Relaxer

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.

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.

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

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

Through its precise filmmaking and whirlwind script about one loser who never gets off the couch, it's a magnetic, five-senses experience for slacker cinema.

Joel Potrykus's droll world is defined by feats of man-child pettiness, by lazy guys who turn the banalities of daily life into meaningless trials of integrity.

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

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.

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.

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.