Get Your Reps In: “Speed Racer” Zooms Past the Haters

Speed Racer (2008)

It’s challenging for a movie to become a genuine reclamation project in the 21st century—what with instantly metabolized film opinions and counter-opinions, not to mention studios averse to risk in the first place. But don’t underestimate Speed Racer (which is also the moral of Speed Racer). The Wachowskis’ 2008 follow-up to The Matrix trilogy flopped on arrival. But anyone having a Speed Racer conversation in the years since has almost certainly focused on the directors’ unbounded vision for adapting the 1960s manga. Five years after it tanked with critics and ticket buyers, Lana Wachowski described Speed Racer as an “assault [on] every single modern aesthetic,” making it an ideal capstone to Cinemagic’s “Cinemaximalism” series on Thursday, April 3. Behold the racing stripes and lipstick so red they’d make Technicolor blush, and live-action performances (by almost everyone but star Emile Hirsch) reaching for the transcendently unrestrained hysteria of action anime. Truly, at any given moment in Speed Racer, you don’t know when a montage might begin by shoving the completed scene off any edge of the frame. Cinemagic, April 3.

Also Playing:

Academy: Clue (1985), April 2 and 3. Risky Business (1983), April 2 and 3. Deep Red (1975), April 2 and 3. The Big Lebowski (1998), April 4-10. The Conversation (1974), April 4-10. Cinema 21: Starship Troopers (1997), April 2. No Country for Old Men (2007), April 4 and 5. Princess Mononoke (1998), April 4-6. Fargo (1996), April 5. Cinemagic: Waterworld (1995), April 2. Moulin Rouge! (2001), April 2. 300 (2006), April 3. The Kindred (1987) on VHS, April 4. Purple Rain (1984), April 4, 5 and 8. Boogie Nights (1997), April 5. True Stories (1986), April 6 and 8. Belly (1998), April 6 and 7. Poetic Justice (1993), April 6 and 7. Clinton: Pom Poko (1994), April 5. The Rocky Horror Picture Show (1975), April 5. Hollywood: Tremors (1990), April 4. Princess Mononoke (1998), April 4-6 and 8. Lonely Are the Brave (1962), April 4 and 5. Star Trek: First Contact (1996), April 5. Tekkonkinkreet (2006), April 6. Girls Town (1996), April 7. Timecop (1994), April 7. Shaolin vs. Lama (1983), April 8. Tomorrow: The Fast and the Furious (2001), The Fast and the Furious: Tokyo Drift (2006), and F9 (2021) triple feature, April 5. Random Harvest (1942), April 6. The Truman Show (1998), April 6.