Episode 34: Relaxer / A Scanner Darkly / The Beach Bum / Holy Motors

| Original Score: 10/100 | Sep 14, 2021

This Millennial slacker Waiting for Godot has a few more tricks up its sleeve, but still feels like an overstretched stunt-though admittedly, some have found Relaxer as rewarding as it is undeniably offbeat.

| Oct 21, 2020

If you can sit and watch someone play a video game on a 1999 couch covered in sweat and spoiled milk for 91 minutes and try to gather a deeper meaning of isolation and social regression, it may be for you.

| Feb 27, 2020

That Potrykus is able to challenge us so deeply with such a low budget and limited resources makes Relaxer all the more impressive and essential.

| Feb 26, 2020

Potrykus found innumerable ways to render cinematic the film's single location, a grungy Michigan apartment where a childlike slacker spends months trying to reach the fabled 257th level of Pac-Man.

| Dec 30, 2019

What's impressive is that, though it doesn't always achieve its aims, the film never gets dull despite the fact that we spend all of it watching a man on a couch.

| Original Score: 3/5 | Dec 23, 2019

Relaxer is a sickening, strangely funny takedown of the capitalistic system that's taking over the world.

| Original Score: 4.5/5 | Oct 9, 2019

Is it possible for a movie to smell bad? Because Relaxer stinks. And I don't mean it pejoratively. The stench oozes from the sweaty pores of the man-child protagonist.

| Original Score: 3.5/5 | Jul 16, 2019

There's a lightness and absurdity to the whole film...Relaxer is a bold, surprisingly meditative and unforgettable midnight movie.

| Original Score: 4/5 | Jun 3, 2019

It's endearing, hilarious, and disgusting all at once, before a whiff of a finale that's bold and cosmic.

| Original Score: 5/5 | Apr 8, 2019

As if Harold Pinter and Samuel Beckett were fed a diet of Nintendo and pizza.

| Original Score: 3.75/5 | Apr 3, 2019

Some may find this movie unbearable; yet there's a place for pictures that push us to the limits of forbearance. Sometimes, even the loathsome have stories worth telling.

| Mar 28, 2019

The endurance of moviegoers will no doubt be tested as much as that of the protagonist, whose hopeless predicament spirals into surreal madness.

| Mar 22, 2019

I can't honestly recommend Relaxer to most readers, but if you like this kind of thing, you'll probably love it.

| Original Score: 3.5/4 | Mar 22, 2019

I have a feeling that Relaxer is the kind of movie you're supposed to watch while wasted. Watching it sober is an endurance test.

| Original Score: 1.5/4 | Mar 21, 2019

Joel Potrykus has created a film that is bizarre, grotesque, and defiant but maintains a pace that keeps the unusual events always oddly hilarious and captivating.

| Original Score: 3.5/5 | Mar 21, 2019

Director Joel Potrykus always seemed to have a penchant for foul man-children, but Relaxer is his magnum opus of slackerdom.

| Original Score: 5.5/10 | Mar 21, 2019

A Midnight Movie-style brain bleeder that still retains a sense of humor. It's no improvement on "Buzzard," but there's a clear escalation of directorial bravery that's interesting to watch unfold.

| Original Score: B | Mar 21, 2019

For a movie that's often embarrassingly funny-with its absurdist hangout dialogue, posturing nobodies, and perfectly timed spews-Relaxer is fundamentally sad.

| Original Score: B+ | Mar 20, 2019

We get eighty-minutes of empty promises before ten-minutes of off-the-wall live wire insanity fulfill what we were conditioned to accept wouldn't come. Too little, too late.

| Original Score: 5/10 | Mar 19, 2019