8/10/14: The Hair Protects the Brain

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academic quiz show, Alex Wolff, Austin Pendleton, Billy Kent, Brendan Fraser, child genius, college student, Collegiate Mastermind, collegiate rivalries, coming of age, Eli Pettifog, Elisabeth Hower, Fred Melamed, Greta Lee, HairBrained, Harvard, independent films, indie comedies, Julia Garner, Kimiko Glenn, Leo Searly, Michael Oberholtzer, midlife crisis, Napoleon Dynamite, Parker Posey, Robin de Jesus, romance, Rushmore, social outcasts, Teddy Bergman, The Trotsky, voice-over narration, Whittman College

Sporting a King Buzzo hairdo and dragging an outrageously overstuffed dufflebag of books behind him, Eli Pettifog (Alex Wolff) is quite the memorable figure. He’s also a socially inept, fourteen-year-old certifiable genius who’s just begun his freshman year at Whittman College, the 37th best school on his list, far below his beloved first choice, Harvard. Eli, obviously, is not going to have an easy go of it. On the other hand, Eli is droll, fearless and has a way with a witty comeback that would make Juno proud. In other words, at least as far as indie comedies go, Eli is gonna be just fine.

As the centerpiece of Billy Kent’s HairBrained (2013), Eli joins a proud tradition of cinematic misfits made good, taking his place with the likes of Max Fischer, Napoleon Dynamite and Leon Bronstein. Like his predecessors, Eli faces a pretty predictable arc: begin as the maligned outsider and win the world over with his quirky charm. While HairBrained is nowhere near the ivied walls of Wes Anderson’s Rushmore (1998), nor even the high school halls of Jacob Tierney’s The Trotsky (2009), the film has enough charm to make it a breezy watch and a worthwhile addition to the canon.

We’re first introduced to Eli as his waste-case of a mother (Parker Posey, in a great cameo) drops him off at the bus station on his first day of college. She’s “too tired” to drive him to school: she’s a “terrible mother,” his voice-over informs us. “Make some friends,” she tells him, with a tone that indicates she knows how this particular request will go. And, with the gentle, psuedo-tropical rhythms of Cayucas’ “Cayucos” playing on the soundtrack, we’re off. It’s an effective opening and a good portent of what’s to come: plenty of gently snark, some genuine emotion and lots of quirk.

Every good movie misfit needs a sidekick and Eli gets his in the form of Leo Searly (Brendan Fraser), the unnaturally happy, easy-going, oldest freshman student at Whittman. As we discover via a clever “slot-machine”-style interlude, Leo has recently had a bit of a mid-life crisis, abandoning his job and family to “rediscover” himself which, as we’ll come to see, mostly consists of flipping a coin to decide between adding badminton or squash to his schedule and attending raging keggers where he gleefully picks up on co-eds young enough to be his daughter. Leo takes to Eli at first sight and makes it his goal to help steer his young protegé through the rocky waters of academia which, again, mostly consists of attending parties and learning to “loosen up.”

For his part, however, Eli can never truly be happy since he’ll always have to settle for second-best: namely, any place that isn’t Harvard. He’s wanted to attend the Ivy League school since he was a small boy and still plasters every inch of his Whittman dorm with his accumulated Harvard memorabilia: being rejected by the school is a blow that Eli still struggles to overcome, even as his outward appearance suggests nothing so much as bored acceptance.

After seeing a flyer for Collegiate Mastermind, an academic quiz show, Eli attends a competition only to watch in delight as his beloved Harvard wipes the floor with the pathetic Whittman team (Eli stands and cheers every time Harvard scores, earning him multiple “atta boys” from the smug Harvard crew, along with dismayed looks from his own peers). After the meet, Eli tries to wheedle himself in with the Harvard boys, only for the nerds to turn around and bully him after finding out that he goes to Whittman. In one moment, Eli’s entire world is turned upside-down: where once burned the flame of adulation, now only burns hatred. Rushing back to his room and destroying all of his Harvard gear, Eli vows revenge on his former crush: he will join Whittman’s Collegiate Mastermind team and he will utterly destroy Harvard…or, at least, Harvard’s Collegiate Mastermind team.

Once the boy genius is on-board, Whittman’s Collegiate Mastermind team is virtually unstoppable. In face, Eli pretty much becomes the entire team, completely over-shadowing original members Gertrude (Greta Lee), Alan (Teddy Bergman) and Romeo (Ruben de Jesus). He even gets a girlfriend in the form of the equally quirky Shauna (Julia Garner), who works at the local mall and enjoys smoking pot and making out (clumsily). Eli also ends up with his own fan base (success-starved Whittman students will hold on to any victories they can get, attending CM meets and chanting “We’re not dumb” en masse) and even a groupie, of sorts, in out-of-his-league cheerleader Eve (Elisabeth Hower), whose football player boyfriend, Laird (Michael Oberholtzer), has become some sort of “frenemy” to Eli. As for Leo, a chance reunion with his estranged daughter, who is now a perspective Whittman student, has got him re-evaluating his life choices: it certainly gets him rethinking his choice in bed partners, as his latest girlfriend is too close in age to his daughter for comfort.

As Eli and the Whittman team get ever closer to their elusive Harvard rivals, temptations arise everywhere for our intrepid heroes: Eli’s increasing showboating and obnoxious behavior during meets threatens his participation in the Collegiate Mastermind finals, Leo’s need for tuition money for his daughter leads him to return to his formerly destructive gambling habits. Will Eli be a hero and take Whittman all the way to a championship? Will Leo do right by his family, at long last? And will someone finally shut up those egotistical Harvard nitwits?

Although HairBrained doesn’t do much different from any other indie coming-of-age comedies of late, it’s still a pleasant, fun film, even if it manages to lose quite a bit of steam by the final third. Without a doubt, the film’s biggest asset is its incredibly winning cast: while there are certainly stand-outs, nearly every performer is equally likeable, charismatic and entertaining, whether in major or minor roles. Wolff and Fraser make an excellent odd couple, sort of a Mutt and Jeff where Fraser gets to traffic in his patented “aw shucks” attitude to great effect. Wolff is a pretty extraordinary young actor, definitely someone who we’ll be seeing more of in the future. Michael Oberholtzer almost steals the film away as Laird, however, playing the character as anything but the stereotypical bully: the bit where he inexplicably dresses like the Donnie Darko rabbit is pretty great but even better is his initial meeting with Eli, wherein he holds his head in the toilet after which he toasts his new “enemy” with a swig from his hip-flask. It’s a great, funny character and Oberholtzer is endlessly fun to watch.

Just as impressive, however, are Greta Lee, Julia Garner and Elisabeth Hower as, respectively, Gertrude, Shauna and Eve. As the no-nonsense anchor to Whittman’s CM team, Lee’s Gertrude is the perfect combination of wistful desire and bland practicality, while Garner’s take on the “manic pixie girl” stereotype is infinitely more tolerable than similar recent examples. Hower, for her part, is magnificent as Eve, playing the character as something of a lackadaisical predator, a sleepy-eyed shark who sets her sights on Eli, for whatever reason: the scene where she corners her prey in the library and implores him to “Look past her breasts,” to which Eli gives his best Henny Youngman-esque answer, “Look past them? I can’t even look at them!” is one of the film’s funniest moments.

On the downside, HairBrained ends up running out of steam well before the conclusion and a lot of what seemed charming and funny in the first two-thirds begins to feel strained and humdrum by the finale. My biggest issue came with the two deux ex machinas dropped into the script, either of which would have been bad enough on their own but taken together almost seem insulting: in essence, any time the relatively “stakes-free” film threatens its characters’ complacency, the script throws in a handy way to get them out, free and easy. As mentioned, it’s more than tiresome: it mars what’s otherwise a pretty good, funny script and smacks of lazy writing.

Despite a few issues, however, HairBrained is a pretty charming film: it’s not a classic, by any stretch of the imagination, but I found myself liking it a great deal more than I did Juno (2007). The dialogue is (usually) pretty clever, Wolff and Fraser have great chemistry and are completely believable as the odd couple friends and the supporting cast is exceptionally strong. While the film doesn’t break any new ground, it does just fine with what it has.

7/31/14: You Can’t Be Righteous With Weapons of War

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based on a true story, Better Mus' Come, brothers, cinema, City of God, Cold War, crime film, Dennis Hall, drama, Duane Pusey, Everaldo Cleary, feature-film debut, film reviews, films, independent film, Jamaica, Jamaican films, Movies, Nicole Sky Grey, period-piece, political factions, political struggle, poverty, Rastafarianism, Ricardo Orgil, romance, Sage the Poet, set in the 1970s, Sheldon Shepherd, Storm Saulter, writer-director-cinematographer

For many people who came of age during the Cold War, the threat of another world war and/or nuclear annihilation was a near constant, if ultimately theoretical, source of worry. Western-bloc school children were put through safety drills, fall-out shelters were built and political rhetoric was tossed around fast and thick from both sides. In some countries, however, the Cold War was more than just an ideological battleground: in places like Jamaica, during the ’70s, people were actually killing (and being killed) for this “battle against Communism.” For some, the Cold War was as physical and real as their often difficult living situations.

First-time writer/director/cinematographer Storm Saulter’s bracing debut feature, Better Mus’ Come (2010), examines this very “heated” side of the Cold War, wrapping the conflict up within the familiar trappings of a coming-of-age story. In the process, Saulter comes up with a film that flirts with greatness, even as it narrowly misses the lofty mark set by the similar City of God (2002). Despite not being a classic, Better Mus’ Come is a fairly extraordinary film, full of some painfully real performances, all surrounded by the inherent majesty of Jamaica’s picaresque countryside and humble shanty-towns slums. It’s a vibrant, lively, colorful place occupied, thanks to Saulter, with some truly interesting characters.

Better Mus’ Come begins in 1978, as Jamaica is in the grip of the Cold War: the slums are caught up in the often violent conflict between rival gangs working for the People’s National Party (PNP) on one side and the Jamaica Labor Party (JLP) on the other. Our protagonist, Ricky (Sheldon Shepherd), is a proud Laborite: he sees himself as a freedom fighter devoted to keeping the “Communist threat” out of Jamaica. “Let them take that shit to Cuba,” he proudly sneers at one point in the film. Along with his role as de facto leader of his local gang, a crew which includes his friends Flames (Ricardo Orgil) and Shorty (Everaldo Cleary), Ricky is also responsible for taking care of his young brother, Chris, a task made exceptionally difficult by their nearly crippling poverty. Like many of the residents of their shanty-town, Ricky and Chris don’t even have access to clean, running water, much less luxuries like electricity and “real” building materials. In one of the film’s most telling scenes, Ricky complains about their lack of amenities to the corrupt local politician who employs them, only to be answered with the dismissive notion that “people shouldn’t expect that kind of stuff.” We could go back and forth on the need for electricity but clean water? That seems like the kind of need that supersedes any notions of social status or wealth: everyone, regardless of station, should have access to clean water.

In his own way, however, Ricky is like a young, impoverished Don Corleone: he practically runs his neighborhood, watching out for residents who are getting crushed by strictures like food rationing and mercurial local authority figures. Ricky and his gang make their money by disrupting PNP rallies and raiding “legitimate” construction sites in order to steal and re-sell the supplies, while still finding time to run out any “Socialists” that manage to wander into the area. When Ricky’s gang jumps and nearly kills Pauly, a nerdy young man who kind of/sort of runs with the Socialists, Ricky gets introduced to Kemala (Nicole Sky Grey) and it’s love at first sight. As with any troubled romance (think Romeo and Juliet or the Hatfields and McCoys), all signs and advise point to Ricky and Kemala staying as far away from each other as possible: Ricky’s peers counsel him to “stay away from Socialist girls,” while Kemala and Pauly are intrinsically intertwined with brutal Socialist gang leader Dogheart (Duane Pusey), a sort of small-town Napoleon who’s always “all-in to kill some fools.”

As Ricky and Kemala timidly negotiate their highly hazardous courtship, events come to a head for both the Laborites and the Socialists. Local entrepreneur Souls (Dennis Hall) wants to pay Ricky and his gang to guard the same construction sites that they’ve been ripping off, a curious conflict-of-interest that’s but one of many dichotomies in Better Mus’ Come. Ricky’s gang jumps at the offer, mostly because the $300/week (plus weapons) that they’ve been offered is twenty-times more than the $15/week they normally make. There’s a trade-off, however: working for “the man” means ceding their autonomy in the neighborhood, the equivalent of Don Corleone swapping his power for a fast-food job. It also means forcing more conflicts with the Socialists, which means the potential for more bloodshed. When Pauly tries to use Dogheart as a way to strike back at the humiliating beating he received from the Laborites, killing seems inevitable. Despite his best efforts, Ricky and his young brother are about to be dragged into the howling maelstrom that is Jamaica’s violent political struggles: in the process, Ricky will have to give up everything for the faintest glimmer of a terror-free life and future with Kemala.

I will freely, if begrudgingly, admit that my previous experiences with Jamaican cinema have been much less numerous than my experiences with other world cinemas: before Better Mus’ Come, I’d only seen The Harder They Come (1972) and Rockers (1978), two films which I thoroughly enjoyed. As mentioned earlier, however, Better Mus’ Come actually owes much more to Meirelles’ City of God than it does to either of the above two: at their hearts, both films are about the ways in which otherwise “good” youths are drawn into lives of crime thanks to the crushing poverty and inherent hopelessness of their situations. Between the two, City of God is definitely the deeper, more powerful film: while Better Mus’ Come has plenty of genuinely impactful moments, there’s also quite a bit of melodrama that wasn’t present in City of God. Meirelles’ film also seemed to get deeper under the skin of its characters than Saulter’s does, although this could also be chalked up to Saulter’s relative inexperience: this was, after all, his debut film.

While Better Mus’ Come is not, inherently, a better film than City of God, it’s still a pretty extraordinary experience. Saulter’s cinematography can be quite beautiful, at times (although it also has a tendency to be a little blown-out at others), and it really shows off Jamaica to great effect. While the musical score is a little obvious and intrusive at the beginning, it becomes much more organic and evocative by the midpoint, adding much to the film’s frequently red-lined sense of tension. While the storyline can occasionally get a bit convoluted and unnecessarily confusing (the introduction of some nefarious government agents, at the end, seems to muddy the waters a bit too much in the home-stretch), it unfolds in a fairly straight-forward way for much of the film’s running time, making Better Mus’ Come an easy film to get wrapped-up in.

Although Saulter displays some nice chops behind the camera, the real stars of the show end up being the exceptional cast. Sheldon Shepard is a real revelation as Ricky: by turns hard-headed, sensitive, biased and understanding, he’s a completely three-dimensional character. Shepard is an utterly magnetic performer, no more so than the crowd-pleasing scenes where he plays “godfather” in the slum. It’s pretty easy to see why folks would follow him which, adversely, makes it pretty easy to see why other folks want him dead. Ricardo Orgil is similarly excellent as Ricky’s right-hand-man, Flames, while Duane Pusey is so over-the-top as the reprehensible Dogheart that he often seems like a mustache-twirling silent-film bad guy. The character works spectacularly well, however, giving Ricky a suitably nasty antagonist to play off. I would be remiss if I didn’t mention Nicole Sky Grey as the Juliet to Ricky’s Romeo, however: she plays the character with a completely winning combination of vulnerability and steely reserve. At one point, Kemala asks why it’s “so easy to die for nothing” in their country and she becomes, effortlessly, both the film’s bleeding heart and its wounded conscience.

There’s an awful lot to like about Better Mus’ Come: the film is full of tense, well-staged action scenes (the big conflict between Ricky’s Laborites and Dogheart’s Socialists is suitably thrilling but is over-shadowed by the truly bravura scene where Kemala and Chris are almost caught by Dogheart’s crew while hiding in the trunk of a cab), features a nicely realized romance (Ricky and Kemala make a cute, realistic couple) and has plenty to say about Jamaican politics circa the late-’70s. The film sometimes suffers from “feature-debut” jitters but, on the whole, is a remarkably assured creation. Despite my relative lack of knowledge regarding Jamaica’s political history, I was utterly enthralled by Better Mus’ Come.

While the film isn’t based on actual events, per se, it’s certainly inspired by the era it represents and marks a distinct, powerful calling card for an emerging new talent. I’m going to go out on a limb here and suggest that we’re going to be seeing a lot more of Storm Saulter in the future: while Better Mus’ Come isn’t quite as unforgettable as City of God, I’m willing to wager that Saulter’s next film will be.

7/30/14: Support Your Local Spirit Squad

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All Cheerleaders Die, Amanda Grace Cooper, back from the dead, battle of the sexes, Brooke Butler, Caitlin Stasey, cheerleaders, Chris Petrovski, Chris Sivertson, cinema, co-directors, co-writers, Felisha Cooper, film reviews, films, football players, girls against boys, Heathers, high school, high school angst, high school cliques, horror films, horror-comedies, Jordan Wilson, Leigh Parker, Lucky McKee, magic stones, Michael Bowen, Movies, Nicholas S. Morrison, rape, Reanin Johannink, Sianoa Smit-McPhee, Sidney Allison, teenagers, The Woman, Tom Williamson, troubled teens, Warlock, Wiccan, writer-director

For a time, Lucky McKee and Chris Sivertson’s All Cheerleaders Die (2013) is a rather nasty piece of work, a combination of the high school clique napalming of Heathers (1988) with the lethal gender conflicts of Donkey Punch (2008). Just as the film seems like it’s really going to dig its teeth in, however, it inexplicably becomes a mish-mash of Warlock (1989) and Dragon Ball Z, which is a much less effective, much sillier combination. As someone who was really blown away by McKee’s last film, the thoroughly uncompromising, jaw-dropping The Woman (2011), I was really hoping that his follow-up would continue the discussion on the battle of the sexes in a similar, uncompromising manner. To say that I was disappointed…well, that might just be the understatement of the year.

From the get-go, All Cheerleaders Die seems to be taking us down a fixed but certainly intriguing path: the film begins with hand-held footage of vapid head cheerleader Alexis (Felisha Cooper) performing a routine before landing on her head with a sickening crunch. Cut to the title, red letters on a black background. From here, we meet Alexis’ “friend,” Maddy (Caitlin Stasey). Maddy was the one filming the opening footage and, for all intents and purposes, seems to be the farthest thing from a stereotypical high school cheerleader: she’s droll, sarcastic, a budding journalist and quite intent on avenging Alexis’ death. To this end, Maddy tries out for (and makes) the cheerleading squad, although she rightfully hides her true intentions from her new “friends.”

Once ensconced within the spirit squad, Maddy goes about trying to detonate the popular girls from the inside-out. There’s Tracy (Brooke Butler), who’s now dating Alexis’ former boyfriend, quarterback Terry (Tom Williamson); Martha (Reanin Joannink), the team captain and Martha’s little sister, Hanna (Amanda Grace Cooper), the team’s put-upon mascot. Maddy blames each of the girls (along with their football player boyfriends) for Alexis’ death but saves the bulk of her vehemence for Tracy and Terry. By wheedling herself in close to Tracy, Maddy begins to drive a wedge between her and Terry, claiming to have evidence of Terry’s infidelity. On the periphery of this toxic little group is Maddy’s former best friend, the Gothy Leena (Sianoa Smit-McPhee), who also happens to be a practicing Wiccan and, apparently, was once Maddy’s girlfriend. Maddy has been dissing Leena, lately, which is all part of her plan to ingratiate herself in with the cheerleaders: this, of course, makes Leena feel like she’s been betrayed by the only person at the school who actually seems to understand her.

Things come to a head when Maddy encourages Tracy to send Terry a nasty breakup text message. When Terry shows up at that night’s cheerleader/football player kegger, the shit really hits the fan. Maddy pressures Tracy into shit-talking Terry in front of his team and you’d have to be completely dense not to see the gathering storm clouds. Indeed, after standing there, emotionless, Terry hauls off and punches Tracy square in the face, a shocking, gritty piece of violence that immediately seems to set the film on a grim track as a visceral examination of violence against women. Maddy tries to get the other football players to jump Terry (they don’t), Martha tries to call the police, only to have Terry snatch away her phone and the cheerleaders jump in their car and take off, pursued at maximum speed by the football players. As Leena watches in horror, the car containing Maddy, Tracy, Hanna and Martha plunges through a railing and straight into a pitch-black lake. Leena does what she can to save Maddy and the others but their bodies are already cold and water-logged by the time she hauls them to shore.

At this point, there were at least a handful of paths the film could have taken: it could have kept the revenge angle, with Leena taking up Maddy’s mantle; it could have had one of the girls survive, making her the avenger; there could have been a falling out among the football players, pitting the more hesitant members against gung-ho Terry and his best buddies. What the film opts to do, however, is to spin the film off into an entirely different direction: namely, All Cheerleaders Die transitions seamlessly from a gritty “battle of the sexes” into an FX-heavy supernatural thriller, sort of a cross between Warlock and Drag Me To Hell (2009). You see, Leena uses her magical powers to enchant the magic stones that she carries around: these stones than “reanimate” the dead girls, as it were, granting them with such things as super strength. The trade-off, of course, is that the cheerleaders must now feed on blood in order to sustain themselves. In other words, the cheerleaders are now zombie/vampire hybrids who are powered by magical glowing stones imbedded in their innards. Suffice to say that any sense of “grit” or “realism” just flew out the window, along with most of the savvy plays on high school cliques and popularity contests.

Instead, we end up with a film that consists of the cheerleaders playing cat-and-mouse, of sorts, with the football players. When the guys return from their little murder spree, they strut through the school like they were, literally, the cocks of the walk. Until, that is, the cheerleaders return to strut through the school. The guys know that the cheerleaders went into the lake, so suspect some sort of teenage version of Gaslight (1944): Terry, for his part, isn’t so sure and gets all the confirmation he needs when one of his guys witnesses Leena levitating her stones in the middle of class (Leena also ended up with a stone in her chest, despite not being dead, which appears to have amplified her magic powers). Every time the cheerleaders kill one of the football team, their power increases exponentially. This fact isn’t lost on Terry, who decides to turn the tables by consuming the cheerleaders’ magical stones and increasing his own powers. Soon, with the ranks on both sides decimated, it’s up to Maddy and Leena to finally put an end to Terry’s reign of terror. Will they be strong enough to stop him, however? And what other tricks might Leena have up her sleeve?

Right up to the point where the film transitioned from a tense, blackly comic drama into a full-on supernatural action film, I was largely, if not completely, on board. In many ways, All Cheerleaders Die plays like a lesser version of All The Boys Love Mandy Lane (2006) or a very light version of Heathers. While I didn’t love the film, I could appreciate where it was heading and looked forward to seeing if McKee was going to get as extreme as he did in The Woman. Once the magic, glowing, floating stones appeared, however, it became pretty impossible to take the film seriously. It doesn’t, of course, help that the CGI on the stones is utterly absurd and awful, reminding of nothing so much as all the damn cheesy “lightning and laser eyes” effects from crappy ’80s-’90s direct-to-video sci-fi epics.

Once the film finds its footing as a silly supernatural tale, it manages to recover a bit, based purely on its ability to grab the concept with both hands and refuse to let go. While the stones never do look any better than the similar effect in Warlock, there are a few eye-candy moments in the latter half that are well-executed (the bit where Tracy’s stone causes Ben (Nicholas S. Morrison) to bleed out in slo-mo, ala liquid droplets in zero gravity, is pretty awesome, as is the final jump-scare, which handily and honestly sets up a sequel). The biggest issue is simply that the two separate aspects don’t really cohere, making this seem like a couple different films jammed together.

In fact, in some ways, All Cheerleaders Die is a tale of several movies: a horror film, an indie superhero tale, a battle of the sexes film, a black comedy set in a high school…the unfortunate truth is that only a few of these films actually work. The horror elements are well-done, with some nicely realized gore scenes, while the “super powers” stuff is hackneyed and trite. The battle of the sexes stuff ends up being fairly negligible (again, Donkey Punch did it much better and pulled, ahem, fewer punches), while the blackly comic high school material ends up being fairly effective. Focused on any one of these angles, All Cheerleaders Die would have been a much stronger film: as it is, the movie lacks focus and coherence, issues that McKee has never had in his previous films.

I really wanted to like All Cheerleaders Die more than I did but, alas, the film was pretty much one continual disappointment. While the acting was solid, there were never any truly stand-out performances, although Stasey did admirably as the protagonist. The film looked and sounded pretty great, which made the ultra-cheesy SFX all the more laughable and obnoxious: it was almost as if the whole concept of the magic stones was added in post-production, which is just about as bad as it sounds.

I will say, however, that I appreciated how the filmmakers managed to marginalize the concept of the “male gaze”: unlike just about every other horror film involving cheerleaders in the history of horror films, the women in All Cheerleaders Die don’t spend the film in various states of undress, the camera lasciviously tracking up and down their nude bodies. In fact, there’s really only one scene that I can recall that broached this in any way and that would be the one where Tracy has just “reawakened” and proceeds to march across the street, wearing only a bra and panties, in order to find some “food.” In many ways, this is the scene that proves my rule: despite Tracy’s attire, the emphasis on the scene is squarely on her ravenous appetite, not the female form. It’s a smart bit and, unfortunately, one that I wish were repeated more often.

Ultimately, I’m probably so disappointed by All Cheerleaders Die because of my experiences with McKee’s other films: May (2002), The Woods (2006) and The Woman, along with McKee’s entry in the Master of Horror series, Sick Girl (2006), are all fascinating examinations of both feminism and male/female violence, with smart, three-dimensional characters and some astoundingly original/shocking elements. The Woman, in particular, was such a gut-punch that it easily ranks as one of the most unpleasant, yet necessary, films I’ve seen in decades. By comparison, All Cheerleaders Die is an entertaining, yet slight and disposable throwaway: by the time the climax rolls around, with Terry and the surviving women fighting like left-over Street Fighter characters, the whole thing feels like a cheap direct-to-video curiosity, rather than a film with an actual agenda.

If only the film were able to stay on the gritty road it started on: there’s definitely a really good movie buried in All Cheerleaders Die…the evidence of that film is pretty much everywhere you look. The problem, of course, ends up being that there are also at least three mediocre films trapped in there and this is, of course, at least three films too many.

7/29/14 (Part Two): Party in the Front, Zemons in the Back

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actor-director, April Mullen, April Mullens, Brandon Jay McLaren, Brittany Allen, Christopher Lloyd, cinema, curses, Dead Before Dawn, Dead Before Dawn 3D, demons, Devon Bostick, film reviews, films, horror, horror films, horror-comedies, Kevin McDonald, Kyle Schmid, Martha MacIsaac, Movies, Rossif Sutherland, silly films, Tim Doiron, zemons, zombies

There’s very fine line to walk with horror comedies between silly and savvy. On the one hand, you have films that trivialize the horror aspects in favor of broad, slapstick-inspired comedy (Saturday the 14th (1981), any of the Scary Movie films). These films are more of a “general appeal” type of deal, something to appeal to folks who have a general knowledge of horror films but are more interested in a wacky comedy. On the other hand, you have films that acknowledge, yet subvert, horror movie tropes and clichés, films like Return of the Living Dead (1985), Parents (1989), Shaun of the Dead (2004), Behind the Mask: The Rise of Leslie Vernon (2006), Botched (2007), Tucker & Dale vs Evil (2010) and Detention (2012). These films are all comedies, in various ways, yet none of them skimp on the actual horror aspects: these are for the genre fan looking for a little “light” entertainment.

Actor/director April Mullens’ Dead Before Dawn 3D (2012) falls somewhere between those two extremes, although it tends to tilt more towards the silly than the savvy side. While the film is generally good-natured and goofy, similar to a live-action Scooby Doo adventure, it features enough genuine horror elements to (mostly) satisfy the fans, including plenty of gruesome deaths and some really decent makeup effects. If the film wasn’t quite as silly and the acting wasn’t quite so broad, Dead Before Dawn would actually be a pretty savvy little film. As it stands, it’s always entertaining even if it has a tendency to overstay its welcome.

Short brush strokes get us to the meat of the story as quickly as possible. Our hero is young Casper Galloway (Devon Bostick), a college student who works in his grandfather Horus’ (Christopher Lloyd) occult shop: the very same shop where Casper’s father died following an encounter with a mysterious urn. Casper’s friends and associates are the usual suspects in films like this: Prof. Duffy (Kevin McDonald) is the high-strung authority figure; Burt (Rossif Sutherland) is Duffy’s creepy hot-dog obsessed teaching assistant; Lucy (Brittany Allen) is the brain-dead blonde cheerleader; Patrick (Kyle Schmid) is the douchebag quarterback; Dazzle (Brandon Jay McLaren) is the token black friend; Becky (director Mullen) is the quirky gal pal who happens to be dating Burt; Charlotte (Martha MacIsaac) is the girl who Casper secretly pines for, who just happens to be dating the quarterback; and Seth (writer Tim Doiron) is the kooky best friend who happens to be pining for cheerleader Lucy.

This mob of clichés all converge on the occult shop after grandpa Horus leaves for the weekend to receive a lifetime achievement award, leaving his well-meaning but rather ineffectual grandson in charge. Casper is only given three rules (Keep the store open during business hours, lock the store after you leave and stay away from the mysterious skull urn that killed Casper’s father) but manages to break the biggest one (hint: it’s not the one about the front door). He ends up unleashing a curse which, thanks to his friends’ inability to take the situation seriously, takes a very specific form: anyone that the group makes eye contact with will later kill themselves and be resurrected as a zombie/demon hybrid (a zemon), which can turn others into “zemons” via a bite. With this established, we’re off to the races.

As all of the group’s associates and loved ones (including Prof. Duffy, Burt, Casper’s mom and the entire football and cheer squads) turn into rampaging zemons, Casper and his friends must figure out how to end the curse before the entire town is destroyed. Since they’re all multi-taskers, the group will also take the opportunity to fall in love with each other, have fights and do all of the things that young college students would normally do…when not fighting demon/zombie hybrids, of course. The whole thing culminates in a slackadaisical ending that’s ripped straight from Wishmaster (1997) yet still gives hope for a sequel (but of course).

Here’s the thing about Dead Before Dawn: it’s got tons of heart. The film is extremely genial and easy-going and it seems pretty clear that everyone involved was having a blast during filming. When the over-the-top acting works, it works extremely well: particularly great is Kyle Schmid (also from the TV series Copper) as the obnoxious Patrick and filmmaking duo Mullen and Doiron as Becky and Seth. All three actors display not only well-honed comedy chops but enough individual characterization to distinguish themselves from the masses. Much less successful, unfortunately, is Devon Bostick as the hero. Casper is a thoroughly unlikable character and his whining, pewling behavior is only exacerbated by Bostick’s awful performance. Dead Before Dawn could’ve been so much better with an actual lead but Bostick is one of the worst things about the film. Equally terrible, unfortunately, is Lloyd, who surely gives one of the worst performances of a long and generally respectable career. He’s never seemed to be one for phoning-in a performance but it’s painfully clear how uninvested he is in the role.

The rest of the acting, unfortunately, is pretty negligible, although Brandon Jay McLaren gets one great scene where he describes how he ended up getting infected (it involves the concept of a “dickey” and is easily one of the film’s biggest laugh moments). For the most part, the rest of the cast is extremely broad, bordering on the amateurish, which tends to drag everything down to a pretty pedestrian level. Add to this the fact that the effects work is exceptionally shoddy (one particular explosion might have been better rendered on MS Paint) and the film definitely has the feel of a self-funded goof. It must also be noted that the film has one of the single worst sound mixes I’ve ever heard: I ended up constantly riding the volume control, since the dialogue needed to be maxed out, which then rendered the effects at airplane levels of intensity.

Despite some pretty fundamental issues, however, and the nagging feeling that the film runs out of steam well before it crosses the finish line, there’s a lot to like about the movie. There’s a consistently high level of energy that gives the film a gonzo quality, which helps glide over some of the rougher patches. Schmid, Mullen and Doiron are great comic actors and handily steal any and every scene that they’re in (not necessarily the most difficult task when faced with Bostick, to be honest). Some of the film’s more loopy comic moments, such as Burt’s hotdog obsession, are nicely realized and actually funny, although other elements, such as the actual “rules” behind the zemons are distressingly under-developed.

With the current glut of horror-comedies on the market, it’s quite likely that Dead Before Dawn will get lost in the shuffle. While the film certainly isn’t the worst of the bunch, it does have several rather substantial flaws that hobble it from the get-go (the first ten minutes, in particular, are excruciating). For understanding viewers with a little time to lose, however, Dead Before Dawn is a fun diversion, although it’s certainly nothing to write home about.

7/29/14 (Part One): A Totally Wack Experience

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Andrea Runge, ax murders, bad movies, based on a true story, Billy Campbell, Christina Ricci, Clea DuVall, dysfunctional family, famous trials, Gregg Henry, historical drama, Lifetime Channel, Lizzie Borden, Lizzie Borden Took An Ax, murder, Nick Gomez, patricide, period-piece, set in the 1890s, Shawn Doyle, sisters, Stephen McHattie, true crime, TV movie

You’d think that making a film about the murder trial of Lizzie Borden would be kind of a no-brainer: after all, this is a case about a young woman from 1890s Massachusetts who was accused, tried and acquitted of butchering her father and step-mother with an ax. The case is so famous that it even inspired a children’s’ playground rhyme (“Lizzie Borden took an ax / And gave her mother forty whacks. / When she saw what she had done, / She gave her father forty-one.”). In certain ways, the media frenzy surrounding the case could be seen as a precursor to modern-day murder trials like Casey Anthony and Jodi Arias: young women who were all considered unlikely murder suspects thanks to their ages, looks and social statuses.

You would think that making a film about a fascinating, real-life case like this would be simple: judging by Nick Gomez’s truly terrible Lizzie Borden Took An Ax (2014), however, you would be wrong…dead wrong, as it were. While the film comes with a fairly huge handicap (it was a “Lifetime Channel original film”, which carries about as much artistic weight as do the terms “Syfy original” or “Asylum exclusive”), the problems (almost too numerous to count) go far and beyond the film’s place of birth. Lizzie Borden Took An Ax is a film that manages to get almost nothing right, managing to be simultaneously over-wrought, lackadaisical, over-the-top and duller than dishwater: no mean feat considering that the film whiplashes tone so often that one could get seriously motion-sick trying to keep up.

The film begins by sketching out (very skimpily) our major players: we meet the obnoxious Lizzie (Christina Ricci), a sort of 1890s take on Macaulay Culkin’s version of Michael Alig from Party Monster (2003); her supportive but numbingly milquetoast sister, Emma (Clea Duvall); her strict, closed-off father (Stephen McHattie), who’s interest in Lizzie appears to border on the incestuous; and Lizzie’s much hated stepmother (Sara Botsford). As far as characterization goes, that’s just about it. We do get a throwaway bit where a couple of town guys argue with Lizzie’s father, Andrew, about being shorted on payment for services rendered but this is never explored any further: I’d be shocked if the information was ever supposed to be more than a MacGuffin. With these characters, what you see is what you get.

So what do we get? Well, we get a ridiculously modern, stomping hybrid of hip-hop and blues for the musical score, which goes superbly with all of the ridiculous slo-mo shots: there are so many “badass” moments where characters stride in slo-mo down the street, accompanied by the over-the-top score, that I briefly wondered if this was the first ever historical drama completely informed by modern super hero movies. We get a performance from Ricci that ranges wildly between “just rolled out of bed stoned” to “every vein standing out in relief,” although the key connecting tissue is that no part of her performance ever feels accurate or real: it’s difficult to tell whether the odd characterization is Ricci or director Gomez’s fault but either option seems entirely valid. Stephen McHattie, who’s normally an incredibly reliable presence in indie genre films like Pontypool (2008) just looks confused here, as does Clea Duvall: both actors have the bearing of performers who are receiving their scripts a page at a time, just as lost as the audience.

While the story doesn’t veer far from the historical details of the murder, the script (which is as reliably awful as the rest of the film) still manages to throw in a raft of completely unnecessary, underdeveloped bullshit: we get another murder, which may or may not be related, although the film doesn’t care enough to explore it further; we get the suitably ridiculous portrayal of Lizzie as a modern-day party-girl magically transported to turn-of-the-20th-century Massachusetts; a stupid “insane roommate” subplot between Lizzie and her sister (the musical stingers and Ricci’s “crazy eyes” are straight out of Single White Female (1992) and enough over-acting to shame an ancient Greek theater troupe.

Picking a single low-point for the film is almost impossible but one of my favorites has to be the astoundingly stupid scene where Lizzie sneaks out to go to a party. The scene is shot exactly like a similar scene in a modern “wild youth” film might be staged: red-lit, thumping music, wild teens drinking…except it’s a period-piece, so all this takes place while the aforementioned “wild youth” are dressed in their best 1890s finery, dancing politely with each other. We get it: kids have always been kids. This doesn’t make it any less of a stupid affectation, however, although it goes hand-in-hand with that ridiculous musical score.

Essentially, Lizzie Borden Took An Ax is completely DOA, flatlining way before we limp in to the inane “twist”ending (spoiler alert: Lizzie did it, after all…duh). Truth be told, there’s virtually nothing to recommend about this film: the cast is pretty bad, including the more established actors like Ricci and McHattie; everything about the storyline is obvious and telegraphed; the score is ludicrous; the acting is too over-the-top, which turns the pulpy dialogue into something resembling film noir for idiots; the courtroom/trial stuff is simultaneously cheesy and boring…truth be told, the only miraculous thing about Gomez’s film is how it manages to be so bad without ever skipping over the line into “so-bad-it’s-good” territory.

If one is so inclined, however, there’s a pretty vicious drinking game that can be applied to the film. To whit: every time you get a gratuitous shot of McHattie’s ax-ruined face, take a drink. Since this happens at a ratio of at least once a minute for the first 30 minutes or so (including a hilarious bit where his face is covered…only for the cloth to be dramatically whipped away, revealing that damn bloody face again…take that!), you’ll either be toes-up drunk by the mid-point or completely unconscious: either way, you win.

7/27/14: A Real Case of McCarthyism

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1950s movies, alien invasion, auteur theory, based on a book, black and white film, Body Snatchers, Carolyn Jones, cinema, clones, Communism, Dana Wynter, Don Siegel, dopplegangers, Film auteurs, film reviews, films, invasion, Invasion of the Body Snatchers, Jack Finney, Jean Willes, Joseph McCarthy, Kevin McCarthy, King Donovan, Larry Gates, McCarthyism, Miles Bennell, Movies, paranoia, pod people, remakes, sci-fi, sci-fi-horror, small town life, The Body Snatchers, the Red Scare, Tom Fadden, Virginia Christine, voice-over narration

What if the people around you, including your family and loved ones, started acting odd? Not tin-foil hat, playing-fetch-with-an-invisible-dog odd, mind you…nothing that obvious: more like a subtle, slightly out of your line of sight kind of odd. Maybe they seem a little out of it…a little too unemotional and disconnected. Perhaps you’d try to tell someone else, let them know that Uncle Johnny didn’t seem quite like himself or that your next-door-neighbor suddenly seemed a little different. What if nobody believed you because everyone was suddenly acting strange, including all authority figures? Where would you turn, at that point? Would you “give in” and join the masses or would you resist, standing alone against everyone else? More importantly, however…how could you be really sure that the problem wasn’t that YOU had suddenly changed? How can you tell when you’re just paranoid…and when you’re right?

This, of course, is the basic setup for Don Siegel’s Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1956), the first of several filmed adaptations of Jack Finney’s sci-fi classic, The Body Snatchers. Coming as it did during the maelstrom that was McCarthyism and the “Red Scare” of Communism, it’s pretty easy to read both Finney’s original novel and Siegel’s original adaptation as commentary on the insidious nature of the communist infiltration of America during the mid-’50s (or, to be more accurate, the perception of certain high-ranking members of the U.S. government as to said subtle “invasion”). While there’s certainly nothing wrong with this reading, I’ve always felt that Invasion of the Body Snatchers was more a cautionary tale about the dangers of assimilation and the problems of “group think,” namely humanity’s inability to turn down any opportunity to “join the mob,” than it was explicitly about communism. Regardless of the particular focus, however, one thing is abundantly clear: Finney’s original tale of clones, pod people and alien invaders has proved remarkably resilient and has become part of the cultural zeitgeist in a pretty substantial way.

IOTBS’s begins with a wrap-around story (added later, against Siegel’s wishes, and easily the worst thing about the film) that introduces us to our hero, Dr. Miles Bennell (Kevin McCarthy), currently under a psych hold at the hospital. No one seems to believe Miles and the story we’ll see is his frantic explanation of events to one of the attending physicians, in order to convince them that he;s not bonkers. It’s an old-fashioned kind of affectation, similar to the whole “it’s only a dream” cliché, and exists purely to give the film a happy ending (the studio demanded the additional scenes after Siegel’s original cut was deemed “too bleak” for the general public).

Miles has been on vacation for a few weeks and returns to his small town of Santa Mira, California, to find that things have been a bit strange in his absence. Plenty of folks have been getting sick, according to his assistant, Sally (Jean Willes), but everyone refused to see the other town doctor or tell Sally about their issues. To compound the mystery, Miles’ old flame, Becky (Dana Wynter), comes to him looking for help: her friend, Wilma (Virginia Christine), has somehow become convinced that her uncle, Ira (Tom Fadden) is actually an impostor. According to Wilma, Uncle Ira looks, sounds and talks just like he always did but there are small, almost imperceptible differences: namely, the “spark” seems to be gone and Ira seems strangely emotionless. Becky has tried to convince her friend that she’s being unnecessarily paranoid, to no avail: she wants Miles to use his authority as a doctor to set Wilma straight.

After running into his psychiatrist friend Danny (Larry Gates), however, Miles comes to realize that there may be more going on in Santa Mira than he originally thought: some sort of “mass psychosis” is causing people to believe that their loved ones are actually impostors. The shit really hits the fan, however, when Miles gets a call from his good buddy, Jack (King Donovan): turns out that Jack has found some sort of “unfinished man” at his house, a seemingly dead (or comatose) creature that looks just like a human, minus things like fingerprints and distinct facial features. At first, Miles and the others seem rather blase about the whole thing (the body is just kept lying on a billiards table and they all sort of poke around it, as if it were roadkill rather than an unformed body) but an overnight development suitably shocks them: the body now looks exactly like Jack, right down to a recent cut on his hand. When Miles finds a similar “double” of Becky, in her basement, one thing is abundantly clear: extreme strangeness is afoot.

Surprisingly, however, the police seem decidedly nonplussed by the whole thing, waving off Miles’ concerns and cueing him in to the fact that there might be a deeper conspiracy going on. Sure enough, Miles, Becky, Jack and his wife, Teddy (Carolyn Jones) are witness to something truly horrific: weird, alien seed pods are spitting out the half-formed proto-humans. Putting two and two together, Miles and the others realize that they’re in the midst of an alien invasion: somehow, the seed pods are cloning the residents of Santa Mira, replacing them with emotionless doubles like Wilma’s Uncle Ira. Who can the friends turn to, however, when everyone seems suspiciously emotionless? When everyone, including law enforcement, seem like alien clones, it’s up to Miles and the others to resist and get the word out to the rest of the world…before it’s too late.

Siegel’s version of IOTBS has always been hailed as a sci-fi masterpiece and there’s quite a lot to like here: the pod scenes are always creepy and suitably icky, there are plenty of well-staged, intense chase sequences (Siegel, after all, was the gritty action-auteur behind such classics as The Killers (1964), Dirty Harry (1971) and Escape From Alcatraz (1979)) and there are several pretty unforgettable images (one of the very best is the bit where Miles kills his own clone with a pitchfork). It’s also quite obvious that Siegel’s film has influenced modern-day filmmakers: the scene where Miles and Becky try to pass themselves off as “pod people,” in order to pass through the clones unnoticed, should be rather familiar to anyone who’s ever seen Shaun of the Dead (2004), while the notion of Miles and Becky taking pills in order to prevent falling asleep couldn’t have passed by Wes Craven unnoticed. The film maintains a fairly tense, claustrophobic atmosphere and Siegel’s original, “downer” ending may be old-hat in these pessimistic times but surely would have been a strong jolt of pure moonshine back in the mid-’50s.

While there’s a lot to like here, however, there’s also quite a bit that doesn’t work. The aforementioned wraparound story is fairly awful and clichéd, while the musical score is always overbearing and too “obvious”: in certain ways, IOTBS is scored like a silent movie, with all of the bombast that the descriptor entails. I also never felt like the romance between Becky and Miles caught heat: it always hovered somewhere between silly and (ironically enough) emotionless, which allows Becky’s latter-half declaration that “I want to love and be loved! I don’t want a world without love!” to come across as both sarcastic and kind of sad.

It’s also kind of difficult to figure out just what the “rules” for the pod people are: sometimes they’re emotionless, sometimes they form mobs of shouting, angry people…sometimes the clones act normal, sometimes they don’t…sometimes the very act of falling asleep is enough to get someone “replaced,” sometimes it isn’t. Without a clear establishment of these basic guidelines, IOTBS comes across much less like a “hard” sci-fi film and more like a drive-in feature (not necessarily a bad thing, to be honest, but still a thing).

Quibbles aside, however, Siegel’s version of Invasion of the Body Snatchers is always entertaining and, frequently, more than a little creepy. The suffocating feeling of paranoia is a palpable thing and when the film is firing on all cylinders, it’s pretty unstoppable: the scene where pods are handed out to the town-members, in preparation of a larger scale invasion, is a real corker and there’s the very real sense that IOTBS features a fun-house warped version of a Norman Rockwell painting. Kevin McCarthy is a suitably fun, if occasionally over-the-top hero and if the rest of the cast ends up a bit generic, they all provide fine, consistent support. The black and white cinematography is also quite nice, if not quite as evocative as something like The Bad Seed (1956): it’s fairly workmanlike but gets the job done. As far as the various film versions of Finney’s story go, I’ve always been more partial to the 1978 version (they always have me at “Donald Sutherland”) but Siegel’s original is a close runner-up. If you’ve never seen the original, give it a shot: the film might feel a tad bit “old-fashioned” today (and that’s coming from someone who tends to place somewhat excessive emphasis on older films) but there’s still a lot of value here.

After all, as our world becomes smaller and more homogenized, it’s increasingly easy to see the notion of “pod people” as being a little too close for comfort: to paraphrase Pogo: we have seen the pod people and they is us.

7/26/14: Putting Your Mind(s) To It

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Amy Madigan, auteur theory, based on a book, Candyman, cinema, dopplegangers, Film auteurs, film reviews, films, George Romero, George Stark, horror, horror films, Julie Harris, Kent Broadhurst, Michael Rooker, Movies, psycho killers, psychopomps, Robert Joy, Rutanya Alda, sparrows, Stephen King, Thad Beaumont, The Dark Half, Timothy Hutton, Tom Mardirosian, twins, writer-director

Although he’ll probably always be known as the father of the modern zombie film, I’ve often felt that George Romero’s non-zombie films are highly underrated. Sure, there’s been the occasional clunker: Knightriders (1981) is a real oddity that never overcomes its inane premise, despite an enthusiastic performance by Ed Harris, while Bruiser (2000) is just as faceless as its protagonist. Despite these misses, however, Romero has a pretty good track record: Season of the Witch (1972) is a nicely understated character study with an interesting feminist angle; The Crazies (1973) is a tensely plotted little B-movie; Martin (1976) is a really fascinating, unique take on traditional vampire films; Creepshow (1982) is a minor classic; and Monkey Shines (1988) is a flawed but thoroughly entertaining piece of pulp cinema.

Along with these films, Romero has also helmed what I feel to be one of the best adaptations of a Stephen King novel, The Dark Half (1993). King’s novel about pseudonyms run amok was one of my favorites as a kid and I can recall eagerly heading to the theater when the filmed version was released, despite the trepidation that always comes with any new King adaptation. Filmed versions of King’s novels have always been something of a running joke, so it’s quite refreshing to find one that actually gets it right. And The Dark Half, for the most part, really gets it right. While rewatching the film for the first time in years, I was pleased (and more than a little relieved) to discover that it still held up after all those years.

Romero’s adaptation, which he also penned, follows King’s original novel pretty faithfully. The film involves mild-mannered writer Thad Beaumont (Timothy Hutton), who secretly writes pulpy crime novels under the pseudonym George Stark. While Thad’s own books are high-minded literary “art,” Stark’s trashy, violent work is the real bread-winner for Thad, his wife, Liz (Amy Madigan) and twin babies. Imagine Thad’s consternation, then, when a sleazy fellow named Fred Clawson (Robert Joy) approaches him after a book-signing and threatens to expose the truth about George Stark (whose made-up background is one of the biggest selling points for his rabid fans) unless he receives some payola. Incensed, Thad discusses the situation with his wife and editors, Miriam (Rutanya Alda) and Rick (Tom Mardirosian), and they all decide that the best course of action is to get ahead of the impending controversy: it’s high time that Thad “killed off” Stark once and for all.

Staging a mock burial ceremony using a Beaumont family grave and fake tombstone, Thad and Liz lay Stark to rest, although the symbolic “ending” actually signals a horrifying new beginning. When the photographer is found murdered (beat to death with his own prosthetic leg) and the grave is desecrated, Thad becomes the number one suspect, since his fingerprints were all over the crime scene. After Clawson is found brutally murdered, in the exact way that Thad was heard to threaten him, things look increasingly dire for the beleaguered novelist.

Faster than you can say, “Candyman,” however, we see the truth: Thad’s violent alter-ego, George Stark (also Hutton), has come to horrific, shuddering life and is rather upset at Thad’s attempts to kill him off. George only wants one thing and he’s willing to massacre everyone that Thad knows and holds dear to get it: he wants another Stark novel, something to keep his legacy intact. The problem, of course, is that Thad and George cannot, technically, co-exist: as one grows stronger, the other weakens and begins to physically deteriorate. As Thad begins to re-experience the headaches and visions of ominous clouds of sparrows that plagued him as a boy, he and George move relentlessly towards an end game that will involve Thad’s family, his past and his very future: only one will emerge victorious…will it be Thad…or Stark?

From the opening intro that cues us in to the existence of Thad’s unborn twin all to the way to the visually impressive finale, The Dark Half is an exceptionally close reading of King’s original novel. Romero even manages to toss in a few blink-and-you-miss-’em bits of fan service, including the revelation that Thad is currently working on “Here There Be Tygers,” one of Stephen King’s earliest short stories. The film, itself, looks great: there are several really nifty set-pieces, including the tense, protracted scene where Mike Donaldson (Kent Broadhurst) is stalked by Stark down a dingy apartment hallway that lit by alternating red and blue lights. Hutton does a good job portraying both halves of the equation, as it were, with his George Stark being a suitably sleazy representation of King’s creation. It’s also nice to see veteran character actor Michael Rooker in a rare “good guy” role as Sheriff Pangborn: it feels like a classic case of casting against type and it works spectacularly well. Romero also makes great use of practical effects, including a jarring stabbing via pencil and the impressive “ripped apart by sparrows” finale.

In many ways, Romero’s film is also staged in a similar manner to Bernard Rose’s Candyman (1992), which preceded it by a year: as people close to him are killed off, Thad comes under more and more suspicion for the crimes, similar to the arc that occurs with Helen in the Clive Barker adaptation. There are even moments where people are killed while Thad is in another room, just like various scenes in Candyman. This particular tact offers up quite a bit of tension and plenty of creeping paranoia, as Thad tries in vain to convince his wife and the sheriff about the true nature of the crimes unfolding around them. Paranoia is always a potent element of horror fiction and Romero delivers the goods in more than satisfactory measure here.

Thematically, The Dark Half brings up several interesting issues, not the least of which is a writer’s inherent connection to his/her creations. Like the real Stephen King, Thad Beaumont is a study in contrasts: on the one hand, literary, high-minded and grasping for greatness while, on the other, visceral, pulpy, audience-friendly and uber-violent. There’s a nicely realized moment where Liz explains to Thad that he doesn’t actually want to “kill off” his alter-ego: he enjoys Stark because it gives him an excuse to behave badly, as it were, smoking, drinking and acting like a complete jerk. It’s the true dichotomy of any artist, be they actor, filmmaker, painter or author: the person creating the art is not always equitable to the art being created. Live it to King (and Romero) to bring this concept to glorious life by, literally, splitting the artist in two.

As previously mentioned, there’s certainly a dearth of “good” King films but I’ve always thought of The Dark Half as part of the solution, rather than the problem. It goes to prove that, in the right hands, it’s not only possible to make a good Stephen King adaptation but a good film, period. It may be approaching 15 years since Romero turned to non-zombie properties but, with a track-record like his, maybe it’s time to leave the walking dead behind for a little bit. If you’ve never seen The Dark Half, give it a whirl: after all, how could you possibly go wrong with murderous doubles, ominous sparrows and Black Beauty pencils?

 

7/24/14: Allergic to the World

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agoraphobia, Alex Pastor, Barcelona, Blindness, Children of Men, cinema, co-directors, co-writers, collapsed civilization, David Pastor, dystopian future, epidemics, film reviews, films, flashback narrative, foreign films, Isak Ferriz, Jose Coronado, Leticia Dolera, Marta Etura, Movies, non-linear structure, pandemic, Pere Ventura, Quim Gutierrez, sci-fi, Spanish film, survivor, The Last Days, The Panic, writer-director

Nowadays, it seems that everything under the sun is “antibacterial,” as if the single greatest threat to humanity isn’t climate change or interpersonal conflict but, rather, microbes, viruses and assorted germs. It’s gotten to the point where roughly 90% of the soaps on the market are antibacterial which, of course, has led to the inevitable backlash: perhaps all of the antibacterial stuff is actually weakening our immune systems, leaving us more susceptible to the very bacterium that we’re seeking to defend against. Ah, humanity: providing the universe with a constant source of amusement for millions of years.

What if this obsession with germs is a completely futile exercise, however? What if our bodies aren’t reacting to specific irritants but, rather, are reacting to everything? In other words, what if we’re all becoming progressively more allergic to the outside world? This rather frightening idea forms the crux of co-writers/directors David and Alex Pastor’s quietly powerful new film, The Last Days (2013). While the film isn’t quite as good as its most similar parallel, the neo-classic Children of Men (2006), it’s still a more than worthwhile entry in the “intelligent sci-fi/dystopic future” subgenre and establishes the Pastors as filmmakers to keep an eye on.

The Last Days begins with the kind of monochromatic atmosphere that informs similar films like 12 Monkeys (1995), Children of Men and Blindness (2008): everything is gray, the sky looks like it’s just about to open up and slam down rain and every single person looks as battered and shell-shocked as any survivor of a protracted siege. In this case, however, “shell-shocked survivor” is a pretty apt description: as we find out in short order, the citizens of the world have all developed a sudden and extreme form of agoraphobia. Unlike the “regular” kind, this particular fear of open spaces kills: victims seize up when outdoors, bleed from every orifice and drop dead unless they’re returned to the “safety” of the indoors. This has led to a situation where everyone has been trapped inside whatever building they happen to be in for months: society has broken down, unchecked fires ravage the streets and the people are gradually losing their basic humanity…and their hope.

Enter our protagonist, Marc (Quim Gutierrez), who’s been trapped with his co-workers in an office building for the past three months. As food reserves and supplies gradually disappear, the trapped people have been attempting to tunnel out from their underground garage into the nearby subway system, which would allow them access to the rest of Barcelona without risking travel in the outside world. Via flashbacks (the film employs a non-linear but fairly simple flashback structure wherein the past and present each get their own “timeline,” although the timelines are intermingled throughout the film’s run time), we learn that Marc’s office has been visited by an “efficiency expert, Enrique (Jose Coronado), whose presence leads to firings and increased stress in Marc’s relationship with his girlfriend, Julia (Marta Etura).

In the present, Marc and Enrique end up working together after each man realizes that the other has something he needs: Marc has managed to get a hold of a flashlight, while Enrique has stolen a coveted GPS system from a car in the garage. The two strike up a deal wherein they will first go to Marc’s apartment building, in search of Julia, before heading to pick up Enrique’s ailing father at a hospital. The journey will be difficult and fraught with peril, not least of which involves the fact that they’re unable to step foot outside: they’ll have to make it from one end of Barcelona to the other using only buildings, underground routes and the like for cover.

As if this wasn’t enough, however, Marc and Enrique will need to deal with that most insidious of dystopic concerns: the violent devolution of humanity in the face of an overwhelming, extinction-level event. Anyone familiar with things like Children of Men, Blindness or The Walking Dead will know that the “event” is never the biggest problem: humans will always be more capable of evil than any disease, zombie invasion or outside force. In The Last Days, people have turned the cramped interior spaces of buildings, subway stations and garages into stuffed-to-bursting pseudo-cities: think the ruined vibe of Blade Runner (1982) jammed into the equivalent of a broom closet and you get some idea of the insanity. As is wont to happen whenever the masses of humanity are forced into constricted locations, tempers flare, the rules of society are abandoned and brute force becomes the law of the land. Will Marc and Enrique survive the human menace long enough to reach their respective loved ones? Will humanity ever be able to rebound from what appears to be an evolutionary development designed solely to extinguish people from the face of the Earth? Will we ever be able to go outside again?

If there’s anything really derogatory to say about The Last Days, let it be said that the film isn’t particularly original or unique, even if it is extremely well-made. While the basic plot is different from films like Children of Men and Blindness, the overall themes and tone are nearly identical to any one of a number of dystopic sci-fi films: I hate to say “If you’ve seen one, you’ve seen ’em all,” since it’s such a restrictive, negative thing to say but it’s kind of true. That being said, I could follow that up by adding, “If you liked the others, you’ll like this one, too.” Unlike something like a generic slasher or low-budget monster film, The Last Days is anything but a cookie-cutter film, even if it brings to mind other, more well-known movies. While the Pastors’ film doesn’t break any new ground, it’s still an incredibly solid, thrilling and thought-provoking experience: innovation is certainly appreciated but there’s still something to be said for just making an overall good film and The Last Days certainly delivers on that front.

The acting is uniformly solid, with Gutierrez and Coronado making a really effective duo: there’s a genuine progression to their relationship that never feels forced and seems to reflect a pretty realistic grasp on how people would actually react in a similar situation. There are a number of setpieces in the film (collecting the rain, fighting the bear in the abandoned church, the insane fortified department store at the end) that are as good as anything else out there, with the bear fight easily standing as one of the most thrilling, well-staged action pieces I’ve seen in some time. It’s always interesting to see how a film will (or won’t) survive multiple butts in the director’s seat but there doesn’t seem to be any notable flaws in The Last Days craft: if there can truly be any flaws, they come from the unnerving sense of deja vu in the film – even if you haven’t seen these particular episodes before, it might feel like you have. As already mentioned, this is both a blessing and a curse: while the Pastors don’t break any new ground, they also don’t phone it in, either.

Ultimately, The Last Days is an interesting, solemn and mildly thought-provoking film that programs nicely in with the rest of its peers, yet doesn’t really have a complete identity of its own. There are certainly some interesting ideas here (the notion of us all becoming gradually allergic to the outside, as our lives and interests increasingly occur indoors, is a solid, frightening one) but the film, ultimately, takes a different route to wind up at the exact same location: we have seen the enemy and it is us. I may agree wholeheartedly with that sentiment but it doesn’t mean I haven’t heard it before.

7/23/14: Red Light Morality

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Adrien Brody, based on a book, Black Box, Cam Gigandet, Clifton Collins Jr., Das Experiment, David Banner, degradation, dehumanization, Ethan Cohn, Fisher Stevens, Forest Whitaker, humiliation, Jason Lew, morality, Paul T. Scheuring, power struggles, prison break, prison films, psychological torture, rape, social experiments, Stanford Prison Experiment, The Experiment, Travis Fimmel, writer-director

While most people, if asked, would probably describe themselves as having some sort of moral compass, it really all comes down to a matter of degrees. It’s often easy for people to follow moral codes when either the state or religion sets up the guidelines but remove those constructs and things get a bit iffier. The real problem, of course, tends to be those who are more “circumstantial moralists”: people who would abstain from theft while the clerk is watching but think nothing of nicking a pack of gum when his back is turned. As evidenced by the sheer volume of folks who think nothing of grabbing as much as they can for themselves, with no regards to others or a “greater good,” I’m inclined to say that we, as a society, have largely become circumstantial moralists: we have no problem doing the “right thing” when it’s mandated or when people are watching but tend to revert back to purely selfish needs when the camera isn’t pointed directly at us.

Writer/director Paul T. Scheuring’s The Experiment (2010) is yet another in a pretty long line of films that take the concept of a specific social experiment and uses it as a way to shine a light into the darkest recesses of the human psyche. In this case, the film re-examines the phenomenon of the Stanford Prison Experiment, although it’s also explicitly listed as both an adaptation of Mario Giordano’s novel Black Box and a remake of the German film, Das Experiment (2001), itself an adaptation of Black Box. Despite its slightly thorny genesis, The Experiment ends up being a fairly standard psychological drama, albeit one with more than its fair share of degrading situations and unpleasant scenarios. At the end of the day, however, the film ends up being just another example of the evil that men do when given free rein and how a complacent society is just as guilty as the monsters it allows to roam the land.

For those not aware, the Stanford Prison Experiment was a real social experiment that lasted for all of six days in 1971. In the experiment, a group of 24 men was divided into “prisoners” and “guards,” using the basement of an old Stanford University building as a mock “prison.” The purpose of the experiment was to test how subjects would break down into power relationships, based on their “roles,” but the whole thing ended up being a pretty spectacular disaster. The “guards” turned into brutal authority figures, using violence and psychological torture to break down the “prisoners,” all of which was allowed by the scientists running the test. Needless to say, very few academics will go on record as supporting psychological torture and the tests were shut down post-haste, leaving the whole failed experiment as a sort of sociological shorthand for unexpectedly brutal, authoritarian experiments on conflict study/resolution. Suffice to say that, over forty years later, the Stanford Prison Experiment still stands as a notable black eye for the world of psychology.

For the most part, The Experiment doesn’t veer far from this basic premise: a group of 26 men, all from different backgrounds and walks of life, are brought to an abandoned prison facility, separated into “guards” and “prisoners” and told to follow a set of five rules. When the rules are violated, punishment must be swift and unflinching: if rule-breakers are not suitably handled within 30 minutes of their violations, a red light will go on, signalling an end to the experiment. Since each of the men are set to earn $1000/day for their participation, it’s in everyone’s best interests to make sure that the light never goes on. This, of course, leads to the film’s central conflict/point: if anything goes, as long as the red light doesn’t come on, how can there possibly be any moral standard or guidelines? The short answer, of course, is that there can’t be: once the experiment revolves around punishing “wrongdoers,” a Pandora’s box is opened, unleashing all manner of horrors upon the “guards” and their unwilling charges.

We meet several of the test participants but two principals emerge pretty early on. The first is Travis (Adrien Brody), who serves as our “every-man” protagonist, a kind-hearted, smart, altruistic guy who’s just lost his job, met a new girl and wants to use his earnings to follow her to India for some good, old-fashioned spiritual awakening. Travis is the kind of guy who attends peace rallies but has no problem putting the hammer down on obnoxious, violent pro-war party-crashers. He’s a good guy, with a capital “G,” and he’ll come to represent the prisoner faction. The other principal player is Michael (Forrest Whitaker), a soft-spoken, shy, slightly nerdy 40-year-old who still lives at home with his brow-beating, ultra-religious mother. Despite his friendly, laid-back attitude, we get the distinct impression that Michael may not be playing with a full deck. Faster than you can say “Overlook Hotel,” Michael has been made a “guard” and has begun what can best be described as a “Nicholsonian” slide into complete bat-shit crazy territory.

Everyone else seems to fall in line somewhere between these two polar opposites: on the prisoner side, you have Nix (Clifton Collins, Jr.), whose tattoos seem suspiciously reminiscent of real Aryan Nation prison tats; Benjy (Ethan Cohn), a gawky, comic-book obsessed diabetic; and Oscar (Jason Lew), the only openly gay member of the group. On the guard side, we have Chase (Cam Gigandet), a ridiculously macho, sadistic “bro-dog”; Helweg (Travis Fimmel), a guyliner-wearing sycophant who follows whoever happens to be the current alpha male and Bosch (David Banner), a kind-hearted individual who becomes increasingly uneasy as “upholding the rules” quickly devolves into “inhuman torture.”

And devolve it does…rather quickly, too, if I might add. After an impromptu basketball game ends with Bosch’s bloody nose, Chase decides that a little punishment is in order and forces the prisoners to do push-ups. Helweg sees Chase as some sort of conquering hero but Michael isn’t so sure…until, that is, he comes to believe that the prisoners all need to be knocked down a peg or two. Targeting Travis, who is seen as the defacto leader, Michael initiates psychological warfare against the other man: he’s chained to his cell wall overnight, wearing only his underwear; blasted with a fire extinguisher; has his head forcibly shaved and, in one of the film’s most horrifying/nauseating moments, is repeatedly urinated on. Despite what they throw at him, however, Travis refuses to break or resort to violence: the rest of the prisoners continue to look up to him and the guards’ hold remains tenuous, at best. Michael is not a man to be trifled with, however, and power can be a heady drug. The harder that Travis resists, the harder that Michael strikes back, culminating in a shocking act of violence that ends up pitting the prisoners against the guards in final, bloody conflict.

Although The Experiment is neither a particularly original nor an especially thought-provoking film, there are a few elements that unnecessarily hobble the production. Chief among the issues, unfortunately, is Whitaker’s completely over-the-top performance. Normally an incredibly reliable presence, Whitaker seems to be channeling the worst excesses of Nicholas Cage here and his transition from “slightly subdued” to “full-bore loony” is so quick as to be virtually non-existent. When Whitaker really takes off, such as the absolutely awful bit where he screams, “Time to clean the TOY-A-LETT!,” at Brody’s character, the film pretty much grinds to a halt around him and becomes something closer to parody than drama. There is one fairly brilliant moment that gives visual representation to the notion that power gives men a boner but, aside from that bit, it’s almost impossible to take him seriously which makes suspension of disbelief a bit of a problem.

Brody, for his part, turns in one of those standard-issue performances that are just tuned-in enough but no substitute for his better genre performances in films like Splice (2009) or Predators (2010). This is more along the lines of his work in Wrecked (2010) or Giallo (2009): good enough but too prone to histrionics to be truly affecting.

The rest of the cast ends up being a mixed bag, although Cam Gigandet is a thoroughly repulsive presence as the rape-happy Chase, a character so loathsome that he seems to have been wholly subbed in from something like the modern remake of I Spit on Your Grave (2010). Travis Fimmel, by contrast, is a complete non-entity as Helweg, a character who ends up being even less three-dimensional than the rest of the paper-thin characters. In one of the film’s strangest moves, veteran weirdo and all-around awesome character actor Fisher Stevens gets what amounts to a cameo: they couldn’t have made him one of the test subjects?

There are plenty of tonal issues and more than a few plot holes (the resolution, in particular, makes less and less sense the more you think about it) but the uneven, generally OTT performances are definitely the crippling blow here. The film isn’t short on ideas, even if none of them are particularly interesting, but it’s impossible to take anything seriously when Whitaker is stomping around, bellowing, rolling his eyes and cracking prisoner skulls like he was a fairytale ogre. Writer/director Scheuring is probably best known as the creator of the TV series Prison Break, which would seem to make him a natural fit for something like this. There is plenty of “prison drama”-type brutality on display here (that urination scene will stick with you for a long, long time…trust me) but little of really seems to hit with any impact.

Minus issues like the overacting and over-reliance on cheesy slo-mo effects, The Experiment would be a well-made, if rather unexceptional prison-drama/thriller. As it stands, however, the film is, by turns, genuinely cringe worthy and unintentionally humorous. There are scattered moments of real power and impact but, for the most part, this has all been done before, to greater effect. Unless you’re an Adrien Brody or Forest Whitaker completest (or a prison-flick aficionado), skipping The Experiment is probably a safe bet: if the red light doesn’t go on after thirty minutes, you’ll know that you made the right choice.

7/20/14: Put On Your Forensic Trousers and Dance

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Alan Partridge, Anna Maxwell Martin, based on a radio show, Best of 2013, cinema, Colm Meaney, comedy, Darren Boyd, Declan Lowney, Felicity Montagu, film reviews, films, forensic trousers, hostage situation, Karl Theobald, Monica Dolan, Movies, Nigel Lindsay, Peter Baynham, radio DJs, radio stations, Simon Greenall, Steve Coogan, Tim Key

At one point in Declan Lowney’s outrageously funny Alan Partridge: Alpha Papa (2013), blowhard, egomaniacal radio DJ Alan Partridge (Steve Coogan) ends up locking himself out of the very hostage situation that he’s been sent in to mediate. Determined to make it back inside the studio, Alan attempts to climb in through a nearby window which, of course, doesn’t go quite as planned: the idiot ends up hanging upside-down, sans pants and underwear (but with shirt surprisingly intact). After winnowing his way free, Alan is suddenly confronted by a heavily armed member of the SWAT team, who demands that he raise his hands. The look on Coogan’s face as he dejectedly, but resolutely, raises his hands is proof positive that the British actor is one of the finest comedians in the business, quite possibly this generation’s Peter Sellers.

Like Sellers, Coogan is a gifted chameleon, a mimic that can effortlessly slip into any character and provide it with its own individual tics and quirks, pulling mannerisms out of a black bag in the same way that Lon Chaney might have removed makeup accessories. Sellers had a particular way with facial gestures…an artfully raised eyebrow here, a sly smile there…that is readily apparent with Coogan: were he reduced simply to gestures, it’s quite possible that Coogan would remain just as effective and funny. Also like Sellers, Coogan can vacilate between drama and comedy: Coogan’s recent turn in the Oscar-nominated Philomena (2013) proved that quite handily. In the right vehicle, he’s pretty much unstoppable: Alan Partridge is just such a vehicle and, quite possibly, the funniest film I saw in the past eight months.

I will admit to coming into the film pretty blind: I knew nothing about the actual character of Alan Partridge, although I suspected that Alpha Papa wasn’t his first spin around the block. Turns out that Coogan created Partridge for a radio show, which then spawned TV appearances and the film we see before us. Suffice to say that prior knowledge of the character is not necessary to appreciate the current big-screen adaptation, although I’m sure it enriches the experience.

We’re introduced to our obnoxious, yet strangely loveable, protagonist through his job at a small Norfolk radio station. Alan Partridge is a DJ and the kind of fellow for whom the term “insufferable” was coined: he’s a completely self-absorbed ass, the kind of person who interrupts singing along with his favorite song on the radio to correct another driver. He’s vain, a habitual liar (Alan says that he’s researching “ospreys” on the internet but the reflection in his eyeglasses suggests otherwise) and egotistical asshole who thinks absolutely nothing about throwing someone else under the proverbial bus, be they his personal assistant, Lynn (Felicity Montagu) or his put-upon fellow DJ, Pat (Colm Meaney).

Turns out that Pat is feeling pretty marginalized, as of late, and getting unceremoniously sacked by the new management has led him to take rather drastic action: arming himself with a shotgun, Pat takes the station’s crew hostage, including the new manager, Jason (Nigel Lindsay) and Alan’s beleaguered on-air “sidekick, Simon (Tim Key). He doesn’t get Alan, however, because the “veteran on-air personality” ran for the hills at the first sign of trouble, “comandeering” a surprised motorist’s car in order to drive to the next-door police station. Fate’s not done with Alan just yet, however, as it turns out that Pat will only deal with one person in the entire world: his good “buddy” Alan. Oblivious to the fact that Alan actually sold him up the river to begin with, Pat feels that only another member of the old school will truly see his perspective on the situation. The police agree and send our man Alan back into the fray, armed with a bullet-proof jacket, one whopper of a lie and a complete and total allergy to common sense. It’s up to Alan to defuse the situation, save the lives of the hostages and deliver Pat to the authorities. In other words: they’re all doomed.

One of the most important aspects of a comedy is the film’s actual ability to produce genuine laughs. Over the years, I’ve become more and more used to watching comedies that function more as “clever” than genuinely “funny.” There’s a big difference: clever films might be witty, thought-provoking and apt to produce the odd chuckle here or there but they are not, by and large, the factory whereby big laughs are produced. An actually funny film, however, will produce uncontrollable bursts of laughter: this is an almost primal, ferocious experience. Laughing so hard that you ache is a rare but altogether intense feeling. If there is a short-list for the the films that have made me laugh the hardest over the years, Alan Partridge would certainly deserve a prime spot.

Quite simply, Alpha Papa is an outrageously funny film. The film is a near non-stop barrage of everything from razor-sharp dialogue and one-liners to utterly absurd situational comedy (a dream sequence that involves Coogan as SWAT team members Jason Bourne, Jason Statham and Jason of the Argonauts is a complete classic), physical comedy and blink-and-you-miss-’em visual gags. There’s a throwaway bit, towards the end, where Alan shoots a BB gun and ends up hitting a poster of JFK dead between the eyes: “Not again!” he wails, racing away, and I couldn’t help but feel that Mel Brooks couldn’t do it any better. From “forensic trousers” to “agenda benders” and the “hands-free head holster” (just what any busy radio DJ/hostage-taker needs for multi-tasking), Alpha Papa is a constantly inventive cornucopia of comedy, a “scattergun” approach to the form that involves an astoundingly high ratio of hits to misses. Truth be told, I’m hard-pressed to recall much of the humor that didn’t work for me, although this probably has at least something to do with my particular sensibilities. I know that it definitely has a lot to do with star/creator Coogan.

Coogan is a complete marvel as Alan, a character that manages to not only say and do the worst possible thing in any given situation but manages to do so with such a complete zeal that his dedication to everything (not least of all, himself) is never in doubt. Alan may be a liar, a cheat and an all-around horrible person but, through some miracle, Coogan manages to make him not only tolerable but likeable. You may never trust Alan with your life or your reputation but there’s just something about him that makes you forgive his often despicable acts, time and time again. It’s a similar enigma as with The Office’s Michael Scott but magnified ten fold: Alan Partridge will never have Michael’s misguided altruism because he’s too self-absorbed to even notice other humans. Despite this complete narcissism (at one point, Alan complains that everyone views him as some sort of “Christ 2.0” and you get the idea that he genuinely believes this), Alan still has the ability to step up when necessary and do the right thing, even if it doesn’t always benefit him.

While Coogan is fantastic as Alan (possibly a career-best performance), he’s got a more than capable ensemble backing him up. Veteran actor Colm Meaney has always been a great performer but his turn as Pat Farrell certainly belongs in his personal Hall of Fame. By turns proud, wounded and pissed off, Pat is a complex character, as far from a plot device or a MacGuffin as it gets. There is some genuine poignancy to the scene where Pat and Alan discuss their boyhood dreams and a rousing bit of wish-fulfillment when the pair hit the road in the “broadcasting bus” to bring the truth to the common man. This may be Alan’s show but Pat is a vital component and Meaney’s performance is a great counter-balance to Coogan’s manic energy.

Great performances abound, however: Nigel Lindsay brings the proper amount of middle-management sleaze to his portrayal of station head Jason, Monica Dolan is hilariously “clingy” as Alan’s on-again/off-again fling Angela and Anna Maxwell Martin is so starched that she practically creaks as Janet Whitehead, head of the SWAT task-force. Special mention must go to Felicity Montagu as Alan’s personal assistant, however. Lynn is a remarkable character, by turns slavishly devoted to Alan’s personal and career-wellbeing, at other times as easily distracted by the trappings of “fame” as a bird is to shiny objects. Montagu is a riot and nearly steals all of her scenes, no small feat when working so closely with Coogan.

I could go on and on about Alan Partridge: Alpha Papa but the bottom-line is pretty simple: the film is an absolute and complete gem. It’s uproariously funny, full of heart, deeply incisive, stuffed to bursting with interesting characters and anchored by a phenomenal lead performance via the indomitable Steve Coogan. While there is no such thing as a universal comedy, I’m hard-pressed to think that anyone couldn’t find something to laugh at in Alpha Papa. It may be a little early to declare a film from 2013 as a “classic” but I’m going to go out on a limb here: Alpha Papa is just about as classic as it gets.