6/27/15 (Part One): The Unreality of Modern Life

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absurdist, Adaptation, Alain Chabat, art films, auteur theory, Élodie Bouchez, breaking the fourth wall, Charlie Kaufman, cinema, confusing films, dark comedies, dream-like, electronic score, Eric Wareheim, experimental film, Film auteurs, film reviews, films, hogs, Hollywood producer, Hollywood satire, husband-wife relationship, insanity, John Gallagher Jr., John Glover, John Heder, Jonathan Lambert, kooky psychiatrist, Kyla Kenedy, life imitating art, Lola Delon, loss of identity, Matt Battaglia, meta-films, Movies, Mr. Oizo, Patrick Bristow, producer-director relationships, Quentin Dupieux, Reality, Rubber, surrealism, Susan Diol, Synecdoche New York, Thomas Bangalter, videotapes, writer-director-cinematographer-editor, Wrong, Wrong Cops

Many filmmakers merely flirt with the weird and “out there,” toeing a carefully demarcated line in the sand between material that genuinely challenges viewers and material that upholds our own, personal status quos. These films may seem impossibly strange, from the outside, but cracking them open, as it were, tends to reveal their decidedly mundane inner workings. Gussying up a traditional narrative with stylistic tics and quirks, complex timelines and pseudo-philosophical meanderings doesn’t make it genuinely challenging any more than slapping a suit on a dog makes it the chairman of the board.

Standing on the fringes of these “politely difficult” films, however, are another batch of filmmakers: the agitators, the genuinely strange and the patently difficult. These are the filmmakers, artists like Charlie Kaufman, Yorgos Lanthimos, György Pálfi, Guy Maddin and Gaspar Noé, who possess singular visions that sit so far outside the mainstream as to seem almost alien. From films like Adaptation (2002) and Synedoche, New York (2008) to movies like Taxidermia (2006), Enter the Void (2009), Dogtooth (2009) and Tales From the Gimli Hospital (1988), these headscratchers are as far from popcorn multiplex features as one can get, immersing audiences into bizarre worlds that look strangely like our own, albeit twisted through a fractured mirror.

And, just to the left of that particular group, stands French auteur Quentin Dupieux. With a body of work that includes some of the most genuinely bizarre, out-there films I’ve ever seen, Dupieux has quickly become one of my very favorite modern filmmakers. As a firm believer in the auteur theory, Dupieux is sort of my gold standard in this day and age: not only does he write and direct his films, he also shoots, edits and performs the electronic scores (Dupieux is also a world-renowned electro-musician who goes by the name Mr. Oizo)…talk about a one-man band! Any new Dupieux film is cause for celebration, which leads us to the subject of our current discussion: his newest oddball creation, Reality (2014). Did I expect the unexpected? But of course. Did Dupieux deliver? Between my aching cranium and over-stimulated imagination, I’m gonna have to answer in the affirmative.

Coming across as a bizarro-world take on Adaptation, threaded through with elements of The Truman Show (1998) and left to melt in the noonday sun, Reality deals with three separate individuals and the ways in which their lives eventually crisscross each other, leading to no small amount of pandemonium, confusion and inner turmoil. Reality (Kyla Kenedy) is an inquisitive young girl whose hunter father (Matt Battaglia, bearing an uncanny resemblance to a young Paul Newman) has just killed a wild boar in the woods and pulled a blue videotape from its carcass. She also seems to be the star of some sort of film being shot in her room, while she sleeps, by a kooky director named Zog (the always-kooky John Glover)…you know, your basic kid stuff.

The next corner of our triangle is inhabited by Dennis (John Heder), the mopey, downtrodden host of a TV cooking show who wears a moth-eaten rat costume and scratches his (possibly imaginary) eczema like it was going out of style. All that Dennis wants is a little relief from his constant irritation but a trip to outrageously obnoxious Dr. Klaus (Patrick Bristow) makes him out to be either a liar, an idiot or both.

The final point of the triangle, preternaturally nice cameraman Jason (Alain Chabat, who featured prominently in several Gondry films, among many others), also ends up being our defacto protagonist. After working his way up from receptionist to cameraman on Dennis’ show, Jason now wants to take the next step and secure funding for his own film, a strange little sci-fi movie about evil, sentient televisions called Waves. When Jason goes to pitch his idea to mega-producer Bob Marshall (Jonathan Lambert), however, the Hollywood exec is only interested in one, single aspect of the proposed production: if Jason can come with the best, most “Oscar-worthy” groan of all time, Marshall will fund his film, sight unseen.

From this point, it becomes a madcap dash as our three corners all attempt to achieve their goals: Reality needs to find out what’s on the videotape, Dennis needs to cure his skin condition and Jason needs to find the ultimate expression of pain and present it to his increasingly unhinged producer. Did I also mention Henri (Eric Wareheim), Reality’s school superintendent, whose cross-dressing dreams appear to be bleeding into reality? How about Jason’s wife, Alice (Élodie Bouchez), the shrink who’s treating Henri in between disparaging virtually every aspect of her husband’s life? Somehow, all of these disparate elements come together to form a real tsunami of the strange, culminating in a truly mind-melting meta-commentary on the nature of authorship, the terror of identity and the inherent insanity of the Hollywood movie machine. In other words: par for the course for Dupieux, the crown-prince of impish cinematic provocateurs.

As an unabashed fan of anything and everything Dupieux (last year’s Wrong Cops was my pick for best film of the year), approaching any new film of his is always a bracing mixture of anticipation and nervous optimism: I haven’t been let down, yet, but I’m the kind of gloomy gus who always expects disappointment around every potential corner. As luck would have it, however, Reality isn’t the film to break Dupieux’s hot-streak, although it definitely doesn’t rank as high as Wrong Cops or Wrong (2012) in my personal metrics. Despite being a much more baffling, confounding experience than any of his prior films, Reality handily displays an outsider filmmaker in full control of his faculties, bound and determined to submerge us in his particular flavor of “reality,” whether or not our poor minds are equipped to handle the experience.

One of the most notable differences, right off the bat, is the more austere, “realistic” vibe of Dupieux’s newest film. In fact, it isn’t until nearly 30 minutes in where it really “feels” like a Dupieux: the scene where Wareheim is introduced, driving a jeep down the street while wearing a gray dress and red scarf, all scored by that subtle “Oizoian” brand of simmering electronica, is quintessential Dupieux and one of his most striking scenes yet. While the film goes on to blend the more serious vibe with some of the goofier elements of his past films (Klaus is the kind of character that can pretty much only exist in a Dupieux universe), there’s a much different vibe here than either Wrong Cops or Wrong. If anything, Reality plays like a more under-stated, low-key take on the existential insanity of Wrong.

As befits Dupieux’s films, he gets some extraordinarily great work out of his cast. While Heder doesn’t get quite as much screentime as I would have liked, he gives the role his all: at times, his performance reminded me of Michael Keaton’s outstanding work in Birdman (2014), albeit without many of Keaton’s subtle shadings. Kenedy does a great job as Reality, disproving the old adage that child actors can’t hold their own amongst the grownups. Glover is predictably odd as Zog, while Lambert has an obscene amount of fun as the batshit crazy producer: whether he’s forcing cigarettes on poor, non-smoking Jason or sniping surfers with a high-powered rifle (complete with scope), Marshall is an absolute force of nature.

For his part, Wareheim turns in my second favorite performance of his ever, the first being his role in Wrong Cops. I never actually liked anything Wareheim was a part of until he got involved with Dupieux’s films: needless to say, I still don’t care for any of his other roles but I’ll be damned if he’s not an integral, necessary part of this particular world. Any and all of Wareheim’s scenes here are easy highlights (the dream sequence where he yells at an old man is, hands-down, one of the funniest sequences of the entire year) and he fits the overall ethos like a glove: as strange as it seems, Wareheim just might be Dupieux’s muse.

While the ensemble cast does remarkable work, however, Alain Chabat’s performance as Jason Tantra is the beating heart of the film. Reality would frequently collapse into chaos if we weren’t so invested in poor Jason’s quest: as he tries to satisfy not only his work and home commitments but his inner, artistic ones, it’s easy to see Jason as a kind of “Everyman” (albeit one focused on the entertainment industry), an avatar for a modern world lost in the clang and bustle of its own progress. The scenes where Jason fights to retain not only his sanity but his very identity are so fundamentally powerful because Chabat cuts through the inherent absurdity and shows us the real, scared and confused individual beneath.

As befits the rest of Dupieux’s oeuvre, Reality looks and sounds amazing: he really has an eye for crisp, colorful cinematography that pops on the screen and that trademark score elevates and enhances everything it comes into contact with. Dupieux may wear an awful lot of hats but he wears them all like a champ, not a chump: he’s a true auteur, in every sense of the term.

While Reality is a typically strong film, I would also be remiss if I didn’t admit that I found the whole thing rather baffling and confounding: this is the kind of film where logic and narrative cohesion mean a great deal less than mood and intention. Although none of Dupieux’s films could ever be called “simplistic,” Reality layers level upon level of meta-commentary until the only natural response for one’s brain is to yell “Stop!” and pull the dead man’s switch. While I’m fairly confident that I understand aspects of the film (the commentary on authorship is pretty difficult to miss and it’s rather easy to see the character of Jason as a surrogate for Dupieux’s own filmmaking experiences), there’s much that remains a complete mystery to me, at least until I’ve managed to watch the film several more times. Suffice to say that Reality is such an experience, I don’t mind doing the heavy-lifting: much better to imperfectly understand a clever film than to be endlessly bored by a dumb one, methinks.

At the end of the day, there’s really not much to say here that I haven’t already said about the rest of Quentin Dupieux’s films: the French filmmaker is a true marvel, one of the freshest, most ingenious voices operating today and just the kind of filmmaker who can help push the industry into a higher plane of existence. If Reality doesn’t rank as my favorite Dupieux (it actually ranks towards the bottom, perhaps tied with Rubber (2010)), it still manages to stand head-and-shoulders above most of what’s out there, proving that the most fascinating things are still coming out of the fringes. Here’s to hoping that if Dupieux ever gets co-opted by the mainstream, he manages to retain more of his identity than Spike Jonze did: I’d love the chance to see him play in a bigger sandbox but only if he got to do it on his terms and his alone.

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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.

10/8/14 (Part One): The Loneliest Hunter of All

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31 Days of Halloween, art films, based on a book, Best of 2013, Birth, British films, cinema, co-writers, Daniel Landin, experimental film, film reviews, films, Jonathan Glazer, Movies, non-professional actors, Scarlet Johansson, Scarlett Johansson, sci-fi, sci-fi-horror, set in Scotland, Sexy Beast, Under the Skin, Walter Campbell, writer-director

Every great once in a while, a film comes along that completely blows my mind. I don’t necessarily mean this in the “what a great film” way but rather in the purer, more maddening “what the hell did I just watch” way. When I was younger, El Topo (1970), Holy Mountain (1973) and Even Dwarfs Started Small (1970) were three films, off the top of my head, that pretty much challenged everything I thought I knew about movies (and maybe even life, to a certain extent). More recently, Toad Road (2012) and A Field in England (2013) twisted my brain into a million little knots, although I’ll freely admit that neither film has one tenth the massed weirdness of one of Jodorowsky’s epics. To this short-list of mind-melting cinema, go ahead and add Jonathan Glazer’s amazing, eye-popping visual spectacle, Under the Skin (2013), a film which manages to split the difference between arthouse and grindhouse, coming up with something that feels dreamlike, impossibly convoluted and languid, yet startlingly alive.

Despite lacking a conventional linear narrative, Under the Skin never feels slight or half-baked, although offering a plot description becomes a bit problematic. Suffice to say that the film involves an unnamed woman, played by Scarlett Johansson, who drives around the Scottish countryside, picks up strange, unattached men (the unattached part, apparently, is quite important) and taking them back to her home. Once there, Johansson and the men undress, at which point the men appear to walk straight into some sort of all-consuming “blackness”: lather, rinse, repeat. As the film begins to take on some of the qualities of a phantasmagorical Groundhog Day (1993), other elements begin to drift to the forefront: a mysterious man on a motorcycle who appears to aid Johansson in her “job”…a strange, blue-lit “ocean” that appears to be of distinctly unearthly origin…a deformed “victim” who appears immune to whatever’s going on…throughout it all, the film relies on dialogue as little as possible, rendering the film closer to something like Kenneth Anger’s influential shorts rather than a more conventional narrative.

Under the Skin, unlike many films, is an almost purely cinematic experience: there is absolutely no hand-holding, telegraphing or easy answers to be found here. Indeed, I felt rather shell-shocked after the final credits rolled, since the entire film felt like some sort of barely remembered fever dream: it was like being rudely woken from an entrancing vision only to be unceremoniously dumped back into the real world. While other films may provoke the response “I wish it would never end,” Under the Skin practically demands it: the dreamlike aura and atmosphere is so addictive that re-entering reality feels like a severe comedown, regardless of one’s relative sobriety at the time. It’s no hyperbole to say that Under the Skin may have been the single biggest immersive experience I’ve had watching a film in recent memory.

Above all else, Glazer’s film is absolutely gorgeous, featuring some of the most stunning cinematography I’ve ever seen. Despite director of photography Daniel Landin’s relative lack of feature film experience (Under the Skin is only the fourth full-length film that he’s shot in a twenty-year career), I really don’t think anyone could have done a better job. From shots that explore darkness and shadow in impressive new ways to one astounding scene that looks to take place in a room-sized lightbox, virtually each and every shot in the film is a work of art. No lie: I’m more than happy to compare Under the Skin’s visuals to any other film out there, past or present, and I’m pretty confident that it would win each and every showdown. Under the Skin is just about the closest to a Kubrick film (in visual aesthetic) that I’ve ever seen, including any of Refn’s candy-colored daydreams.

Writer/director Glazer, whose short career (thus far) has only included three full-lengths and a slew of music videos, has such a firm grasp on the film that it becomes more than a little shocking to discover how much of it was, essentially, improvd. Apparently, Glazer would send Johannson out into the Scottish night and have her randomly “pick up” strangers: once the men took the bait, as it were, the production team would approach them with waivers, more specific direction, etc. In a way, this recalls the similar blurring of reality and fiction in the exceptional Toad Road, although Under the Skin is a much more dreamlike effort, all things considered. Even though none of the “victims” are really required to do much in the way of acting, it still strikes me as endlessly impressive that there was such an element of chance inherent to such a meticulously crafted piece of art: it’s akin to finding out that an amazing tattoo artist freehands everything, making the job as difficult as possible.

Full disclosure: I’ve never been the biggest Scarlett Johansson fan in the world. Truth be told, there have actually been very few films that I’ve really enjoyed her in, although I thought she was great in Don Jon (2013) and perfectly serviceable in Lost in Translation (2003). That being said, Johansson is absolutely pitch-perfect in Under the Skin, turning in a performance that is endlessly nuanced and as three-dimensional as a mysterious, unemotional, nearly mute character could possibly be. One of the most fascinating aspects of the movie is how completely unerotic and clinical the frequent nudity ends up being: despite her continued status as a modern “it girl,” Johansson manages to work wonders with her posture, stance and body language to craft a character that manages to seem almost utterly alien and strange. In the past, I’ve always had the dismayed sense that Johansson was a completely blank performer, no more capable of investing her characters with genuine life than she was with singing the songs of Tom Waits with any sense of passion. Here, Johansson’s inherent emptiness becomes but one facet of her unnamed character: she manages to off-set this blankness with some moments of genuine emotion. The scene where she has sex with one of the men she picks up is telling because it’s one of the few scenes where Johansson’s character displays any emotion aside from a sense of ennui: her panicky reaction works so well because it plays against everything that’s come before…watching the fine cracks spiderweb across the surface of Johansson’s frozen lake of a personality is one of the most sublime joys the film offers.

Truth be told, I still find myself a little off kilter after watching the film. While I genuinely enjoyed Glazer’s Sexy Beast (2000), there’s just no way I could have foretold that Under the Skin would be on the horizon, even almost 15 years later. There’s a genuine sense of grandeur and space that fills the entire film, a feeling that befits a work of art that has its head as far into outer space as it has its feet firmly planted on terra firma. Even a few days later, I’m hard-pressed to explain exactly what it was I saw: I have my suspicions, of course, my theories and even my doubts. At the end of the day, however, I just don’t know…and that’s a mighty awesome, invigorating problem to have. In a day and age where too many films shoot for the lowest common denominator and filmmakers seem to constantly “dumb down” their productions for less discerning audiences (hell, the Weinstein’s cut Snowpiercer’s (2013) running time because they didn’t think Western audiences would be able to patiently sit through the film), Under the Skin is that rare beast that does neither. Rather, Glazer’s film demands that audiences meet it on its own terms or not at all: I can only imagine how unbelievably frustrating Under the Skin would be to a passive, disengaged viewer.

At the end of the day, Under the Skin is many things: a mood piece; an art film; a sci-fi film; a horror movie; a romance; an allegory…it’s all of these and none of them, at the same time. While I don’t really know much the film, specifically, I do know that it really hit me hard and continues to be something that worms around my cerebral cortex. While there may come a day when I understand the film more completely (I have a nagging suspicion that I’ve missed some of the more important symbolism), I really hope that the day doesn’t come when I cease to be impressed by it. The world needs more films like Under the Skin: gorgeous, atmosphere, dense and uncompromising, the film is a true work of art. It may be a little premature to include this film on my list of all-time favorite movies (I’ll need to live with it a little longer and see it many more times before that can happen) but it’s no hyperbole to say that the film absolutely blew me away. Give Glazer another nine years and, I daresay, he might just come up with something that will set the film-world on its ear: I have no idea how he’ll top Under the Skin but I’m sure as hell excited to see him try.

2/1/14: Your Mind Will Betray You

Tags

'Nam, 1970's cinema, absurdist, Academy Award Nominee, Academy Awards, Adrian Lyne, Alexandra Stewart, Alice in Wonderland, Alois Nebel, animated films, Au revoir, auteur theory, avant-garde, battle of the sexes, black market, Black Moon, bureaucracy, Cathryn Harrison, cinema, Cold War, Czech-Polish border, Czechoslovakian films, Danny Aiello, dark films, drama, Elizabeth Pena, experimental film, fall of Communism, Fatal Attraction, Film auteurs, films, foreign films, French cinema, French films, French New Wave, homeless shelter, horror films, hospitals, Indecent Proposal, insanity, isolated estates, Jacob Singer, Jacob's Ladder, Jan Svankmajer, Jason Alexander, Joe Dallesandro, les enfants, Louis Malle, Movies, post-office, psychological horror, Rotoscoping, scary faces, Silent Hill, strange families, talking animals, Therese Giehse, Tim Robbins, Tomas Lunak, train conductor, unicorns, veterans, Vietnam vet, Vietnam War

Although I didn’t really plan it that way, last Saturday’s screenings definitely had a theme: the unreality of reality. These were films that may (or may not) have been about insanity or they may (or may not) have about something more tangible and bizarre. All three of the films challenge audience perceptions of what is real and imaginary, proving that we really don’t know as much about our world as we like to pretend we do.

My immersion into dark animated fare continues with Alois Nebel, an Oscar nominated Czech film from 2011. As I’ve mentioned before, animation style can, often, be the biggest impediment to my initial enjoyment of animated films. In the case of Alois Nebel, however, this issue was pretty much thrown out the window early on with the film’s gorgeous black-and-white imagery. At first, the animation style reminded me of a more severe, serious version of Archer. Upon closer examination, however, I realized that the animated images were actually Rotoscoped. Now, in general, I’m not the world’s biggest Rotoscoping fan: up to this point, my go-tos for that style would have been either A Scanner Darkly or Waking Life, neither of which really blew me away. The images and animation in Alois Nebel, however, are certainly the best Rotoscoping I’ve yet seen and have given me a new benchmark for stuff like this in the future. As always, I heartily approve of anything that expands my horizons.

Tomas Lunak’s film begins in a small town on the Czech-Polish border in 1989, at the tail end of the Cold War. The titular character is a quiet, reserved train conductor who first comes to us via voice-over as he unemotionally recites the train schedule, his droning voice taking on the feel of a litany or a mantra. He lives in a town that seems to exist outside of the current world, a town where the black market is in full swing, thanks to the local military and one of Alois’ “friends”, a fellow switchman. Alois has been having dreams of his childhood, specifically about events that happened in 1945, when German citizens were expelled from Czechoslovakia. His caretaker was one of these people and Alois never ceases wondering what became of her. His dreams become interpreted by those around him as a mental breakdown, however, and he is committed to a pretty wretched insane asylum (electro-shock therapy and Rohypnol appear to be the standard treatment choices). When he is released, Alois ends up homeless and falls in with a former train conductor who now resides at the local homeless shelter. He begins a tentative romance with the woman who runs the shelter before events around him conspire to throw him back into the mystery of his missing caretaker, Dorothe, and her fate. Into this mix we pour a mysterious mute man with an ax and a grudge, the collapse of Communism and a harrowing finale involving betrayal, a torrential downpour and washed-out roads.

There’s an awful lot to take in with Alois Nebel and I’ll be honest: even with an extremely close reading of the film and copious notes, I’m still not sure that I understand everything. In particular, I found many of the relationships to be a bit confounding, especially when dealing with older/younger versions of the characters. There are times when I was positive that I was following one character, only to find out that it was someone else, entirely. The stuff about the mute man is especially confusing, which can be a bit of a critical wound when one realizes how intrinsically he’s tied into everything.

There also seemed to be a lot of very casual betrayal going on, so casual, in fact, that I keep wondering whether I missed something: surely these people couldn’t so actively fuck each other over without incurring any sort of ill-will from those around them, could they? Again, I’m not sure if the intent was to highlight institutionalized duplicity, point out how naive Alois was or if I just managed to misread it but there seemed to be quite a few examples of characters doing everything in their power to step on someone else.

For as confounding as Alois Nebel can be, however, the film is also powerfully hypnotic and flows with a beautifully lethargic sense of dream-like wonder. The sound design is exquisite and, when paired with the stunning imagery, combines to create a truly immerse experience. At times, the film almost seems like a partial horror film (there is a particularly nasty ax murder that occurs) or nod to German expressionism (the combination of Rotoscoping and black-and-white imagery makes for some truly sinister shadows), although the slow pace and dour attitude definitely place this squarely in the “serious art film” category.

More than anything, I found myself wondering just what, exactly, this film would look like as a strictly live-action affair. From what I can imagine, it would still look pretty darn interesting. The shot composition and framing is nothing if not reminiscent of live-action films and the frequent silent scenes, showcasing only subtle facial expressions or, in some cases, no expressions at all, would certainly play well with “real” actors. Ultimately, however, the Rotoscoping helps to add an unearthly edge to the film which is perfectly in tune with its themes: Alois Nebel is about a man who doesn’t quite fit in anywhere and the film, itself, really doesn’t, either. Patient viewers (or anyone with a sense of Cold War Czech politics) will find much to like and appreciate here but those expecting more action may find this to be a bit inert. Odd, unsettling and slightly too confusing to be a complete success (for me, at least), Alois Nebel is still a fascinating film.

I’ve always had kind of a love/hate relationship with Adrian Lyne’s Jacob’s Ladder. As a rule, I’m not really a fan of Lyne’s oeuvre: his career has tended towards Hollywood potboilers like Fatal Attraction, Nine 1/2 Weeks and Indecent Proposal, none of which I’m a big fan of (I do tend to have a soft-spot in my heart for Flashdance, however: that film is just so stupid that it’s kind of brilliant). Jacob’s Ladder always stuck out like a sore thumb, at least to me: the closest any other Lyne film got to that little psychological shocker was Fatal Attraction, which wasn’t particularly close.

Jacob’s Ladder deals with the struggles of Jacob Singer (Tim Robbins), a Vietnam war vet who currently works at the post-office, romances his co-worker (Elizabeth Pena) and has extremely unsettling flashbacks to his war-time experiences. You see, Jacob was part of an army platoon that experienced…something…during the war and he’s never been quite right ever since. He goes to see his friend and chiropractor Louis (Danny Aiello, in a truly great supporting role) whenever he needs an adjustment but there’s no adjustment that will fix his bizarre dreams or the creepy imagery that has begun to seep into his waking like, including strange creatures with no faces and demonic lizard-men.  Jezzie, his girlfriend, is starting to get fed up with his problems, especially once he has a complete freakout at a nightclub and begins screaming about monsters and demons. He might just be ready to confine himself to the loony bin until he happens to reconnect with one of his old army buddies and realizes that he’s not alone: everyone in his former platoon is experiencing the same issues. Jacob tries to take action, even going so far as to initiate a class-action lawsuit with lawyer Jason Alexander (a mere one year into his tenure on Seinfeld), but is stymied at every turn by his own comrades, shadowy mob figures and those damned creepy faceless critters. Will Jacob finally get to the bottom of his problems or is this all one big exercise in futility?

For most of its run-time, Jacob’s Ladder is a pretty effective, nifty little chiller. The visuals may seem commonplace nowadays but it’s interesting to note that the “scary-quick-changing-face” effect that’s become all too ubiquitous in modern horror films actually got its start here. In context, it works well but I can’t help but hate its genesis on principle, alone: if Jacob’s Ladder could only see what it wrought with Paranormal Activity…

The acting is, generally, pretty good, with Robbins giving a nicely nuanced performance as Jacob and Aiello providing just the right amount of mystery as his “is he/isn’t he?” friend. Pena wears out her welcome fairly quickly, unfortunately, playing her character with so much anger and aggression that she seems sorely out-of-place in the film: she even seems pissed off when she’s making love. Her attitude works in the scenes where it’s necessary (blowing up after the dance-floor fiasco, for instance) but fails completely in those scenes where she’s actually supposed to act loving. I never bought Robbins and Pena as a couple, ever, which seems like a real lost opportunity.

The film has an interesting, atmospheric quality to it, although the horror elements are really only paid off in a few scenes. One scene, in particular, is a real corker and the true horror centerpiece for the film: after escaping from abductors, conking his head on the pavement and getting his wallet stolen by a Salvation Army Santa, Jacob is taken to a hospital and sent for X-rays. As he’s being wheeled down the hallway, going down first one corridor, then the next, Jacob’s surroundings gradually change, going from normal hospital sterility to the kind of gore-drenched, body-part littered hellscapes that one would normally find in Silent Hill. The truth? The hospital scene in Jacob’s Ladder was actually a big influence on the seminal horror video game. At any rate, it’s an amazing scene and goes a long way towards cementing the film’s horror cachet.

So, with all this to recommend it, why do I have a love/hate relationship with the movie? Well, you see, it happens to have one of those twist endings and this particular one manages to undo the entire film as surely as if it pulled on a loose shoelace. This isn’t the kind of ending where you say, “Eh, it was alright.” It’s the kind of ending that makes you say, “Hey, wait a minute! How is that possible if this and this and this actually happened?” It’s the kind of ending that seems powerful and emotional, for about 30 seconds, before you start to really think about it. Once you let it bounce around in your noggin, however, you realize that the ending is pretty much impossible: if you accept it, you basically end up discounting the entire film. If you choose to toss the ending out the window, however, then you’re provided with absolutely no sense of closure or resolution. In other words, a lose/lose situation. Ultimately, this will always make Jacob’s Ladder a good, rather than great, film as far as I’m concerned.

There are times when you can be completely unprepared for a film, even if you’ve been anticipating it for some time. Case in point: French auteur Louis Malle’s 1975 surreal oddity, Black Moon. I’d read about the film for some time and had become quite curious to actually see it. After finally viewing it, however, I find myself nearly as perplexed as I was before I saw it. Sometimes, seeing does not bring clarity.

Although he had a distinguished career (including a 1956 Academy Award for Best Documentary and several nominations after) in France before he made his first English-language films, it will probably be a trio of these American films that he’s best remembered for: Pretty Baby (1978), Atlantic City (1981) and My Dinner with Andre (1981). These films, along with Au revoir, les enfants (1987), showcase Malle as a filmmaker as comfortable with testing film’s technical constraints as he is with pushing the emotional limits. Although Malle was a constant presence during the French New Wave of cinema, his work never really fit explicitly into that movement. At least, it didn’t really fit into that movement until he released Black Moon in 1975, however, only a decade or two since the movement ran its course.

Black Moon is many things but plot-driven is not one of them. Nonetheless, there is a plot (of sorts) and it will sound imminently familiar to anyone who’s read Alice in Wonderland: a young, inquisitive blonde girl wanders about a strange house, meets bizarre individuals, talking animals and, gradually, comes to learn something about herself. The young girl, in this case, is named Lily (Cathryn Harrison, a mere 16-years-old at the time of shooting) and she’s on the run from some kind of lethal gender war: men and women have taken up arms and proceeding to blast each other to kingdom come. Lily takes refuge in a mysterious estate and meets the eccentric family who lives there: Brother Lily (Warhol regular Joe Dallesandro, who gets by his acting inadequacies by way of remaining mute for the entire film), Sister Lily (Alexandra Stewart, as mute as Joe) and the Old Lady (Therese Giehse, who died shortly before the film was released and to whom it’s dedicated) and her husband, Humphrey the rat (yes, he really is a rat).

After introducing these decidedly odd elements, Black Moon does what any good absurdist film would do: piles one absurd event on top of the other. Lily discovers the family’s pet unicorn (a creepy-looking pony-thing that looked, to my disturbed eyes at least, as if it had a skull for a face: I don’t think it does but I could probably be forgiven for thinking that); drinks milk out of an absurdly large glass, while a pig looks on from a high-chair (hello, Alice, my old friend…); has to constantly pull up her constantly falling-down knickers; runs over a badger and suckles the old woman. We see naked children leading around a giant pig (shades of Jodorowsky); crying flowers (don’t ask) and creepy people in gas masks.

In many ways, Black Moon does come across as a kinder, friendlier version of a Jodorowsky film or, possibly, a version of Waiting for Godot enhanced by three sheets of acid. As with any absurdist/avant-garde film, the visuals are at least as (make that: much more) important than the actual story, although I think that the description of this as a “post-Apocalyptic Alice in Wonderland” is as good as anything I could come up with.

This is a defiantly weird film (Brother Lily can communicate via thought but only while touching someone; the Old Woman appears to die in one scene only to be fine in the next) but it’s also a pretty interesting one, anchored by the wide-eyed performance of Harrison as the surrogate Alice. She sees a lot of weird stuff, no doubt about it, but she always seems to be ready for more, which, consequently, makes us pretty game for more, too. When faced with the bizarre, Lily grits her teeth, puts her head down and says, “Just a minute, please,” whether dealing with hawk-slaying siblings, talking unicorns or hungry old women.

Whatever Black Moon actually ends up being about (Is it a strange Alice in Wonderland adaptation? A dialogue about the battle of the sexes? A story of a girl becoming a young woman?), the film is quite lovely to look at and filled with just enough absurdity to make one wonder what could possibly be around the corner. At times, it reminded me of the unholy offspring of Jan Svankmajer’s Alice and Hardy’s original The Wicker Man, a gauzy, odd landscape with any number of potential horrors just over the horizon. At other times, my wife and I turned to each other and shrugged in complete bafflement. Without a doubt, this is a strange one.

1/14/14: The Hell Inside You

Tags

Cannibal Holocaust, cinema, cinema verite, drug abuse, experimental film, Film, found-footage, gone before their time, Hallucinogens, horror films, James Davidson, Jason Banker, Movies, psychadelics, Sara Anne Jones, the Seven Gates of Hell, Toad Road, tragedies, twenty-something angst

Full disclosure: I am a firm believer in the strange, the unexplained and the supernatural. Personal experience notwithstanding, this world we inhabit is just too big, too impossible, to not contain more secrets than we could ever imagine. Until we’ve truly poked under every rock, swam to the bottom of every sea and followed every deserted dirt trail to its terminus, we cannot, honestly, say that we know anything about the world we inhabit. We can make educated guesses…we can analyze and test until the cows come home…but at the end of the day…we’re never going to be 100% sure of anything. We must simply have faith that what we believe to be true is so…until something comes along to shatter that believe, of course.

I begin my discussion of Toad Road in this way for a very particular reason: more than almost any film I’ve ever seen (certainly on the short list), this film explodes any notion audiences might have of cinematic reality/unreality, establishing not only a world where anything and everything can be possible but a film where anything can be possible. I’ll be honest: with very few exceptions, I had an almost impossible time telling the fiction from the reality in Toad Road. This, friends and neighbors, is the living definition of a nightmare.

The genius of the film – and the film is genius, make no bones about it – lies in the ease with which we (the audience) continually have the rug pulled from beneath our feet. The story, itself, is pure simplicity: a group of disaffected twenty-something layabouts do massive quantities of every drug imaginable, have sex where they feel like it and generally thumb their nose at society. Into this toxic mix pours the town’s goodie-goodie new girl, Sara. Sara hooks up with James, one of the defacto leaders of the clique and proceeds to throw herself wholehearted into their druggie lifestyle. Sara becomes obsessed with stories about Toad Road, a local urban legend that posits that the Seven Gates to Hell are located in the nearby woods. Ultimately, she convinces James to accompany her as she drops a massive quantity of acid and walks Toad Road. As can be expected, things do not go as planned and James learns the very valuable lesson that Hell can be wherever you are.

As I mentioned, pure simplicity and certainly nothing that we haven’t seen before, especially since the film is occasionally shot in a hand-held, found-footage style. The acting is very naturalistic: these all seem like the kind of wastoids we’ve known (and possibly been in the past) and the tone of cheerful hedonism seems completely honest. These early drug/party scenes have an almost verite style to them, recalling the similar grittiness of Larry Clark’s Kids. Again, nothing we haven’t seen before but well done. And then the rug gets pulled from beneath our feet because…

…this is all really happening. That’s right: the drug/party/debauchery stuff looks so real because it’s actually happening. Take a look at the cast list: most of the characters (with the exception of the odd police officer here or anonymous driver there) have the same name as the actors portraying them. Sara is played by Sara Anne Jones; James is played by James Davidson. The character of Uncle Damon in the film? Played by Damon Johansen.

You see, writer/director Jason Banker didn’t audition his actors: he found them online. In a coup rarely seen (the last time I can remember something like this was Cannibal Holocaust, waaay back in the day), Banker blends the real debauchery of the drugging/partying (smoking massive quantities of weed; doing shrooms; getting so drunk that they all run around their apartment pantless, setting each other’s pubic hair on fire) with the manufactured drama of the story itself. The effect on your psyche is pretty stunning: once you realize that part of the film is actually happening, why not allow for the rest of the story to be taking place? Where does reality end and fiction begin?

I’ll be honest: once I realized what the film was doing, I felt like someone had punched me in the gut. In this day and age, films (especially horror films) are way too safe. Gone are the days of danger when you feared that watching Salo or Cannibal Holocaust or Faces of Death would somehow scar you, change you for the worst into some sort of slobbering beast…the Video Nasties era. No matter how well made modern films are, they just don’t possess that sustained sense of dread because modern times are so much different: we’ve seen and done it all, by this point, and modern technology keeps giving us the ability to do even more. Gone are the days of yore when audiences thought the speeding train would careen through the screen and into the theater: we’ve seen Peter Jackson’s Middle Earth, so we know that absolutely anything can be done.

Here’s the trick: once you realize that the partying scenes are real, it makes you question everything else about the film. How much of this was improvised? Written? Were any of the “friends” actually actors (the lead, Sara, was definitely not a professional, despite her amazing performance)? The film deals with pain on many different levels, particularly with the character of Sara: how much of that was real? The climax of the film pulls a few tricks out, here and there, that serve to remind us that at least some of the film is faked (by my count, there were two shots that satisfied the current obsession with “scary faces” in modern horror films but these were brief and altogether unobtrusive) but so much of the movie revolves around the interactions of the group of friends (at least 80%) that it starts to make you wonder about everything. I know that the end was fake because it’s a movie. But what if…

Lest it seem like the only reason to watch Toad Road is for the dizzying combination of truth and lie, let me set your mind at ease: the film is absolutely stunning in every possible way. When the footage is not hand-held, the cinematography is absolutely gorgeous, particularly all of the beautiful snow and winter footage. The sound design is amazing, especially in the scene where they visit a local cave: the sound of wind chimes begins to get louder and louder on the soundtrack until it’s an all-encompassing force, coming from nowhere and yet going everywhere. And that acting…wow…that acting.

Special attention must be paid to the film’s lead and emotional/moral core, Sara. If there is an arc to the story (and there certainly is), it would be Sara’s journey from good girl to lost soul. Her obsession with Toad Road and psychedelics turns her into a completely different character by the film’s end, one stronger and, yet, more vulnerable than she began. There is a moment in the film where Sara explains what each of the Seven Gates of Hell symbolizes and I’ll be honest: I was completely transfixed. The scene could have gone on for 30 seconds or 30 minutes: it was all the same to me. I simply couldn’t take my eyes from the screen, lest I miss one single thing that she said.

And here, of course, is one of the biggest kickers, the fact that proves how truly haunted Toad Road really is: Sara Anne Jones is now dead. She died of a drug overdose shortly after the film was finished, further blurring the line between reality and fantasy: the character of Sara took her journey to its natural conclusion and, so too, would it seem the actual Sara did the same thing.

It’s a tragic epilogue to a brutally sad film, a movie that makes Requiem for a Dream look like a Calgon commercial. The film is brutal and heartbreaking and absolutely brilliant. There are moments that will make you question not only the world around you but the world inside you, as well. These are lost souls, burned-out candle stubs. By the time that James realizes how much of a waste his life is, by the time that he realizes how desperately he and Sara need to get away, it’s already too late.

The actual meaning behind Toad Road may be a little gauzy but I’m pretty sure I got it, anyway: this is one of the single, greatest anti-drug films in the history of cinema. This is a film for anyone who’s ever been there, anyone who ever got out and anyone who’s ever lost someone who couldn’t. It’s a powerful film, one that I won’t forget anytime soon. Aside from the beautiful cinematography, there’s nothing pretty or sweet about this film. The best way that I can sum the whole thing up is to quote that paragon of optimism, Friedrich Nietzsche:

“Battle not with monsters, lest ye become a monster, and if you gaze into the abyss, the abyss gazes also into you.”

Toad Road was the abyss and it looked right through me.

1/11/14: Chills, Thrills and Groans

Tags

adventures, animated films, B-movies, bad movies, computer-animated, Daniel Craig, dark comedies, Edgar Wright, experimental film, Film, Film auteurs, Funny Games, German cinema, home invasion, hullaballoo, Indiana Jones, Michael Haneke, misanthropic, Nick Frost, Party of Five, SImon Pegg, Steven Spielberg, strange families, suspense, The Adventures of TinTin, The Butcher Brothers, The Hamiltons

Our quest to catch up now takes us to this past Saturday for another triple header. On this particular day, my viewing selections were tempered by the fact that I needed something to wash the taste of Funny Games out of my mouth: hence, the segue from that to Spielberg’s Adventures of TinTin. Now THAT’s the kind of counter-programming more festivals need to do!

Oy vey…talk about suffering for art…We’re all familiar with feel-good cinema: those gauzy, sweet, brightly colored bits of film fluff that usually posit nothing more challenging than a stubbed toe or a willfully spunky ingenue to shake things up. In a world that’s become increasingly cold and hostile, feel-good cinema can be the equivalent of a warm fire on a cold day, returning the essential humanity to an inhumane species.

Michael Haneke pisses all over feel-good cinema before burying it out in the desert. If the word “misanthropy” is defined as meaning, “the general hatred, distrust or disdain of the human species or human nature,” then Mr. Haneke may be one of the premiere misanthropes working in film today. Whether dealing with severely damaged, violent individuals (Benny’s Video, The Seventh Continent, The White Ribbon), the horrors of a violent society invading the sanctity of the home (Funny Games, The Time of the Wolf) or the erosion of life and love (The Piano Teacher, Amour), Haneke has never met a subject to dark or depressing to tear into. Despite his seeming disdain for people, Haneke has had a surprisingly successful career, achieving enough acclaim with his original 1997 version of Funny Games to warrant his American remake ten years later and culminating in Best Foreign Film and Best Actress nods for his most recent film, Amour.

I admit that I got to the Haneke party a little late, not jumping in until the remake of Funny Games. As a big Tim Roth fan, I took a chance, based on his presence, and was rewarded with something rather nasty and unpleasant. Nonetheless, I was intrigued and spent some time touring his back catalog, eventually arriving at his original version of Funny Games. Needless to say, I remember being thoroughly disturbed by the film and promptly sought to put it behind me. Flash forward many years and a lazy Saturday morning seemed like a perfect time to revisit the film and see if it still held any power. Short answer? Yes.

For those not familiar with the story, Funny Games is, ostensibly, a home invasion film. Three members of a family (parents and young son) are vacationing at their lakeside cottage, next to several other cabins and friends. The family is well-to-do, educated (while driving, they play a game of “Name that classical music concerto” and seem like nice enough people. Upon arriving at their cottage, they notice that their next-door-neighbors appear to be entertaining guests, a pair of young men dressed in tennis outfits. When one of the men appears at their doorstep to borrow some eggs, the family become trapped in a seemingly never-ending nightmare of violence, humiliation, torture and…well…funny games.

Part of the terrible, feral power of the film comes from how well-made it is. Rather than feeling (or looking) like a quickly dashed together bit of exploitation nastiness, Funny Games is an art film through and through. The opening, featuring an aerial view of their car driving through winding mountain roads, instantly reminds of Kubrick’s similar opening to The Shining. The film has a cold, clinical look that recalls Cronenberg’s early bio-medical chillers. The acting, particularly from the evil young men is impeccable and, at times, downright heartbreaking. The film has a terrific grasp of tension, feeding out just enough line to keep you hooked, then snapping it back ferociously when needed. Scenes play out for much longer than seem necessary, the camera rarely cutting once things start to get crazy. Unfortunately, watching the film is still about as much fun as getting buried alive.

If its possible for a film to be considered “mental torture porn,” than Funny Games would be the undisputed king of that ring. Although there is violence in the film, most of it occurs off-camera, leaving us to merely view the results. The horrible humiliation and psychological torture that the pair put the family through, however, is almost impossible to watch. During an excruciatingly long scene where the pair force the mother to strip down to her underwear in front of her family, I found myself asking the all-important question, “Why?” Not “Why are the bad guys doing that,” since the world is full of truly sick individuals but “Why are we being forced to watch this in such detail?” Like Pasolini’s Salo, Funny Games is a film that not only shows you the shit on the floor but proceeds to rub your face into it. Haneke doesn’t just want to make you aware of the evil in the world: he wants to make you suffer it, too.

Were Funny Games just a streamlined, brutal, unflinching home-invasion thriller, it would be a memorable film. Haneke, however, has something else up his sleeve. At one point, the lead psycho, Paul, is standing in front of his partner, Peter. He turns and winks directly at the camera, although our understanding is that Peter is there, off-camera. This makes sense, of course, all the way up to the point where Paul turns and directly addresses the audience, asking us if we think the family has been through enough. At once, we’re not just spectators but accomplices: if we didn’t want to see the family suffer so much, we’d quit watching and let them off the hook. No film, especially fringe and extreme films, can exist without an audience. In one fell swoop, Haneke indicts horror and exploitation fans, asking the all-important question: how normal is it to want to witness suffering? As a lifelong horror fan, I didn’t much care to answer it. Thanks, Michael: see you again when I’m feeling slightly too upbeat.

As a remedy for the massive feel-bad vibes presented by Funny Games, I turned to an old master of the feel-good film: the inimitable Steven Spielberg and his recent computer-animated feature, The Adventures of Tintin. I originally avoided the film due to the computer animation (I’m much more of an old-school animation fan) but I figured that only Spielberg could give me the 10ccs of food-times needed to wash away Haneke. Turns out, I was right.

Right off the bat, imagine my immense excitement when, during the fabulous credit sequence, I notice that Peter Jackson is producing the film. Alright…that’s interesting. Not half as interesting, however, as the fact that Joe “Attack the Block” Cornish and Edgar “Cornetto Trilogy” Wright wrote the film. That’s right, boys and girls: two of the best comedic horror/sci-fi writers in the biz collaborated on the script for a Spielberg film produced by Peter Jackson. Essentially, there was no way this would be anything but one big love letter to classical film and it did not disappoint.

Once I actually got into the film, any concerns about the animation style melted away: the animation was actually so realistic that it was easy to imagine this as a life-action film, versus a cartoon. In fact, there are so many visual and narrative nods to the Indiana Jones films that this almost felt like it inhabited the same world. The scene where Snowy pursues TinTin’s kidnappers through a busy street reminds me immediately of the Cairo chase in the first Indiana Jones film, right down to the way in which the pursued item is constantly kept in the same frame as the pursuer, despite their distance from each other: simply genius.

In all honesty, there were too many highlights in the film to count. The battle between Haddock’s ship and the pirate ship is absolutely stunning, perhaps one of the coolest nautical battles I’ve seen. The final duel with construction cranes is amazing and made me wonder why no one ever tried that in the past (hint: probably because it’s impossible). The voice acting, whether from Daniel Craig as the bad guy or Simon Pegg and Nick Frost as the bumbling Scotland Yard duo of Thomson and Thompson, is top-notch and TinTin, Captain Haddock and Snowy make one hell of a team. Massively fun and technologically impressive, I can easily compare The Adventures of TinTin to Wes Anderson’s animated The Fantastic Mr. Fox. Both films showcase outstanding filmmakers boldly going where they (technically) haven’t gone before.

I’m not sure that mere words can do justice to the sheer awfulness that is The Hamiltons but I’ll try. Imagine, if you will, a torture porn version of Party of Five featuring hammier actors than Troll 2 and The Room combined. Intrigued? Let me finish. The family that we’re stuck with for almost 90 minutes features a stereotypical moody, whiny teen boy, complete with always-filming video camera; a straight-laced older brother that holds down a job, is polite, smart and kind, so is obviously a closeted homosexual; a twin brother and sister that chew through scenery like ravenous warthogs when they’re not busy sucking face and disgusting the audience with the most assinine, ridiculous display of incestuous union since whatever Troma film took on the subject; and a supernaturally strong, feral, beast of a kid brother that looks like…a normal kid.

On top of these obnoxious characters we get a story that blatantly rips off We Are What We Are before becoming something else (read: equally shitty) entirely, a primal-scream breakdown that must be seen to be believed and the actual line “I’m getting awful tired of your hullaballoo,” delivered with as much earnestness and integrity as the actor could manage when being asked to deliver something so obviously Shakespearian in origin.

But am I being a little too mean? Isn’t all of this a bit harsh for a film that probably just wants to be considered a decent little horror film? Absolutely not. The pair of idiot filmmakers behind this call themselves The Butcher Brothers and have already created a sequel. They must be stopped by any and all means necessary, before The Hamiltons becomes the truly shitty franchise that it threatens to become. If we do nothing, we may soon wake up in a world where the Butcher Brothers may continue to create unchecked, turning the world into the goofy nightmare land of Branded.

In short: I’m getting awful tired of their hullaballoo.

1/4/14: Saturday Night’s Alright (for Movie Watching)

Tags

'80s slasher films, action films, April Fool's Day, documentaries, documentary, dramedy, Dziga Vertov, Exiled, experimental film, fan conventions, films, Friends with Kids, gangster films, Hong Kong films, horror films, Jason Statham, Johnnie To, Lebowski Fest, Man with a Movie Camera, Redemption, rom-rom, Russian film, slasher films, Takeshi Kitano, The Achievers, The Big Lebowski

Welcome to our first Saturday edition of The VHS Graveyard. As a movie fanatic, weekends are my go-to days for mass viewings. I usually like to wake up early, get a few foreign or silent films in to kick-start everything and then proceed to plow my way through my “must-see” list for the day. This Saturday, I was able to take in six films: not quite my best tally but not too shabby. This, then, is how the day progressed:

Johnnie To is often described by waggish critics as being the “Hong Kong Jerry Bruckheimer.” This, to be fair, isn’t completely shy of the truth but is unnecessarily reductive. In all honesty, Bruckheimer wishes that he had the wide-ranging scope of To’s films – action, gangster, drama, comedy…he’ll take on pretty much any genre and give it his customary sheen.

When To’s gangster films are good, they’re very good, reminding me of flashier versions of Takeshi Kitano’s iconic ’90s-era gangster films like Sonatine and Boiling Point. Exiled ends up being quite good, although it’s also a rather strange duck. Posited as an intermingling of the gangster and spaghetti Western genres, Exiled is high on style but rather light on substance. We follow a close-knit group of hitmen as they move from job to job, ending with a double-cross that sees them on the run from an angry mob boss.

While the storyline itself can be unnecessarily cluttered (there were a few times when I lost track of the cross/double-crossing and was utterly in the dark), there is no denying the power of the action and imagery. To manages to replicate the essential feel of a spaghetti western without simply cramming in the various pieces of a gangster film. The result is a hybrid that manages to take the best aspects of both (the elegiac pace and dry-as-dust soundtrack of the western, the kinetic Technicolor atmosphere and frenzied pace of the Hong Kong bullet ballet) and make something wholly interesting. The film isn’t perfect but, when it works (an amazingly framed shoot-out in a scuzzy doctor’s apartment would be the highlight in any of a hundred other films), it’s pretty unforgettable.   Throw in some very nicely handled thoughts on friendship and we’ve got something well worth seeing.

As a former film student, I’ve always had a soft spot for Russian pioneer Dziga Vertov. One of the true forefathers of cinema, Vertov was constantly experimenting with the very fabric of cinema even in its earliest days. I’d managed to miss seeing Man with a Movie Camera up until now but I’m glad to have finally rectified that situation.

Ostensibly, Man with a Movie Camera is just what the title says: a man (with a movie camera) rushes around 1920s-era Russia and captures every aspect of society. Literally. The camera catches life and death (a birth and a funeral); love and sorrow (a wedding and folks signing divorce papers at a court-house); rich and poor (the well-to-do in elegant finery and filthy hobos in the street). There is no dialogue and no intertitles, even though the film is, technically, a silent film. Here, Vertov was interested in challenging the very idea of narrative filmmaking, birthing a form of documentary realism that is still very evident today.

There’s a playful sense of surrealism to much of the film, particularly in scenes where the cameraman looms Godzilla-sized over the city or films from inside a full glass of beer. Stop-motion (a self-moving camera and animate plate of crawfish are particular highlights) helps to heighten this sense of “realistic unreality.” More than anything, however, possibly due to the documentary film-style and lack of intertitles, Man with a Movie Camera feels very current and nothing like what we might presume a silent film from 1929 to feel like. The ending even features the cameraman racing around the streets and is filmed like an action sequence, complete with pulse-pounding score.

Ah, ’80s slasher films…so much variety, so many clones. April Fool’s Day has the virtue of being one of the more notorious ’80s slashers for one very important reason, a reason that I won’t spoil for you. Suffice to say, however, that you will feel cheated by this film’s ending.

A group of obnoxious, stuck-up college kids (plus the obligatory nice hick and square British woman) head to a strange friend’s secluded mansion for some good ol’ fashioned fun. The friend is named Muffy and she may or may not be crazy: she also may or may not be trying to kill everyone one by one.

The “twist” is genuinely awful, although it does automatically remind one of the twist in House of the Long Shadows. That may have not been a great film, either, but it had the benefit of featuring Vincent Price, Christopher Lee and Peter Cushing. All that April Fool’s Day has going for it is some okay gore, cheesy acting and that forehead-smacking ending.

Hardcore fans of anything are, by definition, kind of nuts. Fan, after all, is a shortened form of fanatic. Hardcore fans of particular films or franchises, however, can give a whole new meaning to the term. Try and have a conversation about anything Star Wars or Star Trek-related with a hardcore fan of either and see how fun that is.

Since fans are kind of kooky, a documentary about hardcore fans of the Coen Brothers’ “The Big Lebowski” and the Lebowski Fest that they attend yearly must be equally kooky, right? Oh boy, yes.

For the most part, The Achievers is an entertaining but slight (very, very slight) examination of Lebowski Fest. For the most part, you get the exact same level of fandom/insight from most of these folks that you would from any other group at Comic-con, swapping the term “Jedi” for the term “Dude.” There’s one really nice quote from one attendee where he states that, “It would be cool if having just thing in common was enough.” Wouldn’t this be nice, indeed? Unfortunately, save for the parts where we’re introduced to the actual people who inspired the characters in The Big Lebowski (the actual Dude is nothing like I expected…Walter is EXACTLY what I expected), there’s not much of use here. As my long-suffering wife perfectly put it: “Can’t anybody just like something?”

Promoted as an ensemble comedy but really more of a traditional two-character-driven rom-dramedy, Friends with Kids is a decidedly middle-of-the-road experience. For the most part, the performances were quite good, with Jon Hamm and Maya Rudolph being personal favorites. In the end, however, there’s something rather disingenuous about the whole thing.

Adam Scott and Jennifer Westfeldt play best friends who are part of a close-knit group with two other couples (Maya Rudolph and Chris O’Dowd, Jon Hamm and Kristen Wiig). When the other couples begin to have kids, the platonic friends feel left out and devise a plan to have a baby of their own: they’ll raise it together, allowing each other to invest maximum time in finding a significant other who will be happy to raise the child as their own. Get it? Yeah, it’s a bit harebrained, to say the least, but makes a bit more sense in practice than on paper. Naturally, complications ensue, the two friends fall for each other and raising a baby is hard work, ya know?

As I stated earlier, this is a perfectly pleasant, enjoyable film with (at least for me) one glaring exception: Jennifer Westfeldt. Nothing against her personally, but her character came across as a complete tonal mess. I would have given anything to have either Rudolph or Wiig take that role but Westfeldt managed to play her character with such complete blankness that I never felt for her. It was like watching a Shakespearian actor attempting to converse with a Juggalo – lots of words coming out but no connection being made.

I went in to this with no small measure of enthusiasm. I like Jason Statham just fine but critics everywhere (including Badass Digest, one of my go-to blogs) had been trumpeting this as something special: not just another Statham action film but an honest-to-god movie! How could I not be eager?

In reality? This is just another Jason Statham action film. There are some attempts at a broader significance (he was in the Iraq War and did terrible things…because it was a terrible place…and now he’ll never forget…or forgive…himself) and the action sequences were actually framed in the real world, versus something like Crank. Unfortunately, however, there just wasn’t much of interest going on around it.

The basic plot is this: Statham’s girlfriend is killed and he goes on a long, convoluted quest for revenge. In between, he beats some people up, kills a few others and romances a nun. The film has a look that recalls Only God Forgives in certain ways (check out the neon-color scheme for the above poster and tell me that doesn’t look familiar) and the vibe is decidedly downcast. In the end, however, this really is just another Statham flick: no better or worse, despite what some critics seemed to think.