Mondo Moxie: Gummo (1997)
Lonely residents of a tornado-stricken Ohio town wander the deserted landscape trying to fulfill their boring, nihilistic lives. (R, 89 min.)
Showtimes
Monday, May 19, 2025
9:00 PM
MONDO MOXIE is a monthly showcase of fringe, underrated, and weirdo cinema. Tickets are $8/Free for Members.
Harmony Korine’s debut feature is an audacious, lyrical evocation of America’s rural underbelly, and an elegy in the southern-gothic tradition of William Faulkner and William Eggleston. Shot in Korine’s native Nashville—standing in for the tornado-ravaged Xenia, Ohio—the rough-hewn film follows two young friends, Tummler and Solomon, as they ride around town, huffing glue and hunting stray cats, their every local encounter charged with vaudevillian anarchy as well as deep pathos. At once transgressive and empathetic, disturbing and undeniably beautiful, Gummo is a one-of-a-kind portrait of angelic and devilish souls caught in a cultural void, circumscribed by poverty and the depleted, alienated spiritual life of late-twentieth-century America. [Criterion]
Starring: Nick Sutton, Jacob Sewell, Chloë Sevigny, Carisa Glucksman, Linda Manz, Lara Tosh
Director: Harmony Korine
Genre: Drama, Dark Comedy
This series spotlights bold, unflinching films that may challenge traditional storytelling or viewer comfort.
**Viewer discretion advised for mature themes and imagery.**
"It's an underground wonder."
— Moira Sullivan, FilmFestivals.com
"A tragic satire – blackly funny, often disturbing, unthinkably sad."
— Joel Copling, Spectrum Culture
"It is a film experience like no other, a movie for which the word original was clearly invented for."
— Dustin Putman, TheFilmFile.com
"A film of challenge that requires a viewer to go beyond passive viewing into very actively experiencing the film."
— Richard Propes, TheIndependentCritic.com
"The unyielding and uncomfortable manner in which Gummo grapples with human diversity has also allowed it to linger long in the memory."
— David Jenkins, Little White Lies
"Problematic, troubling, dangerous even, but breathtakingly original, and absolutely true to the times. The cutting edge doesn't get any sharper than this."
— Tom Charity, Time Out
"The purpose of the film is seemingly to expose movie goers to an existence that they may otherwise pretend does not exist, while at the same time eliciting a reaction of discomfort. In that arena its a resounding success..."
— Joshua Ryan, FandomWire
"Gummo is likely to offend and shock -- cat lovers should be especially warned -- and its portrayal of small-town nihilism and craziness is disturbingly weird, but it is an an accomplished and wholly original piece of filmmaking."
— David Stratton, At the Movies (Australia)
"It is obvious that Korine meticulously controlled every aspect of the film to his satisfaction. This included a dazzling manipulation of aesthetic features and postmodern strategies—including pastiche, the fragmentation of narrative structure and the breakdown of the distinction between ‘high' and ‘low' culture. By rejecting the use of a coherent plot, Korine allowed no rhythm or pace to eventuate, continually jolting the audience and forcing them to question the film that they are viewing."
— Fergus Grealy, Senses of Cinema
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