2/7/14: One Bad Mother

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'70s films, '70s-era, action films, Alan Weeks, bail bondsmen, blaxploitation films, cinema, Dick MIller, film reviews, films, guns, Isaac Hayes, Jonathan Kaplan, Movies, Nichelle Nichols, Paul Harris, pimps, Scatman Crothers, Shaft, skip tracers, Superfly, Three Tough Guys, Truck Turner, Yaphet Kotto

Slowly but surely, we work our way through the review backlog. This time, we bring you last last Friday’s viewing: Truck Turner.

For a guy who was so instrumental in one of the greatest Blaxploitation films of all time, Isaac Hayes didn’t really have much involvement with the subgenre past that point. He wrote the score for the 1971 action flick (picking up a Grammy, in the process) but would really only return to the fold twice more (three times if you count I’m Gonna Get You Sucka (1988)): he made his acting debut in 1974’s Three Tough Guys and followed that up with Truck Turner the same year, for which he starred and wrote the score.

With his solid build, smooth-as-silk voice and pliable features, Isaac Hayes always seemed like a ready-built movie star: too bad that whole music career thing got in the way, huh? Despite being one of the biggest recording artists of the ’60s and ’70s, Hayes also managed to act in several dozen films and TV shows, including an eight-year on South Park as the iconic Chef: not too shabby for someone who’s also won three Grammys, a Golden Globe and an Oscar.

There’s something about Hayes that always seemed to communicate an unseen wink and nod, even if he was beating the living crap out of someone: he’s such a personable force, such a likable onscreen presence, that you’re liable to forgive him any trespasses. In the dictionary next to “Badass”…well, you get the idea.

In Truck Turner, Hayes portrays the titular hero, a truly badass bail bondsman who’s as fast with a gun as he is with his fists. Just take a look at that glorious poster featuring a shirtless Hayes wielding a gun so large it would make Dirty Harry weep. That’s right, suckers: that’s truth in advertising right there. Truck and his partner Jerry (Alan Weeks) are on the trail of a badass pimp named Gator (Paul Harris). When they waste the scuzz-bucket, Gator’s old lady Dorinda (Nichelle “Uhura” Nichols!!) puts a call out to all the local pimps: if they can take out Truck, she’ll give them half of Gator’s stable of working girls. Only one pimp is bad enough to even try: Harvard Blue, played by non other than Yaphet Kotto. They all hit the streets for a violent whirlwind of sassy backtalk, hard hits, slo-mo kicks, giant guns and lots and lots of sweet outfits (most of the cast are supposed to be pimps, after all). In short: this is blaxploitation heaven, friends and neighbors.

Truck Turner may be a lot of things but “boring” and “square” aren’t two of them. Truth be told, this was a wickedly funny, super-fast and impressively paced film, something that can (almost) sit proudly next to Shaft. The cast and the dialogue are what really push this one to the forefront. Hayes is absolutely perfect as Truck, a seamless combination of bemused-nice-guy and badass-tough-guy who has a particular way with a quip: “If anyone asks you what happened, tell ’em you were hit by a truck: Mac Truck Turner” is one of his better ones but really: Hayes doesn’t get much bad dialogue in this. Alan Weeks is a perfect foil as Jerry: his indignant delivery of “They called my old lady a jive-ass broad!” is easily one of the films highlights but everything about his friendship with Turner is spot-on. The two have a habit of sighing off with a “Get it…got it…good” interplay that always provokes a smile: you really buy these guys as best friends, which adds a lot of pathos to the film.

Kotto is completely over-the-top and absolutely outstanding as Blue: he manages to chew even more scenery than he did in the previous year’s Bond film, Live and Let Die (1973), no easy feat considering he was blown up by a shark pellet in that one. Any scene with Kotto in it is gold and he gets a pretty decent amount of screen-time. His death scene, in particular, seems to last about 45 minutes and is a master-class in mugging for the camera. Scatman Crothers makes an appearance as a retired pimp, complete with pink pants and creme de menthe in hand and Corman regular Dick Miller shows up as head of the bail bond office.

Best of all, however, is Nichols as the vicious, venomous Dorinda. From what I can tell, Truck Turner was Nichols’ only blaxploitation film role (and one of only a handful of non-Star Trek film appearances, to be honest), which is a real shame: Nichols is an absolute hoot and I would have killed to see her do a vintage film with Pam Grier. In fact, Nichols is so good that she almost steals the film from Hayes and Kotto, which is no mean feat. When she snarls, “They better learn to sell pussy in Iceland cuz if I ever see them again, I’m gonna slit their fucking throats!” to Gator’s prostitutes, she manages to be both hilarious and terrifying: Nichols seems completely invested in her performance and sells it 150%.

Excellent cast aside, there’s plenty of other great stuff going on here. The score, while not as iconic as Shaft, is certainly no slouch. In particular, Hayes’ “Truck Turner Theme” is a minor masterpiece, featuring such classic lines as, “There’s some dudes in a bar/With busted heads and broken jaws/What hit ’em?/Truck Turner!” The rest of the score is equally hot, featuring plenty of funky rock, rockin’ congas and rude brass. The humor is exceptionally vulgar (one woman tries to pay the bail-bondsmen with food stamps) but genuinely funny, more often than not. There are certain shots, such as the slo-mo bit where a pink Cadillac collides with a massive cart full of bagels or the (also slo-mo) moment where Truck kicks some dude backwards through a phone-booth that function both as great action bits and decent belly laughs. The film even manages to reference other films of the era (“Grow wings, Superfly” quips Truck, as he holds some poor schlub out of a window)

The prolonged chase sequence where Truck and Jerry are hot on Gator’s heels is a thrilling, prolonged highlight involving multiple car chases, a car-jacking, gunfights, a foot chase, an exploding car and a massive bar brawl. The bar brawl, in particular, is a complete classic and should make any devotee of ’70s action movies blush with pride. In fact, the film is pretty much one non-stop fight/chase scene after another, with only momentary breaks taken for such issues like character development or a little romance (the scene where Truck makes love to his woman while an Isaac Hayes slow-jam plays on the soundtrack is so meta that it becomes hilarious).

Essentially, if you have any affinity for blaxploitation movies whatsoever, Truck Turner will be right up your alley. I mean, c’mon: the movie features a white pimp named Desmond who coordinates his eyepatch to his various pastel-and-rhinestone outfits, Nichelle Nichols swearing like a ship full of sailors, Yaphet Kotto using a sick kid as a human shield and Isaac “Mr. Badass” Hayes kicking some dude through a fucking phone-booth!

If you can’t get behind that, turkey, I just can’t help ya.

1/31/14: Home is Where the Hearts Are (Oscar Bait, Part 3)

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Academy Award Nominee, Academy Awards, adventures, animated films, auteur theory, bad movies, Blackenstein, Blacula, blaxploitation films, box-office flops, Catherine Keener, cavemen, Chris Sanders, cinema, Cloris Leachman, couples, cute sloths, Dr. Stein, Dreamworks Animation, Emma Stone, fear of the unknown, Film auteurs, films, Francis Ford Coppola, Frederic Forrest, Harry Dean Stanton, Kirk Demicco, Lainie Kazan, Las Vegas, Movies, musical, Nastassja Kinski, Nicholas Cage, One From the Heart, pets, Raul Julia, relationships on the rocks, romance, Ryan Reynolds, searching for a new home, strange families, tar pits, Teri Garr, terrible films, The Croods, Tom Waits, William A. Levey

Our cinematic journey continues with last Friday’s viewings: we screened an abysmal Z-grade horror flick, an odd musical and another of this year’s contenders for Oscar gold.

Ugh…Blackenstein is proof positive that not all blaxploitation films were equally worthy of consideration. My original intention was to watch this as a double-feature with Blacula but that didn’t quite work as planned. As such, it ended up on a crammed Friday-bill where it really didn’t stand a chance. To be honest, this film wouldn’t have stood a chance no matter where I programmed it: Blackenstein is one colossal flop from the first frame to the last.

Plot (not that it matters) is fairly minimal: Dr. Winifred Walker (Ivory Stone) has come to see Dr. Stein (John Hart, in a friendly, jovial turn that is completely out of place in the story) in order to have him help her fiancee, Eddie (Joe de Sue, who has obviously never acted). You see, Eddie lost both arms and legs in Vietnam and Dr. Stein has been “working in the field of replacing limbs.” Sounds like a match made in heaven! Until, of course, Dr. Stein’s creepy assistant Malcomb (Roosevelt Jackson, who’s actually not bad) takes a shine to Winifred and sabotages Eddie’s treatments in order to get him out of the picture. Eddie head swells up, he gets angry and proceeds to rampage about the city, pulling the guts out of various women along the way. Winifred finally figures out what’s going on and Eddie saves her from Malcomb’s slimy clutches before getting devoured by police dogs.

There’s an awful lot wrong with Blackenstein, issues that pretty much cripple the film and prevent it from even rising to “so-bad-it’s-good-levels.” On a purely technical level, the transfer is absolutely awful: it looks like it was dubbed from TV to VHS. The sound keeps cutting out which, to be honest, isn’t a huge issue since the dialogue is so bad. Filmmaking basics are pretty non-existent: the cinematography is ugly, cuts are jarring, coverage is weird (lots of odd zooms on legs, feet, sidewalks, empty spaces and car doors), the music never fits with any given scene (chief offender being the scene where Winifred waits calmly for Dr. Stein as the soundtrack proceeds to out-Psycho Herrmann’s famous score) and the camera angles are often off-putting. Most of the sets appear to be made of cardboard, although that’s probably being generous, and the gore is about five solid steps back from Herschell Gordon Lewis’ heyday, featuring some of the most ludicrous gut-tossin’ you’ll (probably) ever see.

It goes without saying that the acting is completely wooden and terrible, as if everyone were trying to remember their lines. At one point during the middle of a big “speech,” Winifred proceeds to look down, off-camera: it’s pretty damn obvious that she reads the rest off a hidden script. Eddie is so unemotional that he delivers every last line with a sort of “Eh…what’re you gonna do?” shrug that drove me crazy after a few minutes. The piece de resistance, however, definitely comes from the hospital attendant (John Dennis). He begins by bullying the bed-ridden Eddie before launching into a jaw-droppingly over-the-top “monologue” about how he was kept from serving in Vietnam due to his physical condition. I’m not sure what we’re supposed to garner from this scene but it keeps going and going and going, an Energizer Bunny on crack.

Compared to Blacula, Blackenstein’s faults become even more glaring. Whereas Blacula featured an almost entirely black cast and possessed quite a bit of dignity, Blackenstein only features a couple of black actors and puts them in some pretty humiliating situations. We don’t even get the awesome funky music that powered Blacula: instead, we get two tepid soul songs sprinkled throughout the film, while the rest of the soundtrack consists of weak “Hammer-lite” instrumentals. There’s a niteclub scene, as in Blacula, but it mostly features a comedian telling jokes and lasts for way too long. It’s obvious that the filmmakers envisioned this as more of a Hammer/Euro-trash film than a blaxploitation film but the whole thing has such a confused sense of identity that none of it works.

Like any film made to jump on a hot trend, Blackenstein is pretty bankrupt of anything resembling imagination, innovation or intelligence. Avoid this like the plague.

If you think about it, anticipation for One From the Heart must’ve been through the roof when it first came out in 1982. For one thing, it was Francis Ford Coppola’s first film since his iconic Apocalypse Now (1979) and the latest in an unbeatable string that included The Godfather (1972), The Conversation (1974) and The Godfather Two (1974). Audiences had no reason to expect anything less sensational than his previous four films, after all, particularly with that lethal Godfather Two/Apocalypse Now combo. For another thing, musicals were extremely popular box office fare at that time. After all, Annie had come out a scant three months before and would become the 10th highest grossest film of 1982. This was the era of The Blues Brothers (1980), The Best Little Whorehouse in Texas (1982), Victor/Victoria (1982, nominated for seven Oscars) and Monty Python’s The Meaning of Life (1983): a big-screen musical from Francis Ford Coppola must have seemed like a surefire hit.

What actually happened, unfortunately, was a bit more akin to the sinking of the Titanic (the actual event, not the James Cameron money-maker): One From the Heart tanked at the box office, taking in just over a half-million in profits, although the film cost upwards of $20 million to make. Coppola declared bankruptcy and would (according to his own accounts) spend the next two decades making films in order to pay back the loss. Although this would result in The Outsiders and Rumblefish (both 1983), Peggy Sue Got Married (1986) and Dracula (1992), it would also result in Gardens of Stone (1987), The Godfather Part III (1990), Jack (1996) and The Rainmaker (1997). So, technically, a complete wash.

So, after all the dust has cleared, how does One From the Heart hold up thirty years later? While nowhere near a classic and a decidedly odd follow-up to Apocalypse Now, One From the Heart certainly has its merits. The film involves the adventures of Hank (Frederic Forrest) and Frannie (Teri Garr), a couple living in Las Vegas and about to celebrate their fifth year together. As will often happen, things are less than ideal: Frannie wants excitement, Hank just wants to chill and Sin City is calling them both to its neon embrace. Before long, Frannie has left and found excitement with a singing waiter (Raul Julia), Hank is tripping the light fantastic with a comely young dancer (Nastassja Kinski) and their poor, put-upon best friends (Harry Dean Stanton and Lainie Kazan, in supporting roles that easily steal the film from every other actor) are trying to help pick up the pieces. Before long, Frannie and Hank will come to realize one important thing: being in love may not be easy but it sure as hell beats the alternative.

First of all, One From the Heart has a pretty unbeatable soundtrack, courtesy of the inimitable Tom Waits. This marked the tail-end of Waits’ drunken troubadour phase, as 1983’s Swordfishtrombones would mark his first full foray into the experimental blues stomps that would characterize the rest of his career. Here, Waits and duet-partner Crystal Gayle are at their loveliest, wrapping the action in the kid of melancholy drinkers’ ballads that could be found on classics like Blue Valentine and Small Change. The score is a perfect accompaniment to the bruised-heart story and is responsible for quite a bit of my goodwill towards the film.

The film also a pretty cool artificial look to it, which makes sense considering Coppola built his version of Las Vegas entirely on soundstages at his new American Zoetrope Studios. While other might disagree (and the extensive sets were certainly one of the reasons why the film went so far over budget), I really liked the look, especially in any of the scenes involving the sign/mascot “graveyard.” As mentioned earlier, Stanton (two years before Repo Man) and Kazan (a few years away from Lust in the Dust) are pretty great in the film: I wish they had at least twice the screen-time, if not more.

What didn’t work for me? Lots of the acting, to be honest, especially from Forrest, Garr, Julia and Kinski. Julia isn’t bad but Kinski is super-obnoxious, reminding me of nothing so much as the “manic-pixie-girls” that currently glut indie-romantic cinema. Forrest and Garr are fairly generic: we don’t necessarily buy them as being in  love, which makes everything else in the film seem sort of silly. As befits the style, much of the film tends to be very theatrical and at least one of the big song-and-dance sequences (a routine that manages to mix Saturday Night Fever with the Vegas Strip) is head-smackingly dumb.

For all of these faults, however, One From the Heart is still a pretty amiable film. At times (although not often), the film is even quite beautiful, reminding me of some of Jeunet’s early work. As mentioned earlier, the music is pretty magical and it’s always great to see Harry Dean Stanton and Lainie Kazan in anything. Did this deserve to tank Coppola’s career and introduce the world to Jack? Absolutely not. Was this a worthy follow-up to Apocalypse Now? Magic 8-Ball says “Very doubtful.”

And then, of course, it was time for me to be really surprised. While I’m a huge animation fan, I must admit that modern big-budget animated features do very little for me. As a rule, I find them to be too crude, self-referential and filled with disposable pop culture minutiae, the cartoon equivalent of those loathsome “Scary/Disaster/Whatever” film “parodies” that continue to crop up like weeds. Nevertheless, it is Oscar season and I’m committed to seeing as many of the nominees as humanly possible. Since Dreamworks’ The Croods was nominated for Best Animated Feature, I figured I might as well sit through it. After all, it had to be more entertaining than Dirty Wars or American Hustle, right?

And how! Without hyperbole, I can honestly say that I fell in love with this pretty quickly and stayed in love for the entire running time. Similar to The Castle, this is a film about family, first and foremost, and their take on this is decidedly less snarky and screeching than most. With Nicholas “The Fury” Cage playing patriarch Grug, I was worried that this would end up being an over-the-top affair like Shrek. As luck would have it, however, this was Cage with a modicum of restraint and a maximum of charm: not only is his character perfectly lovable, he’s also perfectly realized as the overly protective father/husband/cave-man. The rest of the voice talent is equally great: Emma Stone projects the right blend of defiance and naiety as Eep; Catherine Keener is always great and she’s no less so as mother Ugga; Ryan Reynolds is actually very likeable as Guy; and Cloris Leachman, essentially, reprises her role from Raising Grace, to great effect.

There are plenty of good life lessons to be found here, none of which are delivered with a particularly heavy hand. At heart, The Croods is about the importance of family and the need to face your fears rather than giving in to them. When their cave is destroyed by an earthquake, The Croods must travel across uncharted territory in order to find a new place to live. Along the way, they meet Guy and his delightful sloth friend Belt (quite possibly one of the cutest critters in a long line of animated sidekicks), a ravenous sabre-toothed tiger (which becomes Grug’s pet in one of the sweetest, heartwarming scenes in the whole film) and discover lots of new creatures.

Their discovery of the new creatures is, in my opinion, one of the best aspects of The Croods. There were two ways that the filmmakers could have gone about the Croods discovering their new world. On the one hand, we could be shown creatures that are old to us (dinosaurs, big mammals, etc…) but new to the Croods. There’s nothing wrong with this tact, although it certainly makes it a little more difficult for an audience to feel the same sense of wonder. On the other hand, the filmmakers could attempt to find a way to make the discoveries new to us, as well, so that we can experience the Croods new world with the same sense of wonder and excitement that they do. To my great delight, they chose option number 2.

To this end, the filmmakers unleash their imaginations and go hog-wild with some incredibly clever animal-hybrids: we get flying turtle-parrots, land-walking whale-elephants, ferocious owl-cats and multi-colored bird-tigers. In fact, there doesn’t appear to be a “regular” animal anywhere in the film, unless one counts the versatile Belt. There’s so much stuff happening in the margins of the screen that I’m assuming multiple views are necessary to really see everything. Couple this with some truly gorgeous animation (the first time they see the night sky is nothing short of magical), some really suspenseful action scenes (the bit where Guy and Grug are trapped in tar is pretty great) and some truly funny dialogue (“He’s riding the sun!…But not very well.”), and the replay factor for The Croods is pretty high.

Ultimately, The Croods was a film that surprised me early and often. I went into it expecting to see some slick, well-produced but ultimately soulless piece of Hollywood animation. What I got, however, was a gorgeous film with tons of imagination, heart and spirit, a movie that hearkened back to the glory days of animation with none of the needless self-reference of today (if there were any allusions or nods to current pop culture trends/issues in the film, they must have gone largely over my head).

As I’ve done with every Oscar-nominated film, thus far, I’ve asked myself the same question: did this film deserve to get nominated and can it actually win the prize? In this instance? Yes and yes.

1/29/14: Some Homes are Castles

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'70s films, Abby, Anne Tenney, Australian films, B-movies, Blacula, blaxploitation films, Charles Tingwell, cinema, Coastas Kilias, Darryl Kerrigan, Dracula, eminent domain, Eric Bana, feel-good films, films, happy films, horror films, independent films, low-budget films, making a stand, Mamuwalde, Michael Caton, Movies, Rob Sitch, The Castle, The Full Monty, the Kerrigans, Tiriel Mora, uplifting films, vampires, William Crain, William Marshall

Of the many, many sub-genres available in the wide world of film, I must admit a certain fondness for the blaxploitation genre. I grew up on films like Shaft, Dolemite and Across 110th Street (one of my all-time favorite movies): I’ll stack any of these films up against whatever you’ve got. Blaxploitation horror, however, was always a bit of a dicier proposition. When done poorly, you ended up with travesties like Blackenstein (which we’ll review in a future segment) or goofy romps like Abby. Upon occasion, however, there were some real gems to be found here: Sugar Hill and J.D.’s Revenge are both atmospheric little chillers and Scream, Blacula, Scream is a minor classic. The best of the bunch, however, as well as the forefather of them all was William Crain’s Blacula.

Blacula begins in a fairly typical way for an American International production (Corman is definitely a spiritual forefather to the proceedings): a dark and stormy night at Dracula’s castle. The distinguished African Prince Mamuwalde (William Marshall) has sought an audience with Count Dracula in order to request his assistance in ending the slave trade to North America; Dracula, for his part, really likes his slaves and wouldn’t mind a few more. He turns on Mamuwalde, bites him, curses him (“I curse you with my name. You shall be…Blacula!”), seals him in a coffin and walls his wife up to starve to death in the tomb. In other words, this Dracula is pretty much a colossal, racist asshole.

An inspired animated credit sequence (seriously cool, maybe one of the coolest credit sequences ever, to be honest) leads into the present day, where a couple of the most outrageous gay interior designer clichés in the history of moving pictures are purchasing several items from Dracula’s castle (a Transylvanian yard sale?). They fall in love with the coffin, even though they haven’t opened it, and lug it all the way home to Los Angeles. Once there, Mamuwalde (now Blacula) rises from his centuries-long sleep and proceeds to break fast on our friendly duo. He then stalks the streets until he accidentally runs into Tina (Vonetta McGee), who just so happens to be the spitting image of his long-deceased wife. What’s a lonely vampire to do but court this lovely creature? Turns out Tina’s friends and sister aren’t too keen on the idea, especially after some sleuthing turns up the truth about Mamuwalde’s origins (for one thing, he lies about his age). Dr. Gordon Thomas (Thalmus Rasulala) teams up with Lt. Peters (Gordon Pinset) and the LAPD and they all attempt to run the bloodsucker to ground. This culminates in a chase through a warehouse and the ultimate act of melancholy acceptance.

As far as low-budget horror films go, Blacula is certainly no worse (nor much better, in certain ways) than many others. The film is actually much less gimmicky than it may sound, functioning more as another straight-faced, if slightly unoriginal, adaptation of Bram Stoker’s classic novel than anything else. Unlike Blackenstein, the majority of the cast in Blacula are black, with the majority of the white actors portraying the police. Cultural aspects are also interwoven much more organically through the story, from Prince Mamuwalde’s origins to the fantastically funky Afro-Cuban theme song.

In fact, for the most part, the film actually comes across as very low-key and highly respectful. William Marshall portrays Mamuwalde with a tremendous amount of dignity and nobility, as truly befits a Prince, and there’s very little in the way of slapstick humor (the interior designers are about as comical as it gets). Marshall, a trained Broadway and Shakespearian actor (as well as the King of Cartoons from Peewee’s Playhouse), actually worked with Crain and the producers to give his character a back-story, which certainly helps to elevate the story into the realm of tragedy rather than exploitation. The love story also feels genuine and not tacked on, something else that ties it in more intimately with the source material.

As befits a low-budget horror film from 1972, however, all is not smooth-sailing. The makeup, in general, is pretty bad but poor Blacula’s makeup is particularly awful: he basically just grows a widows-peak and unibrow. Some of the dialogue can be pretty silly (“Vampires multiple geographically.” “It’s a goddamn epidemic!”) and the gay characters are obviously very out-moded and rather derogatory. Everyone involved came from TV backgrounds, which definitely influences the overall look of the film (think Kolchak-esque production values). Marshall is pretty spectacular in the titular role, however, and the ending packs a pretty decent emotional wallop. All in all, Blacula ends up being one of the better low-budget vampire films out there and definitely worthy of a screening. Be forewarned, however: you’ll be humming the theme song and performing “air horns” for the next week straight.

Sometimes, it takes me a while to really connect with a movie. I may watch something a few times and appreciate it but it may take me a whole lot longer to actually like it. Take Fincher’s The Game, for example: I actively hated that film when I saw it in the theater but, after watching it several more times in the ensuing years, I’ve actually begun to like the movie. Give it another 10 years and I’ll probably love it.

Some films, however, hit me immediately, going straight to my reptile brain and setting up residence in my immune system. I fell completely head-over-heels for The Good, the Bad and the Ugly when I first saw it, for example and after finishing Taxidermia for the first time, I promptly started it all over again. It’s hard to tell why some things get to me more than others. I do know one thing, however: I fell instantly in love with Rob Sitch’s The Castle and it will, in all likelihood, become one of my favorite films in the future.

The Castle is an Australian film that could, for lack of a better term, best be described as a feel-good film. Right off the bat, we’re introduced to the Kerrigan family, an ultra-lovable clan of eccentrics. There’s Darryl (Michael Caton), the resourceful, ever-optimistic patriarch and his loving, supportive wife Sal (Anne Tenney) or, as their kids say, “If Dad is the backbone, Mum is the other bones.” We also meet their kids Dale, Steve and Tracey (Stephen Curry, Anthony Simcoe and Sophia Lee, respectively) and Tracey’s husband, Con (Eric Bana, in his screen debut). Another son, Wayne (Wayne Hope) is currently serving a prison sentence, not because he’s a bad person, but because he listened to the  wrong person. There is absolutely no sense of shame as far as Wayne goes: his family loves him just as much as if he were sitting before them.

And this, friends and neighbors, is what makes The Castle so completely, absolutely magical: these people genuinely love and respect each other! Fancy that: a family unit constructed of love, support and understanding, rather than sarcasm, irony and snarkiness…the mind practically buckles at the thought! These are quirky characters, to be sure, but they never lose one iota of their wonderful innocence and charm, regardless of how strange their actions might get or how much the world attempts to crush them down. For the world will, indeed, try to crush the Kerrigans.

Turmoil comes to their small suburban paradise in the form of a planned expansion by the next-door airport (literally next-door, as in “two-feet-from-their-backyard” close). Their property, along with their neighbors’ properties have been seized under eminent domain laws and they’ve been offered a cash settlement and told to hit the road. Only problem is, Darryl Kerrigan loves his home: it may look cheap, stitched together and decidedly middle-class to outsiders but it’s where he raised his family, it’s where all of his memories are and it’s his home, dammit! He rallies his neighbors, who all pledge to put up a united front. As his neighbor Farouk (Costas Kilias) makes clear, things can always be worse: “He say plane fly overhead, drop value. I don’t care. In Beirut, plane fly over, drop bomb. I like these planes.”

When he can’t get anyone to listen, Darryl enlists the aid of the lawyer who represented Wayne, despite his lack of knowledge in constitutional law cases (“I can’t do this!” “You defended Wayne.” “And he got eight years!”) and proceeds to take the case as far as he can. Along the way, he happens to join forces with a former Queens Council barrister, a legal eagle who just may have the know-how to send the government packing. The whole thing climaxes in a thrilling courtroom dance between the barrister (Charles Tingwell) and those who would deny a man the simple right to raise his family.

The Castle is one of those films that, as mentioned above, I just fell in love with right off the bat. The humor is rapid fire and genuinely funny (blink-and-you’ll-miss-it moments include the super-thin pool table built into the too-small room and Dale’s outrageously useless inventions) and the dramatic moments actually feel real, not tagged on. The acting is absolutely impeccable, especially from Michael Caton: I not only felt like I knew Darryl but I genuinely wanted to spend time with him. This, in a nutshell, is the beauty of the entire film: this is a group of people who genuinely love and care for each other. As a family unit, they are nothing but positivity, acceptance and love. My favorite example of this comes from the family’s dinners, where Darryl constantly extols the virtue of his wife’s cooking: “What do you call this, then?” “Chicken.” “And it’s got something sprinkled on it.” “Seasoning.” “Seasoning! Look’s like everybody’s kicked a goal!” Moments like this could come across as silly and treacly in the wrong hands but the film is so pitch-perfect that it all comes across as sweet rather than cloying.

In fact, the absolute best compliment that I can pay The Castle is that I really didn’t want it to end. I could have probably enjoyed the Kerrigan’s exploits for another two or three hours but the 85 minutes I spend with them was way too short. I was going to compare The Castle to another go-to feel-good movie of mine, The Full Monty (a comparison which the box art even takes pains to mention) but I honestly believe that The Castle is the far superior film. The Full Monty, as great as it is, still has a tendency to manipulate and play with our emotions and expectations. The Castle, on the other hand, just presents a group of really likable characters and asks you to come along for the ride: that’s an invitation I’ll accept anytime.