Rubber: all great films ... contain an important element of no reason

Rubber at IMDB

[first lines]

Lieutenant Chad: In the Steven Spielberg movie E.T., why is the alien brown? No reason. In Love Story, why do the two characters fall madly in love with each other? No reason. In Oliver Stone's JFK, why is the President suddenly assassinated by some stranger? No reason. In the excellent Chain Saw Massacre by Tobe Hooper, why don't we ever see the characters go to the bathroom or wash their hands like people do in real life? Absolutely no reason. Worse, in The Pianist by Polanski, how come this guy has to hide and live like a bum when he plays the piano so well? Once again the answer is, no reason. I could go on for hours with more examples. The list is endless. You probably never gave it a thought, but all great films, without exception, contain an important element of no reason. And you know why? Because life itself is filled with no reason. Why can't we see the air all around us? No reason. Why are we always thinking? No reason. Why do some people love sausages and other people hate sausages? No fucking reason.

Can you handle a film that celebrates "no fucking reason"? If not, skip Rubber. If so, if so, you still might have trouble with this. The film is a comedy-horror that features an explained "living tire" that blows up people's heads, Scanners style. There are strong hints that the story is a story within a story, for example there is an audience that starts to watch the action through binoculars, after the above intro, but never any explanation of anything who, why, or how.

It starts slow and weird and then moves into slow and atmospheric, then gets more enticing. It might seem hard to give a tire character, but the filmmakers succeed.

Let's call it 22PSI out of a recommended 32PSI.

Trailer: on Youtube

Scanners at IMDB

Final thought: the tire even comes across as male