ve never really been knocked flat. Because their plain-and-straight signature only penetrates so far. In my case at least.

If you know the Dardennes and how their films tend to play, Tori and Lokita feels very familiar You can’t help feeling sorry for these kids, but desperate immigrants have been getting kicked around and exploited for centuries, haven’t they? Life can be heartless for have-nots.

Tori and Lokita had its big debut in Cannes ten months ago. It opened in Europe last fall, and was available on Bluray & streaming late last October. Sideshow and Janus Film will give it a limited opening stateside on 3.24.23.