5/12/14: Everybody Has a Twin

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+1, Adam David Thompson, Ashley Hinshaw, Ashley Winshaw, Bill Gullo, cinema, college parties, Dennis Iliadis, doppelgängers, dopplegangers, doubles, film reviews, films, Francis Ford Coppola, horror, horror films, keggers, Logan Miller, Mihai Malaimare Jr., Movies, Natalie Hall, parallel universe, Peter Zimmerman, Plus One, Primer, Project X, Rhys Wakefield, Rohan Kymal, sci-fi, Suzanne McCloskey, The Last House on the Left, Timecrimes, wild parties, youth in trouble

There’s something quite magical about a previously unknown film exceeding expectations. Not meeting them, mind you: that happens quite frequently. No, I’m talking about that special thrill that can only happen when you expect a movie to go through the motions only to discover that it’s actually a smarter, scrappier little bastard than you thought. The best example I can think of in this regard is Hobo with a Shotgun (2011): while I wasn’t expecting anything more than a stupid, gory attempt to set up shop in Troma-land, I fell completely in love with the film after one viewing, finding it to be the freshest, funniest, funkiest pile of gold-plated junk I’d seen in a blue moon. While Dennis Iliadis’ +1 (Plus One) doesn’t fire me up in the same way that Hobo did, it’s a massively impressive effort: I went in expecting one of those moronic “megaparty” films “with a twist,” but I was actually greeted with something that aspires a little closer to Timecrimes (2007) than Project X (2012). It’s not perfect, by any stretch of the imagination. but it is interesting, quick-paced, intelligent and just tricky enough to inspire a repeat viewing. Looks like I better keep my eye on this Iliadis dude: us Greeks can be a tricky lot!

In many ways, +1 is two separate films, joined at the hip: a megaparty, youth-getting-crazy-and-finding-love movie and a batshit crazy horror story about a strange meteor and murderous doppelgängers. If it sounds like those halves make ill-fitting companions, you’re right: there’s absolutely no way this should work (it even looks sketchy on paper). For whatever reason, however, it ends up working perfectly: my biggest issues with the film tend to be the ultra-cliched party scenes but I have issues with those kinds of films/scenes whenever I see them (without a doubt, The Kitchen (2012) had one of the worst “parties” I’ve ever seen in a film). The doppelgänger aspect, however, is handled with some real wit and nerve, albeit in a slightly confusing manner. Since Timecrimes and Primer (2004) were both complete head-scratchers, however, I’m willing to grant that the subjects of time travel and alternate versions of ourselves may be just a little more complex than the average multiplex feature can handle, at least beyond the Hot Tub Time Machine (2010) level.

The film begins with a nice little bit of foreshadowing, as our hero, David (Rhys Wakefield, kind of a poor-man’s James Van der Beek), makes a bit of a mistake after his girlfriend’s fencing match. You see, he goes to kiss who he thinks is Jill (Ashley Hinshaw) but ends up kissing a girl who’s her spitting image…but definitely not her. Jill sees this and before David knows it, he’s been unfriended on Facebook: shit just got serious, folks! Looking to drown his sorrows, David lets his shithead friend, Teddy (Logan Miller), drag him to one of those epic college keggers that seem to involve 5000 people and always get shut-down by the cops. Who should be at the party, of course, but Jill, who’s attending with her new gentleman friend, Steve (Peter Zimmerman)? As expected, this bums David way the hell out: how’s a guy supposed to kick back when his ex is sucking face with some jerk? Hoping to succeed where generations of movie heroes have failed, David moves through and around the party, hoping to get Jill alone so that he can win her back. Teddy, in the meantime, has his eyes set on Melanie (Natalie Hall): she’s out of his luck, of course, but how’s a guy gonna know if doesn’t try? Meanwhile, the party’s host, Angad (Rohan Kymal, mugging as if the bus will explode if he doesn’t go big at every opportunity), has his own problems, since the party (complete with outdoor stage, strippers and live music) keeps getting bigger and bigger. Stay cool and have a great summer, guys!

And then, just when it seems that all hope is lost (for us, not our heroes: they always do okay), the film decides to drop the other show: a meteor plummets from the heavens to earth, exploding into brilliant, blue electrical energy when it hits. The energy jolts into a nearby powerline, which causes a temporary power outage. David is looking in a mirror when the power cuts: when it comes back on, he’s looking one way but his reflection is looking the other way. The game, as they say, is on.

From this point on, +1 manages to graft both halves of the film together and, a few ugly stitches notwithstanding, it’s a pretty seamless job. As David, Teddy and their friend, Allison (Suzanne McCloskey), quickly figure out, there now appears to be two of everyone. As a further twist, however, the doubles don’t seem to be aware of each other (yet), as they’re on slightly different timelines than the “real people”: the doppelgängers replay incidents that happened shortly beforehand, so they’re (technically) always a little behind the real partygoers. When the real party moves outside, however, and the doppelgängers take over the house, it becomes pretty clear that these parallel lines are moving rapidly towards a collision point. Ever the opportunist, David sees a “surefire” way to get back Jill: if he can only get to her doppelgänger, David can use information from his last conversation with the “real” Jill to re-romance the double. Will he be able to get back his “normal” life by doing something decidedly strange? How different is “real” Jill from “fake” Jill? For that matter, how different is “real” David from “fake” David? As the “time-difference” between the real people and their doppelgängers gets smaller and smaller, a new wrinkle is revealed: rough-neck drug-dealer Kyle (Adam David Thompson) gets shot in the head by his own double. With this incident comes a terrifying new question: what, exactly, will happen when the doppelgängers “catch up” to the real people?

While +1 is a little rough out of the gate (despite the clever opening situation), it quickly settles into quite the tense, action-packed little marvel. As mentioned earlier, the megaparty stuff is all pretty stupid and shallow, although I’m definitely not the audience for that kind of film. “Woo-girls” run around in Native American headdresses, chugging red cups. A bunch of broish dudes eat sushi off a naked Japanese woman before offending her and receiving some righteous jump kicks as punishment (really). A bunch of the idiots decide to play tennis, indoors, with a flaming tennis ball. Yes, a flaming fucking tennis ball. When the flames set a curtain on fire, do they panic? Naw, brah: they just wait for the sprinklers to kick on and dance in the water! Yeah…it’s unrepentantly dumb and, combined with some idiocy over which band gets to play and the bizarre strip show outside, the whole thing feels sort of like a dinner-theater version of Coachella.

Stick with it, however, and that most magical of things happens: it actually bears fruit. While much of the banality from the party scenes is just that, many other elements get reworked and filtered back through a new lens once the doppelgängers enter the picture. Certain scenes that formerly made no sense, on their own, are now seen in the bigger mosaic of the film and it’s a pretty smart move. There’s also no shortage of genuine tension in the film, including an absolutely brilliant scene where Allison’s doppelganger is being followed by a bitchy rival, who is being pursued by the real Allison. The three form a pretty great conga line and it’s edge-of-the-seat time as we realize that any look over a shoulder blows the whole thing to hell. Very smart. There are also some fantastically edgy moments as the real people wait, terrified, as the timelines get closer and closer together: since the audience has no idea how this technically works, we’re in the exact same boat as the party-goers, sort of a flip on that whole “we become the victim” idea in slashers.

There’s so much that genuinely works in +1 that I almost feel bad for the stuff that doesn’t, although none of it irreparably harms the film. The special effects (the “alien fire” and flaming tennis ball) are astoundingly awful: worse than direct-to-video awful, if I can be so bold. The acting tends to range from decent to kinda awful, although I also got the feeling that many of these actors were of the “I need a bunch of folks for a crowd-scene” variety. The principals do pretty good, for the most part, with Logan Miller being particularly impressive: I started the movie absolutely hating the loathsome, douchebag character of Teddy but he managed to (eventually) win me over. Similarly, I felt that Rohan Kymal’s Angad was always too over-the-top, although even he had several nicely nuanced scenes, particularly once the shit really hits the fan.

Director Iliadis’ previous claim to fame was the remake of The Last House on the Left (2009), which I haven’t seen, but I enjoyed +1 enough to be curious about that one, as well. I don’t like everything he does here but there’s enough wild invention to glide me over the rougher aspects. Cinematographer Mihai Malaimaire Jr. was the guy responsible for shooting Francis Ford Coppola’s last three films — Youth Without Youth (2007), Tetro (2009) and Twixt (2011) — as well as P.T. Anderson’s The Master (2012). While there’s nothing overly showy about the cinematography, the shots are always nicely composed and he has a way with depth of field that leads to some very interesting reveals. At the very least, the film has a much richer, deeper look than one would expect from this type of “party hardy” environment.

While +1 isn’t perfect, it’s a damn sight more interesting than many more “prestigious” films that I’ve seen over the past six months or so. At one point, the “real” characters get into a discussion about what makes the doppelgängers different from their “originals.” As one person points out, the doppelgängers can’t be the same, technically, since they’ve had different experiences than the originals have (especially towards the end, when things get bad). If you think really, really hard, it’s a pretty mind-blowing concept, especially within the framework of the story: does your mirror image have a life of its own on the other side of the glass? Where does it go when you walk away? What makes a being intelligent…and what makes it unique? These are the kinds of questions I might expect from a highfalutin sci-fi slow-burner or something by Aronofsky. When I can get things like this in a movie that also features flaming indoor tennis, I consider myself a mighty lucky man, indeed.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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