The Year in Review: The Top 20 Films of 2015 (Part One)

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2015, Best of 2015, best of the year, Buzzard, cinema, favorite films, favorite films of the year, film reviews, films, Girlhood, Inside Out, Movies, People Places Things, personal opinions, Reality, The Duke of Burgundy, The Final Girls, The Martian, The Midnight Swim, What Happened Miss Simone?

Now that the horror categories for 2015 have been officially closed off, it’s down to the last, big list of this previous cinematic year: the 20 films that I considered to be the very best of the entire year, regardless of genre. Many of these have been bouncing around in my brain for almost the entire year: some were screened for the first time a week ago and still managed to vault onto the list.

From January 1st to December 31st, I managed to watch a grand total of 348 films, 119 of which were 2015 releases and, thus, eligible for this humble little list. Out of those 119 movies, I managed to whittle the contenders down to the best overall 20, plus seven runner-ups.

As far as I’m concerned, 2015 was another banner year for quality cinema. While the multiplex offerings were still as hit-or-miss as ever, VOD and streaming choices really came into their own this year, offering movie fans of every stripe and type a virtual cornucopia of choice offerings. If you didn’t find enough quality films to keep you occupied in 2015, I’m going to go ahead and offer my stock response: you just weren’t looking hard enough.

In that spirit of excellence, The VHS Graveyard proudly presents the first part of the Top 20 Films of 2015: numbers 20-11. Enjoy and stayed tuned for the finale and year-end wrap-up as we bid a fond, final farewell to 2015.

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20.

The Martian

I’m a sucker for both “stranded in space” flicks and intelligent sci-fi, so Ridley Scott’s return to the vacuum of space was always going to light up at least a few pleasure centers in my brain. That being said, even I wasn’t expecting to like The Martian this much. Chalk it up to a combination of an extremely likable Matt Damon performance, lots of completely immersive visuals and locations and tons of organic tension but Scott’s film delivers (at least for me) in the way that mega-budget, multiplex fare rarely does. My biggest complaint (and what keeps this from placing higher on this list) are all of the completely unnecessary cutaways to the rescue effort back on Earth: when The Martian is smart enough to trust solely in Damon’s charisma and Scott’s vision, it shines like a supernova.

19.

Inside Out

Few films, much less animated ones, deal with emotions quite as honestly as Pixar’s Inside Out. Honesty and self-reflection are the name of the game here, however, and the usual madcap antics take a decided backseat to the kind of melancholy soul-searching that’s usually reserved for more adult fare. This coming-of-age tale about young Riley learning to listen to the disparate “voices” in her head is just as apt to produce sniffles in the over-30 set as it is to produce wonder with the young’uns, however, so impressionable parents should proceed with caution: if the kids ask, you just got something in your eye.

18.

People, Places, Things

If I was looking to select a “Most Valuable Player (Male)” for this prior calendar year, it would probably be a tough choice between Kurt Russell and Jemaine Clement. While Russell will always have the “Biggest Badass” title locked down, Clement proved himself one of the year’s very best actors with unforgettable performances in both What We Do in the Shadows and People, Places, Things. As art teacher/single dad Will Henry, Clement lays it all out on the line and the results are a thoroughly heady mixture of deep sadness, wry humor, wounded love and pure indie dramedy bliss. Nothing in writer-director James C. Strouser’s third feature is ham-handed, tonally false or revoltingly precious, despite the presence of Will’s adorable young daughters. This has “modern-day classic” written all over it.

17.

What Happened, Miss Simone?

Passionate, politically-active and never afraid to speak her mind, the legendary Nina Simone took a huge piece of the world’s soul with her when she shuffled off this mortal coil back in 2003. Liz Garbus’ meticulous, fascinating documentary, What Happened, Miss Simone?, uses mind-blowing archival footage, interviews with Simone’s grown daughter and former husband/manager and a host of musical and pop culture luminaries to paint a truly three-dimensional portrait of the musician/activist that might have more relevance today than it did back when Simone was alive. Never afraid to shy away from the various personal issues that made Simone such an interesting person, Garbus’ film is a vital, fiery tribute to a truly one-of-a-kind talent.

16.

The Duke of Burgundy

Smart, sensual and just strange enough to keep you constantly off-balance, writer-director Peter Strickland’s The Duke of Burgundy is a singularly unique experience. Taking place in a world that appears to be devoid of men, Strickland examines the power dynamic behind submissive/dominant relationships, tracking the assorted head games and romantic machinations of a couple of butterfly experts as they attempt to define their relationship in a way that makes sense to them, if not necessarily others. Full of genuinely weird touches (the various mannequins posed in the lecture scenes are more than a little nightmarish, especially divorced from context), lush visuals and a dreamy, evocative atmosphere, The Duke of Burgundy finds Strickland slowly morphing into Peter Greenaway, adopting the elder statesman’s more painterly affectations with ease. Obviously, there’s nothing wrong with that whatsoever.

15.

The Final Girls

I’ve written about my love for Todd Strauss-Schulson’s nostalgic “Purple Rose of Cairo by way of Friday the 13th” meta-slasher already, so let’s just rehash a few of the most salient points. Full of genuine emotional heft, surprisingly funny humor, lots of memorable performances/characters and just enough violence to sell the concept without wallowing in it (the film is rated PG-13, after all), The Final Girls is that rare horror film that serves as not only a love letter for the devoted but a surefire entry-point for the less initiated. You’ll laugh, you’ll gasp, you’ll choke up and you’ll probably hum “Bette Davis Eyes” for a week: deal with it.

14.

The Midnight Swim

While fear, disquiet and unease are all important emotions to invoke with genre films, there’s an additional emotion that I feel gets short shrift: wonder. Although writer-director Sarah Adina Smith’s The Midnight Swim is pretty light on fear, it more than makes up for that with an abundance of disquiet, unease and, of course, wonder. This measured, intelligent drama about a trio of sisters who come together at their family’s lakeside cabin to mourn their missing (but presumed drowned) mother traffics in some of the biggest questions to plague the human animal: Why are we here? Are we all connected, somehow? Where do we go when we die? With a final revelation that’s quietly mind-blowing, in a Kubrickian way, The Midnight Swim is the kind of film that you think about long after the final credits roll.

13.

Buzzard

Loud, obnoxious, casually offensive, openly belligerent and with a massive, Holden Caulfield-shaped chip on its smartass shoulder, Joel Potrykus’ Buzzard is probably what would have happened had Alex Cox opted to follow Repo Man with a primordial version of Office Space. This fractured, completely insane “narrative” about a shitty, young office temp who gets fed up with the phoniness of the world and proceeds to do battle armed with a caustic sneer, a sarcastic quip and a razor-tipped Nintendo Power Glove may not be for everyone but it might just be for you. Similar to the works of Quentin Dupieux, Buzzard pulls you in to a batshit insane, utterly nightmarish world where nothing functions like it should and the very act of wolfing down a heaping plate of spaghetti becomes its own act of societal rebellion. Utterly unforgettable and unlike anything else out there, Buzzard is grimy, ugly and uniquely original, fluttering among the countless masses of homogeneous, Xeroxed bullshit like some kind of a warning from beyond the stars.

12.

Girlhood

This was actually the very last film I screened in 2015, yet ended up being one of the best films I saw all year. Grounded by a simply stunning performance from first-timer Karidja Toure, Celine Sciamma’s coming of age tale details the lives of a a group of poor, black teenagers, growing up on the outskirts of Parisian society. There’s a lot to digest here, from sobering examinations of institutional racism to abusive relationships, from the inherent power of female friendships to the continued disparity between the haves and the have-nots. Never content to hit the easy, surface emotions, Sciamma’s film is raw, honest and, at times, almost too painful to watch. Just try and take your eyes from Toure, however, even for a minute: if there’s a more magnetic new performer out there, I don’t know who they are. Girlhood is not only an impeccably made, beautiful film: it’s a vibrant, utterly alive one that demands respect for its subjects and won’t let go of your throat til you’ve given it.

11.

Reality

In years past, it was all but a given that any new Quentin Dupieux film would end up on my years’ best list. Who am I to buck trends this year? While Dupieux’s newest is a solid half-step (maybe three-quarter step)  down from the sublimely perfect Wrong (2012) and Wrong Cops (2013), it’s still one of the most casually mind-blowing, crazy films of the year. Essentially the story of one director’s quest to find the perfect, Oscar-worthy groan (you could ask but I could never explain), this curious bit of meta-fiction turns and folds in on itself so many times that it’s all but impossible to keep up, sort of like Charlie Kaufman or Spike Jonze getting blasted on peyote tea.

While the film manages to make even less sense than its predecessors (like most Dupieux films, there’s nothing wrong with admitting bafflement), it’s an easy film to watch and, quite frankly, to love. Leave your preconceptions at the door, eliminate all distractions, give your complete and undivided attention to the screen and trust Dupieux to get you to his destination in (more or less) one piece. When you have a filmmaker as amazing as Quentin Dupieux driving the jalopy, just kick back and enjoy the damn ride.

Stay tuned for the final part of our Best of the Year spectacular: the Top 10 films of 2015.

Halftime Report: The Best Films of 2015 (So Far)

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A Girl Walks Home Alone At Night, Best of 2015, best-of lists, Buzzard, cinema, Creep, Faults, film reviews, films, Motivational Growth, Movies, op-ed pieces, personal lists, Reality, Slow West, The Voices, Welcome to Me

With the year more than halfway through, what better time to take a preliminary look back at the films that, in my humble little opinion, have been the very best of a pretty good eight months? Since there are still 4.5 months left and plenty of potentially incredible movies still to be seen (Goodnight Mommy, The Martian, Crimson Peak, Suffragette, Scout’s Guide to the Zombie Apocalypse, Cooties, Tales of Halloween, Bone Tomahawk, Before I Wake, Final Girls, Trumbo, Krampus, The Hateful Eight and Revenant are all on my “must-see” list, along with a raft of others), this is by no means a complete list: there is no particular order to anything, no sense of ranking or any of that jazz…yet, at least.

And now, with no further ado, my nine favorite films of 2015 (so far):

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Welcome to Me

I absolutely adored everything about this smart, quirky and endlessly charming look at a woman with borderline personality disorder who wins the lottery and decides to launch her own talk show. In an era where narcissism seems to be the new norm, Shira Piven’s constantly surprising film has plenty to say about the way we view ourselves, the world around us and all of the wonderful misfits that inhabit it. Above all else, Kristen Wiig is a complete marvel and one of my early picks for Best Actress of the Year. I dare anyone to watch this and not be pounded senseless by your own emotions.

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Slow West

Not only one of the very best films I saw this year but one of the very best Westerns I’ve seen in longer than I can remember, Slow West has “modern-day classic” written all over it. The story of a teenage, Scottish greenhorn and the “reformed” outlaw who chaperones him through the wild and woolly West, Slow West is full of masterful performances (I predict a Best Supporting Actor nod for Mendelsohn), gorgeous cinematography and a wildly unpredictable streak of magical-realism that feels like the Coen Brothers by way of Wes Anderson. Nearly perfect and essential viewing.

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Faults

Nothing about this effortlessly bold, thought-provoking film is spoon-fed or obvious and that’s just the way I like ’em. While Faults may seem overly familiar on the outside (if anything, the “male deprogrammer vs female cult member” synopsis makes this seem like a riff on Jane Campion’s odd Holy Smoke (1999)), the film manages to spiral out into a million different directions, like meteors vaulting into the sky instead of the other way around. Essentially a two-person character study, Leland Orser and Mary Elizabeth Winstead prove so magnetic and compelling that we don’t really need any other characters: I would have happily spent 3 hours with these two, making this the rare case of a film where I just didn’t want it to end.

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Creep

If you look at him, Mark Duplass is probably the very last person you’d cross the street to avoid: with his constant grin, sarcastic demeanor and doofy “every-man” bearing, Duplass seems like the epitome of the comedy “lifer.” Immense kudos to Duplass and co-writer/director Patrick Brice, then, for managing to make the character of Josef such a thoroughly unnerving, unsettling and, ultimately, absolutely terrifying presence. The film gradually ratchets up the tension, lulling the viewer into a false sense of security until it’s too late to realize that the subtle increase in temperature we’ve been feeling has been the duo turning the knob from “simmer” to “blast-furnace.” By that point, it’s far too late: our geese have already been cooked.

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A Girl Walks Home Alone at Night

Like the mutant offspring of Jim Jarmusch and John Hughes, Ana Lily Amirpour’s A Girl Walks Home Alone at Night is equal parts art and nostalgia, teen angst and existential angst. Billed as “the first Iranian Vampire Western” and shot in gorgeous black and white, there’s a narcotic, hallucinogenic quality to the film’s gauzy cinematography and even hazier moral outlook that’s not quite like anything else out there. When Amirpour wants to draw blood, however, she’s as fearless as any horror auteur before her.

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Buzzard

As a big fan of both counterculture and “weird” films, Buzzard is the very best example of getting peanut butter in my chocolate. Fiercely anti-authoritarian, casually offensive, as fidgety as a meth addict on a bender and given to breaking minds at the drop of a hat (the film’s finale is almost as mind-melting as the conclusion to Villeneuve’s Enemy (2014), which is no mean feat), Buzzard is one of those films that’s best experienced…no mere plot description could do justice to this fundamentally cracked depiction of a day in the life of one of the most staunchly individualistic antiheroes since Holden Caulfield first flipped off the phonies some sixty years ago.

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Reality

Full disclosure: I’ve never met a Quentin Dupieux film that I wasn’t madly in love with. Period. In a world where filmmakers seem to outnumber grains of sand on the beach, Dupieux is a true visionary, a genius filmmaker whose surreal paeans to the absurdity of modern life just don’t look or feel quite like anyone else. While Reality isn’t quite as perfect as either Wrong (2012) or Wrong Cops (2014), it’s still a thoroughly mind-blowing, utterly insane and completely wonderful trip through a true artist’s immensely fucked-up mind.

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The Voices

If you would have told me that one of the most amazing, stylish, disturbing and original horror films of the year would star Ryan Reynolds and be directed by Persepolis’ (2007) Marjane Satrapi…well…I would have absolutely agreed with you, hands down. You see, advance word of mouth was so strong with The Voices (Satrapi’s first ever attempt at a horror flick) that I was already predisposed to love it before I even had a chance to see it. Luckily, this was one case of the hype being downplayed: The Voices isn’t just an amazing film…it’s a goddamn revelation and should have achieved instant classic status. Instead, this dark fable about an exceptionally disturbed man and the talking cat and dog who “guide” him is the very definition of a sleeper. In a perfect world, Reynolds would be looking at a Best Actor nomination for his performance and Satrapi would be looking at a Best Director nod for hers. If dreams really do come true, I hope Puppy Goo Goo fetches this one just for me.

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Motivational Growth

I had zero idea of what to expect going into this (the synopsis was intriguingly gonzo and it featured Jeffrey Combs, so I was definitely on-board) and precious little idea of what I had just seen when it was over. The only thing I did know? I wanted more, more, more, just like that greedy little shit, Oliver T. Motivational Growth is genuinely weird (as in “early David Lynch on acid” weird), incredibly grungy, more than a little gross, completely disturbing, uncomfortably thought-provoking, a little sad, totally outrageous, certainly not for polite company and, without a shadow of a doubt, one of my very favorite films of the entire year (the film officially received festival play in 2013 but didn’t get any kind of wider distribution until this year, hence, its relative age vs release discrepancy). What’s it about? In a nutshell, a shut-in receives life-coaching advice from a large patch of talking fungus on his bathroom wall. Terrible, hilarious, gross things ensue. In other words: this is unmitigated greatness not seen in these parts for some time.

And there you have it: my favorite nine films of 2015, thus far. I’ll leave you with a short list of the runners-up, those films that just fell short of making my short list. Let’s check back and do this all over again in 4.5 months, shall we?

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Runner-Ups (So Far)

Digging Up the Marrow

Honeymoon

Wolfcop

Zombeavers

It Follows

Spring

6/11/15: Don’t Forget About the Power Glove!

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Adam J. Minnick, Alan Longstreet, Animal Trilogy, anti-authority, anti-establishment, anti-hero, Ape, awkward films, Buzzard, cinema, con artists, Cool Hand Luke, Coyote, dark comedies, experimental film, film reviews, films, Freddy Krueger, Harmony Korine, indie films, Jason Roth, Joe Anderson, Joel Potrykus, Joshua Burge, Katie Call, long shots, Marty Jackitansky, Michael Cunningham, millenial angst, Movies, Nintendo Power Glove, odd movies, One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, Quentin Dupieux, Richard Linklater, slackers, stylish films, surreal, Teri Ann Nelson, writer-director-actor-editor, youthful angst, youthful rebeliion

When Marlon Brando uttered the immortal rejoinder “Whadda ya got?” all the way back in 1953, it’s highly unlikely that he had Marty Jackitansky in mind. 60 years later, however, here he is, ready or not: the heir apparent to Johnny Strabler, Holden Caulfield and “Cool Hand” Luke Jackson, Marty is the anti-establishment anti-hero that our era needs (and deserves), the kind of cynical, self-serving smart-ass who flies the middle finger by default, in the same way that some folks slip on plastic smiles before punching the daily clock. He might never be anyone’s idea of a conventional hero but for any poor sucker caught in the clutches of the modern working malaise, he just might be the only hero we’re gonna get.

Marty and the rest of the colorful oddballs that orbit around him are all residents of multi-hyphenate madman Joel Potrykus’ ingeniously warped Buzzard (2014). Not only does Potrykus write, direct and edit the film (the third part in a trilogy that also includes Coyote (2010) and Ape (2012)), he also has a prominent role as Marty’s delightfully obnoxious, uber-nerdy co-worker. It’s a lot to bite off for any filmmaker but Potrykus, with only his second feature film, makes the whole thing look ridiculously easy. The result? One of the quirkiest, coolest, funniest and just plain out-there films I’ve had the pleasure of seeing all year. At this rate, Potrykus runs the risk of joining such vaunted company as Quentin Dupieux, Harmony Korine and György Pálfi as a first-rate purveyor of outsider cinema.

By day, our humble “hero,” Marty (brilliantly played by Potrykus mainstay Joshua Burge), toils away in the kind of anonymous, homogeneous cubicle graveyard that seems more minimum-security prison than place of work. Well…”toil” is really a relative term: you see, Marty is the kind of fella who internalized the “work smarter, not harder” maxim more than most, turning it into the kind of do-or-die statement of purpose that characterizes the most successful con artists. In fact, virtually every waking second of Marty’s existence is given over to scams of one sort or the other: he orders expensive office supplies from work, “returns” them at a nearby office supply store and pockets the cash…he eats nothing but frozen food, most of which he receives for free after constantly complaining about the “quality,” usually after he already finished licking the pizza sauce off his fingers…he rescues discarded food from a McDonald’s dumpster and returns it to the counter for a “fresh” replacement. Marty isn’t running a game: his entire existence IS a game, one that he seems to be handily winning.

When he’s not constantly scamming, Marty appears to only have three other interests: pounding metal music of any and every variety (Norwegian black metal seems to be a particular favorite), anything horror-related and video games. In other words, Marty is the very picture of arrested adolescence: with his Doritos-and-pizza-sandwiches, constant Nintendo playing and brain-rattling thrash, Marty is every loner who ever lived on their friend’s couch, every “twenty-something-teenager” who ever tried to shuffle their way through this mixed-up world of ours. Hell, Marty has such laser-focus that his prize personal project is a glove that combines the old Nintendo Power Glove with horror icon Freddy Krueger’s razor-bladed weapon-of-choice.

As he yawns his way through a workday that holds absolutely no interest for him whatsoever (Marty’s a temp at a bank, which easily stands as one of the most anonymous, thankless jobs out there), he gets a “golden parachute” dropped into his lap, so to speak: Carol (Teri Ann Nelson), his supervisor, hands Marty a small mountain of returned customer refunds to process. Marty’s job is fairly simple (he just has to call the customers and/or look up their current addresses) but he gives it the same expert touch he applies to any work project: he half-asses it before finally giving up. After a mix-up with the birthday check that his mother mails him, however, Marty is introduced to the joys of signing checks over to himself.

In no time, Marty is supplementing his other (ill-gotten) income by depositing the customer refunds into his own account. After his supremely geeky co-worker, Derek (Potrykus), uncovers the scheme, however, Marty’s paranoia begins to kick in. Once Carol casually drops the bomb that she, personally, monitors the account that the refunds are drawn from, however, Marty’s whole world begins to collapse. Despite the lack of any sort of organized investigation, Marty goes on the lam, convinced that his scams have finally caught up with him. Armed with only a pocketful of stolen checks, a combo Power Glove/blade weapon and a sneer that could wrap around the planet twice, Marty is bound and determined to make it out, on his own terms. He’s gonna have to stay sharp, though: in a world full of idiots, phonies, squares and drones, any nail that sticks out is guaranteed to hit hammered down.

As a bit of disclaimer, I’ll begin by saying that I have a particular fondness for anything where a clever, roguish anti-hero sticks it to our modern shit-storm of a society: blame it on too many viewings of Cool Hand Luke (1967), Caddyshack (1980) and Stripes (1981) during my formative years but I always back the rebel, regardless of the situation. In this regard, Buzzard hits the bull’s-eye dead-center, presenting me with one of those unforgettable shit-disturbers that I prize so highly.

Marty Jackitansky, to cut to the chase, is a great character, one of those literary/cinematic creations that is so instrumental in helping us make sense of the world we live in. Like many presumed drones, Marty is as deeply mired in the system as his peers: the major difference, of course, is that they’re merely marking time, whereas he’s trying to carve out his own bit of reality. In many ways, Marty is the very best kind of role-model one could have: he, literally, spends every waking moment of his life indulging in all of the things that he loves, without giving much thought to the stuff that doesn’t matter.

Unlike Derek or the other temp, Stacy (Katie Call), Marty has no interest in “doing a good job” at work: this kind of work doesn’t matter, ultimately…it has no inherent value, beyond the meager paycheck, and brings no great worth to his life. Rather than pretend that worthless things like his office temp job actually matter, Marty treats them like the ridiculous jokes that they really are: it’s not so much that Marty is an eternal optimist as that he, literally, doesn’t sweat the small stuff (including all of the societal niceties like “hanging out” and making small talk).

The kicker, of course, is that Potrykus is much too clever a filmmaker to simply present us with a “lovable ruffian” (although, to be fair, nothing about Marty really says “lovable”) and take easy pot-shots at society. Rather, we get a no-holds-barred view of Marty’s process, which means that we get a front-row-seat to his inevitable paranoid breakdown. Potrykus (and Marty) know that you can only flip off life for so long before you get as good as you get: his downfall doesn’t have as much to do with his slippery moral slope as it does with the fact that, in the end, none of us can escape the machine. The film’s brilliant final image isn’t so much a marvelous bit of magical-realism as it is the realization that nothing is ever quite what it seems: you can break out of one “prison” only to find yourself right back in another.

While the filmmaking here is absolutely top-notch, there’s no denying that Burge shoulders an enormous amount of the burden. His portrayal of Marty is so perfect, so wonderfully insular, that he immediately vaults into the upper-echelon of cinematic outsiders like One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest’s (1975) Randle McMurphy or the aforementioned Holden Caulfield. There’s not much margin for error, here, since Potrykus’ style leans heavily on extreme close-ups and awkwardly long takes: if Burge wasn’t always completely invested, if we couldn’t see the spark of Marty’s rebellion in every single smirk, squint and chortle, this would all get old ridiculously quick. Instead, we get brilliant scenes like the one where Marty shovels spaghetti into his face while wearing a pristine, white hotel bathrobe. In and of itself, the scene means nothing: when you factor in Burge’s complete mastery of his character, the scene becomes something much more…it becomes triumphant, the perfect synthesis of mania and joy, a “final meal” consumed at a crossroads that leads either to victory or oblivion.

Burge isn’t the only one to watch here, however, even if he’s undeniably the film’s focus. Just as great, for different reasons, is Potrykus’ performance as the unforgettable Derek. Quite frankly, Derek is an awesome character, sort of the unofficial patron saint of basement dwellers everywhere. Between his “party zone” (the sad-looking basement in his dad’s house plus one of those cheap colored-light things from Spencers), his self-important proclamations on everything under the sun and his Bugles/Hot Pockets/Mountain Dew diet, Derek is a gaming-culture Everyman. He’s the kind of person who tries to turn co-workers on to terrible pop music, takes every opportunity to show he’s not “gay” and forces his house-guests to watch him play video games. Derek is the kind of character who could have been unbelievably insufferable and hateful yet, thanks to Potrykus’ all-in performance, he becomes an integral part of the film. It also helps that the side-splitting scene where he munches Bugles in faster and faster succession is, without a doubt, the single funniest gag like this since Lucy tried to eat all those chocolates.

There are so many layers to Buzzard that it’s difficult to get everything on the first go through, despite the apparent simplicity of the film. While it’s tempting to view the movie as a series of Marty’s adventures, the contrast with the “real world” is just too cutting to ignore. This becomes especially true once Marty goes on the run and his actions become increasingly violent and more unpredictable. Similar to the moment when we first realize just how disturbed Travis Bickle really is, it takes a while before we “wake up” to the reality of what Marty’s done. It’s quite telling that the film’s finale can be read as either abject success or failure, depending on the individual sensibilities.

As should be quite apparent, I absolutely loved Buzzard. The film has a great look (even the extreme close-ups eventually won me over), is genuinely funny (Marty’s “White Russian” response to “Is your name Polish?” might be my favorite quip of the month) and carves out its own path with ruthless focus. In many ways, the film reminded me of Quentin Dupieux-lite (despite seeming like a negative, that’s actually quite the positive) or a slightly warmer, friendlier co-mingling of Richard Linklater and Harmony Korine. While there are some genuinely strange elements to the film, it never quite hits the surreal heights of something like Wrong Cops (2013) or Gummo (1997), although there are certainly elements of both to be found here.

What the film absolutely does not remind me of, however, is Rick Alverson’s odious The Comedy (2012), another recent odd to aimlessness in the modern youth. The reason for this, I think, is pretty basic: while The Comedy sought to portray a group of privileged, self-obsessed hipster assholes waging war on “polite society” through a series of pranks and un-PC jokes, Buzzard gives us a genuine, counter-culture irritant who seeks to realign the modern world to his favor. Marty Jackitansky may be rebelling against everything but he’s got a reason: when the whole world is full of shit, sometimes you just gotta make your own reality. While I can’t say I always (or almost ever) agreed with Marty’s methods, I’d be lying if I said I didn’t respect his goal. The most I could say for the assorted schlubs in The Comedy, however, is that I probably wouldn’t think about mowing them down with a steamroller.

Many of us were raised on the old maxim “an honest pay for an honest day’s work.” When the return isn’t “honest,” however, what does that say about the work? Marty Jackitansky knows that you can never get ahead playing someone else’s game, so he brings his own to the party. If that ain’t something worth celebrating, well, I don’t know what is.