The Fourth Dimension (Harmony Korine, Alexei Fedorchenko & Jan Kwiecinski, 2012)

7.5/10
Eddy Moretti is a producer for Vice Films, an off-shoot of Vice Magazine, and backers of the triptych film collectively called The Fourth Dimension. Moretti wrote a "creative brief", a sort of manifesto that the three filmmakers involved must follow when making their segments. An obvious take-off of Dogme 95, it contains 50 "rules" ranging from the broad ("we must never know the truth") to the silly ("a stuffed animal needs to make an appearance").
Harmony Korine, no stranger to manifestos himself, directs the first segment, The Lotus Community Workshop starring Val Kilmer. Kilmer plays an extremely exaggerated version of himself, a motivational speaker who preaches about cotton candy and "awesome secrets" at a neon-lit rec room to lower class devotees. This is intercut with scenes of Kilmer and his girlfriend Rachel (played by Korine's wife), looking about 16 to his 40ish. They ride bikes, rent video games, swim, and play the recorder. It's absolutely insane, and Kilmer is so hilariously over the top it's a performance that has to be seen to be believed. It's probably the most outwardly comedic thing I've seen from Korine, though still retaining his signature sardonic critique of middle America. Worth the trip alone.
The other two films can't possibly live up to Lotus' standards, even though they're interesting in their own right. Alexei Fedorchenko directs Cronoeye, about an old man named Grigoriy who designs a head-mounted camera that allows the viewer to see images from the past, though never from the perspective Grigoriy would like (a shot of Jesus' birth is, to Grigoriy's frustration, "shot" from baby Jesus' perspective, so all we see is a donkey licking the "camera"). This narrative is interwoven with a dancer in the apartment above Grigoriy and though the short has some interesting moments, it's not altogether a success.
The final film is Jan Kwiecinski's Fawns, about four ultra-hipster looking Polish twentysomethings, running amok in what appears to be a deserted, dystopian Poland (air raid sirens are constantly heard and the roads are abandoned, with something about flooding briefly mentioned). Plot threads emerge, with one member of the group getting separated from the others and the remaining three agonizing over whether or not to rescue the disabled daughter of the farmer they shot from the oncoming floods. I've never seen an Aki Kaurismaki Leningrad Cowboys movie, but I imagine it to be somewhat similar to this short. Despite a variety of loose ends, it was pretty good.
I'm not sure how closely the films relate to the manifesto in the end (not very, I'd imagine) and they certainly don't relate to one another except in the most superficial ways, but all three are still interesting and thought-provoking, with Korine's the major standout of the pack.