5/3/16: Twain of Consequences

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Aaron Nee, Adam Nee, based on a book, Becky Thatcher, Beth Grant, childhood friends, cinema, co-directors, co-editors, co-writers, Cooper Huckabee, Creed Bratton, Daniel Edward Mora, dark comedies, Eric Christian Olsen, film reviews, films, Hannibal Buress, heist films, Huck Finn, Injun Joe, Johnny Pemberton, Kyle Gallner, Lee Garlington, literary figures, Mark Twain, Matthew Gray Gubler, Melissa Benoist, Movies, Noah Rosenthal, Stephen Lang, Tom Sawyer, writer-director-actor-editor

If you’ve ever gotten really wrapped up in a good book or story, you’ve probably wondered what happened to the surviving characters after the last page has been turned.  Do they continue to live on, experiencing life and having adventures that you’ll never be privy to? Are the unwritten/unseen adventures as good as what made it to the page? Could they possibly be better? Or is this the proverbial case of the unseen tree in the woods: if we’re not reading, do they cease to exist?

Working from this basic question, filmmaking siblings Aaron and Adam Nee offer up Band of Robbers (2016), a droll, indie-crime caper that wonders, aloud, what would happen if Mark Twain’s classic rapscallions Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn were a couple of young roustabouts in our modern era. Lest they get lonely, the Nees have also brought along old friends like Becky Thatcher, Muff Potter, Aunt Polly, Sid Sawyer and, of course, that old ne’er-do-well, Injun Joe. When all’s said and done, however, do these timeless characters survive their modern makeovers or is this one of those “better in theory” type of deals?

Tom Sawyer (co-writer/director/editor Adam Nee) and Huck Finn (Kyle Gallner) are childhood best friends who are pretty much attached at the hip until life sends them down two very separate paths. Tom ends up joining the police force, where he navigates around both the disapproving eye of his stern aunt, Lt. Polly (Lee Garlington), and the over-sized shadow of his over-achieving half-brother, Det. Sid Sawyer (Eric Christian Olsen), all while keeping the most ridiculously sunny disposition this side of Mary Poppins. For his part, Huck has chosen a life of crime and spent a stretch of time in prison. As he nears his release date, Huck has no family, no friends, no real relationships and a huge question mark over his future.

The old friends reconnect when Tom picks Huck up from prison and whisks him straight away to a thoroughly pathetic “welcome home” party that doubles as a meeting for Tom’s latest brilliant idea. To whit: he wants Huck to join his “Band of Robbers,” which includes perpetually bleary Ben Rogers (Hannibal Buress), eager-to-please Joe Harper (Matthew Gray Gubler) and squeaky-clean Tommy Barnes (Johnny Pemberton), who just happens to be married to Tom’s old girlfriend, Amy (Maria Blasucci).

Tom’s plan is a complex, convoluted and fairly nonsensical one that involves ripping off a pawn shop in order to steal a hidden fortune in gold that has, according to Tom’s source, “Muff” Potter (Cooper Huckabee), been left there by none other than the nefarious killer, Injun Joe (Stephen Lang). The plan is a harebrained one, sure, but it still ends up going to shit in some pretty spectacular ways, mostly centered around Tom suddenly acquiring a wet-behind-the-ears, rookie partner, Becky Thatcher (Melissa Benoist). When the dust clears, Tom, Huck and their bumbling “band” must avoid not only the long arm of the local podunk police force but also the murderous attention of Injun Joe and his partners. Throw in some love lost and found, old wounds healed, old friendships reconciled and destinies fulfilled and you might have something that would make ol’ Samuel Clemens crack a grin.

If it were possible for films to skate by on nothing but a fresh concept and good intentions, Band of Robbers would be a massive success from start to finish. Indeed, the vast majority of good will that the Nees amass here is usually centered around the clever ways in which they manage to insert Twain’s various creations into the fabric of what turns out to be a fairly hum-drum caper film. Devotees of the original source material will be able to play a pretty fun little game of “Spot the Reference/Character,” which adds a little replay value to the proceedings, along with creating a fairly immersive world for Tom, Huck and their cohorts to play in.

The performances are generally enthusiastic, which gives the film a nicely propulsive quality, although some actors/characters fare better than others. At the top of this particular pyramid sits Kyle Gallner’s nicely understated take on Huck Finn and Stephen Lang’s all-in performance as one of the literary world’s greatest villains. Completely unrecognizable (I actually had no idea it was him until the end credits), Lang seems to be having more fun than the entire case combined and it’s pretty easy to give yourself over to the film whenever he holds the reins (which is, admittedly, not often enough). For his part, Gallner gives us a fairly standard “troubled dude with good intentions” but the performance is nuanced and Gallner is charismatic enough to make it work.

We also get sturdy performances from Gubler (quickly becoming a modern-day, genre film go-to-guy), Garlington, Olsen and Huckabee, all of whom run the gamut from suitably grounded to outrageously over-the-top. At the very least, however, each one brings enough individuality to the portrayals to make the characters seem (at least superficially) like fairly well-rounded creations. We’re not talking the typical Andersonian “cast of dozens,” mind you, but the aforementioned actors do a fine job of keeping us in Band of Robbers peculiar little world.

Less successful, unfortunately, are Hannibal Buress’ odd, spacey performance as Ben (was he actually stoned during the shoot, on cough medicine or a combination of both?), Adam Nee’s thoroughly grating, obnoxious take on Tom Sawyer and poor Melissa Benoist’s completely wasted take on Becky Thatcher. Buress’ performance isn’t as much of an issue due to his relative lack of screen-time but Nee is in roughly 90% of the film and he’s all but impossible to ignore. When working in tandem with Gallner and the others, Nee’s spastic performance feels, at the very least, tethered to something. Whenever he’s allowed to dominate the proceedings, however, he Hoovers up scenery like some sort of human-shaped black hole, giving everything a hectic, rushed and unnecessarily madcap feel that seems at odds with the rest of the film’s tone.

Perhaps no one gets the shorter end of the stick than Benoist, however, whose Becky Thatcher is such a non-entity that she might as well wear a big sign that says “Plot Device” around her neck. Where the original Becky was a more than suitable firebrand foil for Tom Sawyer, this version is just a moon-eyed, bumbling green-horn, a character who exists only to complicate the already complicated caper and serve as a standard-issue love interest. Hell, Becky’s “big” moment comes when she reveals that she asked to be Tom’s partner because she “sensed that he was headed for big things.” It would probably be easier to forgive the waste of a character if Benoist (so good in Whiplash (2014)) didn’t throw her all into the thankless character, giving her a giddy, effervescent quality that absolutely deserved a better outlet. Maybe next time, Melissa.

More than anything, however, Band of Robbers suffers from being simultaneously too familiar (despite that great central concept) and too disjointed and manic. When the film works, it works just fine. When it doesn’t, however, it actually becomes something of a mess. Take the pawn shop heist, for example, which should be one of the film’s primo setpieces. Instead, the scene devolves into a seriously unfunny mix of silly situational comedy, exaggerated performances and sub-Ritchian, overlapping dialogue. It was tiresome practically from the point it began, grinding the entire film to a halt at just the exact point when it should have been reaching take-off speed.

This sense of missed opportunities is repeated ad infinitum, right down to the ridiculously lackadaisical way in which the film dispatches its one legitimate threat (suffice to say that low stakes are but another constant issue here): it’s the notion that cutting off loose ends is much easier and less time consuming than tying them into neat bows. It’s a bit of a shame, too, since the film generally looks and sounds top-notch: at times, cinematographer Noah Rosenthal’s camera-work even approximates the arty loveliness of the Nees’ obvious influence, Wes Anderson, although it’s never more than a surface touch, at best.

Ultimately, despite its good intentions and handful of genuinely smart stylistic quirks, Band of Robbers never really makes good on the inherent interest of its premise. Rather than being something fairly original and new, this is just another zig-zagging crime caper about odd-couple friends who must set aside their differences in order to pull off one last, big haul. If that sounds familiar…well, it certainly is. There are plenty of films worse than Band of Robbers and an equal amount that are much, much better: problem is, no one ever stood out by standing in the middle of a crowd. I think ol’ Tom Sawyer would agree with that, too.

7/9/15: Sheep In Wolf’s Clothing

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Ansel Roth, Beth Grant, brainwashing, character dramas, Chris Ellis, cinema, cult leaders, cults, dark comedies, deprogrammers, dramas, dysfunctional family, fall from grace, Faults, feature-film debut, film reviews, films, Heather McIntosh, hotel rooms, Jon Gries, Lance Reddick, Leland Orser, Leonard Earl Howze, living in a hotel, Mary Elizabeth Winstead, Michael Ragen, Movies, Nicholas Tucci, parent-child relationships, Riley Stearns, Sarah Beth Shapiro, surreal, The Cub, washed-up, worried parents, writer-director

Cinema has a long, proud tradition of anti-heroes, although few are quite as memorable (or reprehensible) as Ansel Roth (Leland Orser). When we first meet Ansel, the de facto protagonist of writer-director Riley Stearns’ incredible Faults (2014), he’s trying to use a previously used voucher to scam a free breakfast from a hotel’s in-house restaurant. The confrontation turns physical after Ansel refuses to leave, eating ketchup packets with a fork while the restaurant manager and waiter attempt to wrestle him to the ground. The capper to the whole fiasco? Turns out Ansel pulled the voucher out of the trash in the first place. The cost of the meal that he refused to pay? $4.75. That, my friends, is conviction.

Ansel is a scruffy rat, a washed-up, defeated con artist who no longer believes in the bullshit he peddles but doesn’t really have a lot of options, at this point in time. Shuffling from one hotel conference room to the next, he discusses cult deprogramming to tiny groups of largely disinterested people, all while trying to sell a book that no one wants. Despite having a former best-selling book and television show, a professional fall from grace and ensuing divorce have left Ansel a broken, wretched schlub, trading on former glories that are in danger of being completely forgotten, leaving his entire existence in question.

After a particularly disastrous “seminar,” Ansel is approached by Paul (Chris Ellis) and Evelyn (Beth Grant), a couple of salt-of-the-earth types who want the former deprogrammer’s help in rescuing their beloved daughter, Claire (Mary Elizabeth Winstead), from the clutches of a cult. Despite initially blowing them off, Ansel is forced to change his tune after his publisher, Terry (Jon Gries), drops him as a client and sends the menacing Mick (Lance Reddick) to collect what Ansel owes for his latest flop of a book. Ansel agrees to “kidnap” and deprogram Claire, undoing the cult’s brainwashing and giving the couple back their daughter…all for an incredibly steep price, of course.

Ansel and his lunk-headed partners snatch Claire off the street and spirit her away to a motel room, where Ansel plans to spend the next five days deprogramming her. While Claire, at first, seems more than a little shell-shocked, in no time at all, she’s engaging in a philosophical back-and-forth about her life, her involvement with the cult and, to a great extent, the abject worthlessness of Ansel’s own existence. Things really get interesting when Ansel reveals that Claire’s parents are staying in the adjoining room.

As Paul’s aggressive, “my way or the highway” attitude threatens to wreck Ansel’s progress (along with giving us plenty of good reasons for Claire’s initial departure), Terry and Mick continue to hover in the background, promising to take the grubby deprogrammer apart and put him together backward if they don’t get their promised cash. Will Ansel be able to keep his own wreck of a life together long enough to save Claire or will it all end up being the straw that broke the camel’s back?

After gaining some measure of notice with the clever “raised by wolves” short The Cub (2013), Stearns really kicks down the door and blowtorches the joint with his debut full-length, Faults. As with John Maclean’s similarly excellent Slow West (2015), Stearns’ film is a perfect synthesis of form, theme, performance and technique, each element blending into and leading into the next like Ouroboros eating its tail. The script is tight, taut and full of exceptional dialogue, giving the film the feel of a really good stage play, a feeling reinforced by the tendency to confine the action to small, contained locations (the motel room, the van, Ansel’s car). Faults is the kind of film that can hold an audience rapt with nothing more than two characters talking, a definitively old-fashioned notion in this era of sensory overload.

Cinematographer Michael Ragen shoots some incredibly beautiful, evocative images, doubly impressive when one considers that Faults is his full-length debut, as well, after a series of shorts and music videos. Ragen was also responsible for shooting The Cub, so here’s to hoping that his relationship with Stearns continues to bear such impressive fruit. Ragen’s often dreamlike images are perfectly complimented by Heather McIntosh’s whimsical score: the score helps to leaven the film’s darker edges and accentuates the more absurd comedy elements quite nicely. Faults looks and sounds consistently great, making it one of the more attractive films to come down the pike this year.

Towering over everything like a pair of Titans, however, are the astounding performances by Leland Orser and Mary Elizabeth Winstead. Despite how great the script and production is, despite the raft of solid supporting performances (Ellis and Grant are particularly good as Claire’s parents) and the tight sense of economy, Faults is, at its heart, a two character study and those two characters are Ansel Roth and Claire, Leland Orser and Mary Elizabeth Winstead. If there are any cracks in this foundation, any failure on the part of the principals to take us “all the way,” than Faults would become just a curiosity, a kindred spirit to Jane Campion’s odd Holy Smoke (1999). Luckily for us all, Orser and Winstead turn in two of the very best performances of the entire year.

Orser, a character actor whose career encompasses everything from walk-ons in The Golden Girls and Se7en (1995) (he was the male half of the “lust” setpiece) to more substantial roles in films like Alien: Resurrection (1997), Saving Private Ryan (1998) and Liam Neeson’s Taken franchise, is an absolutely mesmerizing presence here, demanding our attention like an immutable black hole. There’s no notion of separation between actor and character, here: no zippers or seams in this particular “costume.” Rather, we get a complete portrait of an impossibly fractured, miserable man, a loathsomely smooth-talking snake-oil salesman who believes in nothing whatsoever, including his own bullshit. From that opening introduction in the restaurant all the way to Ansel’s shocking “evolution,” there’s not one missed note or misstep in Orser’s performance. I fully expect him to be snubbed come awards’ season but know this: he absolutely deserves to be represented when they announce the short-list for Best Actor in a Leading Role, hands-down.

Winstead, who first came to prominence via performances in genre pictures like The Ring 2 (2005), Final Destination 3 (2006), Black Christmas (2006), Death Proof (2007) and The Thing remake (2011), is nothing short of a revelation here, giving us what surely must be the trickiest, most subtle performance of her entire career. The co-mingled sense of naive innocence and steely determination is a heady one and watching Claire slowly assume control of the whole messy situation is one of the greatest cinematic pleasures I’ve experienced in some time. Winstead is completely invested in the performance, giving Claire the kind of multi-dimensionality that marks the very best cinematic creations. Immense kudos to Winstead for her fearless performance: Stearns is her real-life husband and I’m assuming that their relationship allowed her to open up in ways that might not have been possible with another filmmaker. Regardless of the reason, Winstead is quite marvelous as Claire, from her parking lot intro (she puts up a pretty good fight!) all the way through the film’s multiple surprise revelations and twists.

The aforementioned twists, another facet of Stearns’ fantastic script, are yet another reason why I found myself falling in fast love with the film. Quite simply, Faults is the furthest thing from a predictable, run-of-the-mill film as possible. While I’m sure that many audience members might call some of the surprises, I seriously doubt whether anyone will be able to predict them all: the last 20 minutes of the film was a constant barrage of “rug-pulling” that was as exhilarating as it was unpredictable. For all of that, however, Faults still feels completely organic: any and every twist revelation is earned, nothing is unduly telegraphed and the whole film feels as smart as advanced trigonometry, albeit much more fun.

So, here I stand, my application in hand to become a devoted acolyte of the transcendent Faults (no “the,” if you please, as Claire patiently informs Ansel). I’m fully ready to give myself over to flawless filmmaking, extraordinary performances and a casually brilliant script, ready to take that next step and “progress” to quality filmmaking. I’m here to recruit you in this endeavor, as well, to take your hand and lead you to the same light I found. No need for deprogrammers here, my friends: let the Church of Stearns show you the way.

 

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.