11/21/15 (Part Two): The Abyss Stares Back

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Amy Jump, auteur theory, Ben Wheatley, best friends, British films, cinema, co-writers, contract killers, disturbing films, Emma Fryer, fate, Film auteurs, film reviews, films, Harry Simpson, hitmen, husband-wife relationship, Kill List, Laurie Rose, Michael Smiley, Movies, MyAnna Buring, Neil Maskell, psychological horror, secret societies, strange ceremonies, Struan Rodger, twist ending, writer-director-editor

When one is standing at the bottom of a very deep hole, looking up at a tiny patch of daylight, it’s tempting to say that it can only get better from there: the only way is up, after all. This, of course, is a very comforting lie, the kind of fairy tale that helps us all sleep better at night. The plain and simple truth of the matter is that things can always get worse: regardless of far down you’ve already dug your hole, there’s always new depths to aspire to. As humans, the very bravest (and foolhardy) thing we can do is stare fate right in the face and dare it to blink. We’ll lose, every time, but that doesn’t stop us from trying.

Nowhere is this notion made more explicit than in British auteur Ben Wheatley’s sophomore film, Kill List (2011). When we first meet Jay (Neil Maskell), the poor bastard seems to have dug a hole as far into the earth as humanly possible. Out of work for eight months, after botching some sort of undisclosed job that appears to have left him with a potent case of PTSD, Jay’s doing everything he can to hold his life together, even if he’s doing a piss-poor job of it. Jay and his wife, Shel (MyAnna Buring), are at each others’ throats constantly, to the point where they routinely hurl bottles against walls and scream in each others’ faces until they’re out-of-breath. To make a bad situation even better, their young son, Sam (Harry Simpson), is a silent, aching witness to the whole massive shit show, wanting nothing more than some semblance of peace in his shattered home.

Things start to look up a bit, however, when Jay’s partner, Gal (Michael Smiley), shows up for a night of drinking, merriment and reminiscing. As the night progresses, complete with a number of potent meltdowns between the feuding spouses, Gal takes Michael aside and offers him an opportunity to “get back up on the horse” and bring a much-needed sense of financial security back to his domestic war-zone. Caught between a rock and an even sharper rock, Jay’s only too eager to get back to earning and takes Gal up on his offer.

Just what, exactly, did Jay and Gal do before whatever happened eight months prior? Well, as it turns out, they were hitmen, a revelation that Wheatley gets out of the way fairly quickly. Gal has just received a job offer that promises maximum money for minimum effort: all they have to do are exterminate three separate targets and they’ll get enough money to make any number of problems permanently disappear. After the pair meet with their strange “client” (a suitably sinister Struan Rodger), a meeting that ends with an impromptu blood oath, they set off on their fated path, uneasy but determined to get the job(s) done. It doesn’t take a psychic to know that this ends up being a very, very bad idea, the kind of bad idea that proves, once and for all, that life can always get worse. Much, much worse.

From his humble beginnings with the caustically comic “kitchen-sink-and-gangsters” flick Down Terrace (2009) all the way to his upcoming, much ballyhooed adaptation of J.G. Ballard’s High Rise (2016), writer-director Ben Wheatley has made a sort-of cottage industry out of the intersection between “polite” British society and the howling insanity of a world gone very, very wrong. By mashing character dramas up with more traditional (“traditional” being a relative term, here) genre films, Wheatley gives extra heft to his narratives, providing intricate insight into characters that, in lesser hands, might across as either vilely unredeemable or completely sociopathic. In Wheatley films, there are never traditional “heroes” or “villains,” nor is there, necessarily, a “right” or “wrong.” There just is, for better or worse…often, of course, for the worse.

Like all of Wheatley’s films, Kill List takes so many sudden turns and reveals so many surprises that to reveal much beyond a basic synopsis is to rob new viewers of a singularly unique experience. As far as plot and story goes, suffice to say that you will call some of the twists (or, at the very least, suspect them) but you will never call all of them, least of all the harrowing, soul-shattering climax. You may think that you know what Wheatley’s doing and, for a time, you might be right. Hell: even after seeing the film a half dozen times, I still find myself second-guessing earlier viewings and readjusting my understanding of the proceedings.

This, of course, is one of the hallmarks of any indispensable film: that ability to return, time and time again and discover new thrills with each subsequent viewing. There are plenty of exquisitely made films that have always been “one-and-dones” for me: it’s to Kill List’s great credit that, despite the film’s many unpleasantries, I keep returning to it, time after time. Chalk this up to the exceptional filmcraft, the airtight writing or the stellar performances (there, literally, isn’t a bad performance from the entire cast, whether in lead or walk-on parts) but Wheatley’s Kill List is the very definition of a modern classic.

Despite all of this, however, I find myself offering the same caveat that I do with many of my favorite films: Kill List, despite its overriding quality, is not a film for everyone. This is a film that delves into the very heart of darkness that so many genre and horror films only hint at, a film that derives its hideous power not from a collection of gory onscreen effects (although there’s plenty of those) but from the deeper horror of shattered humanity. The finale is impossibly, almost oppressively horrifying, make no bones about it, but it’s also deeply and fundamentally sad and hopeless, the kind of revelation that sucks the wind out of your sails, leaving you defeated and broken.

Kill List is many things: a tale of friendship and duty; a heartbreaking look into the dissolution of a marriage; an examination of the destructive power of anger and the redemptive nature of martyrdom; a mystery; a grotesque; a cautionary tale. Kill List is all of these things and so many more. Above and beyond all else, however, Wheatley’s Kill List is a dark, savage, merciless abyss: stare into it, by all means, but don’t be surprised if you find that the abyss also stares back at you.

8/12/15: Killing is His Business

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Movies, films, cinema, crime film, Brad Pitt, based on a book, film reviews, heist films, writer-director, Sam Shepard, dramas, heroin trafficking, mobsters, illegal gambling, crime thriller, hitman, literary adaptation, best friends, Ray Liotta, Richard Jenkins, Scoot McNairy, Greig Fraser, Ben Mendelsohn, Killing Them Softly, hired killers, James Gandolfini, Andrew Dominik, financial collapse, George V. Higgens, Vincent Curatola, Slaine, Trevor Long, Max Casella, heroin users, crime as business, Chopper, The Assassination of Jesse James By the Coward Robert Ford, Cogan's Trade, set in 2008, economic crisis, 2008 Presidential election

Like most established film genres, mob movies come in a rainbow assortment of various flavors: they can be pedal-to-the-metal thrillers, pensive character studies, dramas, comedies or any combination of the above. They can focus on the acts being committed, the people committing said acts or the authority figures trying to put said people behind bars. Mob movies might turn the gangsters into virtually mythical heroes or they might portray them as violent, bottom-feeding scum. They might be packed to the rafters with clever dialogue and insight or as reserved and serene as an undisturbed lake.

For the follow-up to his under-appreciated Western The Assassination of Jesse James By the Coward Robert Ford (2007), New Zealand writer-director Andrew Dominik takes aim at another literary adaptation: this time around, he puts his particular spin on George V. Higgens’ 1974 crime novel, Cogan’s Trade. By updating the action from the mid-’70s to the 2008 economic crisis/Presidential election, Dominik gives us yet another view of organized crime: the mob as a business entity. Like the white-collar figure-heads who pull the strings, Dominik gives us a view of organized crime that’s all about the bottom-line, cost-effectiveness, streamlining the organization and keeping the stockholders happy. You know…just like “Big Business” but with a lot more bullets and bloodshed.

The central plot to Killing Them Softly echoes Higgins’ novel fairly closely, albeit with that massive timeline shift from the ’70s to the ’00s. As in the novel, the main action involves ripping off a mob card game and pinning the blame on the schmuck who runs it. Johnny “Squirrel” Amato (Vincent Curatola aka The Sopranos’ Johnny Sacks) hires fresh-from-the-pen Frankie (Scoot McNairy) and his incredibly unreliable former bunk mate/heroin addict, Russell (Ben Mendelsohn), to rip off the aforementioned card game. The plan is actually pretty solid, since they have the perfect patsy: Markie Trattman (Ray Liotta), the guy who runs the card game, actually orchestrated his own robbery of said game many years back and was never punished for his “crime.” If the game gets ripped off again, all eyes will be on Markie and, to quote the parlance, he’ll be “fish food.”

Enter Jackie Cogan (Brad Pitt), the soft-spoken, philosophical hitman who’s been sent by mob enforcer Dillon (Sam Shepard) and his underworld employers to get everything back on track. You see, when Trattman ripped off his game years ago, it put a temporary halt to the illegal card games, which ended up affecting the mob’s bottom line in a pretty major way. Jackie needs to restore order and reassure the “stockholders” that the games will be able to continue unimpeded.

As Jackie continues to meet with Driver (Richard Jenkins), the mob’s consigliori and his go-to man on this particular venture, Frankie, Russell and Johnny Amato try to keep their own heads above water, no easy feat given that Russell’s eagerly returned to the smack addiction that initially landed him in prison. For his part, though, Jackie is only concerned with one thing: getting rid of every person involved with the heist, including poor Markie. It’s nothing personal, though…this is nothing but business.

Reuniting with his Assassination of… star Brad Pitt, Dominik turns in a decent adaptation of Higgins’ novel (which was, itself, sort of a companion piece to his better known debut, The Friends of Eddie Coyle), albeit one which still manages to fall short of the source material. In many ways, Killing Them Softly reminded me of another recent film that managed to disappoint despite its high-octane cast: American Hustle (2013). As with that film, a handful of truly great performances and a generally intelligent script still add up to a slightly underwhelming whole. It’s not that Killing Them Softly is a bad film, mind you: it’s just one that never fully gets to live up to its potential.

Chalk this up to a few different factors. For one, Dominik’s decision to move the action from the ’70s to the ’00s makes perfect sense, on paper, yet is executed in a less than perfect manner. The intention behind this seems to be a parallel between the United States’ economic meltdown in 2008 and the similar economic meltdown experienced by the mob due to the recent heist. In reality, however, none of this pays off until the film’s very final scene: for the most part, this is just an excuse to endlessly reference said economic meltdown, as well as that year’s Presidential campaign. To that end, we get countless George W. Bush soundbites, as well as countless Barack Obama soundbites: it’s hard to recall a scene in the film that doesn’t feature a TV, radio or newspaper constantly talking about the financial crisis. It’s complete overkill and quite equitable to the equally odious tendency of some period pieces to over-rely on the slang and vernacular of whatever era they’re depicting. It becomes so much background noise and, to be frank, adds little to the overall narrative.

Killing Them Softly also has a tendency to relegate its strongest aspect, Brad Pitt’s excellent performance as Cogan, to the back burner in favor of an increased emphasis on the travails of Frankie and Russell. As should be fairly obvious, that’s not exactly the best move: Pitt is a constantly magnetic presence whenever he’s onscreen, whereas the normally reliable McNairy and Mendelsohn turn in performances that tend to grate on the nerves. With McNairy’s “Bahston” accent and Mendelsohn’s Aussie inflection fighting each other for dominance, too much of Killing Them Softly comes across like an acting workshop where the performers have been given scenarios to explore: “You guys are low-level crooks…go!” Add to this McNairy’s wishy-washy characterization and the fact that Mendelsohn just turns in one of his patented “slovenly cretin” roles (the differences between his character here and the one he played in TV’s Bloodline, for example, are so minute as to be negligible) and we’re left with a couple of protagonists who just aren’t particularly interesting.

This reliance on past performances actually affects more of the film than just McNairy and Mendelsohn. In one of his last few roles, James Gandolfini’s take on hard-drinking hitman “New York” Mickey come across like a more exhausted Tony Soprano, while Sopranos co-star Curatola’s Johnny Amato is an almost exact replica of his Johnny Sacks character: the levels of meta are strong with this one. Throw in Liotta doing yet another sad-sack gangster and you have lots of characters who seem overly familiar, even though we’ve just met them.

In truth, all of the films best scenes belong to Pitt and Richard Jenkins: while the rest of the film flops between sober crime thriller and slightly sardonic black comedy, only the interplay between Jackie and Driver manages to find the perfect combination of both. At their best, these scenes remind of the Coen Brothers’ innate grasp on “extraordinary characters doing ordinary things” and the film could certainly have benefited from more of them. It’s little surprise, then, that the highly effective finale belongs solely to Pitt and Jenkins: the two are always the film’s high-water mark, so handing them the keys, at the end, only makes sense.

It’s easy to imagine a slightly different take on this material, one that keeps the updated time-frame but puts the emphasis back on Jackie (the original novel, after all, is called Cogan’s Trade for a reason). There’s plenty of rich material to be mined as far as the parallel between corporate business models and the Mafia goes but Dominik’s script never goes any deeper than the point made in Pitt’s closing speech: America isn’t a country, it’s a business. As a character, Jackie is a pretty great one: he’s charismatic, thoughtful, smart, eloquent, appropriately cold-blooded yet with a firmly established internal compass that always keeps him pointed towards true north.

When Frankie whines to Jackie that Johnny Amato isn’t a “bad guy” and doesn’t deserve what’s coming to him, Jackie’s response is honest, perfectly calibrated and delivered without a hint of sarcasm: “None of ’em are…they’re all nice guys, kid.” Nothing about killing people is personal to Jackie (the title comes from his preference to kill from a distance aka “killing them softly): it’s all just part of his job, no more, no less.

This, of course, is the ultimate message that Dominik is getting at: when you break everything down, it’s all just business. Lots of characters and moments reiterate this talking point, over the course of the film, but no one hammers it home quite as well as Jackie. Pity, then, that Dominik didn’t give him more of the reins: as a whole, the film could have used a lot more of his inherent ability to knock ’em dead, softly or otherwise.

8/8/15: Find Your Swan

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Alan Tudyk, awkward films, best films of the year, best friends, Best of 2015, borderline personality disorder, casinos, cinema, dark comedies, David Robbins, dramas, Eric Alan Edwards, favorite films, film reviews, films, independent films, indie comedies, indie dramas, indie films, instant millionaire, James Marsden, Jennifer Jason Leigh, Joan Cusack, Kristen Wiig, Linda Cardellini, Loretta Devine, lottery winner, mental illness, Mitch Silpa, Movies, narcissism, obsession, Oprah Winfrey, patient-psychiatrist relationship, psychiatric care, Shira Piven, talk shows, therapists, therapy, Thomas Mann, Tim Robbins, Welcome to Me, Wes Bentley

If there’s one unifying theme to this crazy, modern era that we live in, I’m willing to wager that it’s narcissism. Never before in the history of humanity has it been so easy to be as completely self-absorbed as it is now. Not only easy, mind you, but also immensely profitable: when average, normal, “every-day” people can clear millions of dollars in ad revenue via YouTube channels devoted to everything from watching them play video games to watching them taste-test sodas, well…it doesn’t really seem to get more “me”-oriented than that, does it? This isn’t even the same thing as watching celebrities shill products: this is watching your next-door-neighbor do the same thing with (presumably) none of the resulting name recognition.

Thanks to the continued explosion of social media, technological advancements, “reality TV” programs and “the 24-hour news cycle,” the unwashed masses now have as direct a pipeline to the cultural zeitgeist as the glitterati. One need not release the “next, great American novel” in order to vault to the top of the literary heap: one need only draw as many curious visitors as possible to their newest blog entry. Want to be a world-famous pop star? Forget paying your dues on the club circuit: start uploading as many videos as possible of you covering that Florence+the Machine song and wait for the offers to start rolling in. In the past, anyone who wanted to “break through” to mainstream fame had a much steeper uphill climb: nowadays, it’s never been easier to shout your opinions to the rafters and actually have someone pay attention. Warhol wanted to give everyone 15 minutes but, nowadays, is there anyone actually watching the clock?

Actor-turned-director Shira Piven tackles this particular phenomena head-on with her spectacular new film, Welcome to Me (2014), a bittersweet ode to wish-fulfillment, mental illness, friendship and self-interest that might just come to define this era in the same way that Easy Rider (1969) would come to define the transitional time between the ’60s and the ’70s. Across the span of 87 minutes, Piven and screenwriter Eliot Laurence put us through the wringer, moving from extreme pathos to extreme hilarity with such stop-on-a-dime dynamics that the whole film becomes a masterclass in how to move your audience. In the process, Piven, Laurence and comedic wunderkind Kristen Wiig present us with one of the greatest cinematic creations of the 2000s, a performance that all but assures Wiig a shot at some genuine award-season gold: Alice Klieg. To paraphrase that most inimitable of comic book possums: we have seen Alice and she is us.

Opening with a quote from French philosopher Michel de Montaigne that might be the best modern mission-statement ever (“I study myself more than any other subject. That is my physics. That is my metaphysics.”), Welcome to Me wastes no time in plunging us into the day-to-day routine of Wiig’s Alice. We see her obsessively arranged house, everything organized by color, shape and whatever random internal qualifiers make sense to her. We witness Alice’s obsession with swans of every size, shape, make and model, along with the seemingly endless rows of videotaped TV shows that seem to fill every available bookshelf in her patently crammed home.

We see her recite every line from a taped episode of Oprah in the kind of off-hand manner that indicates she probably has every line from every Oprah episode memorized. We see her ask a complete stranger if there’s any “rape” in A Tale of Two Cities, a question which is as esoteric as it is mildly disturbing. We watch Alice as she goes about her lonely, oddly structured life, a ghost-like presence in a world that doesn’t quite make sense to her, a world that seems to have no more interest in her than it would any other roadside curiosity or “quirky” bag-lady. She doesn’t even seem to have any friends or casual acquaintances, aside from her mousy BFF, Gina (Freaks and Geeks’ Linda Cardellini). From our first glimpse of Alice, it’s painfully obvious that she has mental health issues, possibly more than one. She seems harmless, however, like so many others, so we just leave her alone to her own devices: what we don’t see can’t affect us, after all.

Alice, however, is destined for much grander things: in a modern era where everyone wants to be heard, why should she be any different? After winning a whopping $86 million lottery, Alice finally gets her chance: she’s going to make a difference in the biggest way possible, all while paying tribute to her greatest idol and influence, Oprah Winfrey. She approaches brothers/TV station owners Gabe (Wes Bentley) and Rich Ruskin (James Marsden) with a proposition: for $15 million, she’ll get her own TV talk show (100 two-hour episodes) and a chance to become as famous/watched/influential as Oprah. The subject? Why, Alice Klieg, of course, in all of her boundless glory.

From the jump, Alice’s show is as insane as expected. She’s wheeled out in a massive swan boat to a pre-recorded theme song that she, herself, croons. Her show features segments like the one where she cooks and consumes a meatloaf cake while the audience watches in confused silence or the numerous reenactments of various moments in her life (the one where she calls out old enemy Jordana Spangler ends with Alice bawling and screaming “Fuck you to death, Jordana!”as the crew frantically cuts to commercial). “Why doesn’t it look like Oprah,” Alice tearfully asks, only to be given the only sensible answer: “Because you ate a cake made out of meat and cried?”

The whole thing is a mess, obviously, the kind of talk show you might expect from someone who proudly discusses her borderline personality disorder as if it were a gluten allergy. It’s not like Alice isn’t seeking professional help, after all: she was happily seeing shrink Daryl Moffet (Tim Robbins) before she decided to quit her meds and regulate her moods with string cheese (always sound medical advice). Now that she’s finally getting what she most wants out of life, she’s happy enough to mitigate the need for mood stabilizers: living well, as always, is its own reward.

But the show is still a mess. Program director Dawn (Joan Cusack) thinks that Alice is a loose cannon waiting to go off, Rich thinks she’s the answer to all of his financial woes, Gabe isn’t quite sure what to make of her (but he kind of thinks he’s falling in love, at least a little bit) and Gina is almost super-humanly supportive, even as Alice seems openly dismissive of anything that doesn’t have to do with her. Hell, Gina even uproots her everyday routine in order to move into a reservation casino with Alice and several dogs…that’s friendship, ladies and gentlemen, no two ways about it!

In order to make her show “better,” Alice throws more and more money at it, all while Rich rubs his hands together and salivates like Scrooge McDuck at an estate sale. And then, of course, the expectedly unexpected happens: “Welcome to Me” starts to gain a following. Before she knows it, Alice has a full studio audience, her ratings are up and she even has her own super-fan, in the person of Rainer (Thomas Mann), an odd man-child who studies Alice in college and wants her show to air five times a week rather than once: he really hates to wait, after all.

And then, of course, the other shoe drops, like an airborne piano through a skylight: as Alice’s show gets bigger and she gets more of a platform, she becomes increasingly unstable and problems begin to crop up everywhere. Alice’s talk show becomes bigger, stranger and more controversial, as each and every whim from her extremely fertile imagination is given life, for better or worse (usually the latter), right through to her decision to spay and neuter dogs on-camera…with Alice actually performing the procedures.

As our erstwhile hero is battered about by any number of external (and internal) forces, Alice finds herself standing on the precipice of the most important, painful decision she’s ever made: embrace the anonymity of “normal” life and give up on her dreams or boldly forge her own path, disregarding the desires, wishes and feelings of all those around her in order to create a more complete version of herself. After all, as the lyrics from Rodgers & Hammerstein’s “Happy Song” inform us on the soundtrack, “if you don’t have a dream, how you gonna have a dream come true?” Like all of us, Alice has a lot of dreams…will she have what it takes to make them come true?

Let’s get the obvious stuff out of the way: Welcome to Me is a helluva film, easily one of the year’s best (thus far, at least). Piven, who has only one other directorial effort in her background (2011’s Fully Loaded, which she also co-wrote) is a sure hand with the material, guiding the film (and audience) through its/our paces with an exceptional amount of subtlety and skill. There are plenty of big, laugh-out-loud moments in Eliot Laurence’s excellent screenplay, no doubt about it, but some of the most effective parts of the film are also the simplest, quietest and most subliminal: the powerful scene where we see Alice framed within the solitude (and virtual imprisonment) of her own home…the heartbreaking look on Gina’s face when she sees her secrets laid bare before a television audience…the impossibly beautiful, uplifting moment where we finally see how much faith the crew actually has in Alice…these would be genuinely impactful moments in any film but hit especially hard here.

Indeed, one of Welcome to Me’s greatest strengths is its ability to make us laugh like idiots one minute (the scene where Alice tries to push an ornery dog into a carrier is absolutely sublime) while ripping our hearts out the next (Alice’s “dark night of the soul” moment, in the casino, has to be one of the rawest, most painful and devastating scenes I’ve seen all year and that’s saying quite a lot). Like the very best films, Welcome to Me wants to entertain us but it also wants to make us think: think about the strangers we pass by every day, think about the world around us, think about our own hopes, fears, dreams and inadequacies. Piven isn’t interested in easy, dumb laughs, although there’s still kneeslappers aplenty here: she knows that you can’t have comedy without tragedy and Welcome to Me is tragic, in the very best way possible.

On the technical side, Welcome to Me packs plenty of firepower behind the scenes. Veteran cinematographer Eric Alan Edwards’ resume reads like a virtual ‘who’s who’ of some of the most iconic films of the ’90s (My Own Private Idaho (1991), Even Cowgirls Get the Blues (1993), Kids (1995), Cop Land (1997) and Clay Pigeons (1998), to name but a few) and he presents some immaculately framed, beautifully composed shots here. There’s an almost fairy tale quality to the film’s narrative that’s handily echoed by Edward’s camerawork.

We also get an appropriately whimsical, well-utilized score by David Robbins, the composer behind films as far-flung as Bob Roberts (1992), Dead Man Walking (1995) and Cradle Will Rock (1999). The score is never obvious and manages to downplay clumsy emotional cues in favor of mood-setting that always feels organic, especially in regards to Alice’s wacky TV show. Between the narrative, cinematography and score, Welcome to Me has a complete singularity of vision that reminded me of another of my favorite films of the year, Marjane Satrapi’s The Voices (2014): both films utilize the lush visuals of someone like Wes Anderson, while tweaking them in some pretty impressive ways.

Then, of course, there’s that cast…I mean, seriously…get a load of this mob of unduly talented performers: Joan Cusack, Tim Robbins, Jennifer Jason Leigh, Wes Bentley, Thomas Mann, Linda Cardellini, James Marsden, Alan Tudyk, Loretta Devine, Jack Wallace…that, friends and neighbors, is how you cast your film! Regardless of the amount of screen-time, each and every member of the cast comes together to form an absolutely unbeatable ensemble. I hate to pull out the “Wes Anderson” card, again, but there’s certainly a similarity between his high-octane casts and Welcome to Me’s featured players. Hell, Cusack and Cardellini turn in two of the year’s brightest performances and neither of them has a tenth of Wiig’s screen time.

The glittering, dazzling star on the top of this particular tree, however, is the one and only Kristen Wiig. While she’s been a reliably great comic presence since her formative years on SNL, Welcome to Me marks a huge leap forward as far as her dramatic performances go. To not put too fine a point on it, Wiig is absolutely flawless as Alice: this is the kind of organic, well-rounded and utterly human performance that deserves to be lauded by every awards organization under the sun. There are no seams, no notion of where the actor ends and the character begins: like Leland Orser and Mary Elizabeth Winstead in the similarly amazing Faults (2014), Wiig isn’t playing Alice…she IS Alice, at least for the 90 minutes that we spend we her.

Whether she’s bawling uncontrollably, propositioning Rainer in the most awkward way possible, throwing a temper tantrum after she gets cut-off for mentioning “masturbation” on-air or sweetly making amends to everyone she’s wronged, Wiig’s Alice is the undisputed master of this particular universe, the sun around which everyone else orbits. Fitting, of course, since the film is all about the eternal struggle for self-validation and personal worth: this is a film about Alice and Wiig towers over the proceedings like the Colossus of Rhodes. Mark my words: Welcome to Me is where Wiig picks up the dramedy mantle dropped by the recently departed Robin Williams and it fits her like it was tailor-made.

Ultimately, the true mark of an unforgettable film is how hard it hits you: from the first minute to the last, Welcome to Me was like a never-ending barrage of body blows, albeit in the best way possible. I’m not ashamed to admit that the final 10 minutes turned me into a bit of a mess: the film’s payoff is undeniably bittersweet but there’s a life-affirming quality to it that’s anything but depressing. Throughout the film, Alice only really wants one thing: to be just like her idol, Oprah Winfrey. While she tries mightily (and fails wretchedly) to emulate her TV show, there is one aspect of her hero that Alice manages to internalize: in the same way that Winfrey derived joy from giving her audience things and helping them, so, too, does Alice learn that the real value of her platform is in her ability to make a difference in the lives of others. Alice’s show is called “Welcome to Me” but, in the end, it could just as easily be called “Welcome to Us.”

As we continue to find new and improved ways to make our own, personal impacts in an increasingly chaotic, cluttered world, it might help to keep one thing in mind: we may all have our own stories, our own triumphs, despairs, victories and losses but, in the end, they’re all part of the same autobiography…the story of humanity, in all its beautiful, terrible, wonderful and hideous forms. We may want to tell our own stories but, in the end, it’s all part of the same narrative. Like Alice, all we can do is strive for happiness and ride our swan boats into the horizon.

8/1/15 (Part One): Watching the Watcher

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Austin Wintory, automatic writing, best friends, cinema, Dark Summer, dramas, film reviews, films, flashbacks, Grace, Grace Phipps, hackers, horror, horror films, house arrest, Keir Gilchrist, Maestro Harrell, Mike Le, Movies, obsession, online stalking, Paul Solet, Peter Stormare, possession, seance, spells, stalkers, Stella Maeve, suicide, supernatural, teenagers, unrequited love, Zoran Popovic

David (Keir Gilchrist), a scrawny, unassuming 17-year-old, is under house arrest for the entire summer, a sentence eagerly enforced by ruthlessly eagle-eyed cop Stokes (Peter Stormare). His crime? Well, it seems that young David is much better at hacking online accounts than he is at talking to girls: as such, he’s been relentlessly stalking classmate Mona Wilson (Grace Phipps), harassment which has ended him up on the wrong side of the law.

Prohibited from using any computers or going online, drinking alcohol or hanging out with minors, David ends up in a prison that’s truly of his own making. Good thing his best buddies, Kevin (Maestro Harrell) and Abby (Stella Maeve), have as little regards for the rules as he does. Determined to keep their friend company, they bring over some booze, a little weed and, most importantly, a laptop.

Seems that the one thing Kevin couldn’t hack was Mona’s Cloud account, something that the unrepentant hacker still considers to be at the top of his “must-do” list. As David continues to try for complete access to Mona’s online life, he’s suddenly contacted by her via Skype: while David watches, in stunned silence, Mona kills herself, leaving him with the chilling statement that he will “feel what she feels.” As increasingly creepy things begin to happen around David, he can’t shake the feeling that the tables have turned: the watcher is now being watched…possibly from beyond the grave!

Paul Solet’s Dark Summer (2015) takes several disparate horror subgenres/themes (dead teens, social media, cyber-bullying, stalking, obsession, possession, haunted house films, ghosts, shut-ins, disbelieving authority figures) and manages to whip them into an effective, if fairly familiar, little chiller. While I won’t pretend to have my finger on the pulse of young horror fans, I could easily see the film striking a chord with them in the same way that something like It Follows (2014) or Unfriended (2014) might: think of Dark Summer as the iPod mash-up version of old “chestnuts” like Halloween (1978) or Black Christmas (1974).

As befits the filmmaker behind the visually-appealing undead baby drama Grace (2009), Dark Summer is endlessly stylish. Zoran Popovic, who also shot the aforementioned Grace, fills the screen with luxurious long takes and vibrant colors, making the most of a red and amber color palette that accentuates the deep shadows in the background of virtually every shot. There’s an inherent sense of claustrophobia to the film that’s only heightened by Popovic’s camerawork: it’s obvious that the pair make a good team.

The film is also full of solid acting, which becomes quite important given the extremely small cast and confined nature of the proceedings: for the most part, the entire film consists of Gilchrist, Harrell and Maeve hanging out, with Stormare and Phipps popping up to add spice to the dish, as needed. The scenes between the three friends have an easy sense of reality, similar to the aforementioned It Follows, and we get enough sense of Abby’s crush on David, organically, to avoid that plot point from seeming too contrived. For his part, Stormare is always a blast and adds both gravitas and a little smidgen of cynical cool to the proceedings.

For the most part, Dark Summer does everything it’s supposed to, hitting the required beats with efficiency, if something decidedly less than pure innovation. There are the requisite creep figures passing in front of the camera and behind the protagonists…the scene where the heroes uncover a creepy hidden room, full of occult weirdness (extra points for making the scene an homage to Hitchcock’s immortal Rear Window (1954) when it would have been much easier to just reference [REC] (2007))…the attempt to contact the offended spirit, via occult ceremony, that doesn’t turn out quite as expected…any and all of these beats can be found in any number of similar modern genre offerings, even though Solet does manage to incorporate all of them extremely smoothly.

If I have any real issues with Dark Summer, they come with the film’s ultimate resolution, a denouement that manages to completely absolve David of any wrongdoing, while turning Mona into the de facto villain. Suffice to say that some spoilers will follow, so discerning readers, please take note. It’s hard to deny that David, at least as portrayed by the extremely likable Gilchrist, is a very charismatic character: he’s soft-spoken, smart, sensitive, driven, inquisitive…pretty much the guy you want on your side, especially when supernatural shit starts to go down. Despite his inherent likability, however, we can’t forget that David is actually a stalker who may very well have been responsible for causing the object of his obsession to take her own life. No matter how you slice it, that’s a real shit cake, friends and neighbors, and certainly not something most of us would want a piece of.

Solet and writer Mike Le mitigate this unpleasantness by means of a late revelation that not only proves David is a “nice guy” but that Mona is mentally disturbed, dangerous and, quite possibly, a witch. Even before this twist, Kevin and Abby are firmly on David’s side (as does the film seem to be, as well), telling him that Mona was “weird” and a loner, implying that she kind of got what she deserved. While I’m not sure that Dark Summer necessarily qualifies as “victim-shaming,” there does seem to be a conscious effort to iron out any and all of David’s faults: by the final image, he’s not only the unmitigated hero but a tragic one, at that, which seems to increase the nature of Mona’s evil exponentially.

I can’t help but feel that removing any of David’s culpability also removes much of the film’s inherent power and any gut-punch that it might possess. A conflicted, tortured, far-from-perfect hero is a literary trope as old and reliable as the hills but there’s a reason for that: split the audience’s sympathies and it makes the drama stick in their craws that much more. By swinging David from “super creepy nice guy” to “total nice guy,” Solet automatically takes all of that potential conflict, drama and power off the table. Man Bites Dog (1992) is such a complete kick in the face because Ben is both a charismatic, effortlessly cool dude AND a terrifying, psychopathic serial killer: remove either one and the character just doesn’t have the same impact. The same, obviously, applies to David, even if he never gets so much as a foot on the bottom rung of the fetid ladder that Ben vaults up like a champion.

All in all, however, I enjoyed Dark Summer, even if I had issues with the ultimate presentation of Mona and David’s characters. The film always looked good, despite its obviously low-budget and minimal production, and there was a nice, measured pace that allowed chills to unspool as something more than amusement park jump scares: this is another film that handily earns its invitation to the New Wave of Atmospheric Horror (NWoAH) brunch, along with the rest of the usual suspects. The acting was always solid and Gilchrist, who was also prominently featured in It Follows, is rapidly turning into a modern genre star: he’s consistently good here. If the film is, ultimately, not quite the equal of its predecessor, well…that’s to be expected: it’s kind of hard to trump a dead, vampiric baby, after all. I have a feeling that Paul Solet will keep trying, however, which is really all that horror fans can ask for.

7/30/15: Easy Riders and the Wild Side

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'70s films, adults only, Any Mathieu, auteur theory, best friends, Blue Summer, Bo White, Chris Jordan, Chuck Vincent, cinema, coming of age, Davey Jones, dramas, Easy Rider, Eric Edwards, erotica, Film auteurs, film reviews, films, grindhouse, Harding Harrison, high school grads, hippies, hitchhikers, horny teenagers, Jacqueline Carol, Jeff Allen, Joann Sterling, Larry Lima, Lilly Bi Peep, Mark Ubell, Melissa Evers, Mike Ledis, Movies, non-professional actors, porn, random adventures, Richard Billay, road movie, Robert McLane, set in 1970s, sex comedies, Shana McGran, soft-core, Stephen Colwell, summer vacation, Sylvia Bernstein, vans, writer-director-editor

Chances are, whether you’ve actually seen the film or not, you’re at least familiar with Dennis Hopper’s iconic, counter-culture ode to the death of the idealistic ’60s, Easy Rider (1969). Crisscrossing the U.S. on their choppers, trying to make some sense of the whole mess, Hopper and Peter Fonda rode right off the screen into our collective consciences via their unforgettable (and, oftentimes, extremely random) encounters with various flower children, rednecks, authority figures, hip cats and square losers. Nearly 50 years after its release, Easy Rider still manages to capture the imagination of anyone who realizes that America’s best stories are still the ones collected on her back-roads: the ways in which we all act and interact, on a personal-level, will always say more about us than any casual examination of current politics and social mores ever could.

While I’m willing to wager that most folks have heard of Easy Rider, I’m just as willing to wager that almost no one recalls adult film auteur Chuck Vincent’s Blue Summer (1973). What does one have to do with the other? Well, to put it bluntly, Blue Summer is the soft-core, sex comedy “reimagining” of Easy Rider. Okay, okay: maybe not the “official” reimagining…there are no coy taglines connecting these spiritual cousins, nor is there even an undue focus on motorcycles (although one does figure prominently in the narrative). The film’s don’t share plot points, per se, and there are no clever, specific allusions to Wyatt, Billy or any of the various people they run into.

Despite the aforementioned, however, Blue Summer actually owes quite a debt to Easy Rider: like the “original,” Blue Summer is all about the assorted adventures that a pair of young men have on the road, adventures that lead them towards not only a greater understanding of the world at large, but also the worlds that exist within them. Throughout the course of the film, our young heroes will deal with “May-December romances,” free-loving hippies, Bible-thumpin’ traveling evangelists, casual sex, genuine love, small-town lunkheads, mysterious bikers and a quirky cult who freely believes “what’s yours is theirs.” Indeed, with more emphasis on the narrative elements and less focus on the simulated intercourse, Blue Summer would actually be a pretty decent bit of coming-of-age fluff. Ah, the ’70s…you crazy, gonzo, amazing little decade, you!

Our intrepid teenage heroes, Tracy (Davey Jones but not THAT Davey Jones) and Gene (Bo White) have decided to have one, last summer adventure before their lifelong friendship is tested when they both go off to far-flung universities. Loading their trusty van (the Meat Wagon) with enough cases of beer to get good, ol’ Bluto Blutarsky blasted, the duo decides to head out for scenic Stony Lake. The only things on the agenda? Why, drinking, driving, having fun, seeing the sights, keeping their minds off college and getting laid, obviously!

As Tracy and Gene travel the back-ways of America, they have a series of encounters that include a couple of thieving hitchhikers (Lilly Bi Peep, Joann Sterling), a stone-faced biker (Jeff Allen), a begging evangelist (Robert McLane), a hippy cultist and his free-loving acolytes (Larry Lima, Any Mathieu, Shana McGran), a middle-aged, married woman (Jacqueline Carol), a town-lush/nympho (Melissa Evers) and her group of redneck admirers and a mysterious no-named diver who seems to be the epitome of the ’70s “manic pixie girl” (Chris Jordan). Along the way, they go from silly, constantly giggling knuckleheads to…well, slightly less giggly, decidedly more grounded knuckleheads. The final shot/sentiment is a real corker: no much how much fun they’ve had, no matter how many different women they’ve “bedded,” the end of the trip signifies, for better or worse, the ends of their adolescent lives: from this point, they’re grownups…and nothing will ever be that awesome again.

Lest any gentle reader think I’m attempting to give writer/director/editor Vincent (who alternated between his real name and pseudonym Mark Ubell) more credit than even he probably felt he deserved, let’s be clear: Blue Summer is very much a soft-core, ’70s sex comedy, with all of the pluses and minuses that the descriptor carries. There’s plenty of nudity (although, as with most films like this, by and large of the female variety), simulated sex and non-professional acting (the rednecks, in particular, could only be called “actors” by an extremely loose application of the term), along with some appropriately ludicrous dialogue, line-delivery and general production issues (the lighting, in particular, is never great).

Now, however, to paraphrase the late, great Roger Ebert: let me get my other notebook. While Blue Summer is easily recognizable for what it is, it also has more heart, imagination and restraint than most of its peers. While there’s never much empty space between the assorted sex scenes, these “in-between” scenes are really where the film sets itself apart from the usual rabble. The subplot with the “mystical” biker never makes sense but does payoff in a nicely kickass (if pathetically sloppy) fight sequence, while the vignette involving the preacher features a really nice, subtle dig at the concept of passing the collection plate, especially where holy-rollers are involved.

The bit with the hitchhikers has a genuinely funny payoff, as does the one involving the cultists (the image of the snoozing hippies laying in the middle of the open field is a great punchline): there’s also some really nice points being made about the concept of sharing your earthly possessions with others (those who have the possessions do the “sharing,” while those without merely do the “suggesting”), as well as the concept of anonymous sex with strangers (“Miss No-Name” doesn’t feel obliged to introduce herself to Gene since “he won’t remember her name, anyway”…he doesn’t disagree, indicating that she’s probably right).

One of the film’s most surprising moments, however, comes after Tracy’s “nooner” with Margaret, the middle-aged, married woman. After having sex, she fixes him lunch in a manner that might best be described as ‘maternal.’ As Tracy eats, he goes on and on about how much he likes Margaret, rebuffing any and all attempts by her to trivialize their encounter. Just as Tracy seems to have convinced Margaret to overcome her reservations and meet with him again, however, her teenage son comes in from swimming, oblivious to what has just transpired between his mom and her young visitor. As Tracy watches the young man, who just so happens to be his age, the eagerness and intensity goes out of his face: both Margaret and Tracy look ashamed and he quickly takes his leave, never looking back.

It’s an intensely sad, mature moment in a film that certainly didn’t require it but benefits immensely from its inclusion, none the less. During moments like this, it’s easy to see Vincent as fighting a two-front war: on the one hand, he needs to deliver a soft-core porn flick, with all of the requisite trappings. On the other hand, he also wants to deliver something a little more substantial, something with enough blood flow to use more than one organ at a time. It’s a constant battle and one that’s not always won: the fact that Vincent fights it at all, however, gives him a leg up, in my book.

Ultimately, despite how fun and “innocent” Blue Summer actually is (all of the sex in the film is extremely positive: no one is ever forced, at any point, and both men and women seem to be having an equally good time), there’s no skirting the issue of its genetic makeup: this is a silly, ’70s sex comedy, full of simulated intercourse, full frontal female nudity and wacky antics, through and through. Deep down, however, it’s impossible to miss the film’s bigger, underlying themes: it might be a “dirty” movie but it’s not a stupid one. If you’re a fan of the sub-genre or just want to see what a “porn-lite” version of Easy Rider might look like, jump in the van, pop the top on a cold one and let Blue Summer take the wheel.

You know that old chestnut, “they just don’t make ’em like this anymore?” Well, they really don’t make ’em like this anymore. But they used to. If you think about it, that’s kind of amazing all by itself.

4/1/15: Who You Callin’ Dummy, Dummy?

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Adrien Brody, Arrested Development, awkward films, best friends, brother-sister relationships, cinema, crazy fiancees, delayed adolescence, dramadies, Dummy, dysfunctional family, Edgar Bergen, film reviews, films, Greg Pritikin, Horacio Marquinez, Illeana Douglas, independent films, indie comedies, indie dramas, Jared Harris, Jessica Walter, loneliness, Milla Jovovich, Movies, outsiders, Paul Wallfisch, romances, Ron Leibman, stalkers, Todd Solondz, ventriloquist, ventriloquist dummies, Vera Farmiga, wedding planners, writer-director

Home, as they say, is where the heart is. It can also, of course, be the place where the freaks and losers come to roost, as we’ve seen in any number of dysfunctional family dramedies over the years. From the cringe-worthy misanthropes that populate Todd Solondz’s best films to the more likable, if no less fractured, outsiders who inhabit Wes Anderson’s candy-colored universe, odd, sparring relatives have been a staple in indie films for decades, now, and the trend shows no sign of declining anytime soon. Think of it as “Cops” syndrome: no matter how screwed up our own families might be, there’s always a more screwed up bunch of folks waiting for us on the silver screen.

Writer-director Greg Pritikin’s Dummy (2002) is so well-ensconced within the “lovable outsider/screwed-up family” subgenre that an overriding sense of deja vu imbues every frame: you might not have seen this particular film before but it’ll probably feel like you have. This sense of familiarity ends up working both for and against the film: just like found-footage enthusiasts and zombie film aficionados have come to find, the “if you’ve seen one…” argument handily applies here. If quirky, combative families and sweetly “weird” loners are your thing, there’s plenty to tide you over until you get your next fix. If, however, you’re looking for a little more individuality from your films, I have a sneaking suspicion that Dummy will prove to be a largely forgettable experience, the cinematic equivalent of eating a three-course meal composed entirely of cotton candy.

In this particular instance, our awkward, outsider “hero” is Steven (Adrien Brody), a ventriloquism enthusiast who still lives at home, even as he inches ever closer to his third decade on the planet. His family is the kind of loud, brash, dysfunctional clan who should be immediately familiar to anyone who’s seen an indie drama-comedy in the past 15 years: mother, Fern (Arrested Development’s Jessica Walter), is a hyper-critical nitpicker; father, Lou (Ron Leibman), spends every minute of his begrudged retirement building model boats and ignoring his family and sister, Heidi (Illeana Douglas), is a wedding planner whose own romantic relationship could best be described as “hideous” and who takes more casual emotional abuse from her parents than Family Guy’s Meg.

When Steven loses his anonymous job at an equally anonymous electronics company, he ends up at the unemployment office, where he decides to pursue his “dream job”: he wants to be a master ventriloquist, just like his old hero, Edgar Bergen. The only problem, of course, is that Steven just isn’t very good: even his own dummy (which he never bothers to name) knows this beyond a shadow of a doubt. As Steven strikes up an awkward, tentative romance with Lorena (Vera Farmiga), the unassuming employment agent who tries to help him realize his life-long dream, he also has to deal with Fangora (Milla Jovovich), his obnoxious, brash, loud-mouthed best friend and Michael (Mad Men’s Jared Harris), his sister’s pathetic, unstable, stalkery ex-fiancee. It all culminates in a disastrous wedding where Steven must finally make the decision to come out from behind his dummy and actually live his life…or lose it!

Aside from the great cast, there’s little about Dummy that really differentiates it from any number of similar indie dramedies. Shy, unassuming but ultimately wise protagonist with a “weird” quirk? Check. Snarky, cynical sibling with a bad relationship? Yup. Bickering parents who micromanage their grown children’s’ lives? Goofball, antisocial best friend who causes chaos wherever they go? Double check. Every expected beat is present and accounted for, every necessary trope and cliché checked off the master list. There’s an overriding sense of awkward mortification that underscores everything, sure, but that’s not exactly revolutionary for this particular type of film.

If the story and writing behind Dummy is decidedly old hat and corny, the film features enough good performances to make it worth a watch, especially for fans of the cast. Adrien Brody is one of those chameleonic actors who always manages to shine, regardless of the production, and Dummy is no exception: there’s a tender vulnerability to his performance that makes us pull for Steven regardless of how pathetic he often seems. Vera Farmiga, currently turning heads as Norman’s overbearing mother on TV’s Bates Motel, is equally great (and under-stated) as his love interest and the couple have genuine chemistry that starts at “meet cute” but ends in territory closer to real life. Illeana Douglas nearly steals the whole show as Steven’s neurotic sister in a role that could easily come across as humiliating (see the aforementioned Meg Griffin reference) but manages to locate itself just south of “tortured nobility.” She’s always been a formidable presence, on-screen, but Dummy is easily one of very best, most self-assured performances: the scene where she, finally, smashes her dad’s stupid model boat is unbelievably satisfying.

We also get great turns from Jessica Walter (does anyone do “bitchy mom” better than Mrs. Bluth/Archer?) and Ron Leibman as the ‘rents and Jared Harris as the pathetic ex. Only Milla Jovovich ends up disappointing as Steven’s ridiculously high-maintenance best friend: blame it on the way the character is written or the actual performance but everything about Fangora is insufferable and obnoxious. Throughout the entire film, my one, overriding thought was “Why the hell doesn’t Steven play hide-and-go-seek” with her and run for the hills as soon as her eyes are closed?

I’m also happy to pour a healthy helping of derision on the ridiculously sappy “singer-songwriter”-esque songs that rear their ugly heads, from time to time. I’m not sure if the tunes are meant as subtle (or not so) commentary on the proceedings or are just impossibly on-the-nose but they never failed to pull me right out of the film. Self-referential songs can move a film forward (see Cat Ballou (1965) for a good example) or stop it cold in its tracks and it’s not difficult to judge which direction I felt Dummy erred on. Suffice to say that any element of a film that calls undue attention to itself is, ultimately, unsuccessful and Dummy’s silly score proves that by a country mile.

Ultimately, Dummy isn’t a terrible film but it is a terribly predictable one. There are enough good performances here (particularly Brody and Farmiga) to make this worth a watch on a lazy Sunday but nothing else really stands out. Most tellingly, Dummy is the kind of film that seems slavishly devoted to pleasing its audience, at the risk of any real tension or stakes: the overly sunny finale manages to snatch a traditionally happy ending from the clutches of a much braver (if still clichéd) possibility. Like Steven’s dummy, Pritikin’s Dummy is a largely inert force that manages to come to life, at times, but never really achieves the vitality that it deserves. Pinocchio might have become a real boy, in the end, but Dummy never quite becomes that animated.

 

1/3/15 (Part Three): Her Choice

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abortion, best friends, Best of 2014, Chris Teague, cinema, comedies, David Cross, directorial debut, divorced parents, Donna Stern, dramas, favorite films, feature-film debut, film reviews, films, Gabe Liedman, Gaby Hoffmann, Gillian Robespierre, Jake Lacy, Jenny Slate, mother-daughter relationships, Movies, Obvious Child, one-night-stands, parent-child relationships, Paul Briganti, Polly Draper, Richard Kind, romantic-comedies, stand-up comedians, Stephen Singer, strong female character, writer-director

Of the many subjects and issues that continue to be hot-button topics in our modern world, few have remained as controversial and divisive as the subject of abortion. Regardless of which side of the debate one finds themselves on, there can be no denying that abortion is a deeply personal decision for any woman to make: separated from notions of religion, politics or societal constraints, abortion is, fundamentally, about a woman’s body…it doesn’t get any more personal than that.

While Hollywood has had no problem dealing with the subject of abortion, any films about the subject are, for obvious reasons, usually dramas. To my knowledge, there’s really only been one abortion-themed comedy and that was Alexander Payne’s explicitly political satire Citizen Ruth (1996). This makes writer-director Gillian Robespierre’s Obvious Child (2014) even more of marvel: for what must be the first time, we have a brutally honest, romantic-comedy about a woman deciding to get an abortion that completely excises any notion of politics or outside factors. It’s simply a film about a woman navigating through life and the choices she makes along the way. It could have been a lot of things but Obvious Child ends up being genuinely funny, heart-felt, emotionally resonant, sweet and quietly insightful.

Donna Stern (Jenny Slate) is a stand-up comic who specializes in relationship-based material, along with a heaping helping of bathroom humor. When we first meet her, she’s just finished her set and her boyfriend, Ryan (Paul Briganti), has just dumped her: he blames the breakup on Donna’s hectic schedule and her constant airing of their dirty laundry on stage, although he also casually mentions that he’s sleeping with someone else. Whatta guy!

To make matters even worse, Donna finds out that she’s losing her job at a bookstore due to the landlord evicting them. Good thing she has the best support system in the entire world: best friend Nellie (Gabby Hoffmann), a hardcore feminist with a snarky sense of humor and zero tolerance for anyone who wants to mess with Donna. Donna’s parents are also in the scene, albeit divorced from one another: her mother, Nancy (Polly Draper), is an uptight professional who disapproves of Donna’s act, while her father, Jacob (Richard Kind), is laid-back and tells Donna that “adversity makes great art.”

In this case, however, Donna’s “adversity” leads her to get roaring drunk before her next performance and she delivers the kind of bitter, venomous and wildly offensive set (Holocaust jokes abound) that sends the audience heading for the door. Hanging around after the set with her gay comic friend, Joey (Gabe Liedman), Donna happens to run into a nice but nerdy computer programmer, Max (Jake Lacy). After a night of drunken shenanigans (the scene where Max and Donna pee outside is a minor classic) and some silly dancing, the couple wakes up in bed, the next morning.

Flash-forward a few weeks and Donna gets the news that she’s pregnant after her one-night-stand with Max. Although she immediately tells her doctor that she wants an abortion, Donna needs to wait a few weeks, since she’s only three weeks pregnant. This would put the procedure on Valentine’s Day, a bit of irony not lost on Donna after Max suddenly reappears in her life. He knows nothing about the pregnancy or Donna’s intended abortion but he’s sweet on her and wants to take her out for a “legitimate” date. As the date of her procedure approaches, Donna tries to navigate around Max, her friends and parents, all while trying to figure out what she really wants.

Obvious Child is really quite an extraordinary film: any synopsis of the movie, no matter how detailed, will always fail to convey all of the myriad little ways that it’s so special. Indeed, it’s all of the little details and elements of Robespierre’s debut feature that make it such an insightful, enjoyable and, ultimately, sweet film. In a year that was ridiculously rich with great debut films, Robespierre still manages to stand out with this completely self-assured bit of filmcraft.

The film has a whimsical quality that’s handily reflected in Chris Teague’s excellent cinematography: rather than resembling the stereotypical indie rom-com, Obvious Child looks great. In fact, some of the shots are actually quite beautiful, displaying a really nice sense of framing and space. It seems like an odd thing to hammer home, but the film really does look fantastic: it’s one of the first things I noticed and really made an impression on me.

Performances are key in something like this, however, and Robespierre gets some absolutely first-class work from a really great cast. Draper and Kind are both lots of fun as Donna’s parents: Draper, in particular, strikes just the right balance between disapproving authority figure and loving mother. Lacy is perfect as Donna’s one-night stand, managing to be equal parts nerdy, sweet and naive. Rather than coming across as the usual “white knight” cliché, Max always seems like a real person. Part of the film’s success from the authentic feel of Donna and Max’s halting courtship: if we didn’t buy Lacy as being genuinely nice, it wouldn’t give the film as much sting as it has. As Donna repeatedly states, Max was the nicest possible one-stand-stand she could have had…but he was still just a stranger. Lacy really plays out that facet of the character and it works beautifully. There’s also a really funny appearance by David Cross as an asshole who tries to seduce Donna, leading to one of the film’s funniest setpieces.

Let’s take a few moments to extol the virtues of Gabby Hoffmann’s slam-bang turn as Nellie, shall we? Hoffman has had a pretty extensive career in film, stretching all the way back to her big-screen debut in Field of Dreams (1989), but she’s rarely been as likable as she is here. Quirky, sarcastic and unflinchingly loyal, Nellie is the perfect complement to Donna and, quite frankly, one of the funnest characters in some time. The two really do come across as best friends, which lends the whole film an air of authenticity that really makes the emotional beats hit hard. Were it not for Slate, Hoffmann would handily steal the film: any scene with her is a highlight and her performance is just more testament to what a talented actress she is.

But, ultimately, Obvious Child belongs to Jenny Slate. I’ll admit to being less than a fan of Slate’s stand-up work, although I’ve enjoyed a lot of her various voice gigs. Going into the film, I was worried that I wouldn’t be able to connect, since I’m not a particular fan of Slate’s style: these fears were completely dashed within the first few minutes of the film. Quite simply, Slate is astounding in this, a complete and total revelation. I can’t really recall the last time that a performance so completely transformed my opinion of a performer, which might make Slate’s turn as Donna a bit of a first, in my book.

Slate’s performance is multi-faceted, subtle, low-key, impossibly sweet, suitably edged and never anything less than riveting. While Slate handles the overtly humorous material with ease (her various stand-up routines are great and her back-and-forth with Nellie is hilarious), it’s the serious stuff that really surprises and impresses. The moment where Donna finally breaks down and crawls into bed with her mother is incredibly powerful and her final stand-up routine, where she discusses her upcoming abortion with a suitably surprised audience, is a real tour-de-force. As Slate guides the scene from awkward spoken-word to a legitimately funny stand-up routine, it’s like we’re watching Donna’s entire journey unfold before us, in condensed form. I’m not surprised that Slate wasn’t nominated for any awards this season but I am incredibly disappointed: her performance was such a masterful blend of innocence and edge, pain and good-nature, that it really stood out in a very crowded field.

One of the most impressive aspects of Robespierre’s film is how light and breezy the whole thing is, despite the weighty, hot-topic subject matter. This isn’t about the legal ramifications of abortion, the “right and wrong” of it or any political aspects: quite simply, Obvious Child is about a woman who matter-of-factly decides to get an abortion because that’s what she wants, regardless of what anyone else might think. Obvious Child seems almost revolutionary for the way in which it reduces such a controversial subject to such a completely human level: there are no “talking points” here, no “agenda.” This is just about humans being human, with all of the messy stuff that always entails.

In closing, I absolutely loved Obvious Child: it was easily one of the best films of the year and Slate’s performance was, likewise, one of the best. I can certainly understand the film serving as a lightning rod for both opponents and proponents of abortion-rights but I really wish folks would just come to it with an open mind and see it for what it really is: an intensely honest, funny and smart look at one young woman’s journey through life, with all of the joy and sorrow that comes with it. When Robespierre’s film is funny, it’s a dirty, goofy little riot. When it’s time to get serious, however, she proves such a deft hand that there are never jarring tonal shifts: if anything, Robespierre has already managed to perfect Wes Anderson’s patented brand of cheerful glumness on her very first try: my mind absolutely boggles at what the future holds for her. With any luck, Gillian Robespierre will prove to be the new cinematic voice that her debut promises: we absolutely need more filmmakers like her, making more films like this.

1/3/15 (Part Two): The Divine Mr. M

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Bernard Jay, best friends, biographical films, cinema, creative muse, David Lochary, Diana Evans, disco, Divine, Divine Trash, documentary, drag performers, drag stars, Eat Your Makeup, Edith Massey, Female Trouble, film reviews, films, Frances Milstead, Glenn Milstead, Hairspray, homosexuality, inspirational films, Jeffrey Schwartz, John Waters, Lainie Kazan, lifelong friends, Mink Stole, Mondo Trasho, Movies, Pink Flamingos, Polyester, Roman Candles, stage names, Susan Lowe, Tab Hunter, Trouble in Mind, Van Smith

When Glenn Milstead died on March 7, 1988, at the tragically young age of 43, he left behind a legion of adoring fans, friends and loved ones, although only those closest to him would probably know him by that name: to everyone else, Glenn would forever be the outrageous, larger-than-life and ludicrously awesome drag performer/John Waters’ muse known as Divine. Although nearly 30 years have passed since Divine’s untimely death, Jeffrey Schwartz’s inspirational, fun and informative new documentary, I Am Divine (2014), brings the star right back to our screens and into our hearts. For anyone who grew up with (and loved) the films of Waters and Divine, this documentary will be essential, if decidedly bittersweet, viewing.

Charting Divine’s entire life, from his lonely childhood all the way up to his death, I Am Divine gives a complete, exhaustive overview of the performer. Filled with fantastic interviews and archival footage featuring such mainstays as John Waters, Mink Stole, Edith Massey, Tab Hunter, Lainie Kazan and Van Smith, along with folks like Divine’s high school girlfriend, Diana Evans, and his mother, Frances, I Am Divine paints a picture of a misunderstood and marginalized young person who exploded out of his shell after embracing his homosexuality and, to paraphrase lifelong friend Waters, “never looked back.”

We get plenty of great behind-the-scenes footage from all of the films that Waters and Divine made together (their friendship began when they were both 17 and would be ironclad for nearly three decades), along with a wealth of amazing and, quite often, hilarious anecdotes. The documentary is careful to focus on Divine’s entire career, not just his collaborations with Waters, so we also get plenty of focus on his drag shows (the one based on Masque of the Red Death sounded absolutely amazing), his stage performances and his highly successful disco career. One of the film’s most fascinating factoids is that Divine all but invented electro-rock with his early, punkish performances: the footage of this is not only historically important but actually pretty kickass…it really made me rue missing out on this in the glory days!

While most of I Am Divine is a fun-filled romp, thanks to Divine’s wonderfully boisterous personality, the film doesn’t shy away from the big, dramatic moments. We get plenty of face-time with Divine’s formerly estranged mother, Frances, and the part where she discusses how her and Glenn’s father disowned him after he came clean about his drug use and sexuality is a real heartbreaker. There are also plenty of discussions of Divine’s lifelong weight issues, issues which I never realized were (at least partially) tied to his massive pot habit: you, literally, learn something new every day. There’s also a very interesting, illuminating segment of the film wherein Waters addresses the issue of whether Divine viewed himself as “male” or “female.” According to Waters, Divine never associated with being female: as soon as the camera were off, the makeup came off, too. This ends up dovetailing nicely into discussion of Divine’s “male” film roles, beginning with the noir-lite of Trouble in Mind (1985): it’s really fascinating to see Divine act as “himself,” as it were, which is such a marked contrast from his Divine persona as to prove what a gifted actor he really was.

Ultimately, if you’re a Divine fan, I Am Divine will be absolutely required viewing. Fans of John Waters will also find loads of valuable material here, including some absolutely priceless footage of Waters as a 17-year-old (spoiler alert: John Waters was ALWAYS John Waters, regardless of the age). Jeffrey Schwartz’s loving documentary serves as a wonderful, inspired tribute to one of the best, most popular and most unique performers of the ’60s, ’70s or ’80s. Even though Divine’s art originated from a place of pain, he would go on to inspire generations of others through his positivity and refusal to give up or get out of the way. As Divine, himself, was apt to say: “Nothing is impossible: if you’ve got those kinds of dreams, go for them.” Divine had those kinds of dreams and went for them: in the process, he showed us all that we can go for our dreams, too.

12/26/14 (Part Two): Woody the Pimp

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best friends, cinema, dramadies, Fading Gigolo, Film, film reviews, gigolos, indie dramas, John Turturro, Liev Schrieber, low-key, male friendships, Movies, New York City, Orthodox Jews, pimps, rabbis, romances, Sharon Stone, Sofia Vargera, Vanessa Paradis, Woody Allen, writer-director-actor

If you were asked to come up with a list of actors who would seem like natural fits to play a pimp, I’m willing to wager that actor-director Woody Allen is probably the very last person you would think of: hell, there are probably dead people that would seem more appropriate for that kind of role. Allen, the patron saint of nebbishy, fidgety, neurotic indie-film characters since the mid-’60s, may be many things but a pimp? C’mon, already. For better or worse, however, that’s exactly the roll that Allen’s Murray fulfills in writer-director-actor John Turturro’s Fading Gigolo (2013), a modest little film that often feels like “Woody Allen-lite,” even as it approaches the material from a decidedly more earthy direction than Allen’s own films.

Murray (Woody Allen) and Fioravante (John Turturro) are best friends who also seem to be the two most low-key, laid-back guys in New York: Murray runs the dusty old bookstore that he inherited from his father (who inherited it from his father, before him), while Fioravante works a few hours a week in a little flower shop. After Murray has to close his shop, however, they take a look at their respective bank accounts and realize that they’re each uncomfortably close to the poor house, a prospect that causes the aging friends no end of worry.

After being approached by a doctor friend (Sharon Stone), however, Murray comes up with a new business strategy: he’s going to set his buddy Fioravante up with local women in need of some “adult” companionship. That’s right: Woody wants to pimp out his buddy to New York’s cougar population. Although initially hesitant, Fioravante quickly agrees, even adopting the nom de plume “Virgil Howard” as a way to keep both halves of his life separate. In short order, Fioravante is a very, very busy man and Murray is becoming a very wealthy one, as we find out in one of those montages that’s pretty de rigueur for this type of thing. Complications arise, however, when Murray sets Fioravante up with Avigal (Vanessa Paradis), a local Orthodox Jewish widow. This ends up raising the ire of Dovi (Liev Schreiber), one of the Orthodox neighborhood’s resident “patrolmen” and the poor schmuck who’s been admiring Avigal from afar for years. As Fioravante and Avigal appear to be falling for each other, Dovi conspires to uncover the truth about Murray’s activities, with the goal of hauling him before the neighborhood’s Orthodox rabbinate. And let’s not forget Dr. Parker and her friend, Selima (Sofia Vargera), whose only goal in life appears to be roping Fioravante into a threesome. What’s a nice, Italian boy to do when everybody, including his best friend, wants a piece of him? Why, keep smiling, that’s what!

For the most past, Fading Gigolo is the kind of modest, low-key film that doesn’t make much of an impact, even if there’s nothing especially wrong with it. The acting is solid, with Allen and Turturro reasonably convincing as friends and Stone and Vargera quite fun as the hot-to-trot cougars. The film is reasonably well made, with a great score, although the overly muddy color contrast is a bit of a bummer. The whole thing moves fairly quickly, although some of the machinations involving Schreiber’s character tend to make the film unnecessarily confusing and cluttered in the final third. For the most part, Fading Gigolo hits all of the required beats, even of most of them come and go without much fanfare.

This, then, is kind of the rub: while pleasant enough, little of Turturro’s film makes much of an impact…the whole thing is so breezy and lightweight as to be almost completely inconsequential. The subplot with Avigal and Fioravante never quite pans out as promised, making the whole thing feel a little extraneous, and there’s something a little too convenient about the way that Stone and Vargera’s ravenous characters are completely tamed in the presence of Turturro’s kind-hearted lover-man: this is a film where true love beats all because…well, just because.

While I’ve always been a huge fan of Turturro’s acting (I think he’s easily one of the most criminally under-rated actors around), this was actually my first experience with him as a writer-director and I must admit to being slightly underwhelmed: again, there’s nothing critically wrong with Fading Gigolo (aside from the inherently silly storyline, that is) but there’s also not a whole lot that sticks to the ribs, either. For the most part, Fading Gigolo comes and goes without making too much of a ripple, which might be some sort of parallelism regarding the two main characters but is, more than likely, just the mark of a film that’s decent enough but hardly relevatory.

12/21/14: The Magic of Youth

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'80s punk rock, Alvin Strollo, Ann-Sofie Rase, Anna Rydgren, based on a graphic novel, best friends, Best of 2014, Bobo, Charlie Falk, cinema, coming of age, David Dencik, favorite films, film festival favorite, film reviews, films, foreign films, friends, girl power, growing up, Johan Liljemark, Jonathan Salomonsson, Klara, Lena Carlsson, Lily Moodysson, Liv LeMoyne, Lukas Moodysson, Mattias Wiberg, Mira Barkhammar, Mira Grosin, Movies, Peter Eriksson, punk rock, punk rockers, set in Stockholm, set in Sweden, set in the 1980's, Swedish films, teenagers, We Are the Best!, writer-director, young love, youth vs old age, youthful rebeliion

When you’re caught in the thick of it, adolescence pretty much sucks: your hormones are racing out of control, no one takes you seriously, romance is weird, adults are stupid, parents are worse, you just wanna get out there and live but everywhere you turn it’s just more rules and the only solution seems to be to blast your music as loud as you possibly can but it never seems to get loud enough to drown out all the fakers, phonies and assholes that seem to be everywhere you turn. It’s only once we get some wear under the engine and a few decades behind us that we fully understand what adolescence is: that one, pure chance to grab the brass ring with both hands and hold on for dear life before the world tries its hardest to grind you into dust.

Swedish writer-director Lukas Moodysson seems to understand this pretty well: his newest film, the unbelievably jubilant We Are the Best! (2013), isn’t just a love letter to teenage punk rockers or the long-gone ’80s…it’s a film about grabbing life with both hands, about making your own way in the world when none of the other options look great. It’s a film about friendships and first loves, about the awkward dance that boys and girls engage in because nothing makes sense but everything seems possible. It’s a film about standing out when everyone wants to fit in…about being one step behind pop culture because you like what you like, not what’s force-fed to you. It’s a film about how much girls rock (because they do), about how dumb boys can be (because they are) and about how clueless adults here (because they always will be). We Are the Best! isn’t just one of the best films of 2014 (although it is that, without a doubt): it’s also one of the very best films about adolescence ever made. We Are the Best? By the time the end credits roll, you won’t be in any mood to argue.

Set in Stockholm, Sweden, in 1982, We Are the Best! concerns the adventures of a pair of teenage best friends and fellow misfits, Bobo (Mira Barkhammar) and Klara (Mira Grosin). The two girls are outcasts in every sense of the word: they worship punk rock even though it’s “dead” (says the jaded purists who have since moved on to Joy Division), rock short, stubby haircuts and mohawks when the rest of the teen girls around them are showing off their long, lustrous hair and seem to exist in a world all their own. Picked on and bullied by those around them, male and female alike, and completely misunderstood by the bemused adults in their lives, Bobo and Klara only have each other but that definitely seems like more than enough to rule the world.

After an attempt to strike back at the shit-headed boys in teenage metal band Iron Fist results in them booking time in their school’s music rehearsal space, Klara and Bobo decide that they should go ahead and just start a band. As is often the case, neither girl can play an instrument but Klara divvies up the work anyway, assigning Bobo the drums and taking the bass as her weapon of choice. At first, the pair can do nothing more than bash meaninglessly on their instruments, whipping up the kind of din that GG Allin might approve of. Talent doesn’t really matter to them, however, since they really just want the opportunity to make their message heard: school sports suck and people should focus more time on starving kids and nuclear safety. Some things never change, eh?

Big change comes, however, when the girls happen to cross paths with another misfit: serious, pale, humorless and very Christian, Hedvig (Liv LeMoyne) seems like the last person the two young punk rockers would ever connect with. Just like them, however, Hedvig is an outcast at her school: during the annual talent show, she plays the Spanish guitar like an absolute wizard but still gets heckled and laughed at. Seeking a kindred spirit, as well as someone who can actually play an instrument, Bobo and Klara basically harass Hedvig until she joins their band and, by default, their little clique. Hedvig might not be much like her new friends but they give her the one thing she can’t get anywhere else: acceptance. As she begins to come out of her shell more, Hedvig starts to grow and develop as a person, right down to the terrifying/triumphant scene where Klara hacks Hedvig’s beautiful, long hair into spastic tufts on her head.

No coming-of-age story would be complete without a romance, however, which is just what Bobo and Klara get when they fall for the members of a local punk band. Young love is never easy, however, and when the boys’ attentions prove fickle, a gulf begins to grow between Bobo and Klara. Since she’s always lived in her friend’s shadow (Klara is the very definition of a force of nature), Bobo has never had the opportunity to shine on her own. As the girls prepare for their first public concert, in a rival town, however, tensions grow, cracks appear in the foundations of their relationship and they’ll all learn a very valuable lesson: when you have true friends, absolutely anything in the world is possible.

There’s so much great stuff to be found in Moodysson’s exuberant film that it’s a little hard to know where to start but let’s begin at the top: the triple threat of Mira Barkhammar, Mira Grosin and Liv LeMoyne as the three leads is so rock-solid, so damn perfect, that you just never want them to exit stage right at any point in the film. It’s hard to pick a standout, since each of them brings so much individuality to the table. Barkhammar brings so much co-mingled pain and sweetness to her portrayal of Bobo that the character feels utterly and completely alive: she never feels like the stereotypical “ugly duckling,” rather like an actual, deeply conflicted human being. For her part, Grosin’s Klara could have been a one-trick pony: brassy, abrasive and mouthy, Klara could have functioned as a sort of Bill Murray surrogate, someone to make wise-cracks and push her more demure partner into “discovering” herself. Instead, Klara is full of just as many contradictions, foibles and hang-ups as Bobo is. Some of the film’s very best scenes involve Klara’s extremely loving, supportive family: as is the wont of teenagers, Klara sees nothing but meddling and prying in their interactions with her but I dare you to wipe the smile off your face when her mother, little sister and father (on clarinet!) join in on their’s band’s jam session. Any other actor might have played Klara as too much of a petulant brat (and there is plenty of that here, to be sure) but Grosin finds the sweetness and sincerity to her “acting out.”

And then, of course, there’s LeMoyne: as the “straight arrow” that gets bent by Bobo and Klara, LeMoyne has the most pure “acting” to do and she’s absolutely killer. Nothing in her character is as simple as just “becoming” punk: the scene where she gets her hair cut is so amazing because we can actually see the conflicted emotions run across LeMoyne’s expressive face as if broadcast on a billboard. The filmmakers also make the wise move to never play her as a patsy for her Christian beliefs, an easy potshot in similar “young outsider” films: while Klara constantly ribs and teases Hedvig about her beliefs, LeMoyne’s calm, serene acceptance is a perfect, measured and, ultimately, very honest reaction. Moodysson could have played this for much more generic “tension,” but he realizes the key point that kids are both more and less accepting of others than their adult peers.

Lest it seem that Moodysson develops tunnel-vision regarding his young subjects, however, We Are the Best! makes plenty of time to deal with the adults in their world. Anna Rydgren is excellent as Bobo’s single mom, Lena: her fumbling attempts to re-enter the dating world mirror Bobo’s own blossoming into young womanhood and there’s some genuine poignancy to the scenes where Lena attempts to deal with the reappearance of Bobo’s father in their lives. There’s also really great work coming from Charlie Falk as Klara’s older brother, Linus, who’s left punk behind to focus on post-punk with the rest of his eternally bored friends. The scene where the girls get drunk and disrupt Linus’ party could have been as clichéd as they come, but Falk finds the perfect balance between Linus’ aloof attempts to be “cool” and his inherent responsibilities as a big brother.

Truth be told, however, all of the acting in We Are the Best! is pretty impeccable, as is the film-craft: Moodysson’s movie looks and sounds amazing, especially during the climatic concert set in the high-school gymnasium. Adapting his wife’s graphic novel, which recounts her own story growing up a punk in ’80s Stockholm, Moodysson turns in a tight, well-plotted and extremely clever film that manages to feature plenty of great dialogue without turning the kids into Juno clones. In fact, I daresay that the kids in We Are the Best! are just about the most authentic versions of such I’ve seen since the glory day of ’80s coming-of-age films like Stand By Me (1986) or The Goonies (1985).

Ultimately, We Are the Best! is one of those films that I can’t recommend enough: if you were ever young, at any point in your life, you will find something here to pull you in. Personally, as someone who grew up both a punk and an outcast, I found Moodysson’s film to be just about perfect. While the scene where the chauvinistic, condescending music teachers get their asses handed to them by Hedvig’s awe-inspiring display of fretboard mastery is one of the most badass I’ve ever had the pleasure of witnessing, the film’s true power can best be summed up in the scene where Hedvig plays an acoustic cover of Bobo and Klara’s favorite punk song. As her clear voice accompanies her gentle strumming, the audience is pulled into the same amazed trance that’s ensnared Bobo and Klara. As Hedvig gives voice to the angry, political sentiments in the song, we begin to feel her character make the transition from background to foreground. At its heart, We Are the Best! is a film about finding your voice and singing as hard and loud as you can, regardless of who’s listening or trying to hold you back.

While 2014 has been a pretty amazing year for film, all things considered, few movies have been this joyful, exuberant and full of life. Is We Are the Best! one of the best films of the year? Absolutely.