3/31/14: When One Door Closes…

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Arthur Kennedy, bankruptcy, Beau Bridges, boat-building, cinema, dramas, film reviews, films, independent films, indie dramas, John David Coles, Kate Reid, Kathy Bates, Kevin J. O'Connor, magical-realism, Maine, Mary Louise Parker, Michael Lewis, movie-of-the-week, Movies, Owen Coughlin, Signs of Life, TV director, Vincent D'Onofrio

It’s a fact of life, for better or worse, that nothing really stays the same for very long. This can be a good thing, of course, because it means that all bad things must someday end: dictatorships, prejudices, awful politicians, terrible people…if nothing else, no human can live forever (yet) and the bad ones, like the good ones, must one day go. On the other hand, this constant state of flux means that none of the good things will stay around forever, either: happiness, wealth, health, youth, your favorite band or even the planet Earth…these may all be here today but, as sure as the sun currently rises and sets, there will be a time when they’re not around any more. We all must deal with changes like this: how we deal with these changes, however, is what makes all of us unique. John David Coles’ Signs of Life examines what happens when, in effect, life closes one door…and opens another.

Owen Coughlin (Arthur Kennedy) owns a small ship-building business in a small Maine town, a business which employs many of the local residents, including John Alder (Beau Bridges), brothers Daryl and Joey Monahan (Vincent D’Onofrio and Michael Lewis), Eddie Johnson (Kevin J. O’Connor) and Mrs. Wrangway (Kate Reid). Business has not been good and Coughlin has just sold his last ever boat to a large family of Italian fishermen. “We did a good job…now we’re out of business. No one wants what we’re building,” he tells his employees, shoulders slumped in defeat. This is the end of an era, as well as a way of life, and everyone knows it.

After the bombshell drops, Coughlin’s employees are left scrambling to pick up the pieces of their lives. Best friends Daryl and Eddie want to head out to Florida to become salvage divers (despite Eddie’s inability to swim), second-in-command John has several daughters and a very pregnant wife (Kathy Bates) who’ll deliver another one any day now and poor Mrs. Wrangway just wants to make sure that this doesn’t destroy old Owen. As often happens, there are complications everywhere they look: Daryl’s brother is mentally impaired and relies on Daryl to take care of him, Eddie’s girlfriend Charlotte (Mary Louise Parker) absolutely does not want him to leave, and John has just stolen a wad of cash from his shitty, condescending brother-in-law Ernie (Ralph Williams). As Coughlin experiences a complete breakdown, feeling all of his years of hard work unraveling into nothing, he’s pestered by a persistent stranger, played by Will Patton, a stranger that may just hold the key to Owen’s past (and future). “Looks like you’re done building boats,” he laconically tells Owen. But is he? Do we ever really give up our passions, even if they no longer work for us?

Signs of Life, for the most part, bears all of the indicators of a Hallmark Movie of the Week: gauzy, misty cinematography; large, ensemble cast filled with familiar faces; quiet, pensive mood; bucolic setting; relationship/family struggles; the past intruding into the present. Truth be told, Signs of Life is rarely, if ever an original film, although that doesn’t prevent it from being a decent film. The biggest problem, ultimately, is that the film comes across as relatively low-stakes, despite the obligatory “racing to save a loved one from danger” scenes. The film’s pace is so measured and relatively even that it has the tendency to lull one into a semi-aware state: there’s nothing happening here that really needs to be thought about, merely experienced. All of the old familiar beats are here: relationship struggles (Eddie vs Charlotte), familial struggles (John vs Mary Beth), struggles with the past (Owen vs the stranger), fraternal conflict (Daryl vs Joey), secret loves (Owen vs Mrs. Wrangway), man vs society (John vs his brother-in-law). As a whole, Signs of Life does nothing new with any of these angles: even the introduction of a magical-realist element doesn’t do anything to elevate the story, merely moving it in a direction that feels like a far lesser Milagro Beanfield Wars.

For the most part, director Coles has been a fixture behind the scenes of various television shows since the early ’90s: Signs of Life was his first (and, to this point, only) feature film and it shows. Many of the beats in the film feel more suitable for a TV movie and the conflicts are all pretty straight-forward and easily resolved. The one real head-scratcher, though, has to be the complete dismissal of John’s storyline. After having him steal and lose the money, the film essentially abandons John, leaving the audience to wonder just what the hell happened to him. Did Ernie get him arrested after all? Did his wife leave him? Did everything end up as rosy for him as it did for the others? It’s a weird development and smacks of key scenes being left on the editing room floor…or never being filmed in the first part, which is definitely the bigger sin.

At the end of the day, Signs of Life isn’t an awful film but it ends up being terribly generic and unoriginal, which may be just as bad. If you’ve been paying attention, there shouldn’t be any surprises at any point in the running time (if you figure out that John storyline, though, drop me a line): there also won’t be a whole lot to remember, to be honest. Signs of Life is a decent film with a good cast doing decent work. If you’re looking for average, middle-of-the-road entertainment, you’ve come to the right place.

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3/25/14: If Wishes Were Horses, They’d Eat Your Face

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Andrew Divoff, Angus Scrimm, cinema, djinn, djinns, film reviews, films, gory films, Greg Nicotero, Harry Manfredini, horror, horror films, horror franchises, horror-fantasy, Kane Hodder, Movies, Nightmare on Elm St., practical effects, Robert Englund, Robert Kurtzman, SFX, special effects, special-effects extravaganza, Stan Winston, Tammy Lauren, Ted Raimi, Tom Savini, Tony Todd, violent, Wes Craven, wishes, Wishmaster

In some ways, I like to equate watching films with eating. Sometimes, I’m really in the mood for a complex, sprawling, four-course meal: at those times, nothing less than the twistiest, most difficult foreign film will do. Other times, I want a good, hearty steak and look towards any of the numerous “classics” that I’ve re-watched enough to memorize the dialogue. There are times when I want a little lighter fare: those are always good opportunities for a music documentary, a slapstick comedy or an old musical. At certain times, however, there’s really nothing that will hit the spot better than junk food: gimme the cinematic equivalent of a Ho-Ho, from time to time, and I’m a happy boy. On those occasions when I want to turn my brain off, kick my feet up and satisfy my horror jones, there really isn’t much finer than the first Wishmaster, a snack-pack of goodness that I’ve been enjoying for nearly 20 years.

Right off the bat, it helps to know one very important thing about Wishmaster: the film series began as the labor of love of Robert Kurtzman, one of the premiere special effects/make-up guys in the industry. Along with Greg Nicotero (any horror fan worth his salt should recognize this name immediately) and Howard Berger, he formed KNB EFX Group in the late ’80s. Naming all of Kurtzman’s projects would require its own separate blog entry but we’ll list a few that folks might recognize: Evil Dead 2, Phantasm 2, From Beyond, Predator, Tremors, Cabin Fever, Misery, Army of Darkness, Pulp Fiction, From Dusk Til Dawn, Scream, Boogie Nights, The Green Mile, Hulk…basically, if it was released in the past 28 years, Kurtzman probably had a hand in the makeup, effects work or both.

As with other directorial efforts by special-effects experts, specifically Stan Winston’s Pumpkinhead and Tom Savini’s remake of Night of the Living Dead, the focus in Wishmaster is squarely on the astoundingly gory, over-the-top special effects, most of which are jaw-dropping…sometimes literally. The nifty hat trick here is that Kurtzman has taken an entirely serviceable idea for a B-horror film and tricked it out with an immaculate, shiny coat of candy-apple-red primer. As mentioned earlier, this is pretty much the epitome of junk food: delicious but nearly devoid of any actual nutrients. Wishmaster is like an amusement-park thrill ride: a blast to sit through but essentially incapable of changing your overall world view.

As far as a story goes, Wishmaster is pretty lean and mean: an opening inter-title explains that there were once men, angels and djinn. The djinn didn’t want to play nice, despite their ability to grant wishes, and were banished to the furthest regions to prevent their complete destruction of humankind, an event which they can bring about simply by granting the same person three separate wishes. Cut to Persia in the 1400s and we see all hell (quite literally) bust loose as a djinn grants a king’s second wish. Before the djinn can grant the king’s third wish and damn humanity to an eternity of servitude, a court magician imprisons the djinn in a gemstone. Cut to the present and a drunken accident at a dock has led to the discovery of the gem: the gem changes hands until it ends up with Alexandra (Tammy Lauren), our spunky heroine. As can be expected, the djinn is eventually released and goes on a wish-granting rampage, all the while trying to get back to Alex: if he can grant her three wishes, mankind can kiss its collected asses goodbye. Will Alex be able to save the world? Will she be forced to use her third wish? Will the djinn help them throw the craziest party in 600 years? As if you had to ask!

Let’s get one thing absolutely clear: Wishmaster will never win any awards for acting or its script but that’s not really why we’re here: we’re here because this thing is a party in a can. Decades before audiences thrilled to “in-on-the-joke” junk like Snakes On a Plane and Sharknado, we all had to make do with good, old-fashioned B-movies, films that took themselves at least seriously enough to avoid winking into oblivion. Wishmaster is a film with plenty of heart (all over the damn place, pretty much) and isn’t so terribly removed from the effects extravaganzas that Harryhausen created back in the day…just with a lot more viscera and exploded rib-cages, of course.

Although the film is jam-packed with eye-popping moments, it’s book-ended by its two biggest, most extravagant set-pieces: the opening Persian bloodbath and Beaumont’s (Robert Englund) climatic cocktail party. Both scenes are chock-full of the kind of explosive effects that would be the centerpiece of any other film: someone turns to crystal and shatters, spraying deadly shrapnel around the room; a skeleton rips itself from a man’s body and stands for a moment, pondering the chaos, before running off to cause some more; a collection of bronze and stone statues depicting warriors from various countries and eras comes to shuddering life, in a scene that directly references Harryhausen’s classic films, and massacres a group of armed mercenaries; someone is cut to pieces by living, levitating piano wires, etc etc…In truth, the two aforementioned scenes actually pack in more amazing special effects moments than at least four lesser horror films combined. Even better, the effects are almost all practical, lending the film yet another point of reference to classic films like Clash of the Titans and The 7th Voyage of Sinbad.

I’ve gone on and on about Wishmaster’s effects but what about the rest of the film? While it’s certainly not An Officer and a Gentleman, Wishmaster ends up being a pretty sturdily constructed affair. The film looks great, with a vibrant color palette that really lets the gore pop off the screen. In a nod to old-school horror fans, Friday the 13th’s Harry Manfredini handles the score and it’s a typically good one, even featuring a few pieces that directly recall the “adventurous” music from the aforementioned Harryhausen films. Wes Craven produced the film and, in many ways, it’s pretty comparable to the latter-day Nightmare on Elm Street films, particularly films like Parts 4 and 5, which tended to be more special-effects showcases than the earlier entries. The djinn even gets a massively ooky regeneration scene that manages to give both NOES and Hellraiser a run for their collective money.

The acting, as can be expected from B-movies, is rather hit or miss. Andrew Divoff is a complete revelation as the djinn, playing the villain with just the proper amount of smarmy charm, deadpan sarcasm and dead-eyed seriousness. His quipping never really gets old (although it will get more tedious over the next few films in the series) and I’m constantly surprised that he never became a more prominent face in the horror world, similar to co-star Robert Englund. Englund is quite good as the slimy Raymond Beaumont and it’s also nice to get cameos from a couple other familiar faces: Candyman’s Tony Todd and original Jason Kane Hodder make appearances as a bouncer and security guard, respectively. They don’t get to do much but it’s still nice to see them.

More problematic, unfortunately, is Tammy Lauren. As the lead, we get to spend an awful lot of time with Lauren and her progressively hysterical performance makes this a bit unpleasant, after a while. She’s alright for the first half of the film or so but she sets the controls for the heart of the sun after that and her overacting even begins to compete with the special effects, after a while. A lesser, but still noteworthy, issue is the rather lackluster ending: while necessary to paint the film out of its corner, it comes across as a real head-smacker and more than a little uneventful.

If you can look past the film’s small handful of problems, however, I can see absolutely no reason why any horror fan wouldn’t love this movie. Here, at the very beginning, we saw the groundwork being laid for a franchise that had the potential to rival Elm Street for prime real estate on the horror map. If the series ended up dropping the ball and limping off the sidelines way too soon (Part 2 is merely okay, whereas Parts 3 and 4 are completely execrable), that does nothing to take away from the achievement of this first edition.

Sometimes, I just want to kick back with an old friend and kill 90 minutes: whenever Wishmaster comes knocking at the door, I’m always ready to party.

3/24/14: The S.S. Low Expectations

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1970's cinema, adventures, Anjelica Huston, B-movies, Beau Bridges, cinema, film reviews, films, Genevieve Bujold, Geoffrey Holder, Jamaica, James Earl Jones, James Goldstone, Movies, odd movies, Peter Boyle, pirates, Robert Shaw, silly films, slapstick, Swashbuckler

Most of the time, even if I can’t quite understand a film, I can at least get myself into the mindset of seeing where the filmmakers are coming from. This can apply to things as complex and fairly inscrutable as Primer, Upstream Colour or Sauna, as well as films that are relatively brainless but hopelessly complicated, such as The Last Rites of Ransom Pride, The Box or Stardust. In most cases, the filmmakers’ intents are relatively clear, even if their final product is hopelessly muddled or head-scratchingly confusing. Every great once in a while, however, I’m faced with a film that completely baffles me, not necessarily because I can’t follow the plot but because I have absolutely no idea what the filmmakers actually intended to do. These films, rare as they are, can either function as delicious treats or obnoxious puzzles, depending on how much collective good will the films manage to accrue across their running times. In the case of Swashbuckler, featuring the intriguing pairing of Robert Shaw and James Earl Jones, I found myself with but one coherent thought after the final credits rolled: what the hell did I just watch?

The film begins with pirate captain Ned Lynch (Robert Shaw) and the merry crew of the Blarney Cock showing up to shell a coastal fort, disrupting the planned hanging of fellow pirate Nick Debrett (James Earl Jones). Ned and Nick are old friends, of course, and what would any good adventure be without a good wingman? In no time, the pair are sailing the high seas, disrupting the dastardly activities of crooked governor Lord Durant (Peter Boyle) and earning the admiration of comely lass Jane (Genevieve Bujold). You see, Lord Durant is attempting to take over Jamaica, placing the islands under his iron-fisted, weirdly sadomasochistic control, and there are only three things that stand in his way: Ned, Nick and Jane. Hold onto your tri-cornered hats, ladies and gents: it’s gonna be an awfully bumpy ride!

Unlike other genuinely strange films, Swashbuckler actually has a pretty easily digestible plot-line: it’s just your basic pirates against the government tale, after all. Shaw and Jones are fantastic as Ned and Nick, possessing an easy rapport that marks the two as old, fast friends. Truth be told, Shaw and Jones are so good and so natural that Swashbuckler is never a difficult or unpleasant film to watch: it just never makes a whole lot of sense, that’s all. Bujold is good as the stereotypical noblewoman/firebrand but her part is pretty cookie-cutter for this type of film. The pirate crew, which includes familiar genre faves like Sid Haig and Geoffrey Holder, make a great team and many of the sword-fighting, swashbuckling scenes are quite rousing. That being said, however, the film still manages to stuff ten pounds of weird into a five-pound sack.

Without a doubt, one of the strangest, most jaw-dropping aspects of the film has to be Peter Boyle’s genuinely bizarre performance as Lord Durant. Boyle plays Durant like some sort of space alien martinet: his performance includes back-waxing scenes, bathtub romps, multiple yelling fits and more psuedo-sadomasochistic affectations than you can shake a switch at. The giddy apex of insanity has to be the part where Durant punishes his loyal second-in-command Major Folly (Beau Bridges) by having him remove his shirt while Durant’s weird assistant menaces his bare chest with a device that seems to be Freddy Krueger’s razor-glove re-imagined with spoons. Honestly. I couldn’t make this up if I tried, ladies and gents. Even better, the creepy assistant reappears during the climatic final battle, where he attempts to fight swordsmen with his spoon-glove hand-thing. The best way to sum this up, quite frankly, would be with a question of sorts: what the fuck?

We also get wonderful moments like the bit where Beau Bridges overacts so much that he actually cracks up his co-actors (no mean feat when everyone is chewing scenery by the yard), Anjelica Huston playing a mysterious, mute woman who goes by the name Lady of Dark Visage in the credits and Genevieve Bujold’s skinny-dipping for no apparent reason (although good ol’ Robert Shaw seems to get a couple of eyefuls. Shaw makes his grand entrance in the film wearing a skin-tight, bright-red jumpsuit that’s more Studio 54 than Blackbeard and the vast majority of the cast (main and supporting) spend the entire film with giant, goody grins plastered on their faces. Was everyone high on set? At the very least, I’m willing to wager that someone made use of a pretty decent-sized tank of nitrous: the looks on the various actors’ faces are positively beatific! Special mention must also be made of Geoffrey Holder’s Cudjo. Between his super-sized appearance and patented, booming laugh, Holder is a complete delight and the sequence where his acrobats help them infiltrate Durant’s compound reminds me of nothing so much as the various circus action scenes in Octopussy.

Ultimately, the main source of my confusion (Peter Boyle weirdness notwithstanding, of course) is the mixed tone of the film. At times, the film seems to be a fairly straight-forward, if rather silly, pirate adventure: nothing too strange there. At other times, however, the film mixes more straightforward, Goonies-esque action, comedy with straight-up, breaking-the-fourth-wall satire. There’s the aforementioned Beau Bridges performance (those other actors are definitely cracking up: I rewound and watched it just to make sure), as well as the scene where he attempts to fight off Ned and Nick in a low-roofed carriage, only to have his sword continually hit the ceiling whenever he draws it from his scabbard. More telling, however, is the climatic moment where Lord Durant meets his fate (no spoilers here, folks: if you didn’t see that one coming from the first frame, you weren’t paying particularly good attention. Boyle overacts like a champion, clutching his breast and lurching about as if performing a dinner theater version of Hamlet’s climax. The scene seems to go on forever, Boyle shamelessly mugging as if his melodramatic eye-rolling might stave off death, itself. Finally, he tumbles through a window, uttering the immortal final line: “Pull the curtain: the farce is ending!” Normally, I might assume this was just some attempt at a “badass” last line. As it stands, however, I find myself wondering if the filmmakers weren’t actually making some sort of comment on the film, as a whole. Was this supposed to be a farce all along? Had I actually missed something (or several somethings) along the way? Perhaps…but I’m not rewatching to find out!

At the end of the day, Swashbuckler is many, many things (including a tremendous mess) but it’s never boring. Most of the time, in fact, the film is great, goofy fun. Everyone involved, especially Shaw, seems to be having a blast and no one seems to be phoning in their performances. If anything, so much scenery is chewed that the poverty-row production values (the transfer is simply awful and the whole film has all of the visual panache of a dreary made-for-TV film) tend to fade into the background…at least somewhat. In this “glory day” of the “so-bad-it’s-good” film, where intentionally terrible movies are routinely churned out with a wink and a nod, it’s somewhat refreshing to see an honest-to-god B-movie that’s just what it advertises: a silly, goofy, fun time. I doubt if this film will ever hit anybody’s “Best of…” lists but I doubt if that’s why it was made in the first place. For my money? Swashbuckler ain’t a classic but it beats getting tortured with a spoon-glove any day of the week.

 

3/20/14: When Jackasses Attack

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arrogance, based on a book, based on a true story, celebrities, celebrity, celebrity journalist, cinema, comedies, Danny Huston, feature-film debut, film reviews, films, fish-out-of-water, Gillian Anderson, gossip rags, Hollywood, Hollywood satire, How to Lose Friends & Alienate People, How to Lose Friends and Alienate People, Jeff Bridges, journalism, Kirsten Dunst, magazines, Megan Fox, Mother Teresa biopic, Movies, New York City, obnoxious people, Robert B. Weide, Sidney Young, SImon Pegg, Sophie Maes, Toby Young, unlikable protagonist, workplace comedies

As a modern society, we’ve become pretty obsessed with celebrities and the private lives of these glitterati. In a classic case of “the grass always looks greener,” it’s very inviting to look over the elegantly wrought-iron fences, past the armed security and straight into the beating heart of the American dream. This, of course, is a steaming load of horse pucky: the grass is greener because it’s Astroturf and the beautiful people look a lot like everyone else do first thing in the morning. This, of course, hasn’t stopped an entire cottage industry of gossip shows, tabloids and paparazzi from springing up to document every celebrity faux pas, grocery store visit, nose job and million-dollar deal under the sun. While it often seems that these purveyors of celebrity “news” are jaded outsiders looking to blow holes in the rhinestone-bedazzled Hindenburg that Hollywood often resembles, the Simon Pegg-starring How to Lose Friends and Alienate People posits a slightly different theory: these paparazzi are just as obsessed, envious and in love with these folks as everyone else is supposed to be.

Based on Toby Young book about his real-life experiences, HTLFAAP introduces us to the character of Sidney Young (Simon Pegg). As a boy, Sidney was obsessed with the idea that all celebrities lived together in some sort of Shangri-La…a 24/7 Copacabana where the drinks were always comped, the makeup was always immaculate and the people were all cool as ice. If he could just get there, he reasoned, he would be one truly happy young boy. As the opening voice-over lets us know, however, “celebrity journalist” is as close as he’s gotten to this imagined paradise. As he sits with starlet-of-the-moment Sophie Maes (Megan Fox) at an award show, one Best Actress award away from some promised pity sex, Sidney reflects back on the events that led him to this particular moment in time. The flashback takes us into our movie proper: one part workplace comedy, one part Hollywood satire, one part old-fashioned romance.

We see Sidney as a scrappy, ultra-combative tabloid journalist, prone to celebrity attack pieces and raging against the machine of the big corporate fluff rags. He ends up on the radar of Clayton Harding (Jeff Bridges), a gossip-rag magnate, after he crashes one of his exclusive A-list Hollywood parties. Sidney reminds Clayton of himself, at that age and economic level, so he does the only thing that a respectable gossip-mag baron would do in a situation like this: he puts Sidney on the payroll. This puts Sidney into direct contact with your usual rogues’ gallery of assorted oddball characters: Lawrence Maddox (Danny Huston), Sidney’s slimy boss; Alison (Kirsten Dunst), the prickly co-worker that would never, in a million years, fall for a jerk like Sidney; fame-hungry starlet Sophie Maes, her little dog Cuba and reptilian agent Eleanor (Gillian Anderson); and colossal jackass/director Vincent Lepak (Max Minghella).

As Sidney navigates these treacherous, shark-filled waters, he finds himself falling for Alison (natch), although she has a mysterious absentee boyfriend that makes getting together seem a little impossible. There also seems to be some interest from Sophie, although she seems more than willing to do absolutely anything that would push her career one step closer to the big time. Sidney’s old rebel spirit begins to fight back as he’s asked to do a puff piece on Lepak, a black-hole of vapidity so dense that nothing can escape his crushing stupidity. When Sidney rebels, it seems like the only thing holding him back is himself: as Harding told him earlier, he’s standing in the first room and is fully capable of getting to the last room…if he wants it bad enough. Sidney must reconcile his own core values with his lifelong desire to fit in with the “cool kids,” all while trying to figure out just what, exactly, he really wants to do with his life.

My biggest beef with HTLFAAP is that the film ends up being so schizophrenic. On the one hand, it wants to be a snarky, razor-sharp satire on the inherent ridiculousness of Hollywood, complete with an epic Mother Teresa biopic starring Megan Fox. On the other hand, the film wants to be one of those ubiquitous workplace dramadies where co-workers conspire against each other, ideas are stolen, comeuppances are had by all and a quirky parade of characters engage in utterly quirky behavior. On the third hand, the movie wants to be an old-fashioned romance, one of those Cary Grant-starrers where the guy and gal don’t see eye to eye, you see, until they do, at which point they fall madly in love with each other and live happily ever after. As you can see, there’s about one hand too many here. This is a big reason why the film ends up being a bit of a tonal mess: one moment, it’s a frantic, ultra-high-strung slapstick comedy, the next moment, it’s a stereotypical “indie comedy,” with Juno-esque dialogue and sardonic voice-over. The film also gets serious, from time to time, mostly to remind us that Sidney is constantly in danger of losing his core values.

For my money, the most tired aspect of the film (and the one that I would have cut first) would have to be the hackneyed romantic angle. The romance steals the focus of the film almost entirely, especially by the final third, where Sidney is madly rushing about trying to win the hand of Alison. In fact, the final denouement has virtually nothing to do with any of the celebrity-chasing that came before, breaking everything down to that time-honored (and ultra-trite) notion that all you really do need is love. How nice. Were there some actual chemistry between Pegg and Dunst, the romance might carry a little bit more weight. As it stands, however, it felt very much like “Character A must like Character B”-level plotting and never felt authentic.

What worked? The film seemed to wring the most success from the celeb-mocking stuff (the Mother Teresa gag is, quite simply, one of the funniest jokes I’ve seen in quite some time) and the performances were pretty sturdy. It’s always nice to see The Dude in something but I kinda wish Bridges had been given more to do than bluster and offer the occasional bit of sage advise. Pegg did a decent job playing a shithead character but this kind of smug, self-absorbed nitwit is starting to seem like old hat for ol’ Simon: it would be nice to see him branch out a little. Ditto for Dunst, who’s been on this kind of autopilot for his last few roles. She’s a great actress but, too often, she’s just required to be withering. Huston and Anderson are great in some meaty supporting roles: Anderson, in particular, is a blast to watch and neatly wrestles the film away whenever she’s on-screen.

At the end of the day, is How to Lose Friends and Alienate People worth a watch? It really depends on your expectations. If you’re a Simon Pegg fan, you could probably do worse (like Mission Impossible III) but you could certainly do better (see a Fantastic Fear of Everything, instead). I’m not familiar with the original book, or the person it was based on, so I can’t really vouch as to the authenticity of either, at least as represented here. My personal take is that Sidney comes across as a self-absorbed douchebag but, then again, what do I know? I do know that the romantic aspect drags the film down, however, and that it would have been a lot better had it been a lot shorter and tighter. I also know that, despite my intense dislike of Megan Fox, I would pay very good money to see her play Mother Teresa in that promised biopic: I kinda wish the filmmakers had given us an hour of that instead of two hours of this.

3/19/14: A Real Simple Man

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auteur theory, beached boat, boat up a tree, broken families, character dramas, cinema, coming of age, David Cronenberg, drama, Ellis, eponymous characters, Film auteurs, film reviews, films, houseboat, Jacob Lofland, Jeff Nichols, Joe Don Baker, love story, man with a secret, Matthew McConaughey, Michael Shannon, Movies, Mud, Neckbone, Paul Sparks, Ray McKinnon, Reese Witherspoon, river, riverboats, romance, Sam Shepard, Sarah Paulson, scrappy kids, small town life, teenagers, townies, Tye Sheridan, writer-director

Fun is fun, when it comes to movies. There’s nothing wrong with mindless action shoot-em-ups or faceless slashers: those are usually more fun than being night watchman in a bubble-wrap factory. Lots of adrenaline, some snappy dialogue and some rousing set pieces…that’s been a sure thing for quite some time. Likewise, mega-budget “event” pictures can be mighty entertaining, in the right doses. Throw a bakers’ dozen of the biggest actors in town into the cinematic equivalent of making your He-Man figures fight your GI Joes? Don’t bother to call: I’m already out in the lobby. That being said, there’s a lot to be said for a good old-fashioned, low-budget, character-driven drama. Sometimes, there’s nothing finer in life than getting a bunch of talented actors together and letting them do what people have been doing since the dawn of time: live. Jeff Nichols’ Mud may not be flashy but it’s a mighty fine coming-of-age film and an intriguing peek into the human condition.

Our film begins on the waterways of Arkansas, as we’re quickly introduced to our young protagonists, Ellis (Tye Sheridan) and Neckbone (Jacob Lofland). They’re a couple of precocious teen boys, best friends and the products of rather fractured homes: Ellis’ mother and father (Sarah Paulson and Ray McKinnon) are at each other’s throats, the harshness of the country and the financial uncertainty of their riverboat existence tearing the family apart, while Neckbone is being raised by his uncle Galen (Michael Shannon) and never knew his parents. One day, while exploring a nearby island, the boys come across a busted-up houseboat, inexplicably beached atop a tree. Boys being boys, they decide to poke around the abandoned boat and discover evidence that it might not be so abandoned: bread, cans of beans and a few nudie magazines. In short order, the lads are introduced to the boat’s current “resident,” a scruffy hobo who calls himself Mud (Matthew McConaughey). According to Mud, he’s waiting for his girlfriend, who he describes to the dubious boys as “long blonde hair, long legs…beautiful…nightingales tattooed on her hands.”

Ellis and Neckbone doubt Mud’s story almost absolutely, right up until the point where they notice that a mysterious young woman (Reece Witherspoon) has just showed up in town, a woman who happens to be blonde and have nightingales tattooed on her hands. She looks an awful lot like Mud’s description, leading the friends to believe that the hobo might be telling the truth, after all. As the trio get friendlier, Mud reveals more and more about his backstory, including the fact that he’s on the run from some pretty bad people. As the boys help Mud get the houseboat up and running and serve as messenger between him and Juniper, they also contact an old friend of his, Tom (Sam Shepard), a mysterious older man who seems to know an awful lot about Mud’s past. As these disparate elements come crashing together, the boys must also maintain their home lives and deal with the conflicting emotions of adolescence: in Ellis’ case, this means falling in love with a high school girl (Bonnie Sturdivant) and navigating the pitfalls of young hormones, while Neckbone must balance his own need to become an independent man with his desire to help his uncle. Everything comes to a head as malevolent forces descend on the small town, intent on making Mud atone for his past as the boys are forced into the first throes of adulthood.

Despite some latter-half action elements that move the film more in the direction of Straw Dogs (minus the rape) than a Boy’s Story, Mud is most certainly a coming-of-age drama. Although the film, ostensibly, is about Mud and his quest for love and redemption, these aspects are always balanced against the larger picture of Ellis and Neckbone growing up. In fact, the more explicitly action-oriented elements (despite being decidedly audience-amping) have an unfortunate tendency to drown out the more mature dramatic aspects that precede them. While it’s certainly rousing to watch McConaughey whup ass righteously, the finale ends up seeming a bit reductive, almost as if the romantic/dramatic elements were a sort of smoke-screen for the more standard action beats. This is doubly unfortunate since, up to that point, Mud as a slow, meditative feel that lends itself more to contemplation than to increased adrenaline.

Acting-wise, the film features an embarrassment of riches, not the least of which is another rock-solid, dependable performance from good ol’ Matthew McC. Sheridan and Lofland are outstanding as the teenage protagonists and there’s never a moment where their friendship feels anything less than genuine. While Sheridan has to do a bit more of the emotional heavy-lifting than Lofland does, owing to Ellis’ slightly more central position in the narrative, neither actor is a slouch: I predict really good things for both of these actors. On the more established, old-guard end, we have excellent turns from Sarah Paulson as Ellis’ mother Mary Lee: she really makes the terrible conflict between what she wants and what her family wants a concrete thing and her interactions with Ray McKinnon frequently have a heartbreaking sense of authenticity. Nichols’ regular Michael Shannon is typically sturdy as Neckbone’s uncle, leading me to reiterate the same thing I always say whenever he’s in a film: get this guy more roles. Joe Don Baker shows up in a small but pivotal role as the grieving father/unrepentant killer and Paul Sparks oozes real menace as his second-in-command.

Writer/director Jeff Nichols has, very quietly, begun to build up quite the impressive resume. His debut, 2007’s Shotgun Stories, was a gut-punch about the special hell that only family members can put each other through and featured a scorching lead turn from Michael Shannon. Nichols followed this up with Take Shelter (2011), another Michael Shannon-starrer, about an average, everyday, Midwest man confronting the dubious possibility that he’s either envisioning the end of the world or is going completely bonkers. Across his three full-length features, Nichols has proven especially adept at examining the ways in which small-town folks are torn asunder by extraordinary circumstances. Some are able to regroup and rebuild…others are completely and utterly washed from the face of the earth. Even though Nichols may not have many films under his belt, he’s revealed himself to be an extraordinary filmmaker with a keen, razor-sharp edge and a knack for upending the stone of Middle American life and examining the squishy bugs beneath. In many ways, Nichols is like a softer-edged, more humanistic version of modern-day Cronenberg: they both plumb the rural interstates and byways of America, looking for the reasons behind the madness. Their America might not look like a Rockwell painting but it’s home, nonetheless.

3/18/14: The Faint Spark of Hope

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Alan Parker, Americans abroad, Angela's Ashes, auteur theory, based on a book, based on a true story, Best Adapted Screenplay winner, Best Director nominee, Best Original Score winner, Best Picture nominee, Best Supporting Actor nominee, Billy Hayes, Bo Hopkins, Brad Davis, buddy films, cinema, college student, critically-acclaimed films, dark films, drama, drug smuggling, drug trafficking, electronic score, Erich, escape from prison, Film auteurs, film reviews, films, Giorgio Moroder, Hamidou, homoerotic tension, homophobia, Irene Miracle, jail-break, Jimmy Booth, John Hurt, legal nightmare, Max, Midnight Express, Mississippi Burning, Movies, multiple Golden Globe winner, multiple Oscar winner, Norbert Weisser, Oliver Stone, Oscar nominee, Oscars, Palme d'Or nominee, Paolo Bonacelli, Paul Smith, prison films, Randy Quaid, Rifki, The Wall, Turkish prison, Vangelis

We’ve all done stupid things: that’s the one constant across humanity, regardless of age, race, gender, creed, nationality, income level or relative place in the historical timeline (cavemen did stupid things, too). Part of the human experience is learning and one of the best ways to learn something is to royally screw it up. Touch the open flame once and you know not to touch it again. Poke the tiger? Not twice, you won’t. We’ve all said and done things that were stupid: many of us may have even done things that were stupid and illegal (never a great combo). For the most part, any and everything is a good excuse for a learning opportunity: after all, many of the most powerful and respected people in the world have pasts that are littered with everything from petty crimes to outrageous public declarations. As long as your stupidity doesn’t actively hurt someone else and you’re given the opportunity to learn and grow from the situation, what’s the big deal? In fact, the whole point of youth is to be stupid, make mistakes and learn from them: it’s the “entry-level-fast-food-job/internship” phase of life, setting you up for the “responsible career” phase that’s to come.

But what if you make that one stupid mistake and, rather than a learning experience, it becomes a game-ender? Normal, average people make stupid choices and screw things up everyday: what if your “mistake” was so serious that it landed you in prison? What if you were a young, naive American college student, facing a life sentence in a harsh, barbaric Turkish prison? If you were Billy Hayes in the 1970s, these wouldn’t be questions: they would be facts. Alan Parker’s critically acclaimed Midnight Express takes viewers into Billy’s world and shows how the stupidest actions can have the most dire of consequences. In the process, it also shows us that most miraculous of human traits: the ability to hold on to hope, even when all hope seems lost.

Midnight Express begins with Billy Hayes (Brad Davis) making one of those aforementioned stupid decisions: he opts to smuggle (or attempt to smuggle, as it were) hashish out of Turkey. Even better, he does this in the dawning years of the 1970’s, during a time when Turkey and the Middle East were experiencing particularly high levels of terrorist attacks. As such, authorities are ever vigilant and Billy…well, he’s a bit of a dumb-ass. After sweating, stuttering and barely inching his way past airport security, he ends up on an Amtrak track that, unfortunately, passes through a security checkpoint. A cursory pat-down reveals the dope and our poor schmuck begins his journey down a very long, dark, grim pathway.

After a failed escape attempt, Billy winds up in a Turkish prison, where he promptly runs afoul of head guard Hamidou (Paul Smith), one of the vilest cinematic creations ever shat unto the big-screen. Hamidou beats Billy senseless for having the temerity to take a blanket and, when he comes to, he’s being cared for by a trio of prisoners: crazy-eyed Jimmy Booth (Randy Quaid), strung-out philosopher Max (John Hurt) and gentle Erich (Norbert Weisser). They quickly show Billy the ropes and cue him in on a few important facts: Steer clear of Rifki (Paolo Bonacelli), a nasty prisoner who rats out other prisoners for money; be careful of the children who run around everywhere, since they’re as untrustworthy as the guards and Rifki; all foreigners and homosexuals are considered scum but almost all prisoners practice homosexuality when no one is looking; for the right price, the Turkish legal system can be bought and sold; and, perhaps most importantly: once you’re inside, you’re probably not getting outside.

In due time, Billy’s life becomes a waking nightmare of harsh conditions (the prison is like a squalid, rat-trap hotel where the concierges occasionally beat you so bad that you herniate), a bizarre, nonsensical legal system (Billy can’t even understand the language during his trial, much less offer any useful defense) and the constant, terrifying notion that he’s doomed to spend the rest of his days in this living hell. When his original “generous” sentence of 4 years is over-turned for a more “reasonable” 30-year sentence, Billy finally decides to jump onto Jimmy’s crazy train and attempt a prison breakout. As expected, this doesn’t go quite as planned, leading to more confrontations with Hamidou and Rifki, as well as a long-in-the-making mental breakdown for Billy. After a certain point, Billy’s life seems completely hopeless. If he can just manage to keep his head above water, however, there just might be a light at the end of the tunnel after all.

In certain ways, Midnight Express is a strictly by-the-book prison film, one of those myriad productions where a “good” person ends up in the pokey and must adapt to survive. The Turkish setting is certainly novel, although anyone who grew up on any of the faceless, Philippine-set prison films of the late-’60s and ’70s won’t find much to be surprised by here. The setting certainly does give the filmmakers ample opportunity to play up the disparity between the Westerners and the native Turks but, more often than not, it devolves simply into “complex Westerners” vs “feral, rabid, caveman Turks.” In hindsight, there really aren’t any positive portrayals of Middle Eastern characters in the film: they’re all either vicious, sneering sadists or bumbling, incompetent Keystone Kops. Since the screenplay is written by Oliver Stone (for which he won a Best Adapted Screenplay Oscar), I wasn’t particularly surprised by this but it was, nonetheless, fairly tiresome. By the time we get to Rifki hanging a cute kitten and Hamidou attempting to violently rape Billy, the “villains” don’t resemble humans so much as fairy-tale ogres. Since the actual Billy Hayes has complained about the negative portrayals of Turkish characters in the film, this seems to be a problem that at least a few folks have had.

Since the film tends to be a fairly standard “men-in-prison” film, it also features plenty of familiar beats: the newbie getting instructed on the lay of the land; the intricate escape plans; the scene where a friendly character is falsely blamed for something; the homoerotic tension between cellmates; the rat; the vicious head-guard. None of these are particularly unique and the only aspect that has the potential to bear interesting fruit (the homoerotic tension between Billy and Erich) is dispensed with pretty quickly. Since this is a film adaptation of a true story, I wasn’t expecting anything particularly “tricky,” as it were, but much of Midnight Express seemed rather old-hat to me Perhaps my opinion would have been different had I seen it when it was released (you know…when I was 1) but decades of prison films since have neutered its impact a bit. Don’t get me wrong: the film is still intensely grim — the scene where a screaming Randy Quaid gets dragged out to be beaten so bad that he’ll lose a testicle is not something that anyone will forget easily — but it’s also not something inherently “fresh” or shocking.

My other major complaint with the film definitely revolves around the musical score by Giorgio Moroder, which inexplicably won an Academy Award for Best Original Score. There are times when the score seems unobtrusive (not high praise, mind you) but, for the most part, it sticks out like a sore thumb. One of the silliest moments has to be Billy’s initial escape from police custody, before he reaches the prison. His escape attempt is scored by some truly ludicrous electro music, complete with laser sound effects: not only does it do nothing to create tension, the score actually made me burst out laughing, which (presumably) wasn’t the desired effect. Later on, Billy mopes about the prison grounds as a moody electronic score plays: I’m pretty sure the intent was something similar to Vangelis’ score for Blade Runner but, again, the execution just doesn’t produce anything but groans. I’m actually a big Giorgio Moroder fan and was pretty excited when I saw his name in the credits: this, however, was like getting coal for Christmas.

On the other hand, the things that work in Midnight Express work fairly well. The performances are uniformly good, with special praise due for Quaid and Hurt’s rock-solid turns as Billy’s only friends. Quaid’s performance is a good reminder that, once upon a time, he was an actor to take seriously. Paul Smith and Paolo Bonacelli are absolutely phenomenal as Hamidou and Rifki, with Bonacelli especially noteworthy. Truly detestable villains are hard to pull off and Midnight Express’ pair of baddies are almost an embarrassment of riches. The only “main” character that seems to get short shrift is Billy’s girlfriend Susan, played by Irene Miracle. Miracle does just fine with what she’s given but she’s not given much: the emotional climax of her character is definitely the moment where she bares her breasts for Billy during a jail visitation but Brad Davis ends up doing most of the heavy lifting. Likewise, Mike Kellin, playing Billy’s dad, is pretty much a non-entity, his participation in events essentially boiling down to the moment where he tells Hamidou to “take good care of (Billy), you Turkish bastard.”

Overall, Midnight Express exists as one of those “critically over-acclaimed” films that can’t help but be a bit of a disappointment, especially when one considers previous films in director Parker’s canon, films like Pink Floyd’s The Wall, Mississippi Burning and Angela’s Ashes. As your standard “men in prison must escape” film, Midnight Express is good but nothing legendary. When the film is more understated, it works quite well, although it too frequently lapses into melodrama and overwrought theatrics (the scene where Billy breaks down in court is particularly over-the-top).

As I stated earlier, however, it’s a little hard to fully get behind Billy’s plight since his own stupidity got him there in the first place. It was much easier to sympathize with Jimmy (in prison for stealing two candlesticks from a church) and Max (a heroin junkie) than it was to support Billy: the others were people caught in bad situations, whereas this dumbass college student put himself there…big difference. As a study in people making bad decisions, Midnight Express has to be one of the most on-the-noise. As a prison film, it’s pretty standard fare. As a character study, however, it just doesn’t seem like it has a lot to say.

3/17/14: Belly Laughs and Bathroom Breaks

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abandonment issues, absentee father, Bad Milo!, bathroom humor, cinema, demons, Duncan, Erik Charles Nielsen, fear of fatherhood, fertility doctors, film reviews, films, Gillian Jacobs, horror-comedies, Jacob Vaughan, Ken Marino, kooky psychiatrist, Kumail Nanjiani, Mary Kay Place, Milo, Movies, Patrick Warburton, Peter Stormare, puppets, pushy mother, Stephen Root, Steve Carell, stomach problems, stress, Toby Huss

There are some film concepts that just sell themselves easier than others. Tell people that The Godfather is about mobsters and at least a few folks will be interested. Tell folks that The Texas Chain Saw Massacre is about cannibals and, dollars to doughnuts, someone’s gonna take the bait. It’s not necessarily that the world is full of mobster and cannibal lovers (although the continued success of these types of films says otherwise) but these are concepts that are fairly easy to wrap our collective heads around. Despite the actual content of these individual films, when we hear the words “mobster,” “cannibal” or “zombie,” we have a pretty good idea of what’s in store.

Once things become significantly higher (or lower) concept, however, preconceived notions become a bit more difficult to manage. If I were to tell you that The Dark Backward is about a stand-up comedian who grows a third arm out of his back, what would you say? Or that Septic Man is about a man who becomes a monster after falling into a sewer system? How about The Visitor, which can best be described as a low-budget sci-fi Western with angels, eagles, super children and John Huston? Sometimes, the basic idea behind a film can tell us almost nothing about the film, least of all whether we will actually like it or not. As Exhibit A in this notion, I present the recent horror-comedy Bad Milo, which bears a pretty simple premise: a nice, normal, average guy has a cute and cuddly demon that crawls out of his ass whenever he gets stressed and proceeds to massacre the (various) sources of said stress. At first blush, Bad Milo seems to be squarely in the Troma camp of over-the-top gore and gross bodily functions. Pass this one by, however, and you’ll be missing one of the sweetest, most unassuming and funniest films yet made about impending parenthood, absentee fathers and irritable bowel syndrome.

In short order, we’re introduced to our hero, Duncan (Ken Merino), one of those modern-day schlubs that Steve Carell specializes in. He’s got a shitty, passive-aggressive boss named Phil (Patrick Warburton), a baby-obsessed wife named Sarah and a constant yearning to know the father who abandoned him and his mother (Mary Kay Place) when Duncan was just a tot. Duncan, as with most modern folks, has got a lot on his plate, although his specific problems are all best suited to a broad big-screen comedy: his mother and her boyfriend Bobbi (Kumail Nanjiani) are perpetually horny, his fertility doctor (Toby Huss) is a crass jerk, his psychiatrist (Peter Stormare) is a loony and his new office is a bathroom, complete with urinal (one of the film’s numerous high points is the moment where Duncan’s imbecilic office-mate stares in wonder at their new “digs” and hopes that the urinal still works). With all of this going on, it’s no surprise that Duncan has quite a few health issues, not the least of which is his near crippling stomach ailments. For lack of a better (or more elegant) descriptor, Duncan has a particularly terrible form of IBS, leading him to spend hours in the bathroom and driving a bit of a wedge between him and Sarah: it’s a little hard to get romantic, after all, when your significant other is always on the can.

Duncan’s life becomes even more complicated, however, when his idiotic cubicle-mate Allistair accidentally deletes months of his work. Duncan experiences the worst pains of his life, blacks out and reawakens to the knowledge that Allistair has been shredded by a “raccoon.” Were it that simple, however. After a hypnotherapy session with his shrink Highsmith goes awry, Duncan is unceremoniously introduced to Milo, the demon who happens to live in his bowels. Milo is a cute little cuss, looking akin to a Muppet crossbred with one of the Ghoulies, and he takes a shine to his “father” Duncan. Only problem, of course, is that Milo has a tendency to “emerge” whenever Duncan is stressed…which is, apparently, all of the time. As Highsmith tries to help Duncan control Milo, other forces begin to emerge that will test Duncan’s new-found sense of zen: his boss has been draining the company dry, Sarah is still looking for a baby and Duncan’s long-gone father, Roger (Stephen Root), is reluctantly back in his life, with a secret of his own and a big piece to the puzzle that is Duncan’s life. Will Duncan be able to tame Milo? Can he forgive his father? Should he? How slimy will his boss get? And, most importantly, will he ever settle down and accept fatherhood?

Although Bad Milo’s concept is entirely predicated around bathroom humor and violence, the film is actually much sweeter and more wistful than this would imply. For one thing, Ken Merino is such a completely lovable puppy dog that you’re inclined to follow him anywhere, regardless of the absurd or disturbing situations: he’s an incredibly gifted comedian whose work in the TV shows Reaper, Party Down and Burning Love are practically  master-classes in making a doofus lovable. Bad Milo is completely and totally Merino’s film and wouldn’t be half as successful (or good) without his contributions. This isn’t to denigrate the quite capable supporting cast, however, which features a veritable who’s-who of character actors. We get Mary Kay Place, Patrick Warburton (always a favorite), Kumail Nanjiani (his infuriatingly condescending manner of speech is perfect for the character of Bobbi), Peter Stormare (as weirdly intense as ever) and Stephen Root. Root, in particular, is great in what amounts to yet another notch on a mighty impressive belt full of roles. Although he’ll always be Milton, Root’s resume looks particularly impressive by anyone’s standards.

Bad Milo focuses on several pretty deep issues, not the least of which are the abandonment issues that can fester late in life and affect one’s chances of raising a family. Without being fully aware, Duncan has been gravely damaged by his father’s absence and is taking these invisible wounds with him into his own developing family situation. He’s got a lot of love to give but it isn’t until he’s forced to serve as “father” to Milo that he’s able to focus this love unto anything besides his wife. He is his father’s son, after all, and there’s always the omnipresent fear that the apple doesn’t fall far from the tree. Manifesting these feelings of guilt, anger and disappointment as a physical entity may not be unique to this film (the nutso ’70s-era oddity The Manitou got there first) but Bad Milo manages the nifty hat-trick of being both thrilling and sentimental.

In reality, Bad Milo is the furthest thing possible from a Troma film, although there are various elements/scenes that would fit in nicely in any of Uncle Lloyd’s old “classics.” The gore effects aren’t particularly gratuitous but they are plenty juicy and do we get more than the recommended daily allowance of Milo returning to whence he came (if you get my drift). That being said, I’m really not sure what one could expect out of a film that could easily (if reductively) be described as “a man must learn to live with his ass demon.” Above all, Bad Milo is surprisingly and genuinely sweet. Duncan and Sarah have a quite lovely relationship, ass demons and parenthood issues notwithstanding. Duncan’s mom seems to genuinely love him and his friendship with his shrink, while hard-earned, becomes quite genuine by the film’s end. The reconciliation with his absentee father is also quite nice, helped in no small amount by an understated Root performance that reminds of Bruce Dern’s work in Nebraska.

As a comedy, Bad Milo also ends up being genuinely amusing. In particular, Warburton is perfect as Phil, the biggest dickhead to ever graduate management school. His constant degradation of Duncan approaches the level of sociopathic (the bathroom office is so perfect that I almost stopped the film after that point: why risk ruining it?) and good ol’ Patty is just the jerk for the job. In a similar vein, Toby Huss is quite good as Dr. Yeager, a “professional” whose bedside manner consists of telling Duncan that he has “a trooper in his pooper.” In order to make the central concept work, we’ve really gotta feel Duncan growing frustration and Warburton and Huss help make this happen.

Ultimately, Bad Milo is about something that we can all relate to, regardless of the relative health of our bowels or our personal lives: it’s about the need to be heard in a world where your voice is increasingly marginalized. At every possible opportunity, Duncan is over-ridden, over-shouted, over-turned and ignored. When he finally manages to find his voice, it doesn’t necessarily take the most productive form (ass demons rarely are) but it’s a voice, nonetheless. By refusing to be ignored and stomped on, Duncan gives the rest of us poor morons some sense of hope, no matter how faint. As the film makes explicitly clear, it’s always better to let things out than to keep them inside. We all have our own Milos: some good, some bad and some indifferent. Embrace yours today.

3/15/14: Just a Couple Good Old Boys

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actor-director, Altamont, America, American Dream, Best Original Screenplay nominee, Best Supporting Actor nominee, bikers, Billy, Bob Dylan, Born to Be Wild, buddy films, Captain America, Charles Manson, cinema, classic movies, counter-culture films, counterculture, Dennis Hopper, directorial debut, Easy Rider, end of an era, film reviews, films, friendship, hippies, Hoyt Axton, Jack Nicholson, Luke Askew, Mardi Gras, motorcycles, Movies, Oscar nominee, Palme d'Or nominee, Peter Fonda, Phil Spector, rednecks, road movie, road trips, Sharon Tate, Steppenwolf, the American Dream, the Manson Family, The Pusher, Wyatt

When, exactly, did the Summer of Love go up in flames? Conventional wisdom usually points to Altamont, in December 1969, as the point where the promise of free love and hippy Utopianism soured. For my money, though, I always pinpointed Sharon Tate’s murder, on August 9th of the same year, as the real tipping point. Even though the Woodstock festival (usually seen as the pinnacle of “hippyism”) would follow Tate’s murder by less than a week, I always viewed that as sneaking one last one in before Manson and his followers nailed down the coffin lid. By the time the Mason family had cemented their terrible legacy, it was pretty apparent that the shiny red apple of peace, love and harmony contained more than its fair share of rot. While Altamont may have slammed the door shut, it had begun to close long before then. In fact, some folks could see the end way before then: when Dennis Hopper’s now-iconic Easy Rider was first released, in May 1969, who could know that the man would seem like Nostradamus a mere seven months later?

Easy Rider is many things: a buddy film…a road movie…a counter-culture landmark…a return to the sensibilities of On the Road at a time when that attitude seemed not only passe but quaint…a drug movie…a critique of the fractured America of the ’60s…More than anything, however, Easy Rider serves as a death knell, a dire warning from one of the original “freak-flag-flyers” that times were changing and that the peace-and-love hippies were about to be swept from the Earth in the same way that the dinosaurs once were. You could stay the same, he posited, but you would die: that was a given. You could, of course, leave behind your ideals and survive by evolving into something else entirely, something colder, more calculating, less romantic. But isn’t this, in the end, the same sort of death as offered in the first option? Above all else, however, Hopper was making concrete the words of Bob Dylan, albeit casting them in a much darker light than Dylan originally intended: the times, indeed, were a changin’.

As a film, Easy Rider has a pretty simple structure: it’s essentially a series of vignettes featuring Billy (Dennis Hopper) and Wyatt (Peter Fonda), usually addressed as “Captain America.” As the two men travel around the back-roads of America, they meet with an odd assortment of characters, including a hitchhiker (Luke Askew) and his hippy commune, a drunken lawyer (Jack Nicholson), lots of rednecks and some good, old-fashioned, middle-American squares. They sell cocaine to Phil Spector (not the “person” of Phil Spector but the actual man: he’s billed as “The Connection” and wears one seriously yellow suit, complete with matching gloves and glasses), visit a whorehouse in New Orleans and leave a diner one step ahead of an angry mob of rednecks and small-town cops.

For the most parts, events in the film fall into a pretty basic formula: the duo rides to a new place, Billy acts like a square, the Captain tells him to chill out, there’s a musical interlude and the whole thing repeats. Each interlude, however, serves as a way for Hopper (who also wrote the screenplay, with Fonda) to dig a little deeper into the whole notion of the “American Dream.” The opening pre-credits drug-dealing sequence begins with Steppenwolf’s version of “The Pusher,” before their iconic “Born to Be Wild” slams us right into the credits. It’s a subtle way to establish Billy and the Captain’s manifesto (they do whatever they want, man), while also commenting on changes in the pop culture zeitgeist: “The Pusher” was written by Hoyt Axton, a popular folk singer in the early ’60s but it was Steppenwolf’s cover, not the original, that Hopper used. As one of the “heavier” new bands to emerge in the late ’60s, Steppenwolf was a good representation of the direction music was taking, at the time, away from the folk and early rock of the ’60s and into the hard rock and metal of the ’70s. Steppenwolf was pushing Axton out, just as the darker mid-late ’60s was crowding out the peace and optimism of the earlier part of the decade.

They end up on the hitchhiker’s commune but don’t get to stay long: the hippies end up picking on and ostracizing Billy, leading us to the notion that maybe these “peaceniks” aren’t quite as nice as they first seem. Although he couldn’t have known it at the time, Hopper was prophesying what would happen with the Manson family: the hippy exterior concealed a dangerous, deranged interior. Lest it be thought that Hopper is unduly picking on the counterculture (which is rather absurd, since he’s been a genuine, card-carrying member of the counterculture for his entire life/career), we also get scenes like the ones where Billy and the Captain get arrested for “parading without a permit” in a small town and are, essentially, chased out of a diner by a group of locals (including the sheriff) that are a few pitchforks away from the mob in Frankenstein. If the counterculture isn’t necessarily who they say they are, then the average middle-American “square” is exactly what they seem to be: small-minded, suspicious, frightened and utterly resentful of the “freedom” that Billy and the Captain represent. That these small-town folk and rednecks will, ultimately, end up being the undoing of Billy, the Captain and George (Nicholson) is certainly telling: although the counterculture has begun to collapse from the inside, its greatest threat still comes from the outside – the world at large.

All of these events eventually culminate in a truly apocalyptic ending for Billy and the Captain (and poor George, of course), although it’s a finale that would probably only provoke a shrug from the kinds of people who helped perpetrate it: those long-haired, weird bastards got what was coming to them. While the finale few moments of Easy Rider holds the answer to Billy and the Captain’s fates, it’s a moment just before that actually spells everything out for an entire generation. After finally achieving their “goal” of visiting New Orleans for Mardi Gras and surviving everything that came before, Billy is absolutely triumphant: they’re both “rich” now, thanks to the opening drug deal and have finally “made it.” “That’s what you do, man,” he tells the Captain, “you go for the big money.” The Captain’s response, however, takes the wind out of not only Billy’s sails but our own, as well: “We blew it, man.” By compromising their principles and losing sight of the “big picture” (changing the world for the better), Billy and the Captain (along with the entire “Free Love” movement) have truly “blown it.” The true extent wouldn’t be felt for some time, of course, but the writing was on the wall: whatever moment might have existed was now past and the movement would continue to spin out into irrelevance.

As a pivotal moment in the history of the counterculture, Easy Rider, much like Kerouac’s On the Road, cannot be easily discounted. Although certain elements have, by necessity, become dated, the overall themes and angles of the film hold up surprisingly well. As a film, Easy Rider is quite good, with sterling performances from Hopper, Fonda and Nicholson, along with some excellent cinematography that is reminiscent of the same year’s Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid. It’s always a hoot to see Hopper play the “straight” guy, particularly with the decades of crazy characters that would come after this. Nicholson, in particular, is excellent, providing yet another example of why he became one of the most beloved actors of all time. There’s a sense of playfulness that easily recalls Depp’s work in Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, although Nicholson owned this type of role for some time before Depp wandered down Jump Street.

If there can be any complaints, it would have to be that the film definitely becomes formulaic well before the ending, although the final 15 minutes are still some of the most powerful film moments ever. Even though the film seems a bit dated now (the commune scene, in particular, is of its era, complete with a truly bizarre mime performance and some really hippy-dippy philosophizing), it’s held up much better than similar films of the era, such as Fonda’s ultra-silly The Trip from a few years earlier. In the end, Easy Rider exists as both a fascinating curio of a forgotten era and a timely reminder that we must be ever vigilant, if we hope to truly change the world. As Sisyphus knew, the moment you quit pushing forward and forging new ground is the moment where the boulder begins to slide back down the hill. In the ’60s, the hippies managed to push the rock quite a ways up the hill. The tragedy, of course, is that it crushed them all on the way back down.

3/14/14: Men Are For Lunch, Women Are From Moodley

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auteur theory, battle of the sexes, British comedies, British horror, Christina Cole, cinema, Daniel Schaffer, Danny Dyer, Doghouse, Dogwitch, Evil Aliens, Film auteurs, film reviews, films, graphic novels, guys' weekend, horror films, horror-comedies, isolated communities, Jake West, killer women, misogyny, Moodley, Movies, Neil Maskell, Noel Clarke, remote village, Stephen Graham, Terry Stone, the battle of the sexes, violence against women, zombies

Ah, the battle of the sexes: that (presumably) eternal struggle between men and women for understanding, equality and empathy. As with most cultural/societal issues, the battle of the sexes has been fodder for popular entertainment since practically the time that men and women could walk upright…and probably before that, to be honest. In all of this time, we’re not in sight of a resolution yet, although there have obviously been numerous individual victories along the way. From George Cukor’s classic Hepburn/Tracy vehicle Adam’s Rib (1949) to Mamet’s misogyny (In the Company of Men (1997), Oleana (1994)) to the world of horror (Season of the Witch (1972), Donkey Punch (2007), Witching and Bitching (2013), the battle of the sexes continues to rage on in movie theaters and on the small screen.

Any film (or book, for that matter) that attempts to take on the battle of the sexes has quite the tightrope to walk. On the one hand, battle of the sexes stories are essentially universal (I’m willing to wager that in societies where it’s not part of the context, it’s an inherent part of the subtext of daily life) and can (theoretically) appeal to just about anyone. In reality, of course, battle of the sexes films (or other forms of media/entertainment) are just as beholden to the realities of a largely patriarchal society as any other forms of entertainment. One need only reflect on Shakespeare’s far from “enlightened” Taming of the Shrew or classic romance/comedies like Adam’s Rib and Pillow Talk to see just how much of the humor/entertainment is filtered through a decidedly male-oriented point-of-view.

The notion of the battle of the sexes gets even iffier, however, when one grafts it onto horror films, which have tended to be even more male-oriented/patriarchal than other genres (with the possible exception of the glut of late-’70s/’80s sword-and-sandal barbarian flicks). In slasher films, for example, the concept of the “male gaze” is so inherent to deeper readings of these works that it’s inseparable: there’s a reason that you can’t intelligently discuss either Friday the 13th or Halloween without going into a detailed discussion of the concept of the “final girl.” Horror films that explicitly take on the battle of the sexes, such as the aforementioned Donkey Punch, Witching and Bitching or I Spit on Your Grave can be rather tricky: while the films may attempt discussion on weighty issues like violence against women, the role of women in a predominantly patriarchal world and the unfortunate prominence of “rape culture” in our modern world, this all comes filtered through sensibilities that are targeted at primarily male viewers. The end result, in many cases, are films that combine serious issues with old-fashioned, stereotypical and, in some cases, outright misogynistic attitudes.

Into this existing goulash of existing “battle of the sexes” films comes Jake West’s Doghouse, a film that posits the battle of the sexes as a real, honest-to-god, knock-down-drag-out fight. While the film operates from the same starting point as Louis Malle’s experimental Black Moon (men and women are actually fighting each other in open, armed conflict), it’s intent is actually much simpler and more “laddish,” as it were: take a bunch of guys, drop them into an isolated village full of blood-thirsty zombie women and see what happens. As can be expected, the results are bloody, comic and just un-PC enough to appeal to the genre fans that flocked to West’s outrageously over-the-top debut Evil Aliens, although it’s doubtful that the film will have anything of value to add to the actual battle of the sexes. As 90 minutes of mildly offensive, early-Peter-Jackson-esque gore, however, Doghouse quite ably fits the bill.

In short order, the film introduces us to our core group of “blokes,” with just enough individual characterization to prevent them from being distinguished solely by descriptors like “the bad boy” or “the nice guy”: We have our hero, Vince (Stephen Graham), the newly divorced one. We’ve got the “bad boy,” of course (Danny Dyer); the “nerd” (Lee Ingleby); the “token gay friend” (Emil Marwa); the “consistently late friend” (Neil Maskell); the “married friend” (Noel Clarke) and the “self-improvement-obsessed-friend” (Keith-Lee Castle). We’ll also get introduced to a stereotypical “aggressive, meat-head, military” guy later on, for a little variety. The friends have all come together to help Vince get over his recent (and painful) divorce with a “guys-only” weekend at the isolated, female-dominated town of Moodley. Enlisting the aid of bus-driver Ruth (Christina Cole), the lads make it to Moodley but discover something sure to give them that ol’ sinking feeling: all of the women in the town have become murderous “zom-birds,” weapon-wielding, rage-possessed, man-hating (and eating) creatures with only one coherent thought in their heads: if it has a penis, kill it.

Soon, the guys must pool their resources and attempt to make a desperate stand against the legions of possessed women, a situation made worse by the discovery that the infected women are still changing, evolving into bigger, faster, more lethal and infinitely more monstrous versions of themselves. When Ruth becomes infected and turns their bus into her lair, the guys seem to be trapped and doomed. Will they survive the worst stag party in history? Will Vince keep his sweet disposition, despite the long odds? Will Neil ever treat women like human beings? And what, exactly, does the military guy have to do with everything? The answers won’t surprise but they will entertain.

Overall, Doghouse is an extremely well-made, energetic, fast-paced and clever film, with a genuinely funny script and some unique little additions to the well-trod zombie genre. The acting is uniformly good, especially from Danny Dyer and Stephen Graham. Dyer, in particular, is perfect: he plays the part of the womanizing, smarmy bastard to a t. Dyer’s been one of my favorite British genre actors for some time now, possessing the quick-witted delivery and roguish good looks of a more tolerable Colin Farrell, and Doghouse is my favorite performance of his with the exception of Severance, which bears the distinction of being one of my favorite modern horror films. Graham, as usual, is incredibly likable and, for most of the film, comes across as the distinct voice of reason, particularly when paralleled with Dyer’s unrepentant misogyny. It’s doubly unfortunate, then, that the films makes its only real missteps with the transition of his character from “reasonable, normal guy” to “kind-of/sort-of misogynist” by the film’s end. That his “attitude adjustment” is viewed as necessary to his survival is, in the end, quite troubling: the film seems to be saying that any male attitude short of misogyny is not only passe but hazardous to one’s health.

Let me be clear: I don’t find Doghouse to be a sexist film, although I do think it unnecessarily muddies its intent with a bit too much sexist humor and that aforementioned need for male characters to become misogynist in order to ensure their survival. As Graham, the film’s sole gay character tells Neil, at one point: “Now is not the time to stop objectifying women!” In fact, Neil’s softening of his initial stance on women almost gets him killed several times, while Vince’s eventual adoption of Neil’s earlier misogyny ends up saving his life…talk about a conflicted sense of equality. Furthering the issue, there really aren’t any women in the film that aren’t (or later become) zombies, leaving the guys as our only actual points of entry into the film. At first glance, it seems that Ruth may end up as a tonic for the “boys-only” attitude but her quick transformation into a zombie effectively takes her out of the game: at the end, the only “humans” in the film end up being the guys, which seems a bit reductive.

Ultimately, however, I didn’t find the film’s male perspective to be any more offensive than Zach Snyder’s Sucker Punch, another genre film that purported to be about female empowerment, yet saw fit to dress its female leads up like fetish models. At least Doghouse doesn’t claim to be more than it is, whereas Sucker Punch’s disingenuous male-gaze seems distinctly more obnoxious thanks to its supposed intent. At the very least, Doghouse doesn’t end up being radically more offensive or unenlightened than any number of similar genre offerings and is worlds away from the rape-revenge fantasies of films like I Spit on Your Grave or Mother’s Day. At its heart, this is a silly, splattery horror-comedy and doesn’t seem to have pretensions to more. The dialogue is quick and funny, the acting is excellent, the effects are really quite good (and very, very gory) and the whole thing has a shaggy-dog-esque likability that goes a long way towards out smoothing over some of the more potentially misogynist material. While Doghouse doesn’t break any new ground, it stands the very real chance of making you break out in a big smile. Sometimes, that’s all you can ask for.

 

3/13/14: Ain’t No Love in the City (Oscar Bait, Part 15)

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2013 Academy Awards, 86th Annual Academy Awards, auteur theory, Barton Fink, Best Cinematography nominee, Best Sound Mixing nominee, Carey Mulligan, cats, cinema, Coen Brothers, couch-surfing, Ethan Coen, Film auteurs, film reviews, films, folk music, Garrett Hedlund, Greenwich Village, indie dramas, Inside Llewyn Davis, Joel Coen, John Goodman, Justin Timberlake, Llewyn Davis, Movies, musical numbers, New York City, Oscar Isaac, Roland Turner, set in the 1960's, snubbed at the Oscars, the Coen Brothers, unlikable protagonist, winter

There’s a very fine line between being a gruff, disagreeable, yet essentially human being and being a complete horse’s ass. On the one hand, you have a set of individuals who just don’t feel like towing the party line, the kind of folks who follow their own rules and don’t always have to have a plastic smile glued to their faces. These folks may be curt, short-fused, unapologetically honest and kind of a drag but, for the most part, they’re good people: someone else’s “theme song” isn’t necessarily noise, just different from our own. The world is full of unpleasant people who do lots of good deeds and are responsible for some very essential/beautiful/hilarious/moving things. On the other hand, however, some people really are just horses’ asses and there isn’t much more that can be said about them.

The question at the center of Inside Llewyn Davis, the Coen Brothers’ latest film, is just what kind of an individual Llewyn Davis (Oscar Isaac) really is: is he a gruff, unlikable, immensely talented artiste or is he just a spoiled-rotten horse’s ass? As with pretty much every Coen film since their debut, nothing here is ever as clear-cut as that, although Inside Llewyn Davis tends to be almost as obtuse as Barton Fink, which is no mean feat.

We’re first introduced to Llewyn, a New York folk singer, as he’s doing one of the two things he’s best at: singing his heart out at a small club. In short order, however, we’re introduced to Llewyn’s other talent, as a mysterious man kicks his ass in the parking lot for heckling during another performance. Even as he’s getting stomped, Llewyn is completely unrepentant: if he regrets anything, it’s probably that he didn’t get away quick enough. We then follow Llewyn on an epic journey of minimalism and aimless drifting as he couch surfs across Greenwich village, letting loose a beloved family pet here, bringing discord to a relationship there and never once wavering from his steadfast devotion to say it like he means it. Jean (Carey Mulligan), one half of a local folk “power” couple with Jim (Justin Timberlake) may be pregnant with Llewyn’s kid but she’d rather abort it than take the chance: “You’re a shit person and everything you touch turns to shit.” Jim gets Llewyn a gig with him in the studio, only for Llewyn to spend the whole time ridiculing the song and being a jerk: “I’m happy for the gig but who wrote this song?” Jim’s unhappy reply? “I did.”

Time and time again, Llewyn acts in the most selfish, self-serving ways possible, navigating through life as if it were a highway and his was the only car in sight. He talks shit about Al Cody (Adam Driver) during the studio session but still manages to ask him to crash on his couch. Not only does Llewyn let out the Gorfeins’ (Ethan Phillips, Robin Bartlett) cat, he also explodes during a dinner, causing Mrs. Gorfein to burst out crying. Nonetheless, Llewyn still shows up on their doorstep later, looking for a place to stay. In any given situation, Llewyn does just what he wants to but then seems surprised when everybody reacts negatively.

As previously mentioned, however, there seems to be a lot more going on here than a simple look into the life of a jerk. For one thing, Inside Llewyn Davis is structured very much like a quest/road-movie, although the ultimate goal never seems quite clear. In some ways, the film reminded me of Oh Brother, Where Art Thou, although the underlying connection of the latter to the Odyssey is much clearer than any classical allusions I can draw from the former. This is not to say that the Coens’ intention is muddy, necessarily, just that I wasn’t able to get it the first time around. There’s definitely something going on internally, especially once we learn that the Gorfein’s cat is named Ulysses, but my initial viewing wasn’t quite sufficient: as with all things Coen, I expect multiple viewings to help clear this up.

We also get the odd introduction of Johnny Five (Garrett Hedlund) and Roland Turner (John Goodman), a beat poet and jazz musician, respectively, who embark on a short, ill-fated car trip with Llewyn. Goodman is absolutely amazing as the crass, boorish, Santeria-practicing, smack-shootin’ jazz musician but it’s a curious role and seems to serve a rather undefined purpose in the film. At first, I was inclined to think that this was a commentary on the inherent differences between jazz and folk during the early ’60s but that felt to reductive. I’m more inclined to think that Roland factors more prominently into the “real,” underlying story beneath Inside Llewyn Davis (I automatically think of Childe Roland to the Dark Tower Came but that could just be me).

There’s also the curious business of the beginning and end of the film, sections which seem to hint at some sort of deeper, almost symbolic meaning. By the end of the film, I was left wondering if, perhaps, this were some form of a purgatory, with Llewyn Davis doing eternal laps around the track as some sort of punishment for past deeds. Did the mysterious, ass-whuppin’ man in black represent some sort of cosmic retribution, the universe’s way of making sure that Llewyn earned some measure of comeuppance for his blatant disregard towards everyone else? Was this some way of saying that omnipresent negativity can only breed more negativity, leading Llewyn to wander in a maze of his own unpleasant creation? It honestly stumped me but I won’t admit defeat until I’ve had a little more time with it.

My confusion notwithstanding, Inside Llewyn Davis marks something of a return to form for the Coens (at least as far as I’m concerned) after the disappointment of Burn After Reading, A Serious Man and True Grit. This is a much simpler, quieter film than productions like Oh Brother and True Grit but it doesn’t have the restrained sense of tension inherent to early films like Blood Simple or Fargo, either. For me, this “slow-burn” zone is my favorite mode for the Coens, so watching this felt like the cinematic equivalent of comfort food, in a way. As usual, the ensemble cast is fantastic: like Woody Allen, the Coens have a natural gift with bringing out the best in actors and they have quite the group to work with here. As the titular “hero,” Oscar Issac is simply marvelous and was egregiously snubbed of a Best Actor nomination at this year’s Oscars. Mulligan and Timberlake, as Jean and Jim, are great, with Timberlake continuing to impress me with another simple but spot-on characterization. As previously mentioned, Goodman is a whirlwind of chaos and easily steals every inch of celluloid that he appears on.

Ironically, despite being denied several obvious Oscar nominations (Best Actor, Best Picture, Best Director, for three), Inside Llewyn Davis was nominated for a pair that I just couldn’t agree with: Best Sound Mixing and Best Cinematography. While the cinematography was good but nothing special, I actually found the sound mixing to be rather awful, with the kind of vast gulf between dialogue and music that mars many films/TV shows these days: I found myself riding my remote’s volume more than I liked and certainly more than should have been necessary in a film with “supposedly” exemplary sound mixing.

At the end of the day, due to my lifelong love of their films, it’s always a bit difficult for me to be truly subjective regarding any new Coen Brothers productions. Unlike certain filmmakers like Nicholas Winding Refn or Ben Wheatley, I don’t love every Coen film in their canon: in fact, there are a few that I actively dislike. Very few filmmakers besides the Coens, however, would make me repeatedly watch a film that I don’t care for in an attempt to get me to understand and appreciate it better. While Inside Llewyn Davis is nowhere near my least favorite Coen film (hands down, that would be True Grit), it’s also nowhere near my favorite Coen film (Blood Simple/The Big Lebowski would be the conjoined twin/winner here). I’m willing to wager that, given some time, I’ll understand and appreciate this a lot more. At the very least, I’ll never get tired of watching Roland bluster or Llewyn chase that darn cat all over town.