4/26/15: Man’s the Only Animal That Foreshadows

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Aaron Staton, actor-director, camping, Christopher Denham, cinema, Cody Saintgnue, dysfunctional marriage, feuding brothers, fight for survival, fighting back, film reviews, films, Home Movie, hunting humans, hunting trip, isolation, lost in the woods, masked killers, Michael Chacon, Movies, Nick Saso, Pablo Schreiber, Preservation, PTSD, survival of the fittest, survival-horror, thrillers, Wrenn Schmidt, writer-director

You know that guy at the party who says something “clever” and then spends the rest of the evening elbowing you in the ribs, saying “You get it? You get it?” until you want to throw him off the nearest roof? Well, Christopher Denhams’ Preservation (2014) is an awful lot like that guy: the film spends the first 20 minutes hammering its main theme into the ground (“Man is the only animal that kills for fun” isn’t just the film’s tagline: it’s practically its mantra) only to have the rest of the film follow in such a predictable manner as to induce feelings of deja vu. On one hand, though, you really have to hand it to Preservation: it promises one thing and then delivers it. Over and over and over again, rinse, wash, repeat.

Our trio of protagonists are Wit (Wrenn Schmidt), her husband, Mike (Aaron Staton) and Mike’s gruff brother, Sean (Pablo Schreiber, perhaps best known as Orange is the New Black’s odious “Pornstache”). The group have headed deep into the woods so that the estranged brothers can relive one of their long-treasured childhood hunting trips, dragging Wit along even though she’s a vegetarian who’s uncomfortable, to say the least, with killing animals. “I don’t think I can kill,” Wit tells Sean, to which he knowingly replies, “You’d be surprised what you can do when it’s fight or flight.” Remember all that hammering-home I mentioned earlier? Get used to it, buckaroos, cuz it ain’t going anywhere.

Faster than Sean can say “Just because you can’t see ’em doesn’t mean they’re not there” and that old chestnut “Man’s the only animal that kills for fun,” our heroes seem to wander into an exceptionally strange situation. Waking from the previous evening’s festivities, the group realizes two things right off the bat: all of their possessions, including their packs, supplies and tents, have been taken while they slept and they each have a large, black “X” drawn on their foreheads. There’s a little bit of finger-pointing and blame-gaming thrown back and forth between Mike and Sean before we get to the revelation that should, presumably, surprise no one: the group is being actively hunted by a group of masked, heavily armed psychos.

From this point, the film hits all the standard “survival-horror” tropes, culminating with the realization that Wit must become everything that she abhors in order to survive: she’s going to have to get her hands dirty and fight to kill. Who are the mysterious assailants? Why are they pursuing Wit, Mike and Sean? Will Wit be able to make a final, desperate stand or will the silent, isolated woods become her ultimate resting place? When the game is self-preservation…there are no rules.

Despite having a more than capable cast, Preservation ends up being more than a little shallow, silly and, to be honest, rather obnoxious. The script is fairly awful, full of ridiculously on-the-nose dialogue and contrived sequences: there’s no point where any of the actors feel genuine, mostly because it’s difficult to take anything they say seriously. Schreiber, in particular, is saddled with some of the clunkiest lines I’ve come across in an indie horror film in some time: anytime he talks, it feels like he’s ticking points off a script breakdown. Schmidt and Staton have zero chemistry which tends to reduce the stakes on many of their scenes together: it was rather difficult to believe that these two even knew each other, much less genuinely loved each other.

Even stripped to its core survival-horror elements, Preservation falls well short of the mark. The majority of the action/violence occurs off-camera (sorry, gorehounds) and the handful of action scenes are poorly blocked, rarely amounting to more than a flurry of chaos and motion. While the film does build up a reasonable amount of tension, at times, it never really amounts to much, probably because everything is so familiar: if you think you know how any particular scene will progress, chances are you’re right. While horror films have a long history of predictability (just think back to the veritable oceans of anonymous slasher flicks that flooded video store shelves in the ’80s), Preservation does absolutely nothing whatsoever to mess with the formula. Even the film’s big “twist” reveal is so hackneyed and clichéd that careful (or even non-comatose) viewers should be able to figure it out after the very first appearance of the villains: needless to say, it’s difficult to be shocked, surprised or amazed by anything when we always seem to be five steps ahead of the film, itself.

To be honest, I was actually surprised by how slight and silly Preservation was for one very simple reason: writer-director Denham’s previous film, Home Movie (2008), is one of the most disturbing, well-made and haunting indie horror films I’ve ever seen. His found-footage portrait of parents coming to terms with their two unbelievably evil children is one brick to the face after another, culminating in the kind of harrowing finale that can, literally, haunt dreams. Home Movie completely blew me away when I saw it years ago and I’ve been eagerly awaiting a follow-up ever since: suffice to say that Preservation couldn’t have disappointed me more if it had actually been made with just that express purpose.

Despite this disappointment, however, I haven’t quite given up on Denham (goes to show just how impressed I was by his debut). While Preservation’s script is dreadful, Home Movie’s was quite good: ditto on the scenario end of things. As such, I’m deathly curious to see which direction his third film (whenever it appears) will take. Here’s to hoping that the next wait will bear much more delectable fruit than this most recent excursion. When your film has a problem making a life-or-death Port-a-Potty battle between Pornstache and a masked assailant interesting, well…it might just be time to pave over this preservation and put up a parking lot.

12/26/14 (Part Four): Letting the Idiots Speak

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actor-director, animal masks, Boris Mojsovski, children in peril, cinema, co-writers, disappointing films, dysfunctional family, father-son relationships, film reviews, films, horror, horror movies, isolated estates, isolation, Jordan Barker, Katherine Isabelle, masked intruders, Michael Foster, Movies, Peter DaCunha, Robin Dunne, Stephen McHattie, stepmother, Thomas Pound, thriller, Torment

For roughly the first half of Jordan Barker’s Torment (2013), all signs point to an above-average little chiller: effectively shot, tense and extremely atmospheric, this little “family in peril” flick doesn’t break a lot of new ground but it ferociously stakes claim to the terra firma that’s already there. Creepy, relentless and with an absolutely ruthless sense of forward momentum, Torment (at first) seems like it’ll be one of those “horror sleepers” that worms its way into my sub-conscious, complete with some very eerie, animal-mask-bedecked baddies…again, not original but highly effective, nonetheless. But then, unfortunately, something rather terrible happens, something that cuts the legs out from under the film and leaves it to die a slow, miserable, humiliating death, flopping around and about like that poor fish from Faith No More’s “Epic” video: the creepy, masked bad guys speak and the whole thing heads straight to Hell in the proverbial hand-basket.

Until the film manages to completely squander all of its accumulated good will, there’s actually quite a bit to like here. The central story, about a pair of newlyweds who vacation in the country with the husband’s extremely difficult son (from his first marriage) opens up some nice avenues for drama: there’s a genuine sense of tension between bratty Liam (Peter DaCunha) and his trying-too-hard stepmother, Sarah (Katherine Isabelle), and a few quietly astute observations about the ways in which step-parents and their families interact. The familial relationship feels fairly authentic (in particular, you really feel for poor Sarah’s attempts to bond with her step-son) and none of the acting gets in the way.

From a horror level, Torment’s first half is a real slow-burn that still manages to include some fairly nasty, abrupt violence, including a very memorable scene involving some sharp garden shears and an astoundingly creepy shot involving shadowy figures in the basement (to be honest, one of the creepiest shots of the year: bravo!). There are some really tense action setpieces, including a marvelously executed cat-and-mouse chase involving Sarah and the masked baddies. Hell, Stephen McHattie even shows up as the lackadaisical sheriff and that’s always a good thing.

Once the film hits the midpoint and decides to let the masked intruders talk, however, the whole thing instantly collapses like a castle made of wet tissue paper. Gone is the tension, mystery and atmosphere, replaced by some of the most tedious, obnoxious and straight-up stupid “tough guy” talk this side of a dinner-theater production of Glengarry Glen Ross. The question of whether to have your masked bad guy speak is always a tough one: in most cases, any mood and mystery goes right out the window as soon as any formerly “strong and silent”-type tests the mic and Torment is absolutely no exception. Suffice to say, that my burning interest in the film was almost instantly doused and the resulting 40 minutes became as awkward, terrible and stupid as the first 40 minutes were effective and chilling.

Hard to pinpoint exactly where to lay the most blame here, but I’ll go ahead and toss a heaping helping of scorn onto the film’s two scribes (that’s right, two screenwriters for this drivel), mostly because the dialogue in the latter half of the film is so painfully stupid and contrived as to stick out like a neon sign. The whole thing ends with an obvious setup for a sequel, which, of course, begs one enormous question: who in the hell wants seconds from this particularly rancid smorgasbord?

Ultimately, Torment is that most terrible of films, at least for me: a scrappy little coulda-woulda-shoulda contenda that ends up as just another cauliflower-eared, empty-headed palooka. There’s plenty of potential here but precious little follow-through: “Torment” might not accurately reflect one’s experience with Barker’s film but I’m wagering the more accurate title wouldn’t have looked as good on the box art: “Tedium.”

10/7/14 (Part Two): No Laughing Matter

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'70s films, 31 Days of Halloween, actor-director, Andrew Prine, based on a true story, Ben Johnson, Captain J.D. Morales, Charles B. Pierce, cinema, Dawn Wells, deadly trombones, Deputy Sheriff Norman Ramsey, film reviews, films, Friday the 13th Part 2, hooded killer, horror, horror films, influential films, isolated communities, Jim Citty, Jimmy Clem, Lovers' Lane, Movies, period-piece, Robert Aquino, serial killer, set in the 1940s, slasher films, small town life, Texarkana, Texas Ranger, the Phantom Killer, The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, The Town That Dreaded Sundown, Town That Dreaded Sundown, true crime

Falling chronologically between The Texas Chainsaw Massacre (1974) and Halloween (1978), Charles B. Pierce’s The Town That Dreaded Sundown (1976) is something of a proto-slasher: it uses many of the tropes of slasher films (masked maniac, creative kill scenes, stalking scenarios) but welds them to a more traditional true-crime format. The finished product ends up being a little like a pseudo-documentary, complete with voice-over narrator, but maintains enough horror film qualities to appeal to fans. By comparing the look of the Phantom Killer from The Town That Dreaded Sundown with Jason’s first appearance, Friday the 13th Part 2 (1981), it’s also plain to see how influential the film would be on the genre movies that would follow. Although Pierce’s film would, ultimately, be less influential than either of the landmarks that surrounded it, it’s still a fairly well-made, tense little picture that’s wholly deserving of a resurgence among modern audiences. With a new remake set to open next week, it appears that horror audiences may finally be ready to focus on Texarkana and its mysterious, hooded madman once again.

Based on a true story, The Town That Dreaded Sundown takes place over several months in 1946 and deals with the activities of a serial killer in Texarkana, Arkansas. Beginning with young couples on Lovers’ Lane, the hooded killer would graduate to attacking people in the safety of their own homes before seeming to vanish into thin air. As the attacks increase in sheer viciousness, the citizens of the 40K-strong town begin to hide in their homes, avoiding the nighttime hours like the plague. At first, Deputy Sheriff Norman Ramsey (Andrew Prine) does the best he can to catch the elusive maniac but he’s soon forced to hand the case over to a living legend: Captain J.D. Morales (Ben Johnson), widely renowned as the greatest Texas Ranger to walk the earth. Together, Ramsey and Morales try to run to ground a sinister, vicious killer who seems to appear out of nowhere and vanish just as quickly. As the body count rises, the town of Texarkana is left to wonder if they’ll ever know peace and safety again.

In many ways, The Town That Dreaded Sundown is a tale of two films (three, actually, but we’ll get to that shortly): a true-crime investigation and a serial killer/slasher film. While the true-crime stuff is interesting, if a little old-fashioned, the serial killer/slasher element is particularly well-done. From his very first attack, where the killer disables a couple’s car while they sit there in stunned fear, to the climatic scene where Ramsey and Morales chase him by the railroad tracks, the Phantom Killer (Bud Davis) is one helluva great bad guy. While his initial attacks involve firearms, the killer really gets creative when he ties a knife to the end of a trombone and proceeds to “play” the instrument, repeatedly jabbing the knife into his victim’s back: it’s a nasty, thoroughly gratuitous scene but it’s also pretty genius and well-staged, inexplicably reminding of the similar method of murder in Michael Powell’s legendary Peeping Tom (1960). Like the best horror/slasher villains, the Phantom Killer is a mute, absolutely menacing presence: it’s pretty easy to take one look at the character and see the direct line of inspiration to the appearance of Jason Voorhees in the second Friday the 13th film, although elements of the Phantom Killer’s appearance and behavior can be found in at least a bakers’ dozen other horror films.

On the “good guy” side, Andrew Prine does a great job as the hard-charging Deputy, although I must admit to being slightly underwhelmed by Johnson’s characteristically gruff performance: there isn’t much shade or nuance to Captain Morales, although not being familiar with the actual person probably makes the case a little moot…after all, it’s quite possible that Morales was exactly as Johnson portrayed him. Nonetheless, I found myself gravitating towards Prine much more than I did to Johnson’s throwback “old school lawman.” The rest of the cast is decent, if a bit anonymous, although many of the supporting roles have a decidedly amateurish tinge to them that pretty synonymous with low-budget films of that era.

The single biggest problem with the film, minor quibbles aside, comes from any of the scenes involving director Charles B. Pierce, who plays police office A.C. Benson. While it’s always a bit problematic having the director pop up in his own film (actors directing themselves, ala Eastwood, Gibson or the like, are entirely different scenarios), it’s made even worse when the character is obnoxious and unnecessary. In a nutshell, the character of Benson exists solely to provide the comic relief that the film so desperately does not need: any scene featuring Pierce is pitched at absolutely screwball levels and sits at odds with anything else in the movie. Without the Benson/Pierce scenes, The Town That Dreaded Sundown plays as an effective, straight-faced thriller. With the scenes, however, the film often takes on the quality of a farce, which has the unintended effect of making the rest of the material seem slight and silly. In a way, it’s similar to the big complaint I have from the original version of Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1956): the cheesy wraparound storyline, added later, severely dilutes the impact of the rest of the film. Similarly, the goofy comedy scenes not only don’t add anything to the film, they actually take away much of the film’s sustained mood and impact, at the very least scuttling any of the serious scenes that directly lead-in to or follow the Benson scenes. In the case of Invasion of the Body Snatchers, at least we can blame the studio for unnecessarily interfering: the tampering in Pierce’s film appears to be solely his fault. Regardless of the ultimate reason behind it, Pierce’s performance as Benson ends up being the film’s biggest problem and serves as a pretty substantial black eye.

It’s a shame, too, because the film that surrounds the absurd comic scenes is actually quite good, if somewhat less than relevatory. The setting and mood are strong, for the most part, the action is tense, the killer is frightening and the setpieces are well-staged. While I’m not normally a fan of remakes, finding them to be largely unnecessary, I can’t help but feel that the upcoming remake of Pierce’s film might not be such a bad idea. There’s a really intriguing, frightening idea to be found here: a film that focuses solely on the darker aspects and jettisons the buffoonish comic relief certainly stands a chance of being successful…tonal consistency would, at the very least, be a significant improvement over the original. If you can look past the film’s poorly executed attempts at levity, however, much of it possesses a raw, feral power that should certainly appeal to fans of “classic” slasher” films, as well as true-crime buffs. If only Pierce could have stayed behind the camera, this might have ended up as an unmitigated classic instead of a near miss: nonetheless, this is one film that you definitely shouldn’t dread.

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.

7/10/14: A Mediocre Day at Black Rock

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actor-director, Anslem Richardson, battle of the sexes, Black Rock, cinema, disappointing films, Donkey Punch, drama, female friendships, film reviews, films, friends, Iraq War, islands, isolation, Jay Paulson, Kate Bosworth, Katie Aselton, Lake Bell, Mark Duplass, Movies, survival-horror, The Descent, The League, The Puffy Chair, thriller, violence against women, war veterans, Will Bouvier

I really wanted to love Katie Aselton’s Black Rock (2012): oh, boy, did I ever. I went into the film with not only the highest of hopes but also the greatest of expectations, practically willing it to be amazing. How could it lose, after all? The film stars and is directed by Aselton  (a complete gold mine in the uproariously funny TV show, The League), is written by her husband, Mark Duplass (also of The League and equally amazing), features Lake Bell (who may just be this generation’s Crispin Glover) and is a female-centric survival-horror film. A pedigree like this seems almost tailor-made for my sensibilities, especially considering how much I’ve always loved The Descent (2005).

Alas, Black Rock ends up being a pretty major disappointment. From a clichéd storyline and heavy-handed musical score to unrealistic, irritating acting and wooden dialogue, the film ended up deflating all of my expectations, one by one. Rather than being a neo-classic, Black Rock ends up being a distinctly lackluster entry into the survival-horror subgenre, more Donkey Punch (2008) than Wilderness (2006). Even worse, the film manages to fail as both a friendship-oriented drama and a horror film, keeping one foot planted in the worst of both worlds.

All that poor Sarah (Kate Bosworth) wants to do is return to the secluded island that she remembered so fondly from her childhood and relive her girlhood memories with her best friends, Abby (Katie Aselton) and Lou (Lake Bell). The only fly in the ointment, of course, being that Abby and Lou can’t stand each others’ guts. Being a real Kissinger, however, Sarah decides to bring everybody together by just, you know, lying about it and invites them each separately. When they all show up at the dock, ready to board the boat, Abby and Lou look about as excited to see each other as a fly and a fly swatter might. Thinking fast, Sarah defuses the situation by pretending to have cancer. That’s right, Sarah the humanitarian bridges the divide by telling her best friends that she has a terminal disease. Let the good times begin!

From here, we get some pretty sub-Blair Witch arguing in the woods stuff, as Abby and Lou proceed to hash out every bit of their contentious relationship. Rather than seeming like a good way to get the gang back together, this begins to seem like a plot on Sarah’s part to have her friends kill each other: could this be some kind of Hitchcockian twist on the part of screenwriter Duplass? Nah…it’s just a lot of pointless bickering to add some “drama” and “character development.” The big problem? All of the “development” stops at the obnoxious phase and never makes it past that.

While tooling through the woods, our trio are surprised by three hunters: Henry (Will Bouvier), Derek (Jay Paulson) and Alex (Anslem Richardson). Turns out that the ladies all went to high school with Henry’s older brother, Jimmy. After as much awkward hemming and hawing as a junior high formal, Abby invites the guys to hang out and get shit-faced with them. This, of course, doesn’t make Sarah and Lou particularly happy, since Sarah wanted a girls’ weekend and Lou just wants Abby to spontaneously combust, but Abby gets what she wants because she’s Abby, dammit!

After another exceedingly awkward scene where Abby gets trashed and makes fun of Derek’s lack of facial hair while flagrantly coming on to Henry, she excuses herself to go get some firewood, followed shortly afterwards by Henry, who sees a good opportunity to take this to the next level. This, of course, leaves Sarah and Lou alone with Derek and Alex, which is just enough time to learn that the three guys are recently back from Iraq, where they were dishonorably discharged. “Something” happened over there, something that they don’t want to talk about but, hey: these are still probably nice enough guys, right?

Not quite, as we find out once Henry attempts to rape Abby out in the woods. She puts the kibosh on the attack with a large rock, which ends up putting the kibosh on the rest of Henry’s lifespan. This, in turn, makes Derek and Alex fly into a murderous rage: how dare this crazy bitch kill their wannabe rapist/potentially lunatic war veteran/cuddly best friend?! Since any measure of actual thought, at this point, would derail the rest of the film, the remaining guys make what seems to be a pretty reasonable decision: kill the three women.

Being a survival-horror film, however, this is all just set-up for one long game of cat-and-mouse between the three friends and their (presumably) insane captors. It goes without saying that they’ll break free, escape, suffer injuries, fight back, get in touch with their inner warriors and kick a ton of ass: it goes without saying because these are all of the traditional beats in any survival-horror film and Aselton and Duplass are absolutely not interested in doing anything outside of this particular box. Period. This, of course, all leads to an ending that could probably be seen coming from at least the end of the first act, if not the opening credits and the sudden realization that tremendous success in television comedy doesn’t necessarily translate to incredible success in a thriller/horror film.

Not to flog this horse too much but Black Rock really isn’t a very good film. It’s stunningly unoriginal, for one thing, almost seeming like a paint-by-numbers attempt at this particular subgenre. While the cinematography and shot selection is actually quite good, the musical score is eye-rolling, so heavy-handed that it felt like the music was constantly elbowing me in the side, going, “Eh? Eh? Get it? You get it?” The script is consistently awful, filled not only with howlingly bad dialogue but also so many character and plot inconsistencies that it felt unfinished, as if the dialogue was half-scripted, half-improv.

The fatal blow, however, has to be the unrealistic acting and thoroughly unlikable characters. To be quite blunt, all six of these people are shitheads: the men are all homicidal, misogynist, insane, steroidal assholes, while Sarah is a misanthropic, self-centered nitwit, Abby is a bat-shit crazy boozehound and Lou is a unlikeable jerk who spends the entire film making bitter beer faces at Abby. Not only would I never want to be stuck on an isolated island with any of these people, I didn’t want to be stuck in a movie with them, either. By the time folks started to die off, it was too little, too late: I kept hoping this would turn into some sort of alien invasion film and ETs would swoop in and turn these jackasses into ash piles. Alas, it was pretty content to stay a thoroughly pedestrian survival-horror film.

Perhaps the worst thing about Black Rock is how much wasted potential there was here. Aselton, Bell and Bosworth are all more than capable actors, while Duplass was responsible for writing not only the mumblecore films The Puffy Chair (2005) and Baghead (2008), but also the way-excellent Jeff, Who Lives at Home (2011). What the hell happened? Short of any kind of definitive answer, I’m going to have to assume that this all looked a whole lot more promising during the planning stages, kind of like mixing the perfect souffle, only to have the whole thing collapse into mush in the oven.

6/1/14 (Part Two): Friends, Zombies, Fellow Men in the Country…

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actor-director, actor-writer, B-movies, backwoods folk, Billy Ray, Buck WIld, chupacabra, cinema, co-writers, Dru Lockwood, dude ranch, dumb films, Edgar Wright, film reviews, films, guys' weekend, horror, horror films, horror movies, horror-comedies, hunting, Isaac Harrison, isolated communities, Jerrod Pistilli, Joe Stevens, Mark Ford, Matthew Albrecht, Meg Cionni, Movies, rednecks, Shaun of the Dead, Tom and Jerry, Tyler Glodt, white trash, writer-director, zombie films, zombie movies, zombies

By this point in world history, plain ol’ “vanilla” zombie films don’t really have much effect anymore. Sure, they may be one of the easiest low-budget productions for fledgling filmmakers to get involved in (Got some friends, a camera and a location? Guess what, Jack: you just got yourself the beginnings of a zombie film!) but that also means that we’ve been drowning in this kind of direct-to-video filler for a good thirty years, at this point. Once the “prosumer” camera revolution occurred, it was even easier for filmmakers to pump out this kind of product and it seems that zombie films have been multiplying like Tribbles within the last decade or so. In order to inject a bit of life into the subgenre, filmmakers have turned to various ways to “spruce” up the ol’ gut-munchers, the most popular of which involves slamming comedy and the zombie film together, chocolate and peanut butter-style, to create an entirely new (well, kind of new) sub-subgenre: the zom-com.

While Edgar Wright’s Shaun of the Dead (2004) definitely wasn’t the first zom-com (I’d give that title to Dan O’Bannon’s outrageous 1985 yuk/yuck-fest The Return of the Living Dead), it’s probably (still) the most popular one, as well as the first to take the “zom-com” tag and run with it. In the decade since Simon Pegg and the lads tried to forestall a zombie invasion of the UK, there have been several fistfuls of zom-coms, ranging in quality from “drop-dead hilarious” to “just drop dead, already.” In a fairly glutted field, I’m managed to see several worthy successors to Shaun of the Dead: Fido (2006) was an ingenious melding of zom-coms with candy-colored 1950’s nostalgia, while Cockneys vs Zombies (2012) managed to overcome a terribly generic title with solidly-paced jokes and thrills. And, of course, who could forget Woody Harrelson and Jesse Eisenberg trading quips in Zombieland (2009)? Mixing zombie chills with chuckles isn’t the easiest task but, when done well, the results can be lots of fun. Unfortunately, Buck Wild (2013), the newest feature from the team of Tyler Glodt and Matthew Albrecht, isn’t so much a “big, dumb blast” as a “really dumb film,” only slightly less stupid than the head-smackingly awful ’80s Troma film Redneck Zombies (1989).

Buck Wild starts promisingly, if crudely, with a fairly funny segment involving beleaguered father Clyde (Joe Stevens), his perpetually horny daughter, Candy (Meg Cionni) and her stupid boyfriend. After decking the boyfriend with a wrench (humping his daughter in the garden is one thing, stepping all over the flowers is a whole other bucket of manure), Clyde ends up getting attacked by a chupacabra. Yes, a chucacabra, ladies and gentlemen. We that, we seem to be off to the races, establishing a crude, fun and extremely tongue-in-cheek attitude.

Unfortunately, the good will begins to fade as the movie proper begins, mostly because we get saddled with a pretty obnoxious group of protagonists. Our “hero” is Craig (co-writer Matthew Albrecht), one of those perpetually put-upon, straight-arrow types that exists solely to become irritated by various indignities. His “best friend,” Lance (Isaac Harrison) is a ridiculously metrosexual “ladies’ man” who happens to be boinking Craig’s girlfriend, Carla (Amerlia Meyers), unbeknownst to our “hero.” The little group is rounded out by Tom (Dru Lockwood) and Jerry (Jarrod Pistilli), who seem to serve as a perpetually at-odds odd couple: you know, cuz they’re named Tom and Jerry? Like the cartoons? The ones with the mouse and cat? Yeah, it just ain’t funny no matter how you slice it, is it? Tom is the typical mealy-mouthed, glasses-wearing dork: we’ve seen at least a million iterations of this character in just the last couple years, nevermind the last couple decades. Jerry, however, is the real prize in this Cracker Jack box: bedecked in a ridiculous fedora, given to smoking cigars in small cars and practicing his nunchuks in the nude, Jerry is supposed to be the epitome of the batshit crazy outsider, that one guy who just…does not…give a FUCK, bro! Except he’s a colossal weenie, sort of a gene-splice between Crispin Glover and Bobcat Goldthwait’s award-winning performance in the Police Academy movies. As such, not only is it impossible to buy the scene where he puts the cigar out on his own hand (cuz this guy totally looks like he would start bawling) but it’s almost offensive to believe that this nitwit occupies the “badass” role in the film. When your bar is that low, no good can come of it, mark my words.

The plot, such as it is, involves one of those “guys-only weekends,” this one ostensibly set-up to allow for not only some male bonding but some animal-shooting, as well. The “gang” heads to the Buck Wild Ranch (Hey! That’s the name of the film! Clever!), which just happens to be run by Clyde. Clyde’s not looking too good and if you’ve seen any zombie films besides this one, you’ll know why. Besides being infected by a chupacabra, Clyde’s also kind of a dick: he calls the guys “punks” and “pissants” (put up your dukes!) and tells them to make sure to stay within the borders of the ranch. Turns out that Clyde’s next-door neighbor is a self-proclaimed “badass” named Billy Ray (Mark Ford) and he doesn’t take kindly to trespassers. The guys end up running afoul of Billy Ray (an absolutely, astoundingly terrible creation that seems to be part frat-boy, part John Waters, part lame-ass rockabilly clothes horse and completely, totally unbelievable) and a completely awful park ranger, Officer Shipley (director/co-writer Tyler Glodt), which don’t really expand the narrative so much as pad it out. Ultimately, they also run afoul of zombies: turns out Clyde has been infecting other locals and, soon, our city slickers are up to their haircuts in the redneck dead. Revelations are had, truths are learned, friends turn into the walking dead, Jerry acts like a badass, yadda yadda yadda. If the ultimate destination of this one-legged mule isn’t readily apparent by the end of the first act…I’m guessing you might actually enjoy this. Hmm…

Look, I’m not gonna sugarcoat this at all: Buck Wild is a stupid film. Aggressively stupid. Worse yet, it’s a hyperactive, self-aware, tone-deaf kind of stupidity that reminds me more of films like Scary Movie (2000) than Shaun of the Dead. Let me give you a good example of the “humor” on display here. After Officer Shipley pulls the guys over because he’s heard “enough gunshots for Baghdad,” he proceeds to stand outside his car and give them a speech about how if you smell shit, you’re probably standing in it. Officer Shipley, it turns out, smells shit: guess what, he asks them. You’re standing in shit, the others point out. And he is…he really is standing in a big pile of shit. Now, if anything about that was humorous (keep in mind that the “delivery” of said “joke” doesn’t help things), Buck Wild just may be right up your alley. Lest we think that the writers only have one kind of joke up their sleeve, they also show us how hilarious and timely their references are: Tom ends up a captive at Billy Ray’s compound and Jerry goes to save him, in a scene that features an ultra-sleazy brass song, Tom bent over a table wearing only his underwear and Jerry wielding a samurai sword. Yeah, that’s right: it’s a fucking Pulp Fiction reference. Not only that, but it’s a “humorous” reference to the rape scene: now that’s comedy!

Lest it sound like Buck Wild is completely worthless, there are actually three elements of the film that really work. The first element is the cinematography, which is consistently well-done and clear: in low-budget films like this, you’re usually lucky if you get something that looks half-way decent, let alone good. The second element that works (spectacularly well, I might add) are the fake TV shows that we occasionally see. One of them, a public access show called “Fucking Hunting” that features Billy Ray and his motley crew, is an absolute scream, miles away the funniest thing in the film. Hot on its heels, however, is another gem of a fake show, this one called “Living Through the Gray,” a self-help show about dealing with color-blindness. The TV shows are not only the funniest moments in the film, hands down, but they’re actually two of the funniest moments I’ve seen in any film recently: it’s a shame that they’re left to die amid the humorless wasteland that is the rest of the film.

The third element that actually works in Buck Wild is an extremely smart and subversive little commentary on the casual female nudity that inundates most low-mid budget horror films. Unlike similar films that might feature a terrified young starlet running around topless, Buck Wild chooses to make Tom the object of the “male gaze.” For the majority of the film, due to one incident or another, Tom rarely wears more than his underwear and socks: at one point, he fashions a toga out of a garbage bag, only to have a zombie rip it to shreds. Later, he gets to take a shower and emerges, clad in a bathrobe, only to have a passing zombie yank it off, exposing him once again. I’ll be honest: this particular running gag never got old and displayed the kind of invention and thought that I wish the rest of the film possessed. I don’t actually recall any female nudity at all, to be honest, although we get plenty of Tom. In some ways, this seems to be a callback to the Pee Wee character in Porkys (1982), who likewise spends the majority of that film in a constant state of embarrassment, harassment and undress. While the film often seems to be exceptionally mean to Tom, it ends up paying off big dividends, especially during a nicely emotional final setpiece.

Ultimately, however, a few worthy elements don’t a worthy film make. If Buck Wild were just a little less inane and stupid, it would be mighty easy to recommend it as the kind of low-budget romp that it thinks it is. Unfortunately, the film mostly ends up being a showcase of missed opportunities and foul balls, with nary a true home run in the batch (unless we count the TV shows, which really only amount to 2-3 minutes of screen-time, max). While I’m more than willing to give Glodt and Albrecht another chance, there’s no way I would put these guys on my radar: Fool me once, fool me twice and all that jazz.

5/11/14: A Real Mama’s Boy

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actor-director, Addie, Addie Bundren, Ahna O'Reilly, As I Lay Dying, based on a book, Beth Grant, Blood Meridian, burial, Christina Voros, cinema, Cormac McCarthy, Danny McBride, Dewey Dell, difficult narratives, dysfunctional family, film adaptations, film reviews, films, incest, independent films, indie dramas, isolated communities, isolation, James Franco, Jewel, Jim Parrack, John Kennedy Toole, last wishes, Logan Marshall-Green, Movies, multiple narrators, quest films, river crossing, Southern Gothic, split-screen, stream of consciousness, Tim Blake Nelson, unfilmable books, William Faulkner

Say what you will about James Franco (and I’ve said plenty of bad things, trust me) but you can’t accuse the actor-director of sticking to strictly safe, middle-of-the-road projects. For every Rise of the Planet of the Apes (2011) or Oz the Great and Powerful (2013), we get something like Interior. Leather Bar (2013) or his recent adaptations of William Faulkner’s infamous As I Lay Dying and Cormac McCarthy’s Child of God (both 2013). I’ve often felt that Franco can be scattershot and unfocused, while also feeling that his best acting work was still all the way back in Freaks and Geeks: he’s done the sub-James Dean thing for almost two decades, at this point, but he never felt more authentic than in Apatow’s short-lived TV series. That being said, I did enjoy his recent meta-Apocalypse comedy This is the End (2013), which revealed a fairly deft hand when dealing with his large ensemble cast. Would he bring this same quality to his adaptation of Faulkner’s notoriously “unfilmable” book? Read on, gentle readers…read on.

As I Lay Dying, Faulkner’s 1930 classic about the Bundren family and their quest to honor dead matriarch Addie’s final wish, is one of those novels, like John Kennedy Toole’s A Confederacy of Dunces or McCarthy’s Blood Meridian, that most folks have considered nigh impossible to bring to the screen. While Confederacy’s tricky narrative seems somehow cursed, at least judging by the number of failed attempts to bring it to the big screen, and Blood Meridian is held-back by its awe-inspiringly ugly content (I think this probably has as much chance of being filmed as the Crossed graphic novels do), the problem with filming As I Lay Dying has more to do with the structure of its narrative. Since the book tends to be very stream of consciousness and uses multiple narrators to tell its tale (each member of the large family, including the dead Addie, gets a chance to narrative), there isn’t a whole lot of “physical” business to hang your hat on: it’s mostly inner conflict. This is one reason why Joyce’s Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man has been largely considered “unfilmable.”

While the narrative structure in As I Lay Dying is decidedly non-conventional, it’s not like we’re dealing with a Kenneth Anger short: this is still a story about a family coming to grips with the loss of their mother while trying to find their own (very awkward) way in the world. These are relateable characters, even if we might not be standing square in the shoes: with the right touch, filming As I Lay Dying certainly doesn’t seem as improbable a task as taking on Joyce’s post-modern epic. For the most part, with a few reservations, I think that Franco acquits himself quite well. This adaptation isn’t perfect, of course, and many of my issues with Franco (unfocused, scattershot) tend to be issues in this film, as well. If it ultimately ends up being a bit more of a triumph of style over substance, that’s not necessarily a terrible thing: the film is never boring and frequently quite beautiful.

As Addie Bundren (Beth Grant) lays dying, she asks her husband, Anse (Tim Blake Nelson), to fulfill one final wish: she wants to be buried in the nearby town of Jefferson, several days ride from their homestead. She also wants to see her kids one final time, especially her favorite son, Jewel (Logan Marshall-Green). Jewel and his brother, Darl (Franco), however, are out making a delivery and don’t make it back til she’s already passed on. Jewel, of course, feels terrible but Darl seems a bit more ambivalent. Rounding out this merry bunch o’ folks is another brother, Cash (Jim Parrack), the youngest kid, Vardaman (Brady Permenter) and the family’s only daughter, Dewey Dell (Ahna O’Reilly). Anse’s friend, Vernon Tull (Danny McBride) hangs around for a bit but, ultimately, it’s just the Bundrens against the rest of “polite society.” As one set-back after another befalls them (the bridge is washed out and a river crossing becomes disastrous, Cash’s leg gets badly broken and “set” with wet cement, Dewey Dell is “in a family way” and needs to take care of it), the Bundren keep trudging on, hauling Addie’s coffin along to its final resting place. As Addie begins to rot, the Bundrens are treated more and more like pariahs: outsiders be damned, however…they will get to Jefferson one way or the other.

In order to handle the multiple narrators/points of view necessary to pull off the story, Franco uses two techniques: he utilizes a split-screen format in order to present opposing POVs simultaneously (obviously necessary to prevent the kind of bloat that could have sunk this quickly) and he has various characters deliver monologues directly to the camera. Of these techniques, the split-screen is the more intrusive but ends up being the more effective, in the long run: the monologues always come across as stagey and awkward, overly theatrical and way too presentational. When the split-screen works well, it’s used to excellent effect: at one point, Darl has a conversation with Dewey Dell and each actor is represented on one side of the screen. When either actor speaks, their voices are heard in the opposite frame but they don’t speak in their frames. It’s a showy effect, to be sure, but it actually serves a very valid purpose, allowing for a more concrete way to express the disconnect that these people feel. At another point, the split-screen is utilized underwater, leading to a really cool effect where each frame is a different color: it’s actually pretty neat, to be honest, aided immeasurably by the consistently excellent cinematography.

In fact, if I have any major complaint about the split-screen format (once it gets past the rather laborious first 15 minutes, that is) it’s that it often seems to devalue cinematographer Christina Voros’ amazing work. As I Lay Dying always looks great and, often, the film looks quite beautiful: Voros has a particularly “painterly” way of framing characters, similar to director Peter Greenaway, and this leads to some mighty impressive vignettes. I don’t know that the split-screen was, ultimately, necessary to the film’s structure (the monologues certainly weren’t) but they do end up adding some artistic, as well as subtextual, depth to the production.

As an adaptation, As I Lay Dying works pretty well, although it doesn’t do much to clear up some of the book’s denser elements. In particular, I found the revelation of Dewey Dell’s pregnancy to be handled in a rather confusing manner: while I haven’t read Faulkner’s novel since college, I’m pretty sure that the film arrives at a different conclusion. It could be that I missed something, of course, but I have the nagging suspicion that it was changed. The only other major change that I could see was the omission of the book’s non-familial narrators, which makes perfect sense: in a low-budget production, including a raft of extra characters doesn’t make much sense, logistically. It never hurt the narrative, at least as far as I could tell, so this seemed like a pretty negligible change.

Acting-wise, Franco’s cast does a pretty good job and coheres fairly well. Tim Blake Nelson is pretty extraordinary as the (literally) toothless Anse: even though I had the devil’s own time understanding him at any given point, Nelson brought an intensity to the performance that was electrifying. The scene where he finally puts Jewel in his place, explaining how he went 15 years without food and Jewel can damn well go a few days without a horse, is powerful stuff. Marshall-Green and Franco acquit themselves just fine as Jewel and Darl, respectively, but Jim Parrack is the real fraternal standout as Cash, the no-nonsense carpenter. As strange as it sounds, I found the scene where he described the logistics of coffin building to be utterly fascinating: I found myself captivated, despite having no interest in woodworking or coffins whatsoever…that’s a good performance! O’Reilly had several good moments as Dewey Dell but she also had an unfortunate tendency to be a bit wooden, a problem that seemed to infect other members of the cast. On the whole, the acting tended to vacillate between “excellent” and “serviceable,” with no one being particularly cringe-worthy.

Ultimately, As I Lay Dying stands as a very respectable, respectful adaptation of a notoriously difficult novel. When the film works, it has a real sense of dark power and urgency that is rather enthralling: the final resolution of Dewey Dell’s “problem” is just as horrifying and depressing as the resolution of Jennifer Connelly’s “problem” in Requiem for a Dream (2000). When the film doesn’t work, it can come off as stiff, pretentious and a little tone-deaf. That the film is, in the end, more successful than not certainly speaks volumes to Franco’s dedication to this project. After seeing this, I’m genuinely excited to see what he’s done with Child of God, especially since he once again utilizes Voros as his cinematographer.

I may not be a member of the Franco Fan Club just yet, but rest assured: a few more films like this under his belt and he runs the risk of actually becoming someone I’ll have to pay attention to. Now, let’s get him working on adaptations of Blood Meridian and Confederacy of Dunces: it’s a hard job but somebody’s gotta do it.

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.

2/12/14: We All Write Our Histories

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1940s-era, actor-director, based on a book, based on a true story, Big Night, bohemian lifestyle, character dramas, cinema, drama, Film, film reviews, homeless, Ian Holm, Joe Gould, Joe Gould's Secret, Joe Mitchell, journalist, mental illness, Movies, New York City, New Yorker magazine, oral history, Patricia Clarkson, Professor Seagull, sad, Stanley Tucci, Steve Martin, Susan Sarandon, The Imposters, the Joe Gould Fund

Our impressions of people, as knee-jerk as they may be, often guide our interactions with them. If we perceive someone as somehow powerful, weak, gentle or assertive, we tend to treat them, and react to them, as such. Nowhere is this more evident than with our daily interactions with the homeless and destitute. In many cases, all we have to go on are surface impressions, since most never get close enough (emotionally rather than physically, as it were) to get to know somehow in these situations. If we see an obviously homeless individual dressed in multiple layers, pushing a loaded shopping cart down the road and carrying on both halves of a conversation with themselves…well, we do tend to think that these individuals might have a screw or two loose. This is only a surface impression, of course, but that’s often all that we get.

But what if we actually got to know one of these individuals, to care about them? What if we realized that there’s not a huge chasm that separates us but a small crack, a crack just large enough to fall through? Stanley Tucci’s Joe Gould’s Secret (based on the magazine article and book by Joe Mitchell) takes just such a look at just such a person, in this case the titular Joe Gould (Ian Holm).

Tucci portrays Joe Mitchell, a ’40s-era writer for the New Yorker who has begun to grow tired of “puff-pieces” and yearns to write something weightier, something more impactful. This something, in the form of Joe Gould, wanders into the diner where Joe is eating and proceeds to upend his life in a charmingly whimsical manner. Mitchell gets to know Gould, a neighborhood eccentric who is constantly collecting for the Joe Gould Fund, while in the middle of a lifelong project: an oral history of the world that is several times longer than the bible. In the meantime, Mitchell meets many of the locals who care about (and for) Gould, including a generous gallery owner (Patricia Clarkson) and Alice (Susan Sarandon), a kindly artist who seems to take a special interest in Gould.

Gould can be the life of the party (sometimes literally, as in one scene where he strips to his underwear and sings songs from atop a table) but he is also completely obsessive and prone to nasty mood swings. He latches onto Mitchell with both hands. Mitchell, for his part, is initially very open to Gould: after all, Gould is the source of Mitchell’s extremely popular “Professor Seagull” article and Mitchell genuinely likes him. Once Gould has begun to pop into Mitchell’s office for daily, lengthy b.s. sessions, however, poor Joe has definitely begun to wear out his welcome. Mitchell hangs on through it all, however, his eyes on the (possibly) mythical oral history that Gould dangles just out of reach like a phantom carrot. Will Mitchell be able to keep his cool? Is Joe Gould an eccentric, fractured genius or a kindly madman? Does the oral history, in fact, actually exist?

Aside from being an exceptionally gifted actor, Stanley Tucci has also proven himself to be quite the writer/director. Joe Gould’s Secret is Tucci’s third directorial effort, following his stellar debut Big Night (1996) and the energetic screwball comedy The Imposters (1998), and is just as accomplished, technically, as those films with the added pathos inherent to the film’s subject matter. At its heart, Joe Gould’s Secret is a deeply sad film, even before the truly sad resolution. This is a film about the outcasts of society, those who’ve fallen through the cracks and exist on a fringe that most of us only visit from time to time. The film never gives easy answers to the question of Joe Gould’s sanity (or lack thereof). We certainly see enough evidence to make the assumption that Gould is mentally imbalanced, possibly schizophrenic and maybe a little dangerous. We also see him as a friendly, loud, kindly eccentric, however, so the picture is never as lop-sided as one or the other.

Joe Gould’s Secret is a very quiet, solemn film, which certainly befits this look back into the gauzy past of New York City. Since the film is, essentially, a two-person show (Tucci and Holm), there’s a tendency for the proceedings to occasionally take on the feel of a stage-play. To be honest, this really isn’t to the film’s detriment, since this impression certainly puts the audience’s attention where it belongs: on the excellent performances of Tucci and Holm. Holm is certainly the flashier of the two roles, given to lusty ranting, raving and carrying-on counter-balanced by quietly devastating moments that really drive home the character. The scene where Holm stands naked, in a line to enter a homeless shelter, is so raw and powerful that it nearly grinds the film to a complete stop. When Holm is on (which is most of the film), he’s an awe-inspiring blend of cocksure absurdity and blistered vulnerability. It’s an intense performance that only occasionally veers into the “actorly.”

If Tucci’s performance is quieter and more reserved, however, it’s no less inherently powerful or commanding then Holm’s. Tucci is saddled with the unenviable task of being the guy who has to spoil the party: everyone else gets to deal with Gould’s hijinks on their own timeframe but poor Mitchell has to be the one to show him to the door. Tucci’s perfect combination of sad-sack acceptance (pretty much a Tucci trademark thanks to those bottomless eyes of his), eager interest and gentle sarcasm (there are many points where he seemed to be channeling none other than Mark Twain) are key to the film’s success: if the actor playing Mitchell had been any less genuine or sympathetic, Gould would have come across as insufferable rather than tragic. In a film where not much happens, Holm and Tucci continually find ways to make their interactions kinetic.

The rest of the cast fares well, although no one really gets to hold a candle next to the two leads. Sarandon is excellent in the kind of supportive, slightly bemused role that should probably best be called “Sarandon-esque” from now on. There are few actors working who portray genuine warmth and love in the way that Sarandon does and the film is all the richer for her performance. One of the film’s biggest surprises (and pleasures) is Steve Martin’s cameo as a partner in a publishing house. He only gets one scene, where Mitchell tries to introduce him to the increasingly squirrely Gould but it’s a helluva scene: beginning comically, the scene gradually to seem more and more desperate and sad. Martin’s Charlie Duell honestly likes Gould but realizes, as the conversation continues, that Gould is already a lost soul. The sad, sweet, bemused expression on Martin’s face is testament to the fact that this guy just doesn’t act enough nowadays.

Joe Gould’s Secret is a quiet, sincere film that becomes exceptionally powerful and sad in the final half. There’s a moment, at the end, where Mitchell goes to visit Gould in the Pilgrim State Mental Hospital. He finds Gould to be calmer, obviously saner but much less alive. Even though Mitchell knows that this is, ultimately, better for Gould, the pain and sorrow in his eyes is unmistakable. No matter how infuriating he might be, Mitchell is witnessing the death of his friend’s spirit before his very eyes. The final shot of Gould shuffling away from Mitchell, clad only in a hospital gown, is almost unbearably sad, a real gut-punch.

A postscript at the end of the film informs us that Joe Mitchell published his book, “Joe Gould’s Secret,” in 1964. For the next 32 years, he went into the office everyday but never wrote another article. I don’t mind saying that I just can’t quite shake that thought from my head. It’s to the film’s immense credit that I don’t really want to, either.