11/3/15: He Ain’t Heavy, He’s My Brother

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Adam Chernick, adopted siblings, brothers, Charles Manson, cinema, comedies, dark comedies, Davie-Blue, dramas, estranged family, estranged siblings, feature-film debut, feuding brothers, film reviews, films, first-time director, independent films, indie comedies, J. Davis, Jay Duplass, Leonora Pitts, Linas Phillips, Manson Family Vacation, Movies, road trips, Sean McElwee, Tobin Bell, writer-director-producer

What does it actually mean to be someone’s “brother”? Is it a purely genealogical notion, a biological distinction marked by nothing more than one’s parentage: the male offspring of your mother and father is your brother, nothing more or less? Is it a societal notion connected to a sense of deep kindred and mutual reliance: the soldiers that you live, train and die with are your “brothers,” regardless of whether you’re blood-related or not? Does biology always guarantee kinship, at some level, or do you have to actively work to achieve that kind of relationship?

What about adopted siblings? Society tells you that your adopted brother is just as much kin as a blood relation, a bond which is doubtlessly reinforced by each and every family that welcomes adopted children into their homes. But is he? Can adopted siblings ever develop the deep-seated bonds of blood relations? Can someone ever truly and unconditionally embrace their adopted sibling, take them into their heart and call them “brother” with the complete and utter conviction of one that they actually share genetic material with? At the end of the day, what does it really mean to call someone “brother”?

First-time writer/director J. Davis’ Manson Family Vacation (2015) takes a stab at this question via two brothers: straight-laced family man/contract lawyer, Nick (Jay Duplass) and his restless, nomadic, uber-hippy, adopted brother, Conrad (Linas Phillips). After Conrad suddenly pops back up in Nick’s life, while en route to a new job in Death Valley, the two brothers get a chance to reconnect and work on their often contentious relationship. At his wife’s urging, Nick swallows his own misgivings and attempts to reconnect with his estranged sibling.

When Conrad’s obsession with Charles Manson and his cult leads to the brothers touring various “murder houses,” however, Nick finds it harder than ever to see eye-to-eye with his “weirdo” brother, especially since he’s now dealing with antisocial behavior from his own teen son, Max (Adam Chernick), and is worried that Conrad is going to provide the worst sort of role model possible. When he comes in to find Conrad gleefully showing Max his favorite grisly crime scene photos from Helter Skelter, it kinda seems like he may have a point.

As the brothers check off “must-sees” on Conrad’s list, though, they find themselves settling into an uneasy balancing act that might, given time, actually blossom into something approaching “love,” if not quite “respect.” Nothing is ever quite as it seems, however, and a secret regarding Conrad’s real parents threatens to tear apart the brothers’ tentative relationship before it’s had a chance to fully heal. Will Nick and Conrad be able to put aside their differences and embrace one another or is it finally time for them to cut ties and burn all their old bridges to the ground?

Despite a gloriously goofy presence and some delightfully comic setpieces (the scene where Nick and Conrad finagle their way into the old Labianca house, under very false pretenses, is a minor comic masterpiece, for one), there’s a big, dramatic heart that beats at the center of Manson Family Vacation and some genuine emotional resonance to the scenario. This is a film that could have easily devolved into pointless whimsy and sub-Andersonian dramatics but manages to effortlessly balance the lighter and darker aspects with a particularly deft hand.

While writer/director Davis deserves no end of credit here (the script, for one, is exceptional), especially considering his first time status, Manson Family Vacation is an acting showcase, first and foremost: the film wouldn’t have nearly the impact without the combined power of Duplass and Phillips’ extraordinary performances. Watching Nick and Conrad feint around each other, coming cautiously closer and sniffing around before bolting back to the safety of their respective hard-set world views, is a pure and unmitigated pleasure, perhaps the greatest since Matthau and Lemmon made such a memorable odd couple on the silver screen.

In other hands, either character could have become a one-dimensional cliche: hell, “uptight, married lawyer in need of cutting loose” and “hippy burnout with dreams of making an impact” are practically commedia dell’arte stand-bys in the modern cinematic world. Duplass and Phillips don’t stop with the short description, however, imbuing their performances with enough nuance and shading to make them seem like real people, not production notes in the margin of a film pitch.

There’s an authenticity to their interactions that’s not only refreshing but infinitely more interesting than the usual cookie-cutter treatment of the same: while the relationship (and film) hit plenty of the expected beats, it does so organically rather than as carefully delineated points on a plot breakdown. When Nick rips the phone from Conrad’s hand during his welcome party with “the Family” and ruins his “reunion” with his father, the combined sense of jealously, pain, anger and the terrible need to lash out against someone, anyone, bursts out of the screen like heat from a blast furnace. Ditto the incredible, subtle moment where Conrad finally gets to witness his tireless devotion to Charles Manson from the inside and doesn’t seem to like it one little bit. They’re the kinds of scenes that would be standouts in any film but, here, they have plenty of good company.

Ultimately, what J. Davis and his exceptional cast (including the single most restrained performance by Tobin Bell since his delightful surprise appearance in the U.S. version of Wilfred) have done is created a cinematic Trojan horse: Manson Family Vacation’s goofy, lighthearted and slightly silly exterior hides a surprisingly powerful, deep and thought-provoking interior. While the comedic material is constantly fun and frequently laugh-out-loud funny (Conrad’s description of his travel memoir as “On the Road: Part 2” is a real gem), the dramatic material has real bite to it.

As Nick and Conrad lay their relationship out bare, rehash childhood wrongs and debate what it actually means to be someone’s “brother,” as Conrad comes closer to the father that he never knew and as Nick finally realizes the responsibility that he bears regarding his relationship with his own son, Manson Family Vacation manages to do something quite difficult and equally wonderful: it makes you absentmindedly wipe away the tear that’s traveled down your cheek, even as you guffaw at the next ridiculous situation. J. Davis’ Manson Family Vacation has real heart and I’ll take that any old day of the week.

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8/8/15: Find Your Swan

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Alan Tudyk, awkward films, best films of the year, best friends, Best of 2015, borderline personality disorder, casinos, cinema, dark comedies, David Robbins, dramas, Eric Alan Edwards, favorite films, film reviews, films, independent films, indie comedies, indie dramas, indie films, instant millionaire, James Marsden, Jennifer Jason Leigh, Joan Cusack, Kristen Wiig, Linda Cardellini, Loretta Devine, lottery winner, mental illness, Mitch Silpa, Movies, narcissism, obsession, Oprah Winfrey, patient-psychiatrist relationship, psychiatric care, Shira Piven, talk shows, therapists, therapy, Thomas Mann, Tim Robbins, Welcome to Me, Wes Bentley

If there’s one unifying theme to this crazy, modern era that we live in, I’m willing to wager that it’s narcissism. Never before in the history of humanity has it been so easy to be as completely self-absorbed as it is now. Not only easy, mind you, but also immensely profitable: when average, normal, “every-day” people can clear millions of dollars in ad revenue via YouTube channels devoted to everything from watching them play video games to watching them taste-test sodas, well…it doesn’t really seem to get more “me”-oriented than that, does it? This isn’t even the same thing as watching celebrities shill products: this is watching your next-door-neighbor do the same thing with (presumably) none of the resulting name recognition.

Thanks to the continued explosion of social media, technological advancements, “reality TV” programs and “the 24-hour news cycle,” the unwashed masses now have as direct a pipeline to the cultural zeitgeist as the glitterati. One need not release the “next, great American novel” in order to vault to the top of the literary heap: one need only draw as many curious visitors as possible to their newest blog entry. Want to be a world-famous pop star? Forget paying your dues on the club circuit: start uploading as many videos as possible of you covering that Florence+the Machine song and wait for the offers to start rolling in. In the past, anyone who wanted to “break through” to mainstream fame had a much steeper uphill climb: nowadays, it’s never been easier to shout your opinions to the rafters and actually have someone pay attention. Warhol wanted to give everyone 15 minutes but, nowadays, is there anyone actually watching the clock?

Actor-turned-director Shira Piven tackles this particular phenomena head-on with her spectacular new film, Welcome to Me (2014), a bittersweet ode to wish-fulfillment, mental illness, friendship and self-interest that might just come to define this era in the same way that Easy Rider (1969) would come to define the transitional time between the ’60s and the ’70s. Across the span of 87 minutes, Piven and screenwriter Eliot Laurence put us through the wringer, moving from extreme pathos to extreme hilarity with such stop-on-a-dime dynamics that the whole film becomes a masterclass in how to move your audience. In the process, Piven, Laurence and comedic wunderkind Kristen Wiig present us with one of the greatest cinematic creations of the 2000s, a performance that all but assures Wiig a shot at some genuine award-season gold: Alice Klieg. To paraphrase that most inimitable of comic book possums: we have seen Alice and she is us.

Opening with a quote from French philosopher Michel de Montaigne that might be the best modern mission-statement ever (“I study myself more than any other subject. That is my physics. That is my metaphysics.”), Welcome to Me wastes no time in plunging us into the day-to-day routine of Wiig’s Alice. We see her obsessively arranged house, everything organized by color, shape and whatever random internal qualifiers make sense to her. We witness Alice’s obsession with swans of every size, shape, make and model, along with the seemingly endless rows of videotaped TV shows that seem to fill every available bookshelf in her patently crammed home.

We see her recite every line from a taped episode of Oprah in the kind of off-hand manner that indicates she probably has every line from every Oprah episode memorized. We see her ask a complete stranger if there’s any “rape” in A Tale of Two Cities, a question which is as esoteric as it is mildly disturbing. We watch Alice as she goes about her lonely, oddly structured life, a ghost-like presence in a world that doesn’t quite make sense to her, a world that seems to have no more interest in her than it would any other roadside curiosity or “quirky” bag-lady. She doesn’t even seem to have any friends or casual acquaintances, aside from her mousy BFF, Gina (Freaks and Geeks’ Linda Cardellini). From our first glimpse of Alice, it’s painfully obvious that she has mental health issues, possibly more than one. She seems harmless, however, like so many others, so we just leave her alone to her own devices: what we don’t see can’t affect us, after all.

Alice, however, is destined for much grander things: in a modern era where everyone wants to be heard, why should she be any different? After winning a whopping $86 million lottery, Alice finally gets her chance: she’s going to make a difference in the biggest way possible, all while paying tribute to her greatest idol and influence, Oprah Winfrey. She approaches brothers/TV station owners Gabe (Wes Bentley) and Rich Ruskin (James Marsden) with a proposition: for $15 million, she’ll get her own TV talk show (100 two-hour episodes) and a chance to become as famous/watched/influential as Oprah. The subject? Why, Alice Klieg, of course, in all of her boundless glory.

From the jump, Alice’s show is as insane as expected. She’s wheeled out in a massive swan boat to a pre-recorded theme song that she, herself, croons. Her show features segments like the one where she cooks and consumes a meatloaf cake while the audience watches in confused silence or the numerous reenactments of various moments in her life (the one where she calls out old enemy Jordana Spangler ends with Alice bawling and screaming “Fuck you to death, Jordana!”as the crew frantically cuts to commercial). “Why doesn’t it look like Oprah,” Alice tearfully asks, only to be given the only sensible answer: “Because you ate a cake made out of meat and cried?”

The whole thing is a mess, obviously, the kind of talk show you might expect from someone who proudly discusses her borderline personality disorder as if it were a gluten allergy. It’s not like Alice isn’t seeking professional help, after all: she was happily seeing shrink Daryl Moffet (Tim Robbins) before she decided to quit her meds and regulate her moods with string cheese (always sound medical advice). Now that she’s finally getting what she most wants out of life, she’s happy enough to mitigate the need for mood stabilizers: living well, as always, is its own reward.

But the show is still a mess. Program director Dawn (Joan Cusack) thinks that Alice is a loose cannon waiting to go off, Rich thinks she’s the answer to all of his financial woes, Gabe isn’t quite sure what to make of her (but he kind of thinks he’s falling in love, at least a little bit) and Gina is almost super-humanly supportive, even as Alice seems openly dismissive of anything that doesn’t have to do with her. Hell, Gina even uproots her everyday routine in order to move into a reservation casino with Alice and several dogs…that’s friendship, ladies and gentlemen, no two ways about it!

In order to make her show “better,” Alice throws more and more money at it, all while Rich rubs his hands together and salivates like Scrooge McDuck at an estate sale. And then, of course, the expectedly unexpected happens: “Welcome to Me” starts to gain a following. Before she knows it, Alice has a full studio audience, her ratings are up and she even has her own super-fan, in the person of Rainer (Thomas Mann), an odd man-child who studies Alice in college and wants her show to air five times a week rather than once: he really hates to wait, after all.

And then, of course, the other shoe drops, like an airborne piano through a skylight: as Alice’s show gets bigger and she gets more of a platform, she becomes increasingly unstable and problems begin to crop up everywhere. Alice’s talk show becomes bigger, stranger and more controversial, as each and every whim from her extremely fertile imagination is given life, for better or worse (usually the latter), right through to her decision to spay and neuter dogs on-camera…with Alice actually performing the procedures.

As our erstwhile hero is battered about by any number of external (and internal) forces, Alice finds herself standing on the precipice of the most important, painful decision she’s ever made: embrace the anonymity of “normal” life and give up on her dreams or boldly forge her own path, disregarding the desires, wishes and feelings of all those around her in order to create a more complete version of herself. After all, as the lyrics from Rodgers & Hammerstein’s “Happy Song” inform us on the soundtrack, “if you don’t have a dream, how you gonna have a dream come true?” Like all of us, Alice has a lot of dreams…will she have what it takes to make them come true?

Let’s get the obvious stuff out of the way: Welcome to Me is a helluva film, easily one of the year’s best (thus far, at least). Piven, who has only one other directorial effort in her background (2011’s Fully Loaded, which she also co-wrote) is a sure hand with the material, guiding the film (and audience) through its/our paces with an exceptional amount of subtlety and skill. There are plenty of big, laugh-out-loud moments in Eliot Laurence’s excellent screenplay, no doubt about it, but some of the most effective parts of the film are also the simplest, quietest and most subliminal: the powerful scene where we see Alice framed within the solitude (and virtual imprisonment) of her own home…the heartbreaking look on Gina’s face when she sees her secrets laid bare before a television audience…the impossibly beautiful, uplifting moment where we finally see how much faith the crew actually has in Alice…these would be genuinely impactful moments in any film but hit especially hard here.

Indeed, one of Welcome to Me’s greatest strengths is its ability to make us laugh like idiots one minute (the scene where Alice tries to push an ornery dog into a carrier is absolutely sublime) while ripping our hearts out the next (Alice’s “dark night of the soul” moment, in the casino, has to be one of the rawest, most painful and devastating scenes I’ve seen all year and that’s saying quite a lot). Like the very best films, Welcome to Me wants to entertain us but it also wants to make us think: think about the strangers we pass by every day, think about the world around us, think about our own hopes, fears, dreams and inadequacies. Piven isn’t interested in easy, dumb laughs, although there’s still kneeslappers aplenty here: she knows that you can’t have comedy without tragedy and Welcome to Me is tragic, in the very best way possible.

On the technical side, Welcome to Me packs plenty of firepower behind the scenes. Veteran cinematographer Eric Alan Edwards’ resume reads like a virtual ‘who’s who’ of some of the most iconic films of the ’90s (My Own Private Idaho (1991), Even Cowgirls Get the Blues (1993), Kids (1995), Cop Land (1997) and Clay Pigeons (1998), to name but a few) and he presents some immaculately framed, beautifully composed shots here. There’s an almost fairy tale quality to the film’s narrative that’s handily echoed by Edward’s camerawork.

We also get an appropriately whimsical, well-utilized score by David Robbins, the composer behind films as far-flung as Bob Roberts (1992), Dead Man Walking (1995) and Cradle Will Rock (1999). The score is never obvious and manages to downplay clumsy emotional cues in favor of mood-setting that always feels organic, especially in regards to Alice’s wacky TV show. Between the narrative, cinematography and score, Welcome to Me has a complete singularity of vision that reminded me of another of my favorite films of the year, Marjane Satrapi’s The Voices (2014): both films utilize the lush visuals of someone like Wes Anderson, while tweaking them in some pretty impressive ways.

Then, of course, there’s that cast…I mean, seriously…get a load of this mob of unduly talented performers: Joan Cusack, Tim Robbins, Jennifer Jason Leigh, Wes Bentley, Thomas Mann, Linda Cardellini, James Marsden, Alan Tudyk, Loretta Devine, Jack Wallace…that, friends and neighbors, is how you cast your film! Regardless of the amount of screen-time, each and every member of the cast comes together to form an absolutely unbeatable ensemble. I hate to pull out the “Wes Anderson” card, again, but there’s certainly a similarity between his high-octane casts and Welcome to Me’s featured players. Hell, Cusack and Cardellini turn in two of the year’s brightest performances and neither of them has a tenth of Wiig’s screen time.

The glittering, dazzling star on the top of this particular tree, however, is the one and only Kristen Wiig. While she’s been a reliably great comic presence since her formative years on SNL, Welcome to Me marks a huge leap forward as far as her dramatic performances go. To not put too fine a point on it, Wiig is absolutely flawless as Alice: this is the kind of organic, well-rounded and utterly human performance that deserves to be lauded by every awards organization under the sun. There are no seams, no notion of where the actor ends and the character begins: like Leland Orser and Mary Elizabeth Winstead in the similarly amazing Faults (2014), Wiig isn’t playing Alice…she IS Alice, at least for the 90 minutes that we spend we her.

Whether she’s bawling uncontrollably, propositioning Rainer in the most awkward way possible, throwing a temper tantrum after she gets cut-off for mentioning “masturbation” on-air or sweetly making amends to everyone she’s wronged, Wiig’s Alice is the undisputed master of this particular universe, the sun around which everyone else orbits. Fitting, of course, since the film is all about the eternal struggle for self-validation and personal worth: this is a film about Alice and Wiig towers over the proceedings like the Colossus of Rhodes. Mark my words: Welcome to Me is where Wiig picks up the dramedy mantle dropped by the recently departed Robin Williams and it fits her like it was tailor-made.

Ultimately, the true mark of an unforgettable film is how hard it hits you: from the first minute to the last, Welcome to Me was like a never-ending barrage of body blows, albeit in the best way possible. I’m not ashamed to admit that the final 10 minutes turned me into a bit of a mess: the film’s payoff is undeniably bittersweet but there’s a life-affirming quality to it that’s anything but depressing. Throughout the film, Alice only really wants one thing: to be just like her idol, Oprah Winfrey. While she tries mightily (and fails wretchedly) to emulate her TV show, there is one aspect of her hero that Alice manages to internalize: in the same way that Winfrey derived joy from giving her audience things and helping them, so, too, does Alice learn that the real value of her platform is in her ability to make a difference in the lives of others. Alice’s show is called “Welcome to Me” but, in the end, it could just as easily be called “Welcome to Us.”

As we continue to find new and improved ways to make our own, personal impacts in an increasingly chaotic, cluttered world, it might help to keep one thing in mind: we may all have our own stories, our own triumphs, despairs, victories and losses but, in the end, they’re all part of the same autobiography…the story of humanity, in all its beautiful, terrible, wonderful and hideous forms. We may want to tell our own stories but, in the end, it’s all part of the same narrative. Like Alice, all we can do is strive for happiness and ride our swan boats into the horizon.

4/1/15: Who You Callin’ Dummy, Dummy?

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Adrien Brody, Arrested Development, awkward films, best friends, brother-sister relationships, cinema, crazy fiancees, delayed adolescence, dramadies, Dummy, dysfunctional family, Edgar Bergen, film reviews, films, Greg Pritikin, Horacio Marquinez, Illeana Douglas, independent films, indie comedies, indie dramas, Jared Harris, Jessica Walter, loneliness, Milla Jovovich, Movies, outsiders, Paul Wallfisch, romances, Ron Leibman, stalkers, Todd Solondz, ventriloquist, ventriloquist dummies, Vera Farmiga, wedding planners, writer-director

Home, as they say, is where the heart is. It can also, of course, be the place where the freaks and losers come to roost, as we’ve seen in any number of dysfunctional family dramedies over the years. From the cringe-worthy misanthropes that populate Todd Solondz’s best films to the more likable, if no less fractured, outsiders who inhabit Wes Anderson’s candy-colored universe, odd, sparring relatives have been a staple in indie films for decades, now, and the trend shows no sign of declining anytime soon. Think of it as “Cops” syndrome: no matter how screwed up our own families might be, there’s always a more screwed up bunch of folks waiting for us on the silver screen.

Writer-director Greg Pritikin’s Dummy (2002) is so well-ensconced within the “lovable outsider/screwed-up family” subgenre that an overriding sense of deja vu imbues every frame: you might not have seen this particular film before but it’ll probably feel like you have. This sense of familiarity ends up working both for and against the film: just like found-footage enthusiasts and zombie film aficionados have come to find, the “if you’ve seen one…” argument handily applies here. If quirky, combative families and sweetly “weird” loners are your thing, there’s plenty to tide you over until you get your next fix. If, however, you’re looking for a little more individuality from your films, I have a sneaking suspicion that Dummy will prove to be a largely forgettable experience, the cinematic equivalent of eating a three-course meal composed entirely of cotton candy.

In this particular instance, our awkward, outsider “hero” is Steven (Adrien Brody), a ventriloquism enthusiast who still lives at home, even as he inches ever closer to his third decade on the planet. His family is the kind of loud, brash, dysfunctional clan who should be immediately familiar to anyone who’s seen an indie drama-comedy in the past 15 years: mother, Fern (Arrested Development’s Jessica Walter), is a hyper-critical nitpicker; father, Lou (Ron Leibman), spends every minute of his begrudged retirement building model boats and ignoring his family and sister, Heidi (Illeana Douglas), is a wedding planner whose own romantic relationship could best be described as “hideous” and who takes more casual emotional abuse from her parents than Family Guy’s Meg.

When Steven loses his anonymous job at an equally anonymous electronics company, he ends up at the unemployment office, where he decides to pursue his “dream job”: he wants to be a master ventriloquist, just like his old hero, Edgar Bergen. The only problem, of course, is that Steven just isn’t very good: even his own dummy (which he never bothers to name) knows this beyond a shadow of a doubt. As Steven strikes up an awkward, tentative romance with Lorena (Vera Farmiga), the unassuming employment agent who tries to help him realize his life-long dream, he also has to deal with Fangora (Milla Jovovich), his obnoxious, brash, loud-mouthed best friend and Michael (Mad Men’s Jared Harris), his sister’s pathetic, unstable, stalkery ex-fiancee. It all culminates in a disastrous wedding where Steven must finally make the decision to come out from behind his dummy and actually live his life…or lose it!

Aside from the great cast, there’s little about Dummy that really differentiates it from any number of similar indie dramedies. Shy, unassuming but ultimately wise protagonist with a “weird” quirk? Check. Snarky, cynical sibling with a bad relationship? Yup. Bickering parents who micromanage their grown children’s’ lives? Goofball, antisocial best friend who causes chaos wherever they go? Double check. Every expected beat is present and accounted for, every necessary trope and cliché checked off the master list. There’s an overriding sense of awkward mortification that underscores everything, sure, but that’s not exactly revolutionary for this particular type of film.

If the story and writing behind Dummy is decidedly old hat and corny, the film features enough good performances to make it worth a watch, especially for fans of the cast. Adrien Brody is one of those chameleonic actors who always manages to shine, regardless of the production, and Dummy is no exception: there’s a tender vulnerability to his performance that makes us pull for Steven regardless of how pathetic he often seems. Vera Farmiga, currently turning heads as Norman’s overbearing mother on TV’s Bates Motel, is equally great (and under-stated) as his love interest and the couple have genuine chemistry that starts at “meet cute” but ends in territory closer to real life. Illeana Douglas nearly steals the whole show as Steven’s neurotic sister in a role that could easily come across as humiliating (see the aforementioned Meg Griffin reference) but manages to locate itself just south of “tortured nobility.” She’s always been a formidable presence, on-screen, but Dummy is easily one of very best, most self-assured performances: the scene where she, finally, smashes her dad’s stupid model boat is unbelievably satisfying.

We also get great turns from Jessica Walter (does anyone do “bitchy mom” better than Mrs. Bluth/Archer?) and Ron Leibman as the ‘rents and Jared Harris as the pathetic ex. Only Milla Jovovich ends up disappointing as Steven’s ridiculously high-maintenance best friend: blame it on the way the character is written or the actual performance but everything about Fangora is insufferable and obnoxious. Throughout the entire film, my one, overriding thought was “Why the hell doesn’t Steven play hide-and-go-seek” with her and run for the hills as soon as her eyes are closed?

I’m also happy to pour a healthy helping of derision on the ridiculously sappy “singer-songwriter”-esque songs that rear their ugly heads, from time to time. I’m not sure if the tunes are meant as subtle (or not so) commentary on the proceedings or are just impossibly on-the-nose but they never failed to pull me right out of the film. Self-referential songs can move a film forward (see Cat Ballou (1965) for a good example) or stop it cold in its tracks and it’s not difficult to judge which direction I felt Dummy erred on. Suffice to say that any element of a film that calls undue attention to itself is, ultimately, unsuccessful and Dummy’s silly score proves that by a country mile.

Ultimately, Dummy isn’t a terrible film but it is a terribly predictable one. There are enough good performances here (particularly Brody and Farmiga) to make this worth a watch on a lazy Sunday but nothing else really stands out. Most tellingly, Dummy is the kind of film that seems slavishly devoted to pleasing its audience, at the risk of any real tension or stakes: the overly sunny finale manages to snatch a traditionally happy ending from the clutches of a much braver (if still clichéd) possibility. Like Steven’s dummy, Pritikin’s Dummy is a largely inert force that manages to come to life, at times, but never really achieves the vitality that it deserves. Pinocchio might have become a real boy, in the end, but Dummy never quite becomes that animated.

 

11/16/14 (Part One): Let Your Voice Be Heard

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Alexandra Holden, bad fathers, celebrity cameos, comedy, Demetri Martin, directorial debut, Don Lafontaine, ensemble cast, Eva Longoria, father-daughter relationships, feminism, Fred Melamed, Geena Davis, In a World..., independent films, indie comedies, infidelity, Jason O'Mara, Ken Marino, Lake Bell, Michaela Watkins, Nick Offerman, Rob Corddry, sexism, Stephanie Allynne, Talulah Riley, Tig Notaro, voice actors, voice coach, voice-over artists, writer-director-actor

Despite this being the tail-end of 2014, there are a lot of things that our species has yet to accomplish: we can send a message from one end of the world to the other in seconds, yet we still have masses of people who starve to death every day…we can send a probe into deep space, yet can’t figure out the basic need for racial equality…anyone, anywhere, now has the opportunity to have their personal thoughts, artwork, opinions and beliefs be seen by a world-wide audience, yet we manage to marginalize women nearly to the point of invisibility. Never before have we been so attuned to the small details, yet so completely ignorant of the big picture…so close to the finish line and yet so very, very far away.

In a World…(2013), the extraordinary feature-length directorial debut of indie writer/actor extraordinaire Lake Bell, probably won’t create any massive kind of sea-change in “the battle of the sexes,” which probably says more about our inherent resistance to common sense than anything else. It’s too bad, really, because In a World…is just the kind of film that could start a bigger dialogue, if given a wide enough audience. A hilarious, sharply written, character-driven comedy that makes its points in the most reasonable way possible and comes to the same conclusion that all of us should have long ago, In a World… politely explains just how fundamentally stupid sexism is and the unfortunate ways in which both men and women keep falling into the same old traps. The solution, as simple as it is, might just shock the world: why not try treating everyone like equals and see what happens?

Carol (Lake Bell) is a voice coach whose main job seems to be helping celebrities like Eva Longoria “not sound like a retarded pirate” for various projects. Voice-work comes naturally to Carol: her father, Sam (Fred Melamed), an impossibly egotistical, massively obnoxious voice-over “superstar,” is about to receive a lifetime achievement award after long being regarded as one of the luminaries in this particular entertainment niche, second only to the legendary Don Lafontaine. The spectre of Lafontaine, who made famous the titular “In a world…” film trailer line so famous, hangs over the cast of characters like a lead weight: he’s the pinnacle that they all aspire to, the ultimate source of envy for jerks like Sam and his protegé, the equally obnoxious Gustav (Ken Merino).

With a new epic film series on the horizon (The Amazon Games, obviously modeled after The Hunger Games), the series’ producers decide that they want an equally epic teaser trailer: for the first time in ages, they decide to use the iconic “In a world…” line and they’re going to need the perfect person to pull it off. Turns out that Carol thinks she’s that person but there’s a hitch: women are completely marginalized as far as cinematic voice-over work goes. Not only don’t any of Carol’s peers, such as Gustav, take her seriously but her own father even disparages her attempts to break into the industry, telling her to stick to her “lowly” voice coaching work. Frustrated, Carol decides to flip off the naysayers and auditions for the trailer…and handily scores the gig! Gustav is furious, unable to handle the news that he lost a plum gig to a woman (even though he doesn’t know it was Carol who “scooped” him) but Sam takes it one step further: he demands to be considered for the gig, even though his daughter has been all-but handed the job already. Since he still pulls weight in the industry, Sam forces the producers to audition the applicants, including Carol and Gustav.

The drama involving the voice-over work is contrasted with a subplot involving Carol’s sister, Dani (Michaela Watkins), her neebishy husband, Moe (Rob Corddry) and the hunky director of The Amazon Games, Terry (Jason O’Mara): they all get thrown into the soup after Carol enlists Dani’s help with some voice-over research (Terry has the dreamiest Irish brogue, dontcha know?) and Dani and Terry end up spending an undue amount of time together. Throw in a romantic triangle involving Carol, Gustav and Carol’s endlessly faithful agent, Louis (Demitri Martin), and you have a recipe for some practically Shakespearian machinations involving love, betrayal, acceptance and the importance of standing up for yourself, regardless of what others think.

As an actor, Lake Bell is known for quirky character performances in indie films like A Good Old Fashioned Orgy (2011) and Black Rock (2012), as well as roles in bigger-budget, mainstream fare like What Happens in Vegas (2008), It’s Complicated (2009) and No Strings Attached (2011). There’s an odd quality to Bell’s performances that marks her as a singularly unique performer: there always seems to be something slightly off about her, something distinctly “out of synch” with whatever she’s appearing in, similar to any of Andy Kaufmann’s various “legit” acting performances. Bell was also part of Rob Corddry’s exceptional Children’s Hospital series, which saw her sharing the small screen with In a World…co-stars Corddry, Ken Marino and Nick Offerman, making her directorial debut a bit of a Children’s Hospital reunion, in a way.

In a World…works on a number of levels: it’s an above-average comedy, thanks to a pretty unbeatable ensemble cast composed almost entirely of comedians (the cast-list reads like a virtual “who’s who” of modern comics); it’s a nicely realized examination of a particularly difficult father-daughter relationship, complete with the requisite “young stepmother” to provide equal comedy grist; it’s a fascinating look into the world of voice-over acting, a subset of the film industry that many casual audiences probably have as little experience with as possible; and last, but certainly not least, it’s a subtle and cutting look at the modern face of sexism and the glass ceilings that still manage to keep women down, despite any number of advances made since the “bad old days.” In a World…manages to be all these things at once, maintaining a delicate balancing act that marks Bell as a formidable talent: much more experienced filmmakers would have dropped at least half of these balls…Bell juggles them with an ease that’s almost supernatural.

One of the most impressive aspects of Lake’s debut is how it’s able to engage on so many levels without ever losing sight of the inherent absurdity of these situations. Carol is exasperated and frustrated by the sexism of her chosen profession but she never gives up or gives in to anger: she plows through, resolutely, determined to prove her worth in the most old-fashioned way possible…by kicking complete ass at the job. For a modern society that prizes innovators and “boot-strap-warriors,” Carol is a bit of a patron saint: she sees something that she wants, ignores the naysayers, busts her ass and goes for it. The whole sexist system is still in place, mind you: the film doesn’t engage in needless feel-good aphorisms any more than it traffics in “revenge fantasies,” ala Horrible Bosses (2011) and its ilk. Rather, Carol’s stubborn refusal to give in and her steadfast desire to be heard makes her something of an Arctic icebreaker, charges ahead despite the endless resistance and pushback she experiences.

Most impressively, In a World…marks Bell’s full-length writing debut: the script is so tight, full of such great dialogue and scenarios that it’s hard to believe she doesn’t have more full-lengths under her belt. I previously called In a World…”Shakespearian” and it’s a comparison I’ll stand by: there’s something about the intricate, brilliant interactions between the various characters that instantly reminiscent of the Bard. By the end, Bell has managed to tie the various threads together in some truly satisfying ways, right up to the fist-raising conclusion that shows how Carol keeps kicking in the door to the boys’ club, finding ways to help women fight the system and find their own voices.

In a World…is that most amazing of constructions, in the end, a “message” film that succeeds as pure entertainment without ever losing sight of the big picture. Bell has lots of things to say here and never hedges her bets but it’s also plainly clear that she wants us to have a good time: there’s no reason that we can’t dance at the revolution, as long as we remember why we’re there. When a film makes you laugh out loud and think, at the same time, well…that’s something pretty special, no two ways about it. Here’s to hoping that In a World…marks the beginning of a brilliant, long directorial career for Bell: the world still has a helluva long way to go but the darkness looks like it’s getting brighter all the time.

8/10/14: The Hair Protects the Brain

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academic quiz show, Alex Wolff, Austin Pendleton, Billy Kent, Brendan Fraser, child genius, college student, Collegiate Mastermind, collegiate rivalries, coming of age, Eli Pettifog, Elisabeth Hower, Fred Melamed, Greta Lee, HairBrained, Harvard, independent films, indie comedies, Julia Garner, Kimiko Glenn, Leo Searly, Michael Oberholtzer, midlife crisis, Napoleon Dynamite, Parker Posey, Robin de Jesus, romance, Rushmore, social outcasts, Teddy Bergman, The Trotsky, voice-over narration, Whittman College

Sporting a King Buzzo hairdo and dragging an outrageously overstuffed dufflebag of books behind him, Eli Pettifog (Alex Wolff) is quite the memorable figure. He’s also a socially inept, fourteen-year-old certifiable genius who’s just begun his freshman year at Whittman College, the 37th best school on his list, far below his beloved first choice, Harvard. Eli, obviously, is not going to have an easy go of it. On the other hand, Eli is droll, fearless and has a way with a witty comeback that would make Juno proud. In other words, at least as far as indie comedies go, Eli is gonna be just fine.

As the centerpiece of Billy Kent’s HairBrained (2013), Eli joins a proud tradition of cinematic misfits made good, taking his place with the likes of Max Fischer, Napoleon Dynamite and Leon Bronstein. Like his predecessors, Eli faces a pretty predictable arc: begin as the maligned outsider and win the world over with his quirky charm. While HairBrained is nowhere near the ivied walls of Wes Anderson’s Rushmore (1998), nor even the high school halls of Jacob Tierney’s The Trotsky (2009), the film has enough charm to make it a breezy watch and a worthwhile addition to the canon.

We’re first introduced to Eli as his waste-case of a mother (Parker Posey, in a great cameo) drops him off at the bus station on his first day of college. She’s “too tired” to drive him to school: she’s a “terrible mother,” his voice-over informs us. “Make some friends,” she tells him, with a tone that indicates she knows how this particular request will go. And, with the gentle, psuedo-tropical rhythms of Cayucas’ “Cayucos” playing on the soundtrack, we’re off. It’s an effective opening and a good portent of what’s to come: plenty of gently snark, some genuine emotion and lots of quirk.

Every good movie misfit needs a sidekick and Eli gets his in the form of Leo Searly (Brendan Fraser), the unnaturally happy, easy-going, oldest freshman student at Whittman. As we discover via a clever “slot-machine”-style interlude, Leo has recently had a bit of a mid-life crisis, abandoning his job and family to “rediscover” himself which, as we’ll come to see, mostly consists of flipping a coin to decide between adding badminton or squash to his schedule and attending raging keggers where he gleefully picks up on co-eds young enough to be his daughter. Leo takes to Eli at first sight and makes it his goal to help steer his young protegé through the rocky waters of academia which, again, mostly consists of attending parties and learning to “loosen up.”

For his part, however, Eli can never truly be happy since he’ll always have to settle for second-best: namely, any place that isn’t Harvard. He’s wanted to attend the Ivy League school since he was a small boy and still plasters every inch of his Whittman dorm with his accumulated Harvard memorabilia: being rejected by the school is a blow that Eli still struggles to overcome, even as his outward appearance suggests nothing so much as bored acceptance.

After seeing a flyer for Collegiate Mastermind, an academic quiz show, Eli attends a competition only to watch in delight as his beloved Harvard wipes the floor with the pathetic Whittman team (Eli stands and cheers every time Harvard scores, earning him multiple “atta boys” from the smug Harvard crew, along with dismayed looks from his own peers). After the meet, Eli tries to wheedle himself in with the Harvard boys, only for the nerds to turn around and bully him after finding out that he goes to Whittman. In one moment, Eli’s entire world is turned upside-down: where once burned the flame of adulation, now only burns hatred. Rushing back to his room and destroying all of his Harvard gear, Eli vows revenge on his former crush: he will join Whittman’s Collegiate Mastermind team and he will utterly destroy Harvard…or, at least, Harvard’s Collegiate Mastermind team.

Once the boy genius is on-board, Whittman’s Collegiate Mastermind team is virtually unstoppable. In face, Eli pretty much becomes the entire team, completely over-shadowing original members Gertrude (Greta Lee), Alan (Teddy Bergman) and Romeo (Ruben de Jesus). He even gets a girlfriend in the form of the equally quirky Shauna (Julia Garner), who works at the local mall and enjoys smoking pot and making out (clumsily). Eli also ends up with his own fan base (success-starved Whittman students will hold on to any victories they can get, attending CM meets and chanting “We’re not dumb” en masse) and even a groupie, of sorts, in out-of-his-league cheerleader Eve (Elisabeth Hower), whose football player boyfriend, Laird (Michael Oberholtzer), has become some sort of “frenemy” to Eli. As for Leo, a chance reunion with his estranged daughter, who is now a perspective Whittman student, has got him re-evaluating his life choices: it certainly gets him rethinking his choice in bed partners, as his latest girlfriend is too close in age to his daughter for comfort.

As Eli and the Whittman team get ever closer to their elusive Harvard rivals, temptations arise everywhere for our intrepid heroes: Eli’s increasing showboating and obnoxious behavior during meets threatens his participation in the Collegiate Mastermind finals, Leo’s need for tuition money for his daughter leads him to return to his formerly destructive gambling habits. Will Eli be a hero and take Whittman all the way to a championship? Will Leo do right by his family, at long last? And will someone finally shut up those egotistical Harvard nitwits?

Although HairBrained doesn’t do much different from any other indie coming-of-age comedies of late, it’s still a pleasant, fun film, even if it manages to lose quite a bit of steam by the final third. Without a doubt, the film’s biggest asset is its incredibly winning cast: while there are certainly stand-outs, nearly every performer is equally likeable, charismatic and entertaining, whether in major or minor roles. Wolff and Fraser make an excellent odd couple, sort of a Mutt and Jeff where Fraser gets to traffic in his patented “aw shucks” attitude to great effect. Wolff is a pretty extraordinary young actor, definitely someone who we’ll be seeing more of in the future. Michael Oberholtzer almost steals the film away as Laird, however, playing the character as anything but the stereotypical bully: the bit where he inexplicably dresses like the Donnie Darko rabbit is pretty great but even better is his initial meeting with Eli, wherein he holds his head in the toilet after which he toasts his new “enemy” with a swig from his hip-flask. It’s a great, funny character and Oberholtzer is endlessly fun to watch.

Just as impressive, however, are Greta Lee, Julia Garner and Elisabeth Hower as, respectively, Gertrude, Shauna and Eve. As the no-nonsense anchor to Whittman’s CM team, Lee’s Gertrude is the perfect combination of wistful desire and bland practicality, while Garner’s take on the “manic pixie girl” stereotype is infinitely more tolerable than similar recent examples. Hower, for her part, is magnificent as Eve, playing the character as something of a lackadaisical predator, a sleepy-eyed shark who sets her sights on Eli, for whatever reason: the scene where she corners her prey in the library and implores him to “Look past her breasts,” to which Eli gives his best Henny Youngman-esque answer, “Look past them? I can’t even look at them!” is one of the film’s funniest moments.

On the downside, HairBrained ends up running out of steam well before the conclusion and a lot of what seemed charming and funny in the first two-thirds begins to feel strained and humdrum by the finale. My biggest issue came with the two deux ex machinas dropped into the script, either of which would have been bad enough on their own but taken together almost seem insulting: in essence, any time the relatively “stakes-free” film threatens its characters’ complacency, the script throws in a handy way to get them out, free and easy. As mentioned, it’s more than tiresome: it mars what’s otherwise a pretty good, funny script and smacks of lazy writing.

Despite a few issues, however, HairBrained is a pretty charming film: it’s not a classic, by any stretch of the imagination, but I found myself liking it a great deal more than I did Juno (2007). The dialogue is (usually) pretty clever, Wolff and Fraser have great chemistry and are completely believable as the odd couple friends and the supporting cast is exceptionally strong. While the film doesn’t break any new ground, it does just fine with what it has.

6/21/14: When Brothers Attack

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actor-writer, Alex Rennie, Awful Nice, Brett Gelman, brothers, Christopher Meloni, cinema, co-writers, comedies, dead father, estranged family, estranged siblings, feuding brothers, feuding families, film reviews, films, Hari Leigh, home renovations, independent film, independent films, indie comedies, James Pumphrey, Jon Charbineau, Keeley Hazell, lake house, Laura Ramsey, male friendships, Movies, sibling rivalry, The Money Pit, The Odd Couple, Todd Sklar, will, writer-director

For anyone who grew up with a sibling, Charles Dickens’ famous quote from A Tale of Two Cities may be all too accurate: “It was the best of times, it was the worst of times.” While there may be no truer, closer friend than a brother or sister, these are also the people who know how to push our buttons better than anyone in this big, crazy world. An older sibling may prove to be a tyrant, while a younger sibling may have been a constant source of annoyance while we were young. The frustrating thing about families, obviously, is that we rarely (if ever) get to pick ours: that particular lottery was taken care of well before we had any say in the situation. Writer-director-actor Todd Sklar’s sophomore film, Awful Nice (2013), takes a look at a pair of estranged brothers who may just come to realize how invaluable they are to each other…if they can keep from beating the crap out of each other, that is.

Jim (James Pumphrey) and Dave (co-writer Alex Rennie, channeling Charlie Day) are estranged brothers who end up forced back into each other’s lives after their father dies and leaves them a dilapidated lake house in his will. Jim is the marginally more mature/responsible of the two, given that he actually has a wife, kids and full-time job, while Dave is more prone to eating donuts out of trash cans, stealing complimentary breakfasts from motels and living so far off the grid that he kinda seems…well…like a vagrant. Even though Jim and Dave haven’t seen each other in years, they manage to handily pick up their former sibling rivalry as if no time had passed, including all of the stupid challenges and dares from their childhood (the dinner scene that begins with a drinking challenge – water, beer, gravy – before turning into an arm-wrestling match that morphs into a fist-fight is a particular highlight). Jim has no time for Dave’s foolishness, while Dave can’t stand Jim’s condescending, superior attitude: nothing’s changed since they were kids except for the addition of facial hair.

After visiting their father’s lawyer, Jon Charbineau (Law and Order’s Christopher Meloni in an absolutely ridiculous wig and glasses), the brothers receive some money to renovate the house, along with an offer for Charbineau’s “personal” construction team to take over the renovations. Jim is all for the idea, wanting nothing more than to get the hell away from Dave and back to wife Michelle (Hari Leigh), who’s becoming increasingly annoyed over his absence from home, thinking he’s just using this as an excuse to bail on familial responsibilities. Dave, on the other hand, is so positive that he and Jim can renovate the wrecked house (think The Money Pit (1986) with better wiring) that he spurns Charbineau’s offer and jumps in headfirst, as it were. Taking the bait, Jim decides to stay and renovate the house, naively believing this to be a fairly simple task. Poor, poor, stupid Jim…

As Jim and Dave continue to work on the house, more and more things begin to go wrong: Dave’s flighty inability to focus on the task at hand leads to untold complications (he begins the renovation by spending $900 of their money on an arcade game, which doesn’t bode well); Charbineau’s construction crew, led by the quietly sinister Ivan (Brett Gelman) appear to be made up of Russian mobsters and don’t take kindly to Dave’s obnoxious attitude or desire to do the job himself; Jim runs into an ex-girlfriend, Lauren (Laura Ramsay), which complicates his present marital difficulties; and Dave falls for a waitress, Petra (Keeley Hazell), who may or may not be a Russian prostitute. In time, many of these disparate issues will come together in a perfect storm, forcing Jim and Dave to finally fix their hopelessly fractured relationship. Will it be too little, too late or will family always win out in the end?

While there’s absolutely nothing unique, ground-breaking or particularly fresh about Awful Nice, it does have a particularly potent ace up its sleeve: the film is very, very funny. Uproariously so, if I may be so bold. The script is exceptionally sharp and witty, which helps do a lot of the heavy lifting, but let’s give credit where it’s due: Pumphrey and Rennie are absolutely perfect as the feuding brother. Not only are the two actors individually funny (as mentioned, Rennie channels Charlie Day’s spastic insanity to near perfection) but they work beautifully as a comedy team. They actually seem like brothers, which is no mean feat, but they’re a perfectly synced combo, which is even more important. While the dialogue is consistently great, much of the film’s physical comedy is completely sold due to how in-tune the two actors are with each other’s comedic style: it’s the kind of complimentary acting that can be found in the best “buddy” films, such as The Odd Couple (1968) or Crosby and Hope’s “Road to…” pictures. The rest of the cast is just fine (although Meloni is so silly as to be almost trifling) but the film is dominated by its charismatic, dynamic leads.

When Awful Nice is funny, it’s very, very funny: there were moments during the film where I laughed harder than I had in some time (the bit where Dave sets off the airbag in Jim’s car by jumping on the hood is a neo-classic, as is the running gag where Jim constantly bops Dave in the head with an umbrella, to Dave’s growing irritation ). The film is never dumb, however (aside from Meloni’s ridiculous get-up), and just as apt to blindside with a genuinely impactful observation about Jim and Dave’s childhood or their miserable adult relationship as it is to throw in a scene where Dave gets his ass beat by a couple sneering yuppies. It’s this expert melding of the emotional and the silly that really drives the film: it’s never so lightweight that it floats away but this sure as hell ain’t On Golden Pond (1981), either. It’s a pretty perfect mix and one that I wish more modern “dramadies” would get right.

For the most part, Awful Nice is a pretty exceptional, modest little film. Not everything works, mind you, and there are a fair number of plot developments that just don’t go anywhere (in particular, the bit with Jim and his ex-girlfriend amounts to a red herring and the Russian construction crew is woefully under-utilized) but the film hits more than it misses and is genuinely funny, which can’t be stated often enough. I also appreciated the little absurdist elements that popped up here and there, never enough to take focus off the rest of the action but just enough to let you know that Sklar and Rennie have got more on their minds than just churning out a low-budget film. Awful Nice is gut-bustingly funny, full of heart and surprisingly sweet without ever becoming cloying: in other words, it was a pretty great little film and I eagerly await Sklar and Rennie’s next full-length. Let’s just hope that if Meloni’s in that one, he gets to keep the rug and Groucho glasses at home.

5/29/14: Lost in the Valley of Dweebs

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Adam Chambers, Amber Stevens, bad films, Baron Vaughn, Bryan Greenberg, Catherine Reitman, cinema, comedies, Dreama Walker, film reviews, films, friends, independent film, indie comedies, Ishai Setton, Jim Beggarly, Laura Prepon, Matt Bush, Movies, one-location, Pepper Binkley, Revenge of the Nerds, Tate Ellington, terrible films, The Kitchen

By their very nature, films involving only one location can be problematic. On the one hand, restricting a film shoot to one location is a pretty terrific way to save shooting time and, therefore, money: you can never have too much extra time (or spare cash) on an independent film shoot. On the other hand, however, if you’re only going to be utilizing one location, it had better be a pretty interesting one. Hitchcock was pretty great at this (among many other things): he set Lifeboat (1944) in a claustrophobic dinghy and Rope (1948) in a living room, with the results speaking for themselves. Buried (2010) took place solely in a coffin, managing to be both highly claustrophobic and genuinely tense, even if we got stuck with Ryan Reynolds for an entire film. When done right, a one-location film can be a thing of beauty, a nearly perfect synthesis between the stage and the screen. Ishai Setton’s The Kitchen makes the masterful, bold move of setting an entire film in what appears to be a crew/cast member’s house, with most action taking place in the titular kitchen. When you’re setting an entire film in a kitchen, it better be one absolutely fascinating, space-age kitchen. This one is just a kitchen, unfortunately, and a pretty bland one, at that.

For Jennifer (Laura Prepon), this hasn’t been a particularly great day: she’s just found out that her boyfriend, Paul (Bryan Greenberg), cheated on her (with one of her own friends, no less), she’s turning thirty and her obnoxious “friend,” Stan (Matt Bush), is going to throw her a big birthday bash, whether she wants it or not. She doesn’t, of course, but no one listens to her. This includes her cynical sister, Penny (Dreama Walker), ditzy best friend, Pam (Catherine Reitman) and any of the anonymous “friends” who filter into and out of her house that evening. Jennifer just wants to be left alone but everyone thinks they know what’s best for her. When one of Jennifer’s “friends,” Kim (Pepper Binkley), reveals that she was the one who slept with Paul, things get really heated. When Paul actually shows up at the party, however, things are going to get…well…slightly more heated, I guess. Revelations abound, secret crushes are revealed, “nice guys” act like assholes, assholes get blasted with fire extinguishers, someone misspells Jennifer’s name on the cake (…the horror…the…horror…) and one dumbass thinks he got someone pregnant by kissing them (not even in this wonderland of inanity, Charlie Brown). This all plays out against a “wild” backdrop of twenty/thirty-year-olds standing around in someone’s house, drinking out of red cups and listening to music.

Right off the bat, The Kitchen has the feel, atmosphere and production quality of a particularly low-quality student film. The action all takes place in one exceptionally bland location (whoever had a free house to shoot in); the actors, with the exception of Laura Prepon, seem decidedly amateurish (whoever was available to help); the script is trite and tone-deaf (whoever was available to write); and there’s no craft to any of the camera shots or cinematography (whoever was available to shoot). There’s no point in the film where it ever transcends those limitations: I kept waiting for the movie to lose its “student film” quality and it never did.

Aside from looking amateurish, The Kitchen features some of the most unpleasant, obnoxious and entitled characters to clog up an indie comedy in some time. Prepon’s Jennifer makes out the best, although her performance always comes across as slightly off and fake. Compared to many of her castmastes, however, Prepon is exceptional. Coming in a close second would have to be Dreama Walker’s sarcastic but (relatively) grounded take on Penny. When Prepon and Walker can rise above the terrible script (which doesn’t happen often), there’s a genuine sense of honesty to their characters that actually resembles real people. There are at least two (but probably not more) scenes where the sisters just sit and talk: these are the most subtle, powerful moments in the film, which makes them the equivalent of a poo-smeared TV in a monkey-cage showing scenes from On Golden Pond (1981).

Amber Steven’s shrill, obnoxious take on Amanda helps makes her one of the most horribly entitled, awful characters to march across a screen in some time. The scene where she lets Paul “sweet-talk” her into getting finger-banged, through an open window, in the middle of a party, is just about as low as you think it could possibly get until you get to her self-righteous temper tantrum about how Jennifer and Penny think they own the world. Oh, do you possibly mean because…gee, I dunno…you were getting fingered by the birthday girl’s boyfriend at her own party? So much of the justifications and characterizations in The Kitchen marked it as a pure fantasy but this bit of idiocy was straight out of some lame Revenge of the Nerds (1984) rip-off. Just as bad, in her own right, is Pepper Binkley’s Kim. For most of the film, poor Kim gets to run around and apologize to Jennifer for sleeping with her scuzzy boyfriend. For the rest of the time, she gets to run around after Paul, following him like a puppy dog and blindly following every request/directive like a cult member. It’s a pretty disturbing character, to be honest: an empty shell that gets to be, by turns, docile and horn-dog wild.

If The Kitchen doesn’t seem to have much regard for its female characters, than it has absolutely no regard whatsoever for the walking penises that populate the film. Paul, obviously, is set up as a thoroughly disgusting, despicable character: he’s never less than a douchebag but he also fits the bill as “bad guy,” in a way, so that’s not surprising. More surprising and unfortunate, however, is how equally obnoxious and odious the rest of the guys are, especially the “nice guys.” For the most parts, the “nice guys” in The Kitchen are actually passive-aggressive jerks who wear their female “targets” down by sheer dogged persistence, insinuating themselves into their lives whether they want them or not. Exhibit A would obviously have to be Stan, Jennifer “best friend.” He spends the entire movie rushing around, trying to make everything perfect and over-the-top, despite Jennifer’s constant protests and requests to just be left alone. He frets about the tiniest detail, all the while dropping not-so-subtle hints that he’s in love with Jennifer and only wants to treat her like a queen. When she’s not interested, however, the worm turns immediately, becoming an acid-tongued, nasty little troglodyte who verbally assaults and disparages both Jennifer and her sister. What a fucking great guy!

Penny’s stuck with Kenny, a dweeb who kissed her, once, and now thinks he’s the father of her baby. Despite Penny’s constant (albeit sarcastic) requests for him to get lost, Kenny flat-out tells her that he has no intention of going anywhere and will be there for her forever, whether she wants it or not. When the film ends with the “happy” revelation that Penny and Kenny have become a couple (“We’re having a baby!” he blurts out, to Jennifer), it doesn’t sound like “happily ever after” so much as the beginning of a lifelong prison sentence. As set up in the film, Penny has no choice over her relationship whatsoever: the guy wants it, so there it is. He’s a “nice guy,” however, and he obviously adores her, so everything’s totally cool. Obviously. Because nothing about this sounds anything like stalking. At all.

I’m not meaning to imply that The Kitchen has some kind of hidden, misogynist agenda but I am plainly stating that it has a sloppy, lazy script, which certainly doesn’t help matters. Everything in the film is tone-deaf, especially the dialogue (with the exception of those aforementioned Jennifer/Penny scenes), but certain elements are particularly cringe-worthy. A running joke about an unknown Iraq war veteran starts off innocuously enough (Stan doesn’t want pot around because war vets are “pretty much cops”…I’ll admit to laughing) until it becomes painful when Stan mistakes the only black guy at the party, Andre (Baron Vaughn), as the vet. He has to be, you know, because all douchy white people think that all black people serve in the military. It’s hilarious…aren’t you laughing, yet? For balance, however, the script gives Andre the immortal line, “This is the whitest party I’ve ever seen: it’s all beer and Arcade Fire.” You know…because only white people drink beer and listen to indie rock. What a hoot! Wait…you’re still not laughing?

Perhaps you’ll find the scene where Penny blasts Amanda and Paul with a fire extinguisher to be more up your alley? How about the edge-of-your-seat moment where Jennifer and Penny try to make the birthday cake fall on the floor, just because. Do you laugh when dweebs get made because the hosts picked Coral Reef to play the party instead of their totally ass-kicking band? Get ready to hold yer guts: there’s plenty of all that here! We also get a lovable weirdo/stoner roommate who’s seldom seen but just might be responsible for the baby in Penny’s belly. Cuz he’s quirky and stuff, you dig? He’s got crazy, ruffled hair and eats cereal whenever he feels like it…what girl wouldn’t fall madly in love with that?

Despite genuinely trying to give the movie a chance, The Kitchen lost me somewhere between the awful characters and the wooden dialogue. While I do admit some pleasure from seeing Paul get blasted with a fire extinguisher and kicked in the nuts (he really is an awful, terrible human being: any worse and his sensei would be telling him to “sweep the leg”), the rest of the film alternates between boring, pretentious “Indie-Film-101” clichés and outrageously stupid scenarios. I kept wanting to root for Jennifer but even she disappears from the film for a time: when the guest of honor doesn’t even want to be at the party, it might be time to call it a night.

 

5/25/14: Those Belmont Avenue Blues

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apartment-living, B-movies, bad cops, bad films, bad movies, cinema, co-directors, co-writers, David Pasquesi, film reviews, films, Hezekiah Confab, horror-comedies, independent films, indie comedies, John LaFlamboy, Justin DiGiacomo, landlords, low-budget films, Mary Seibel, Mike Bradecich, missing pets, Movies, obnoxious cops, Police Academy, Robert Englund, slumlords, terrible films, The Mole Man of Belmont Avenue, Tim Kazurinsky, writer-director-actor, X-Zanthia

There’s a fine art to making a “good” bad film, almost a recipe, if you will. You need to begin with tons of energy: lack-luster, anemic B-movies are more commonly known as “terrible films” and you’ll very rarely find any cults dedicated to them. You need a really crazy idea, something that you just wouldn’t find in a movie with more…I dunno…taste? If you’re Troma, you might do something like zombie chickens at a fried chicken place that turn people into other zombies…or you could get really weird. Perhaps this is just me but a “good” bad film really needs to be stuffed to burstin’ with outrageously bad taste: the more offensive, the merrier. Troma, again, seems to get this right more often than not, although there’s still only so many squished heads, dead baby jokes and vomit that one person can take. Another great way to make a “good” bad film is to fill it with songs. Nothing helps a rough film go down a little easier than a few choice, hilarious, original songs. I’m probably in the minority of people who actually liked Repo! The Genetic Opera (2008) in toto but I like to think that almost anyone could have found at least a song or two to hum on their way out of the theater.

There are all kinds of ways to make a bad film “good” but there’s one common thread to all of them: despite how craptacular the film ends up being, there has to be at least one (preferably more but let’s be generous) aspect to it that is genuinely enjoyable. Otherwise, you’re just left with an amateurish, silly, disposable production, rather than the bad films that become truly legendary, like Manos: The Hands of Fate (1966) or Troll 2 (1990). When a bad film is really fun, energetic and batshit crazy, it can be the best movie-watching experience ever. When a bad movie, especially one that sets out to be quirky and batshit crazy, fails, however, we’re brought back to the sobering reality that it’s a very fine line between stupid and clever (thanks Tap!). The Moleman of Belmont Avenue (2013), despite its best intentions, is a pretty awful film…and not in the “good” way, either.

The Mugg brothers, Marion and Jarmon (co-writers/directors Mike Bradecich and John LaFlamboy), are landlords who could, most charitably, be described as slumlords. Their building has no heat or gas, very few tenants and precious little hope of new ones. This might have to with the fact that the Muggs are complete idiots, but it could also have something to do with the murderous Mole Man (Justin DiGiacomo), who has turned the remaining residents’ pets into his personal buffet line. These residents are…well…let’s just say they don’t do much to class up the joint. We have aging lothario Hezekiah Confab (Robert Englund), doddering old lady Mrs. Habershackle (Mary Seibel), a bunch of idiotic, interchangeable stoners, a reclusive hermit named Dave (David Pasquesi) and a dominatrix named Eliza (X-Zanthia). None of these are particularly interesting characters and Eliza seems to exist solely to walk around topless: were this a truly transgressive film, they would have had ol’ Mrs. Habershackle and the “girls” but this opportunity, alas, is a wasted one.

In short order, Marion and Jarmon are on the trail of the Mole Man: at first, they hope to stop it but, later, seem to be happy just to placate it. When the apartment building runs out of pets, however, the Muggs have to head out for replacements. When that doesn’t work, they decide to pick up a drifter (Police Academy’s Tim Kazurinsky) and see if the Mole Man will accept some delivery. When that doesn’t work, it’s time to suit-up, head into the basement and go mano-a-mano with the mysterious, blood-thirsty and pet-hungry monster. Better grab your super-shovels: shit’s about to get average.

It’s hard to really put a finger on what worked the least for me in Mike Bradecich and John LaFlamboy’s debut feature but right near the top of the list would definitely have to be the two writers/directors/lead actors. To put it bluntly, the two have no chemistry together whatsoever, which is pretty much items 1-5 on the attributes list for best buddies in schlock films. It’s hard to buy that these two were ever really friends, let alone actual brothers, which requires more constant suspension of disbelief than the film warrants. It’s kind of like the shields in old Star Trek episodes: the more energy expended trying to protect the ship from asteroids, the more vulnerable the ship becomes, in the long run. You waste so much energy trying to convince yourself that Bradecich and LaFlamboy “work” as a comic duo that there’s no energy left for deflecting things like the bad acting, Poverty-Row production values or staggeringly unfunny comic scenarios. For Pete’s sake, this is a film that attempts (and “attempts” should never indicate “achieves”) to posit that listening to Robert Englund make disgusting sex talk is hi-lar-eye-ous simply because he was Freddy Krueger. Poor Englund has acted in so many non-Nightmare on Elm Street-related productions in the last couple decades that I’m pretty sure most actual genre fanatics (the exact audience I would assume this is pitched at…what “normal” people would care about a goofy, ultra-low budget horror-comedy?) don’t automatically assume he’s playing Freddy whenever he’s on-screen but, hey…maybe they do and I’m the weirdo…who knows?

Another massive problem with the film is that, for a comedy, The Moleman of Belmont Avenue is startlingly unfunny. I have a pretty broad, fairly tasteless sense of humor (those aforementioned dead baby jokes? I laughed at most of ’em) but there were still only two points in the entire film that made me actually laugh out loud. The scene where Marion keeps dropping things on Jarmon, culminating in Jarmon getting hit in the crotch with a lantern, is a complete winner and the most effortlessly funny thing in the film. It’s stupid humor, to be sure, but it works great, proving that there’s no comedy stand-by quite like the old “kicked in the nuts” gag. The second genuinely funny moment comes in the scene where the Muggs go to get Mole man-fighting gear and wind up with “super shovels.” This bit was smart and pays off in another nice gag later on (so three funny moments, if you want to be technical). Other than that, the movie is a veritable wasteland of silly mugging, pratfalls, idiotic montages (filmmakers mocking the traditional “suiting-up” scenes in horror/action films have started to become as ubiquitous as those damned “bullet-time” scenes were after The Matrix blew up) and toothless attempts to be “edgy.” As far as “edgy” goes, we get a pair of truly obnoxious cops, a dominatrix neighbor who walks around topless and a gag involving a box of kittens that gets left in the trunk of a car for too long. Compared to something truly transgressive, The Moleman of Belmont Avenue is about as in-your-face as a white-bread-and-mayo sandwich with a side of sawdust.

If it means anything, the cast all seem to be having a pretty good time (or they fake it well), so Bradecich and LaFlamboy must be pretty okay guys. As such, I feel a little bad for savaging their film: after all, is it really as bad as something like The Last Rites of Ransom Pride (2010)? You know, in its own way, The Moleman of Belmont Avenue is as bad as The Last Rites of Ransom Pride. Maybe it’s not as weirdly tone-deaf as that bizarro-world “Western” but it’s just as lifeless, sloppy and brainlessly kinetic. The Moleman of Belmont Avenue reminds me of that one drunk guy who always tries to tell you a joke at a party: he’s loud, he’s sloppy, he’s belching stale beer into your face and spitting all over your eyelids whenever he talks. It takes him a good 10-15 minutes to get the joke out, mostly because he keeps forgetting elements and going back to add them. Finally, he gets to the very end…and forgets the punchline. At this point, you could wait patiently for the whole mess to play itself out again (even though you’ve already heard this knock-knock joke a hundred times) or you could just fake a laugh and vanish backwards into the crowd. If you need me, I’ll be over by the door, trying to avoid that damn drunk guy.

4/27/14: It Takes a Village to Raise a Curtis

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Aaron Jungels, Adele Parker, awkward kids, based on a true story, bohemian lifestyle, Breakfast with Curtis, cinema, coming of age, Curtis, David A. Parker, dramadies, eccentric people, feuding neighbors, film reviews, films, independent films, indie comedies, Jonah Parker, Laura Colella, Movies, Syd, Theo Green, Virginia Laffey, writer-director-actor, Yvonne Parker

Unless you happen to live atop a flag pole or at the bottom of the Mariana Trench, chances are good that you’ve had neighbors at some point in the past. Whether you tend to fall more on the Flintstones’ side (love thy neighbor) or the Sawyers’ side (brain thy neighbor with a mallet) is completely up to you, of course: personally, I tend to be Team Sawyer, so you’d best have an invite if you come knocking. For many folks, however, interacting with and getting to know their neighbors is an integral part of what it means to be a good citizen, a way of bringing humanity closer while strengthening the necessary social bonds that help us all pull together in times of crises. I get that…I really do. It’s always a good idea to know who lives nearby, especially if you’re the kind of person who relies on the kindness of strangers for things like lawn mowers, cups of sugar and hedge clippers. What if, however, your next-door-neighbors are a bunch of hippy-dippy pains-in-the-asses? In that case, you might very well end up with a situation like Breakfast with Curtis (2012), writer/director/actor Laura Colella’s most recent film.

The film begins “five years ago,” with the inciting incident that touches off the neighborly feud: young Curtis (Gideon Parker) throws a rock at his neighbor’s cat. Said neighbor, Syd (Theo Green) is a bit of a hippy hothead and threatens to crush Curtis’ skull. Needless to say, Curtis’ father, Simon (David A. Parker), isn’t thrilled with this plan and comes around to tell Syd and his wife, Pirate (Adele Parker) to stay the hell away from him and his family. Five years later, Curtis (Jonah Parker) is now 14 and he’s one of those stereotypically unhappy movie kids that never speaks, preferring to communicate by a complicated series of sighs and disappointed glances. He seems to be completely withdrawn from his family (and life in general, it seems) but this all changes (of course) when Syd has a change of heart and decides to try to bring Curtis into the fold via a videography project. As Curtis and Syd begin to spend more and more time together, the boy begins to come out of his shell and even (gasp!) smiles at one point…he’s cured! In the meantime, as Curtis is getting his life on track, Simon and his wife, Sylvie (Virginia Laffey), try to reconcile their former friendship with Syd, Pirate and their quirky housemates, Frenchy (Aaron Jungels), Paola (Colella) and Sadie (Yvonne Parker). Will Curtis be able to navigate the stormy seas of adolescence? Will Simon and Sylvie ever be able to recapture those fabled “Tequila Summers” of yore? Will Syd ever shut up?

Right off the bat, it helps to know a few things about the film. For one thing, the movie was shot in Colella’s own house and the characters are actually based on her own housemates and their (apparently) once contentious relationship with their own next-door neighbors. The cast is made up of a mixture of non-actors and professionals (at least to the extent that they’ve appeared in Colella’s other independent features), although the actual actors are playing different roles than their real-life counterparts. As such, the performances in the film tend to be a mixed-bag. Theo Green is a force of nature as Syd, resembling a slightly older, more disheveled Weird Al Yankovic but he’s pretty inconsistent: there are times when he’s able to bulldoze the audience into submission although, just as frequently, his delivery is awkward and halting. Jonah Parker isn’t given much to do, as Curtis, but there’s nothing particularly wrong with his performance: we’ve seen a hundred characters like this in indie comedies/dramas/dramadies over the past 15 years and Parker does no worse (or necessarily better) than the others. The rest of the cast, including director Colella, acquit themselves just fine, with one glaring exception: Yvonne Parker is absolutely painful as Sadie. Her dialogue tends to be trite and her delivery/performance is irritating and tedious, exemplifying the very worst aspects of non-actors in professional productions. While the other performances may be a bit unpolished, from time to time, Parker is consistently terrible.

Uneven performances notwithstanding, my biggest issue with Breakfast with Curtis tends to be its relative lack of focus and, occasionally, confusing story elements. For much of the film’s running time, it’s exceptionally difficult to get any real sense for who these characters are and how they’re all connected together. It wasn’t made clear until much later in the film, for example, that the people living in Syd’s house are actually several different groups: for a while, I assumed they were all related, which made some of the (assumed) sexual pairings come across as a little confusing, to say the least. I don’t mean to imply that a genealogy chart is required, of course, but the film seems to assume that we’re all on the same page from the jump, when I obviously wasn’t.

There are also story elements that seem rather undeveloped, sometimes to confusing effect. In one instance, a female visitor shows up at Syd’s house, is treated like a long-lost relative and seems to engage in a threesome with Frenchy and Paola, yet is never introduced or affects the film in any noticeable way. There’s also some unnecessary vagueness regarding the nature of Simon and Sylvie’s former friendship with Syd and the others: at one point, there seems to be a strong inference that they were all swingers. Were they? Does that actually have any bearing on the plot? Should it? As someone who not only strives to pay pretty close attention while watching films but also takes notes, I’m particularly confused by my inability to answer these questions. The only conclusion I can reach is that the answers were never provided. Small issues, perhaps, but the more time I spend confused, the less time I spent invested in the actual film.

Which, ultimately, is a bit of a shame, since the movie isn’t bad, even if it is rough. Everything has an amiable, shaggy-dog quality that makes it eminently watchable, even when it begins to come off the wheels. It would have been nice to have Syd say something profound, at some point (at any point, really), but Theo Green is charismatic enough that the character comes across as eccentric rather than haranguing.  Jungels and Colella have good chemistry together and there are plenty of charming scenes to be found (the “ladies-only” birthday party, where Frenchy dresses in drag, is a particular highlight and a really lovely scene, in general). I was also a big fan of the film’s color palette, finding the warm and primary color choices to be good ones, bringing a vibrancy to the proceedings that are sometimes lost in other indie films that favor drab tones and colors.

At no point, however, does the film ever seem to have any real forward momentum: the stakes are consistently low and there never seems to be any sense of “danger” whatsoever. Even the conflict between the neighbors seems to be largely forgotten after the opening: when Curtis’ parents find out that Syd wants him to help with his project, they both think it’s a great idea and encourage him to go for it. The Hatfields and the McCoys, they ain’t. In a cinematic landscape where these kind of coming-of-age dramadies are as numerous as grains of sand on the beach (I must have seen at least two dozen over the past three or four years), Breakfast with Curtis just doesn’t do enough to stand out from the crowd. It’s amiable and easy-going, sure, with a nice message and a good heart. Sometimes, however, that’s just not quite good enough.

4/1/14: Only the Lonely

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Bobby Cannavale, cinema, drama, dramadies, dwarfism, film festival favorite, film reviews, films, food truck, friends, friendship, independent films, indie comedies, John Slattery, loneliness, low-budget films, low-key, Michelle Williams, Movies, Patricia Clarkson, Paul Benjamin, Peter Dinklage, Raven Goodwin, small town life, The Station Agent, Tom McCarthy, train depot, train-chasing, trains, writer-director

Some folks are just slightly out of step with the rest of the world, despite the best efforts of the rest of the world to bring them back into line. Humans are social creatures, we’re told, and companionship is necessary for our survivals (and mental health). The best way to succeed in life is through a positive outlook and cheery disposition: like attracts like, after all, and grim, unpleasant people will lead grim, unpleasant lives. In order to succeed, you must constantly push ahead, remaining endlessly active: idle hands and all that, you know. These are all truisms, little global facts that will help us all become better people…if we’d just listen and get in line, of course. What about those individuals who don’t “play nice,” however? The people who would rather go it alone than hang out with the crowd? Those folks who don’t find a smile to be their resting expression but something closer to a resigned grimace? Are the dour and serious-minded among us fit only to be reformed, devoid of any societal use on their own? Tom McCarthy’s low-key, dour independent film The Station Agent takes a good look at one such “unfriendly” individual and comes up a similar conclusion: even loners need companionship…even if they don’t realize it at the time.

Finbar McBride (Peter Dinklage) runs a model train store with Henry Styles (Paul Benjamin): the two live together and appear to be each other’s only friends, enjoying a quiet, tranquil existence filled with lots of comfortable silences and humble meals in their tiny kitchen. Nothing can remain forever, however, and Fin’s life is upended when his only friend suddenly drops dead. Henry has sold off his store, leaving Fin unemployed, but he’s also bequeathed his friend some land with an abandoned train station on it. Fin pulls up stakes and moves into the train station, making it his home. Once there, he meets his new neighbors: Joe (Bobby Cannavale), a boisterous, out-going, talkative food-truck owner and Olivia (Patricia Clarkson), a rather odd, high-strung artist. Joe has a tendency to park his food truck right outside Fin’s new doorstep, making him something of a mobile next-door-neighbor.

At first, Fin wants nothing more than to run down the clock of his life in peace, away from any other human contact. Bobby, however, takes a real shine to Fin and seems determined to become friends with him, even if it means wearing down his resistance with a constant, never-ending stream of good-humored chatter. Along the way, other people end up in Fin’s orbit, people like young Cleo (Raven Goodwin), local librarian Emily (Michelle Williams) and Olivia’s rather bewildered ex-husband David (Mad Men’s John Slattery). Despite his best intentions, Fin ends up interacting with all of them, to one extent or another, and each one brings him one small step closer to rejoining the rest of humanity. Will Fin ever embrace the friendship around him or will he continue to sequester himself away from the world, greeting everything with downcast eyes and a sigh? Will romance bloom in surprising ways? Or will long-held secrets and Fin’s naturally stand-offish demeanor doom him to a life alone?

One of the charges frequently leveled against indie films is that they have a tendency to be unrelentingly dour and po-faced: this certainly isn’t anything that The Station Agent works particularly hard to disavow. If anything, the film may stand as one of the most serious “comedies” I’ve ever seen, although most indie comedies from the past decade tend to be a bit of a misnomer. There are certainly funny, upbeat moments in the film (almost all courtesy of Bobby Cannavale) but the overall mood is definitely one of serious pensiveness. Peter Dinklage mopes about the film with an expression that seems more befitting of Wuthering Heights than anything with the descriptor “comedy” and Olivia’s backstory (and subsequent breakdown) keep the story in some pretty dark territory. There’s also the notion that only Olivia, Joe and Cleo (and possibly Emily) ever treat Fin with anything approaching warmth or humanity: everyone else he comes across is content to mock him, snap photos on the sly or gawk as if he were a three-headed space alien.

Since the film is so serious, and Fin is set up as so stand-offish and unpleasant, there’s frequently a disconnect between the characters. I can’t count the number of times that I visibly cringed whenever Joe said something to Fin: Joe was always so sweet and happy, while Fin was always so dismissive and curt that I really just wanted to grab Fin and shake the shit out of him. It’s certainly not fair to make Fin responsible for “babysitting” Joe, as it were, and being friendly to him. On the other hand, however, Joe does absolutely nothing derogatory to Fin, yet often gets a big, heaping helping of nothing, in return. Once Fin warms up, a genuinely sweet, touching friendship develops. Even then, however, there’s still a sense of distance and disconnect: you get the feeling that Fin stops smiling the moment his “friends” can no longer see his expression.

Despite Fin’s rather churlish attitude, however, The Station Agent is still able to make some nice points about friendship and companionship. Deep in the heart of the film is the idea that real friends, the kind that stick around for a lifetime, never require any more of us than our presence in their lives. There’s real power to the moment where Fin finally lets Joe sit and read with him: even if Joe can’t quite keep his end of the “complete silence” deal, this feels like a real breakthrough moment for both. Equally powerful is the scene where we see Fin, Olivia and Joe sitting quietly together, staring off into the distance, drinking wine and smoking a joint. No one says anything but there’s nothing uncomfortable about the silence. This, the filmmakers seem to be saying, is the real definition of friendship: real friends don’t need to talk…real friends would be just as content to sit there, listening to the buzz of mosquitoes in the warm summer air, enjoying their time together on earth.

The Station Agent may seem to be about a man who just wants the world to leave him alone but it’s actually much more: it’s about a man who just wants the world to meet on his own terms, in his own backyard and on his own two feet. Finbar doesn’t want anything less than respect from the world at large: can any of us ask for less?