The 31 Days of Halloween (2017): 10/1-10/7

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31 Days of Halloween, American Fable, cinema, Cult of Chucky, film reviews, films, George Romero, horror, horror films, horror movies, Housebound, Movies, Night of the Living Dead, October, The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, They're Watching, Tobe Hooper

At long last, The VHS Graveyard returns from its slumber to present the annual 31 Days of Halloween. As longtime readers will know, one day out of the year is a paltry celebration for the kaleidoscopic glory represented by horror films: as such, we celebrate horror for all 31 days of October, forgoing any and all cinema that does not, in fact, go bump in the night.

While previous Octobers have seen the VHS Graveyard plowing through mountains of cinematic goodies, from the most-current chillers to old favorites, we’ve scaled it back a little this year. As always, however, our goal remains the same: screen at least one horror film for every day of the month of October. We didn’t quite hit the quota for this week but, nonetheless, we humbly present the six films that make up the first week of our October viewing. As always, we invite you to discover new favorites and reconnect with old friends. Welcome to the Season of the Witch!

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American Fable

My October viewing got off to a bit of a false start with writer-director Anne Hamilton’s feature-length debut, American Fable. While I didn’t expect the film to feature overt horror elements, various discussions had pegged it as magical-realist and a spiritual successor to Del Toro’s Pan’s Labyrinth, which definitely put it on my radar.

In actuality, American Fable is a dark coming-of-age drama with a consistently oppressive atmosphere and frequent forays into dream sequences and fantasies that put it closer to Peter Jackson’s striking Heavenly Creatures, albeit with a more mundane resolution. 11-year-old Gitty (the impressive Peyton Kennedy) has a lot going on in her world: her stressed-out parents are one thin dime away from losing their family farm…her shithead older brother, Martin, makes a game out of swinging an ax at her hand and threatening her beloved chicken, Happy…she’s dealing with the pangs of adolescence…oh yeah…there’s also the mysterious man (Richard Schiff) that Gitty finds trapped in her family’s abandoned grain silo, which, as always, can’t be a good sign.

American Fable was a lot easier to respect than actually enjoy, at least as far as I was concerned. Although the film looked and sounded fantastic (cinematographer Wyatt Garfield also shot Lila & Eve), with one carousel sequence that has to go down as the single most gorgeous shot of the entire year, it was also rather dull. The reveal did nothing to help things, turning the film into a much more middle-of-the-road crime drama than it was probably shooting for. The fantastic elements were an odd fit, to boot, feeling distinctly out-of-place with the grim seriousness of everything else.

There was enough here that worked (similar to Ryan Gosling’s odd Lost River) for me to be interested in Hamilton’s future work but American Fable certainly isn’t the calling-card it could have been.

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The Texas Chainsaw Massacre (1974)

I’ve watched The Texas Chainsaw Massacre more times than I can count, quite possibly more times than any other film on my “All-time Favorites” list. I don’t always screen it every October but I try to screen it most Octobers: it’s the kind of film I never get tired of seeing and it’s always as welcome as catching up with an old friend. I always find something new in this ageless tale of dumb teenagers getting on the wrong side of an insane family of cannibals, deep in the Texas badlands. It is, quite frankly, one of the very best horror films in the entirety of the genre and, might I add, one of the best films, in general.

There was no way I would miss screening TCM this October for one simple, sad reason: the man who made the saw scream, genre legend Tobe Hooper, shuffled off this mortal coil on August 26th of this year. While Hooper’s career was far from perfect (his last truly great film was actually The Texas Chainsaw Massacre 2, way back in 1986), he was still responsible for some of the films that I hold closest to my heart: the aforementioned Chainsaws, Eaten Alive, The Funhouse and Salem’s Lot. He was a unique visionary who burned bright and fast but left an indelible mark on the world of film.

If you have any doubt of Hooper’s lasting power, do one simple thing to realign your compass: turn off all the lights, put your phone away and watch The Texas Chainsaw Massacre tonight. That feeling in your gut? That’s dread, buckaroo, and Hooper wrote the first and last word on it 43 years ago. Let that sink in.

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Night of the Living Dead (1968)

2017 has been a rather dreadful year, in general, but it’s been particularly shitty for old-school horror fanatics. Not only did we lose Tobe Hooper but we lost the Father of the Living Dead himself, George A. Romero. When you’re talking legends, they don’t get more legendary than the visionary who wrote the rule-book that zombie films (and pop culture) would follow for nearly 50 years and counting.

As simple in set-up as it is powerful in execution, Romero’s debut is an exercise in economy that does nothing to distill the apocalyptic fury that it contains. NOTLD planted the seeds for not only the entirety of zombie films that would follow but also laid the groundwork for siege films, ala Assault on Precinct 13 and Fort Apache: The Bronx. It featured a black lead who was portrayed as a strong, independent individual in the same year that the assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. was ripping the country apart. It featured graphic (remember, this was 1968) sequences of gut-munching and dismemberment and had no problem with killing off children (still somewhat of a cinematic taboo).

Romero had a rich career outside of his landmark Dead film, including classics like The Crazies, Martin, Creepshow and The Dark Half, but it all started back in that little farmhouse, in grainy black and white, with legions of the freshly dead clawing at the windows. George Romero changed my world, no small feat, but he also changed the world and that’s why he’ll never be forgotten.

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Cult of Chucky

On a happier note: Don Mancini is still alive and kicking and I’m eternally grateful for that! He’s been writing the Child’s Play series all the way back since the first one, in 1988, but only took over the director’s reins beginning with 2004’s Seed of Chucky. While that effort wasn’t amazing, 2013’s Curse of Chucky most certainly was: introducing a Hitchcockian element that sounds ludicrous on paper but plays out perfectly, Curse of Chucky was not only a breath of fresh air but a clear signal that the Child’s Play franchise was alive and kicking.

This year’s brand-spanking-new Cult of Chucky isn’t quite as perfect as Curse but that’s a minor quibble: trading Hitchcock for Cronenberg, Mancini comes up with another delirious, giddy, gorgeously shot bit of blood-soaked eye candy, providing fan service for the long-timers while managing to keep things fresh and new for everybody else.

This time around, Nica (the thoroughly kickass Fiona Dourif, channeling her inner Ripley) is confined to a mental institution and accused of Chucky’s murders from the previous entry. When the ol’ Chuckster shows up to finish what he started, it sets into motion a complicated series of machinations involving long-time series hero Andy Barclay (Alex Vincent, grown-up), Chucky’s insane girlfriend, Tiffany Valentine (the always amazing Jennifer Tilly) and various incarnations of Chucky from the previous films. Nica is going to have to be strong, though: one Chucky might be a handful but a whole cult of Chuckys? That’s murder, buddy!

Self-referential, beautifully shot (one set-piece apes Argento in the best way possible) and with a fantastic, smart script, Cult of Chucky is quality filmmaking from first to last. The pleasures to be found here are virtually endless (one of the most sublime being the scene where Fiona gets to, essentially, perform as her father) but the brilliant finale, which flips the whole series on its keister, indicates that Mancini has plenty of fun left in his bag of tricks. An easy lock for one of my very favorite horror films of 2017, hands down.

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They’re Watching

Originally screened as part of my eternally on-going pursuit to see every horror film released in 2016, I decided to re-watch They’re Watching as part of this year’s seasonal festivities for one important reason: I really dug it the first time around and was in the mood for a fun romp. As hoped, this fit the bill quite nicely.

Coming from the demented minds of writer-director duo Jay Lender (Spongebob Squarepants, Phineas and Ferb) and Micah Wright (videogames like Destroy All Humans and Call of Duty) comes a film that, no surprise, is equal parts video game, live-action cartoon and gonzo horror-comedy. Parodying endless cable home improvement shows, They’re Watching follows a hapless, woefully unprepared film crew as they travel to rural Slovenia and collide with murderous locals and, perhaps, something much more ancient and fundamentally dangerous.

From beginning to end, They’re Watching is a giddy romp, taking a kitchen-sink approach to its subject matter that actually works. Combing elements of backwoods brutality, found-footage, witchcraft, possession, horror-comedies, home improvement shows and ’90s SFX spectacles (albeit with much cheaper digital FX) makes for a finished product that is never dull and, at times, genuinely surprising. Suffice to say that I liked this just as much as the first time around, indicating that They’re Watching has earned a spot on my seasonal rotation list.

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Housebound

I’ve written extensively about Gerard Johnstone’s delightful Housebound in the past, even going so far as to name it my favorite horror film of 2014. This wonderful tale of an obnoxious petty criminal who gets the ultimate punishment when she’s placed under house arrest in her overbearing mother’s possibly haunted house became a favorite of mine from the very first time I saw it and the love has diminished not one bit.

What more is there to say about this charmer (think fellow New Zealander Peter Jackson’s The Frighteners but with much more heart) than that you should see it immediately? With news coming in that Johnstone has just been pegged to pen the Justice League Dark script, this might be the last chance to catch him before the superhero machine sends this talented writer-director straight into the stratosphere.

 

Stay tuned for Week 2 and keep it spooky, boos and ghouls!

 

 

 

 

 

 

7/5/15 (Part One): Home is Where the Haunt Is

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Barbara Niven, cinema, dead children, father-son relationships, film reviews, films, ghosts, grown children, haunted houses, horror-comedies, Housebound, Jack Plotnick, Jeffrey Combs, John Waters, Kat Dennings, Lucas Lee Graham, Mackenzie Phillips, Mark Bruner, Matthew Gray Gubler, McKenna Grace, Mel Rodriguez, Michl Britsch, Movies, multiple writers, Muse Watson, Odd Thomas, paranormal investigators, racists, Ray Santiago, Ray Wise, Richard Bates Jr., Ronnie Gene Blevins, Sally Kirkland, scatological humor, seances, seeing ghosts, Sibyl Gregory, silly films, Soska Sisters, Suburban Gothic, suburban homes, suburban life, suburbia, The Frighteners, Under the Bed, writer-director-producer

Ah, suburbia: endless rows of identical houses, with identical lawns, with identical Suburbans parked in identical carports, tended to by identical suburbanites as they go about their virtually identical lives. For many people, suburbia is the very picture of success: after all, what really says “You’ve made it” more than your own house, family, steady job and reliable source of transportation? For the outsider, misanthrope and loner, however, the very concept of suburbia can be a kind of hell on earth: the place where all dreams go to become pureed into easily digestible slop. As the Descendents so aptly put it: “I want to be stereotyped…I want to be classified…I want to be a clone…I want a suburban home.”

For filmmakers, the concept of the dark underbelly of suburbia is nothing new: after all, films like The Stepford Wives (1975), The Amityville Horror (1979), Neighbors (1981), Parents (1989), The ‘Burbs (1989),  American Beauty (1999) and Donnie Darko (2001) have been equating cookie-cutter neighborhoods with existential dread for decades now. To this storied tradition we can now add writer-director Richard Bates Jr’s Suburban Gothic (2014): proving that there’s nothing wrong with ambition, Bates Jr takes the aforementioned suburban angst films and throws in elements of “I see ghosts” films, ala The Frighteners (1996) and Odd Thomas (2013), as well as “grown children moving back home” films, such as the instantly classic Housebound (2014) and the less successful Under the Bed (2012). If Suburban Gothic never comes close to reaching the heady heights of Housebound, there’s still enough silly, funny and outrageous material here to give genre fans a grin from ear to ear. Plus, it’s got Ray Wise: any film with Ray Wise is, of course, automatically better than any film without him…that’s just basic math, amigo.

Poor Raymond (Criminal Minds’ Matthew Gray Gubler) is in a bit of a pickle, the same conundrum that might befall many twenty-to-thirty-somethings: he’s over-educated and under-employed. Despite having his MBA, Raymond must swallow the bitterest pill of all and move back in with his over-protective, smothering mother, Eve (Barbara Niven), and obnoxious, disapproving and casually racist father, Donald (Ray Wise, swinging for the rafters), an event which is sure to put a crimp in any attempt he can make to take control of his life.

You see, Raymond is a bit of a mess: bullied as a child about his weight and “gifted” with the ability to see ghosts, he escaped his one horse town as soon as he could, hoping to put as much distance between him and the past as possible. Given to wearing outrageously showy clothes (his bright, purple scarf is a definite highlight), Raymond couldn’t be more out-of-place in his old hometown, especially once he ends up back in the sights of former bully Pope (Ronnie Gene Blevins) and his small crew of miscreants. Everyone in town is glad to see that Raymond failed at life, since it (somehow) validates their own humble existences. Everyone, that is, except for Raymond’s former classmate, Becca (2 Broke Girls’ Kat Dennings), who now tends bar at the local watering hole. To her, Raymond was always the only interesting person in town and she’s mighty glad to have him back, even if she has a snarky way of showing it.

Just in time for his homecoming, however, some truly weird shit has started to happen, seemingly centered around the makeshift childs’ coffin that Donald’s gardeners have just dug up in the yard. Before he knows what’s going on, Raymond is experiencing the same ghostly visions that he used to have, this time involving a sinister little girl. As the occurrences become more pronounced, Raymond and Becca are convinced that a wayward spirit is in need of a peaceful journey into the light, while Donald and Eve are convinced that their son is losing his ever-lovin’ mind. As Raymond and Becca dig deeper into the history of the house, however, they begin to realize that the spirit in question might not be that of a little lost girl: it might just be something a bit more on the “extreme evil” side of things. Will Raymond and Becca be able to set it all to rights or will this humdrum slice of suburban life end up destroying them all?

My anticipation level for Suburban Gothic was pretty high, right out of the gate, for one very important reason: I pretty much adored writer-director Bates Jr’s debut, the outrageous Excision (2012), a slice of high school life that managed to combine Grand Guignol gore with fanciful dream sequences and arrived at a wholly unique, if often repugnant, place that wasn’t so far removed from what the Soska Sisters did with their stunning American Mary (2012). Excision was the kind of debut that puts a filmmaker firmly on my radar, which leads us directly to the sophomore film, Suburban Gothic. If his newest possessed a tenth of the gonzo energy of his first, this seemed like a pretty sure-fire no-brainer.

In reality, Suburban Gothic is a good full-step (certainly at least a half-step) down from Bates Jr’s debut, although it’s still a thoroughly enjoyable romp on its own terms. The big difference ends up being tonal: unlike Excision, which buried its blackly comic sensibilities under a lot of very unpleasant material, Suburban Gothic is a much sillier, goofier affair. Nowhere is this made more explicit than the impossibly silly scene where Raymond watches his toenails rise and fall to the tune of the old chestnut “Let Me Call You Sweetheart.” Shoddy CGI aside, the scene has the feel of something truly slapstick and goofy, perhaps closer to The ‘Burbs than anything in Bates Jr’s debut.

This “silly” elements end up seeping into almost every aspect of the film: John Waters shows up as the blow job-obsessed head of the local historical society, the medium’s daughter is named Zelda (et tu, Poltergeist (1982)?), Raymond and Becca dress up in the most ridiculous ghost costumes ever (think Charles Schultz), anonymous hands grab Raymond from every-which direction and there’s more mugging going on than a thug convention. In one of the film’s most notable bits, Raymond masturbates while checking out his favorite site, “Latina Booty,” as an overhead light slowly fills with “ghostly” semen: at the “appropriate” moment, the light shatters, showering poor Raymond in about fifty gallons of spooky spunk. Disgusting? You bet yer bottom dollar! Terrifying? Not quite.

The aforementioned example, however, is also a good example of Suburban Gothic’s ace-up-the-sleeve, as it were: for all of the film’s silliness and scatological humor (along with the jizz, we get a lovingly filmed vomiting scene and a nice, long shot of a turd in a toilet), there’s also genuine intelligence and love for the genre. The light gag might be an easy-shot gross-out joke but it’s always a subtle, kind of brilliant nod to Sam Raimi’s original Evil Dead (1981). There’s also a not-so subtle reference to del Toro’s Pan’s Labyrinth (2006), lots of visual ques for The Amityville Horror and Poltergeist and plenty of cameos by genre royalty (the legendary Jeffrey Combs gets to play a bugshit-crazy doctor (natch), while the Soska Sisters pop up in a crowd scene).

While the actual plot is nothing revolutionary, Suburban Gothic is such a good-natured, eager-to-please popcorn flick that it’s never painful to watch: the CGI is fairly well-integrated (save that rather dreadful toenail bit) and if the color-timing on the cinematography seems constantly off (the film has an odd red cast that’s pretty noticeable), cinematographer Lucas Lee Graham (who also shot the much more striking Excision) serves up plenty of nicely composed, evocative images.

On the acting side, Gubler is pitch-perfect as the sarcastic, quietly suffering schlub who must swallow his distaste for everything in order to save his (decidedly undeserving) childhood home. Gubler has a rare ability to mix wiseacre dialogue delivery with Stoogian physical comedy, an ability which serves him well here: one of the film’s easy highlights is the hilarious scene where Raymond accidentally drops an ice cream cake, over and over, until he finally stamps on the damn thing in an abject display of childish tantrums writ large.

While Dennings takes a little longer to get revved up (her early scenes have a rather distracting “I don’t give a shit” quality that’s off-putting), she fully comes into her own by the film’s final reel and her and Gubler make for a believable enough couple. Although she’s never as consistent as Gubler, Dennings shows enough steel, here, to make me interested in her next move: here’s to hoping she spends a little more time in the horror genre…we could use a few fresh faces!

While Niven is fun as Raymond’s mom, Wise really gets to run roughshod over the proceedings: whether he’s proclaiming that all of his Latin American workmen are “Mexicans,” telling his son to “take a knee” as he rolls up to him in a squeaky office chair or apologizing to his black football players for his lack of “grape pop,” Wise is an absolute blast. If anything, his performance as Donald makes a nice comparison to his role as Satan in Reaper, albeit tempered with more than a little lunk-headedness. I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: if there’s ever a Mount Rushmore for iconic genre personalities, Wise is guaranteed to be there.

Ultimately, Suburban Gothic is a thoroughly entertaining, amusing and mildly outrageous horror-comedy: fans of this particular style will find no end of delights, I’m willing to wager, although I still found myself slightly disappointed by the time the credits rolled (the less said about the ridiculously sunny coda, the better). Perhaps I’ve been spoiled by standout films like Housebound and The Frighteners, a pair of horror-comedies that are pretty much the first and last word on this particular subject…perhaps I was hoping for something with a little more bite, ala Excision. Whatever the reason, I have no problem whatsoever recommending Suburban Gothic (provided, of course, that potential viewers are prepared for the often rude humor), although it’s not quite the Richard Bates Jr joint that I hoped for.

I have a sneaking suspicion, however, that Bates Jr is going to become a force to reckon with in the next several years. If that doesn’t blow yer toenails back, pardner…well, I don’t know what will.

12/31/14 (Part Two): Parents Just Don’t Understand

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Best of 2014, Bruce Hopkins, Cameron Rhodes, cinema, favorite films, feature-film debut, film reviews, films, foreign films, Gerard Johnstone, Glen-Paul Waru, haunted houses, horror-comedies, house arrest, Housebound, Kylie Bucknell, Morgana O'Reilly, mother-daughter relationships, Movies, New Zealand films, Rima Te Wiata, Ross Harper, Ryan Lampp, set in New Zealand, Simon Riera, The Frighteners, The Jaquie Brown Diaries, writer-director

In a year crowded with excellent horror and genre films that managed to fly below the mainstream radar, there was still one film that stood out, head and shoulders, as my favorite horror film of the year: Gerard Johnstone’s astounding debut, Housebound (2014). This wasn’t the scariest film of the year, although it had plenty of frights and atmosphere to spare. It certainly wasn’t the most horrific film of the year, although it doesn’t skimp on the grim stuff, either. For my money, Housebound was, quite simply, the best synthesis of all of the horror elements that I look for and love, the single best representation of what I truly enjoy when I sit down to watch a film. I may watch and enjoy many different kinds of movies but few filmmakers have managed to reach straight into my brain in the way that Johnstone does: in many ways, this is the epitome of what I look for in a horror-comedy.

Beginning with a dynamic two-person assault on an ATM machine that quickly collapses into a comedy of errors, we’re introduced to our protagonist, the fabulous Kylie Bucknell (Morgana O’Reilly). Tough as nails, smart, sarcastic, cynical and an all-around badass, Kylie is probably one of the coolest characters I’ve run across in a film in quite some time. As far as I’m concerned, she compares favorably with Kurt Russell’s immortal Snake Plissken in the badassitude department. Caught and sentenced for her attempted theft, Kylie receives the single worst punishment she could hope for: eight months of house arrest under the “watchful” eye of her screwy mother, Miriam (Rima Te Wiata), and step-dad, Graeme (Ross Harper).

Kylie and Miriam get along like oil and water for any number of reasons, not least of which is that Miriam is a superstitious believer in any and every paranormal thing possible, whereas Kylie has a tremendous amount of trouble believing in anything at all, let alone some mumbo-jumbo that she can’t see. Determined to make her mother’s life a living hell, Kylie proceeds to act like the world’s oldest teenager, sulking about, eating her parents out of house and home and, in general, acting like a spoiled, self-entitled little brat.

All of this changes, however, when Kylie happens to overhear her mom call into a radio show and discuss their “haunted” house. Initially passing the whole thing off as more of her mom’s loony fantasies, Kylie is forced to change her tune when she has an unexplained occurrence of her own. Determined to find a rational explanation, Kylie begins to research the house’s history, hoping to disprove her poor mother’s beliefs along the way. While this is going on, Kylie must also navigate around her dopey counselor, Dennis (Cameron Rhodes), as well as Amos (Glen-Paul Waru), the friendly tech who works for the company that monitors Kylie’s ankle bracelet and happens to be a firm believer in the paranormal. Kylie continues to experience things that she just can’t explain and she’s forced into the one partnership that she would never, in a million years, expect to make: her own mother.

Before we go any further, let me state, for the record, that I absolutely loved this film. I’m a person who tends to have intense reactions to movies, both good and bad, although it will often take a particular kind of film to draw the most intense reactions out of me: Housebound was that film. Something about the film drew me in from the very first frame and I stayed on its wave-length all the way through the final credits. Housebound is the kind of movie that I look forward to owning, in physical form, the kind of film that will “elevate” my humble collection, for what that’s worth. In the simplest way possible, it’s great…really, really great. Let’s see if I can’t explain why.

For one thing, Housebound looks absolutely amazing: Simon Riera’s cinematography is gorgeous, showcasing the marvelously creepy old house to stunning effect. It’s truly difficult to believe that Riera works, primarily, in TV and shorts: everything about Housebound screams “veteran cinematographer,” from the shot composition to the framing and the intuitive ways he works with depth-of-field. My hat’s off to Riera for coming up with one of the best looking films of the whole year: bravo, sir…bravo!

You can’t have a great film without a great script, however, and Johnstone certainly doesn’t disappoint there. Truth be told, Housebound is kind of brilliant: not only is the film laugh-out-loud funny, it’s also quite chilling and moving, in equal doses, which is certainly no mean feat. The film’s mythology isn’t particularly original (in fact, much of the film recalls fellow New Zealander Peter Jackson’s The Frighteners (1996), at least in tone, if not specifics) but it’s nicely realized and doesn’t seem moldy or overly obvious. There’s also some surprising weight to the mother-daughter relationship, which gives the whole film an underlying gravitas that’s belied by the constantly arch tone: it’s a delicate balancing act but Housebound manages to come across as sweet without seeming cloying and obvious: again, that’s a damn handy hat trick to pull off.

How are the actual horror aspects, though? As far as I’m concerned, top-notch. The true key to effective horror, as far as I’m concerned, will always be atmosphere and mood, two areas in which Housebound easily excels. Although it’s the furthest thing from graphic, Johnstone’s isn’t afraid to get his hands dirty and there were at least a couple organic jump scares that actually made me jump. Kudos to a great production design team who manage to give everything the appropriate creepy touch: it’s a suitably classy affair but the horror still shines through, loud and clear.

When it all comes down to it, however, there are two very potent reasons why Housebound is such a great damn movie: Morgana O’Reilly and Rima Te Wiata. Quite frankly, the two are perfect: there isn’t one single note, one movement, one affectation or one line delivery that I would change with either performer, were I in such a position to do so. O’Reilly’s performance as Kylie ranks up with my favorite cinematic badasses ever: I can’t help but return to the Snake Plissken comparison because it just feels so apt. When Kylie really gets going, she’s damn near unstoppable: I would love to see a franchise precipitated around her shrugging her way through various evil situations, sort of like an ever more cynical and irritable version of Bruce Campbell’s Ash.

Te Wiata, for her part, is nothing short of a marvel: she makes Miriam such a twitchy, neurotic, nearly unbearable ball of nerves that it seems impossible to ever empathize with the character. That Miriam is never anything less than 100% likable, then, is nothing short of a miracle: I’ve seen lots of great performances, over the year, but to not mention Te Wiata would be the most criminal form of neglect. Even better, the duo mesh perfectly as mother and daughter: they’re such an inspired team that I’m really hoping for a continuation of the partnership, even if they switch up the details. I honestly feel that O’Reilly and Te Wiata are one of the most inspired comic teams of this decade and can only hope that Housebound serves merely as the opening act of a great partnership.

I could go on and on, really, but anything more that I say runs the risk of spoiling any of Housebound’s myriad surprises. There’s a genuine sense of invention and wide-eyed enthusiasm that’s quite infectious: I find it rather impossible to believe that anyone wouldn’t be completely sucked into the film by the five-minute mark. In a year where lots of first-time filmmakers surprised me with some pretty stunning debuts, Gerard Johnstone’s was one of the most shocking and utterly delightful. Suffice to say that Housebound managed to rocket straight into my list of favorite films after a single viewing: this is one of those films, like Pulp Fiction (1994) or The Good, The Bad and the Ugly (1966), that I look forward to having a very long, happy relationship with. Here’s to hoping that Housebound is just the tip of the iceberg and that Johnstone proves to be one of our very brightest, best new talents.

The Year in Review: The Best Films of 2014 (Part Two)

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2014, Best of 2014, Borgman, Calvary, cinema, favorite films, film reviews, films, Grand Piano, Housebound, Jodorowsky's Dune, Movies, Nymphomaniac, Obvious Child, Rhymes For Young Ghouls, Under the Skin, Wrong Cops, year in review, year-end lists

We began with ten of my picks for the best films of 2014 and will now end with the other ten: proving how fluid these types of lists are for me, I’ve already whittled one film off in order to make the list an even twenty…life, as we know, is a constant state of flux. As with the first half, none of these are specifically ranked, with the exception of the final listing. Let’s do this.

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The Best Films of 2014 (cont.)

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Borgman

Coming across as a particularly cold combination of Michael Haneke’s misanthropic odes to the futility of modern life (particularly Funny Games) and the bizarrely Dadaist films of Greek eccentric Yorgos Lanthimos, Dutch genius Alex van Warmerdam’s newest film, Borgman, is a weird, creepy little marvel that almost defies description. A mysterious vagrant insinuates himself into a well-to-do family’s life, ala Down and Out in Beverly Hills, and ends up destroying them from the inside-out. The elevator pitch doesn’t sound particularly odd but Warmerdam isn’t the kind of filmmaker who does anything by the book: blackly comic, surreal, oppressive, nightmarish and oddly fairy-tale-like, Borgman worms its way into your brain and latches on like a pit bull with lockjaw.

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Grand Piano

The absolute closest thing to Hitchcock since the Master of Suspense shuffled off this mortal coil (put your hand down, DePalma), Eugenio Miro’s relentless Grand Piano was one of the biggest surprises in recent memory. The setup is so simple that it seems impossible to carry across a full-length film: a retired concert pianist reemerges to play a concerto on his dead mentor’s prize piano, only to receive messages from a mysterious person during the packed performance that indicate he’ll be shot dead if he stops playing or makes a mistake. From this intriguing, if limited premise, Miro shoots for the moon and winds up somewhere in a far, undiscovered galaxy. Elijah Wood, who’s quickly becoming one of my favorite genre actors, is perfect as the pianist but the real star of the film is Miro’s flawless direction and a ridiculously air-tight script by Damien Chazelle. Grand Piano is full of so many amazing setpieces and thrilling scenes that I was, literally, on the edge of my seat for the entire film: one of the most nail-biting moments I witnessed all year involves nothing more than sheet music and a cell phone and it’s astounding. The fact that this film didn’t open huge and play to massive audiences is one of the best indications that the future of cinema lies in the margins, with the truly unique outsiders, rather than anything that plays the multiplexes.

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Rhymes For Young Ghouls

A coming-of-age film…a period piece about life on Canadian Indian reservations during the ’70s…a heist film…a family drama…a revenge drama…Rhymes for Young Ghouls is all of these things and so much more. Anchored by the amazing performance of Kawennáhere Devery Jacobs as the hard-nosed, resilient and, frankly, awesome Aila, writer-director Jeff Barnaby’s feature-length debut is nothing short of inspirational. I was never less than enthralled by anything that happened in the film (the brief animated segment, by itself, is one of the coolest cinematic moments of the year) and was frequently caught with a giant lump in my throat: when Rhymes For Young Ghouls is firing on all cylinders, there’s an epic quality to the filmmaking that actually echoes Scorsese. I went into Rhymes for Young Ghouls knowing nothing about the film whatsoever and left with my head on backwards. The fact that I really haven’t seen the film mentioned anywhere is testament to the fact that some awfully amazing gems seem to be falling through the cracks lately. An utterly vital, essential debut.

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Under the Skin

Lyrical, lush, atmospheric and experimental, Jonathan Glazer’s Under the Skin was probably one of the most beautiful films I watched all year. There’s something almost hypnotic about the way Glazer blends eerie surrealism with the quiet, hushed tone of the film. Johansson is actually perfect as the mysterious, other-worldly woman who picks up guys on the nighttime streets of Glasgow and then…well, what, exactly? One of the supreme joys of Under the Skin is how little Glazer holds viewers’ hands: there’s never an “info dump,” no tedious flashbacks to over-explain twists and precious little dialogue to intrude on the near suffocating stillness. When the film jets off into the unknown, as in the “assimilation” scenes, Glazer’s film stakes out territory that puts it in the company of pioneers like 2001, albeit on a much smaller scale. Under the Skin is the kind of film that cinephiles can (and should) think about and digest for years to come.

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Housebound

As my pick for the best horror film of 2014, Housebound still wasn’t a shoe-in for my overall list: as I mentioned elsewhere, I used very different criteria to determine the “horror” vs “overall” lists and many films that made my horror list didn’t carry across to the other. Housebound did for a simple reason: it’s not only the best horror film of 2014, it’s one of the best films of the year, period. Extremely well-balanced, with an expert mixture of humor and horror, I could see Housebound appealing to any and everyone, not just the horror-hounds in the audience. Morgana O’Reilly and Rima Te Wiata are outstanding as the mother-daughter ghost-hunting duo, giving us plenty to care about amidst the usual spooky high-jinks and haunted house tropes. To make it even better, O’Reilly’s Kylie Bucknell is an instantly iconic female ass-kicker, a strong-willed, take-no-shit woman who needs a white knight like she needs a hole in the head. When I wasn’t laughing, I was cheering: when I wasn’t on the edge of my seat, I was karate-kicking the ceiling fan. Housebound is an absolute blast to watch and is only writer-director Gerard Johnstone’s first film: I absolutely can’t wait for his next fifteen movies.

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Jodorowsky’s Dune

So many films have been made since the advent of cinema, so many more than any of us will be able to see in a lifetime, that it seems a little strange to celebrate and discuss a movie that was never made. When the film is question is Alejandro Jodorowsky’s proposed adaptation of Dune, however, a film that was actually posited as a source of enlightenment for humanity and a way to help it achieve another level of spiritual evolution…well, it seems like we could probably take a few minutes to reflect on that, dontcha think? There was nothing conventional about Jodorowsky’s plans for Dune whatsoever: from casting Salvador Dali as the Emperor of Space to commissioning Pink Floyd to provide the music for one of the planets (not for the entire film, mind you…just as a theme for one particular part) to utilizing one of the most famous graphic artists of the era as a storyboard artist, Jodorowsky followed his muse at every step. His only intention was to create pure art and enlighten humanity: compare and contrast that with our current glut of superhero films and it’s clear that Jodorowsky wouldn’t even fit into our modern era, let alone in his. Fascinating, inspirational and full of so many amazing stories and anecdotes that it almost becomes overwhelming, Jodorowsky’s Dune is anchored by the man himself, Alejandro Jodorowsky, 84-years-young at the time of filming and so much more alive and vital than most people a tenth of his age. More than anything, the amazing documentary is a testament to the notion that you should never stop reaching for the stars, even if your feet are firmly stuck on terra firma.

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Nymphomaniac Vols 1 & 2

Sprawling, messy, over-the-top, frequently unpleasant and always impossible to look away from, auteur Lars von Trier’s epic-length ode to female sexuality (a staggering 5.5 hours in the director’s cut, which is definitely the way to go, if you’re going at all) is a stunner in every sense of the word. The film doesn’t always work and von Trier is up to all of his old provocateur antics here but it’s impossible to deny that Nymphomaniac is one of the most awe-inspiring films of the years. There’s a level of ambition here that’s daunting: at times, the film’s endless digressions, footnotes and asides begin to feel like a pornographic version of House of Leaves come to bold, colorful life. This will absolutely not be for everyone…hell, it probably won’t be for many people, to be honest: when the film is raw, it’s in-your-face raw and the frequent (real) sex can be a bit numbing after a while. There’s also the underlying question of whether von Trier actually has any business discussing female sexuality at all: it’s a valid concern, to be honest, and one that actually feels like it gets addressed, internally, as the film progresses, almost as if the writer-director is working out his own thoughts and beliefs as the story unfolds…it’s a complex issue and one that demands to be discussed at length and out loud. While I haven’t always seen eye-to-eye with von Trier cinematically (or personally, although that’s a discussion for another time and venue), there’s no denying that his last three films, Antichrist, Melancholia and Nymphomaniac, have been bold, visually stunning and thoroughly unique works of art. Love him or hate him as a person but ignore him at your own risk: for folks that can handle it, Nymphomaniac is nothing short of essential.

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Calvary

John Michael McDonagh’s debut, The Guard, was a massively fun, ridiculously engaging film that featured a whirlwind performance from Irish national treasure Brendan Gleeson at its center and had one of the freshest, tightest scripts around. For the followup, Calvary, McDonagh opts to stick with Gleeson and the results are nothing short of cinematic perfection. There’s an overlying air of regret and fatalism to this story about a happy-go-lucky, small-town Irish priest who’s told by an unknown man, during confession, that’s he’s to be killed at the end of the week as revenge for the Catholic Church’s child molestation scandal. As Gleeson’s Father James runs about the town, conducting his own unofficial investigation in order to discover the identity of his would-be assassin, he uncovers a hidden world of resentment, anger and hatred, much of it directed at the clergy. Unbelievably powerful and bleak, Calvary is an absolutely stunning film with a conclusion that punches you right in the face. In a lifetime filled with more amazing roles and performances than seems humanly possible, Gleeson, somehow, manages to top himself, once again. For my money, Calvary was probably the single best drama of the year, a purely old-fashioned and cinematic marvel that reminds us of the time when all you needed to flatten an audience was tremendous acting, a remarkable script and a filmmaker with the patience and vision to make it all happen. This is powerful, moving cinema as its very best.

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Obvious Child

When it came time to put together my Best of 2014 list, I instantly knew that Gillian Robespierre’s debut, Obvious Child, was going to be there: the only real question was “top spot or lower.” While it didn’t go on to take the top honors, there was nothing easy about the decision at all…in fact, I’m still agonizing about it as I continue to type out this particular missive.

Into a year that seemed hellbent on declaring out-right war on women (threats of violence against female journalists, widespread denial of rape allegations, Stone Age legislative rulings regarding women’s health and reproductive rights) came Robespierre’s bittersweet Obvious Child, an honest-to-god abortion comedy (the only other one I can even think of is Citizen Ruth), a smart, funny, sweet honest and uncompromising film that was the furthest thing from a stereotypical rom-com, yet held enough of the DNA to still be identifiable as such. At the center of it all is stand-up comedian/voice actor Jenny Slate, in a role that should guarantee her status as a star: Slate is simply perfect in the film, displaying a range and depth that would be impressive on a “professional” actor, much less a stand-up comedian. Nothing about the movie is obvious (despite the title) and anyone expecting a typically Hallmark resolution will probably be pleasantly surprised: there’s too much honesty here for any of the characters to delude themselves as far as that goes. By turns hilarious, heartfelt and always authentic, Obvious Child was that rarest of finds in 2014: a film that I wished would just keep going on, into infinity. Here’s a little future forecast for all of you fine folks: Gillian Robespierre will be one of the world’s foremost filmmakers in a remarkably short amount of time, mark my words.

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Nineteen films down, one to go. While everything that preceded this could be considered unranked (although Obvious Child would still be very near the top), my final selection is very definite: I saw this particular film all the way back in April of 2014 and it never left my head throughout the year. At times, scenes would just pop into my brain out of nowhere, as if my subconscious was happily rewatching the film, internally, without my express written consent. It’s a film that I can look at from end to end and find nothing worth complaining about, nothing that detracts from the overall massive awesomeness. When I look back at my absolute favorite films over the years, movies like The Good, The Bad and the Ugly, The Godfather, Goodfellas, 2001 and The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, there’s a unity of vision to them, a sort of perfect totality of world building that makes them impossible to escape (for me, at least), similar to shiny, jangly things for a jackdaw. I may like quite a few films and probably love a few more than most people do but there’s a very fixed, specific list of films that I consider to absolute, stone-cold classics. It has nothing to do with age, notoriety, “hip-factor” (or lack thereof), indie vs studio or any such easy distinctions. When a film is an utter classic, a little voice goes off in my head and that’s pretty much it: I can give great reasons, rationales and critiques until the cows come home but it all comes down to that little internal guide, that quiet little voice that hasn’t steered me wrong in some 30-odd years of cinematic obsession. With all of that being said, my choice as the single best film of calendar year 2014 is…

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1.

Wrong Cops

In a year filled with such stunning, critic-proof films as The Grand Budapest Hotel, Under the Skin and Obvious Child, what right do I have to select this incredibly gonzo little oddity as the best of the best? Let me see if I can’t try to break it down a little, before we circle around to that whole “internal voice” thing. Right off the bat, French musician/film auteur Quentin Dupieux is one of the most unusual, singular and amazing filmmakers currently living: it’s absolutely no hyperbole to place him in the same impressive echelon as folks like Luis Bunuel, Alejandro Jodorowsky or David Lynch. For my money, what makes an auteur is a singularly unified vision, the kind of vision that can be instantly recognized from film to film without falling into the territory of slavish duplication. In particular, I think of filmmakers like Wes Anderson or Scorsese: their films may (for the most part) be very different from each other but there’s always the overriding notion of returning to a particular universe.

Beginning with his 2002 debut, Nonfilm, Dupieux has been quietly and confidently blowing minds for the following decade plus. The hallmark of a Dupieux film is an amazing synthesis of the absurd and comic with the dark and deranged: his third film, the astonishing Rubber, is about a sentient tire (as in, the kind that goes on the wheel of a car) that “wakes up” with the ability to blow things up with its mind, falls in love with a human woman and sets out on a mission of revenge, all while the film’s “audience” (ie: us) watches the proceedings from the sidelines. The followup, Wrong, concerns a mild-mannered nebbish who loses his dog and stumbles into a bizarre world of pet cults, psychic pooches, the evolution of mankind and more repeated insanity than a thousand Groundhog Days stacked end to end.

While Dupieux’s previous films were mind-blowing, unforgettable pieces of cinematic insanity in their own rights, Wrong Cops is like Dupieux decided to just take it all to the next level, cut out the safety net and just go for it. On the surface, there’s nothing about Wrong Cops that should work: the cast is full of comics, which doesn’t always guarantee the sturdiest acting; Marilyn Manson plays a nerdy teenager; the humor is crude, scatological, politically incorrect and often outrageous (one of the main characters is a happily married father who stars in violent, homosexual porn as a side gig); there’s a sense of absurdity that can be downright confounding and the film is in constant motion, so jittery and kinetic as to be the cinematic equivalent of a facial tic. No one in the film can remotely be considered a “good” (or even sympathetic character) and the notion that Dupieux is constantly winking at us is never far behind.

And yet…and yet, for all of this marvelous insanity, Wrong Cops works so astoundingly well that it almost makes me misty-eyed. Dupieux is such an assured master of the surreal and bizarre, ala Bunuel, that we trust him with the wheel, even though we have no idea where he’s driving. Bits that seem like throw-away jokes (one of my favorites being the grievously wounded fellow who’s dragged all the way to a record exec’s office just so he can weigh in on whether a particular track is “cool” or not) all pay off, in the long run, and everything in this nonsensical universe eventually makes sense, even if it’s not in any conventional sense of the term. More than any film this year, Wrong Cops is a film that boldly says “Trust me: I know what I’m doing” and then goes on to prove that fact.

While the surreal filmmaking and script are sheer perfection, this would all collapse like a bad souffle if there weren’t such a rock-solid, amazing ensemble to hold it all together. The incredibly game cast, while includes Mark Burnham, Eric Wareheim, Eric Judor, Ray Wise, Steve Little and Arden Myrin, give it their all: when everyone involved seems this invested, it’s impossible not to get swept up in the madness. Hell, even Marilyn Manson puts his performance square between the goal posts: his scenes with Mark Burnham are a perfect combination of creepy, weird and sweet and pretty much form the bedrock of the film (the movie is actually an expansion of a short that primarily featured that relationship). Combine this with a truly awesome, trippy soundtrack, courtesy of good ol’ Dupieux (he’s also a famous French electro-artist who performs and records under the name Mr. Oizo) and Wrong Cops folds you up in its crazy, multi-colored, batshit world and never lets you go.

There were many films this year that I respected and plenty of films that I loved. Wrong Cops, however, was one of the few films that I actually felt like I “needed.” As someone who’s addicted to outsider fare like Taxidermia, Dogtooth and the like, I often find it incredibly difficult to get my “fix”: I might go years between truly astounding finds and, sometimes, it can feel a little like wandering through a desert in search of an oasis. Ever since I discovered Dupieux, however, I can finally get that jolt that I need so badly, on a semi-regular basis: in many ways, Dupieux is a filmmaker that seems to be making films just for me…how the hell could I not consider that the greatest thing ever?

Will Wrong Cops have any relevance to non-acolytes of the Church of Quentin? If you appreciate bold, uncompromising, exquisitely made films with a surreal bent and zero desire to coddle, there is no way you won’t completely fall in love with Dupieux and his filmography. For my money, one of the single most important qualities for a true lover of film to have is an open mind: you will not and cannot experience anything new and wonderful unless you’re willing to step outside your comfort zone and take that leap of faith. When it all comes together, like some sort of cosmic plan, the results can be life-affirming.

For all of these reasons and so many more, Quentin Dupieux’s Wrong Cops is my selection as the single best film of 2014, topping a crowded field and nineteen other contenders.

Stay tuned for the final wrap-up on 2014 as we prepare to return to our regularly scheduled broadcast here on The VHS Graveyard. It’s been a long journey but we’re finally home.